Video from The Stone?

Anyone ever heard of any video circulating from Freddie Herrera and Bobby Corona's The Stone (412 Broadway, San Francisco, CA, 94111)? Apparently video was shot there.

JGB at Queens College, October 30, 1975

LN jg1975-10-30.jgb.all.aud-cooper.124251.flac2496

Have barely had time to write a word about the Hopkins-era JGB these last 4+ years of blogging and hiatuses. That remains true, so the writeup will be short. Bottom line is that I think Nicky sounds really good (i.e., reasonably sober). I sort of figure that the day off the day before had done everyone some good. The tempos are upbeat. Pretty good tape of a pretty good show.

Jerry Garcia Band

Colden Auditorium, Queens College

Kissena Blvd.

Flushing, NY 11367

October 30, 1975 (Thursday)

Cooper MAC 2496 shnid-124251

--set I (8 tracks, 85:02)--

s1t01. / Let It Rock [10:38] %

s1t02. Sugaree [8:09] [0:02] % 8-12-9:29

s1t03. That's Alright Mama [11:35] [0:03] % [0:45] % [0:25]

s1t04. Catfish John [10:39] %

s1t05. /Pig's Boogie [#6:54] % [0:23]

s1t06. I'll Take A Melody [12:21] % [0:55]

s1t07. Money Honey [8:48] [0:02] %

s1t08. [0:23] (I'm A) Roadrunner [10:51] %

--set II (10 tracks, 98:15)--

s2t01. //It Ain't No Use [9:54] [0:02] % [0:27]

s2t02. Russian Lullaby [8:36] % [0:10]

s2t03. That's What Love Will Make You Do [10:47] [0:02] % (1) [0:59]

s2t04. Friend Of The Devil [5:38] % [0:15]

s2t05. Lady Sleeps [5:09] [0:03] %

s2t06. [0:56] Mission In The Rain [5:49] [0:04] % [0:01]

s2t07. Mystery Train [13:01] [0:02] %

s2t08. [1:08] The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [9:11] [0:05] % [0:03]

s2t09. Let's Spend The Night Together [18:26+0:17] ->

s2t10. [-0:17] Edward The Mad Shirt Grinder [7:02] (2) [0:03]

! Band: Jerry Garcia Band

! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;

! lineup: Nicky Hopkins - piano;

! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;

! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19751030-01

! band: Jerry Garcia Band #1 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html).

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/124251 (this fileset), http://etreedb.org/shn/124248 (1644 fileset, same source), http://etreedb.org/shn/92780 (Gerry Moskal aud).

! map: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Colden+Auditorium,+Queens+College,+65-30+Kissena+Blvd.,+Flushing,+NY+&hl=en&sll=38.997934,-105.550567&sspn=7.374835,16.907959&t=h&hq=Colden+Auditorium,&hnear=Queens+College,+65-30+Kissena+Blvd,+Flushing,+New+York+11367&z=16&iwloc=A. As of this date (11/9/2013), Google Maps locates Colden Auditorium on Reeves Avenue. The [hard contemporary evidence] says "Kissena Blvd." (no number). JGBP gives street number 65-30, but I don't quite know, so I am sticking with the hardest contemporary evidence, for as far as it will go.

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/colden-auditorium-queens-college-65-30.html

! R: field recordist: Jim Cooper

! R: field gear: Sony ECM-22P > Hitachi TRQ-232, Maxel UD-C90, no NR

! R: transfer: Nakamichi Dragon > benchmark ADC1 24/96 > pc > adobe audition 2.0 > cd wave > flac. Transfer & seeded by Rob Berger 3/13.

! R: seeder notes: “brilliant!”

! R: running slow? Reporting now during TWLWMYD, and it sounds just fine.

! historical: $9,000 guarantee plus $1,500 lights and sound. Staying 5 nights at the St. Moritz on Central Park South, so this was just a drive to Flushing from Manhattan. Candace doing the lights.

! seealso: JGMF, "Bloody Hell," http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/01/bloody-hell.html.

! P: s1t01 LIR Nicky some really nice runs at the start of the song

! P: s1t02 Sugaree JG pretty nice solo over the 6-mark.

! P: s1t03 TAM sounds like After Midnight to start. Nicky sounds great.

! R: s1t05 PB clips in

! P: s1t07 MH @ 5:30- JG guitar solo, starts off low and a little fuzzy, then 5:45 he sharpens up with a jagged run that's very, very, nice. A little faster run 6:10-6:23, they pick up the energy a little bit, swinging more now. Jerry playing very well. Fanning @ 6:45, Nicky errs late in the 6-min mark, not letting the solo play, then he's gone for awhile, until Jerry settles back into the swooping hook that is really the trademark of "Money Honey". Still not hearing Nicky much until late in the 7-min mark. Maybe he was cleaning his mirror?

! P: s1t08 IARR Jerry never quite settled on how he wanted to present Roadrunner in terms of key, tempo, etc. In every iteration, it reflects the idiosyncrasies of its human and pharmacological context. A temporal cipher. In early '74, it was young Jerry running a little too hot (e.g., 2/9/74), with tons of color from Merl's organ. With JGMS and LOM it really benefited from Martin's saxophone as well in terms of the overall palette. The Garcia-Hopkins JGB was a lot more stripped down, of course. Especially on a tape (night?) like this, where Nicky is really hard to hear, things are just too percussive, or something. Nicky solos in the 5-min mark, the rest of the guys chugging behind him. Sounds like Jerry practically had to write him an engraved invitation to take a run. With that said, the Garcia-Hopkins tempos are generally pretty good, still some juice like earlier, but not the swampy dirges of 1976-1978. So, this is a pretty good tempo for IARR, even though I don't find this version to be very good. It just never really cooks.

! R: s2t01 IANU cuts in, not much missing

! P: s2t02 Russian Lullaby: Love this tempo! Very upbeat. Such great Hot Club swing, Nicky providing some really nice saloon groove. Coffee or whisky? Why not both? Jerry's attack in the 2:30 mark is really inventive, like he's skipping two notes down instead of a more continuous scale. In the late-5 over 6 minute mark Jerry has almost a Midi sound, very interesting. It's rather trumpet-like, his playing here. Nicky another solo late-6 over 7 minute mark. NB that RL did not have the bass solo at this point.

! s2t03 (1) After John runs through the chord progressions for FOTD, knowledgeable fans call it out. Good call!

! P: s2t04 Crowd clapping enthusiastically to the familiar (because played by the GD) "Friend Of The Devil". This tempo is great, very upbeat. Nicky's playing shows lucidity that was too rare during his time with JGB. Jerry takes a fine solo over the 4-minute mark, compact but reasonably dextrous. He's getting warmed up, I hope.

! song: "Friend Of The Devil" (s2t04) [Jerrybase]: One of the rare tunes Jerry played inside and outside of the GD with any regularity, this one, like other switch-hitters such as "Sugaree" and "Deal", a Garcia-Hunter joint that Jerry just seemed to love.

! setlist: s2t05 was listed in this info file as "Waltzing Matilda", but it is "Lady Sleeps".

! song: "Lady Sleeps" (s2t05) [Jerrybase]: Nicky wrote and performed this pretty piano instrumental as a solo, spotlight piece during his time with the JGB. In most live JGB renditions he segued it into the unfortunate "No Time", a forgettable nasal lament which also appeared on Nicky's 1975 release No More Changes (Mercury SRM 11028). Here it stands on its own, and nicely, a velvety soft, gentle feel sharpened by Nicky's clean strokes.

! P: s2t06 MITR: These early versions of MITR are so great. There was only really a brief window when he could truly handle the vocals, including the opening lines. Here he flubs some lyrics in the mid-3 range.

! P: s2t09 LSTNT some nice fanning over the 10-minute mark. Late in the 14-minute mark there appears to be some discord, not sure who contradicts whom, but Jerry and Nicky don't seem on the same page as one of them returns hard to the LSTNT theme, the other stiff-arms. Now to mid-15 minute mark they are dueling vigorously, late 15-minute mark Tutt picks up the tempo, and they get into a very tasty romp, a little bit to the tempo of "Caution" for the GD fans, Jerry running around now, building to some nice fanning @ 17:15, back to LSTNT theme 17:30, Tutt banging like an animal late in the 17-minute mark, some great drumming, Jerry rises in response late 17-minute mark, now everyone digging in real deep, Jerry more theme then winds down into Edward.

! R: s2t09 LSTNT a brief splice @ 16:46?

! P: s2t10 Edward is a tremendously exciting piece of music, getting Jerry to sound like John Cipollina and David Gilmour in one song is no mean feat. Tip o’ the cap to ya, Session Man.

! s2t10 (2) JG: "Thank you. See y'all later on."

! Staying at St. Moritz, 30 Central Park South, New York, NY, 10019 (http://goo.gl/maps/gQOgv), five nights. Jerry's the only one of the traveling party with a double room, so I presume he's with Deborah Koons or another woman not named Mountain Girl. Players Nicky Hopkins, John Kahn and Ron Tutt, manager Richard Loren, and drivers/'quippies Steve Brown, Kidd Candelario, Steve Parish, and B. Zachary all get single rooms. The band members had hit the road on Tuesday the 21st, the drivers probably a few days earlier, so everyone's a week or more on the road. Nine shows in seven consecutive nights, Wednesday (10/29) off in NYC, then, starting this night, six shows on four consecutive evenings, flying home the next day (Monday, November 3rd). "You've 'ad yer fun ... now pay fer it!" Back to the old salt mines. Hop in the limo, dozen mile ride to Queens, and play this long-ass gig.

JGB April 2, 1976 Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ

Wow. Earliest known JGB video. Wonderful.



Hopefully there's more video from the Cap yet to emerge!

Thanks to whomever unearthed and shared this. Great, great stuff.

Reminder: Date Index

Just a little reminder that I try to keep a reasonably complete list of dates I have discussed at any length at a db.etree list, http://db.etree.org/jgmf. Happy hunting!

Fishing Reports: Fall 2011

I was going through some old posts, trying to update tags, and somehow this must have only been a draft. So it was posted in 2013, two years after the fact.

I don't have time to do this up right, and I know these are just notes-to-self, but let me just lay them down anyway.

10/28/2011, 1000-1300: St. Vrain from the white gate.

Started lower than in 2009, while river still on the right. Water is low, shop guys said 3 weight and small bugs would be good. Suggested nymphing earlier in the day, maybe weighting down an ant underneath. Also underwater: Rainbow Warriors, a blue tungsten bug. Small, 22 ish. 6x line-leader-tippet.

Ca. 10 am - ca 1 pm, sunny, probably got into 50s in the sun in the canyon. Banks are still super-snowy. Water looks great.

I put a caddis fly up top as a strike indicator and started with the rainbow warrior down low for some flash (mostly shady on the water). Caught a couple of small browns. Switched to the blue tungsten underneath, caught a few more small browns.

Walked up to where the road runs to right of the river, a hundred yards maybe and fished up for awhile. Caught one decent-sized (by which I mean maybe 10") rainbow on the rainbow warrior.

Last time (only other time) I got skunked, so 5-6 fish in 3 hours isn't terrible. But it wasn't in any way obvious. There are some great pools and lots of nice channels, but I mostly caught stuff when I could swing my wet fly underneath an underwater rock shelf. They mostly came out of crevices, not much happening out in the open.

10/24/2011, 0900-1300: South Boulder Creek, El Dorado Canyon

Parked right down and off to the right inside the park and fished the lower section of the river. I almost never go here, just because the fish are so obvious (cf. the St. Vrain, 10/28/2011), so visible in the high-traffic areas of the park (the bridge, the little path along the water for a few hundred yards or whatever it is), so accessible that I figure they get hardware thrown at them constantly and are gonna be curmudgeonly. But with traffic to the park down from the summer season, and the water coming down, I have been eyeing it and decided to try it.

Good times. Not trivially easy to catch fish, and they're bigger down here than in the middle section I usually fish (from 60 yds down from the Rattlesnake Gulch trailhead, up to the big pool or the upper bridge). So I am so used to this water that I was pretty well able to find the fish and persaude them to say hello. I think it was BWOs that were killing, on a slightly overcast day. Dry only, 3-weight rod, 6x line/leader/tippet.

10/21/2011, 0700-1200, Big Thompson River, b/w mile markers 70 and 71 on Highway 34

Came out way too early, but I had insomnia so what better was I gonna do? It was chilly in the morning, boy, but it warmed up to 50s by early afternoon.

Already having a hard time remembering what I was doing this day ... 5 weight I think (first time with the new reel), 5x line/leader/tippet. I probably caught a half-dozen fish, mostly browns and one rainbow. I can't really remember. It was nice, but not ridiculously better than what I can get a lot closer to home. Not as good as when I want at this same time of year in 2009.

ca. mid-October 2011, South Boulder Creek (1) west of highway 36, and (2) between South Boulder Road and Highway 36.

I have commuted past South Boulder Creek on highway 36 hundreds of times, but I have only fished the water you can see from the road once, and to my recollection only very briefly. Having been riding my bike to work, I have been watching the progress and regress of the fly shops located in the Table Mesa Shopping Center. While Rocky Mountain Anglers continues to thrive (I hope) because of its amazing people, gear and knowledge, "the other shop" on Table Mesa has had a bunch of turnover. Anyway, this shop had a sign in the window saying that Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) was creating some habitat in this flat area of the creek, at least the bits on either side of Highway 36.

Alligator

I didn't mean to publish this drafty fragment. It published itself. IIWII.

anonymous comment: 

Russian River connection might have to do with them spending time at the Warnecke Ranch out on Chalk Hill Rd in Healdsburg. Alligator was supposed to be written there.

7/16/67 interview Garcia says they are looking to move to the Southwest, with specific mention of New Mexico. I would be stunned if this were not connected with Hunter.

Here's what The Bard says in Box of Rain (1):

This was one of my first lyrics recorded by the Dead. I got paid two hundred fifty dollars from the record advance for Anthem of the Sun with which I bought a used car and headed north to Seattle, where I tried to make a living restringing beads from Goodwill for a friend's boutique. I made about five dollars at this occupation. The car broke down, which was okay, since I couldn't afford gas for it, so I hitchhiked back to S.F. and decided to hang out there with the Dead.

Dodd (2) doesn't say much about the near origins of the song (i.e., through any Hunter biography), but has characteristically brilliant and fascinating analysis of its various historical progenitors and other relatives.

REFERENCE:

(1) Hunter, Robert. 1990. A Box of Rain: Collected Lyrics of Robert Hunter. New York: Viking Press (s.v. "Alligator", pp. 6-7).

(2) Dodd, David, ed. 2005. The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, annotations by David Dodd, Foreword by Robert Hunter. New York: Free Press (s.v. "Alligator", pp. 36-38).

LN Reconstruction May 19, 1979 Old Waldorf, set II

Corry attended the Reconstruction show at the Old Waldorf on May 19, 1979, and has written it up very nicely from all of the angles that matter. He saw the 1st set. The second set, probably most of it, circulates from a very nice but unattributed audience recording. It's not the best Reconstruction set around, but I like it OK. This material has circulated as set I, but it's set II.

Garcia was clearly trying not to have attention drawn to himself in Reconstruction. He seemed to want to efface himself in the band, stand back in the shadows. Many of the show advertisements listed him as a featured player, in part because Reconstruction seems to have played some shows with Jerry Miller on guitar, and in part, well, to sell tickets. Garcia was always the goose that laid the golden egg in his side projects. Or, he was Midas, even for middling, disco-inspired funk, soul and disco outfits like Reconstruction. As David Grisman would say in another context, "Jerry kind of takes care of the profitable part" (or something like that).

My main reason for queueing this up is that it has some banter up front that I have always found revealing. Saxman Ron Stallings handled the emcee duties for Reconstruction. After the first few songs on this tape (shnid-14804), we hear the following exchange:

"Jerry Garcia on the guitar. On guitar, Jerry Garcia. Our guitar player, Jerry Garcia."

[Crowd getting louder and louder, cheering more each time he says Jerry's name.]

Crowd member: "Hey, who's on the saxophone?" Another: "Take it, Merl!" They ask again: "Who's on the saxophone?" Stallings: "That's a very good question."

Someone in the back: "Who's on guitar?" Stallings: "Guitar? Jerry Garcia." Crowd: "Who? Who?"

No big deal, right? I know. But it is interesting to hear the slightly uncomfortable evidence of Garcia's stardom and fawning fan-base, even in the presence of badass players like Reverend Ron Stallings and drummer Gaylord Birch. Everyone who ever played a paid gig with Jerry had to reconcile himself or herself to the fact that Garcia was going to get all the attention, Garcia was probably going to bring in dollars, etc. One had to just deal with some over-the-top fans.

For the rest of the gig, Stallings makes a big deal of repeating the players' names over and over. But I think he's just compensating for the awkwardness of this earlier exchange. I can imagine Garcia being a little bit mortified by all of this. Revisiting the 6/23/79 show in Guerneville, I hear Garcia and Kahn trying to start up Dear Prudence before Jerry could be announced from stage. I swear, that's what I hear. And here I hear him cringeing a little bit for his fans and for himself. Just part of the "Burden of Being Jerry" (see also ca. 4/12/73 with Old And In The Way).

Listening notes follow.