Saturday, July 14, 2012

The McNally-Arnold Jerry Garcia List

It's very meta, but I do have a lot to say about The List Tradition which I hope to get to. Let me just point out something that I think is interesting: The Garcia stuff on the typescript McNally-Arnold Jerry Garcia List (McNally and Arnold, ND), which became the Garcia list in Deadbase IX, entered the ether through The Jerry Site, and lives still at Jerrybase) derived from the same ur-source as the Soto-Arnold GD List, union gig contracts.

Working musicians pretty much have to join the American Federation of Musicians, AFM Local No. 6 in San Francisco, (previously?) at 116 Ninth Street, just a few blocks off Market. Every gig or session played by a union member has to be filed with the union. These union contracts were seemingly systematically kept by the GD organization. Don't want any trouble with the union, I guess. Anyway, these union contracts, held in GD/Garcia business files, were the basis for both Lists. I don't know whether Janet Soto also compiled the Garcia list, but I sure would like to know whom we have to thank for the bounty of data that we have so long enjoyed around Garcia On The Side!

Quick meta, just can't avoid it: gotta love how modern bureaucratic organizations document themselves; indeed, it's almost redundant to point it out.

1 comment:

  1. A comment Dennis McNally made to me suggests that he compiled the list from union records. I now comprehend that they were in a drawer in the Grateful Dead office, which is how he was able to do it.

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