Robert Dunn wrote a nice review in Night Times. This drew my eye because I recalled that Jerry recorded tracks for Demon in Disguise around this time. Indeed, he did:
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| Table xxx. Jerry Garcia and David Bromberg: Demon in Disguise sessions, Wally Heider's, June 21-24, 1972. |
So I looked at this review to see if maybe there was a hidden Garcia-Bromberg Shared Stage ... but it was not to be. The reviewer never tells us which night he saw, but he does mention that harmonica player Will Scarlett came out and blew some - there's a 1st degree of Shared Stage separation, since Jerry and Scarlett played together any number of times. But it ain't Garcia playing with Bromberg.
Anyway, sound like some good shows, and there are some nice ads on the page, for color.
Anyway, sound like some good shows, and there are some nice ads on the page, for color.
Hey, see the ad for "The Beans Are The Tubes" at the North Beach Revival. We can now date the name change from The Beans to The Tubes. Vince Welnick in the band, so of course it is laden with Grateful Dead content.
ReplyDeleteActually, there are many earlier mentions of the name change, I want to say as of March. I didn't track all of that, despite the Welnick connection -- too much.
ReplyDeleteThat same ad appeared in the May 3-16, 1972 Night Times. I know it came up earlier in the listings.
ReplyDeleteAl Aronowitz (1978) seemed not to be a big fan of Mr. Bromberg:
ReplyDelete"It was June of '72 and the folksinger'd turned into one collossal pain as soon as I'd gotten him a recording contract. Me, I kept on trying, but the kid's ego was coming out of his nose and his nose was stuck up his ass. How was I going to make a star out of this turkey? He'd be against any idea of mine simply because I thought of it first. Even when he thought of the same idea I did, he'd be against it if I mentioned it first. He'd kick and scream and drag his feet. He'd been coming on 100 per cent folkie purist. He wanted to be rich and famous but not if it meant getting too big for the coffee house circuit. He thought rock was bullshit. He'd never sell out and go commercial. That's the attitude he'd copped to camouflage his lack of expectations. He was a spoiled brat of a doctor's son, lanky, awkward, with a long nose, eyeglasses and thick lips curled into a sneer that he'd sometimes try to disguise as a smile. He'd been laughed at as ugly all his life. He'd grown up a cartoon, a one-dimensional caricature of the precocious Jewish intellectual kid motivated solely by the rule that slickness gave quicker rewards than depth. In his guitar playing and in all his dealings, he was not only as fast as a pickpocket but he also had the mentality of one. With sleight-of-hand his only game, his imagination was limited to tricks, gimmicks and cheating. He had to fake soul by posing as a sensitive poet type, supersincere, as dedicated as a tunnel while still as hollow. He was a tall, bony con wrapped in stretch veneer that you could see right through like a piece of polyethylene. Secretly he thought he was Superman, but I never knew if he cracked about that to anyone but me."
and some chris smither obscura (since he was on that bill), courtesy of TCGDD:
ReplyDeleteDon't Drag It On - Chris Smither (Poppy Records PYS 5704) Side two this 1972 release, his second album, includes "Friend Of The Devil", with some modified lyrics: "I took off for Reno, Chased by twenty hounds, Ran me all night away, Till the morning came around.". Recorded November 30 to December 4, 1971 at Bearsville Sound Studios in Woodstock, New York.
I-) ihor
Although coincidental, John Kahn was in Woodstock at the time, recording with Geoff and Maria Muldaur
DeleteSteve Brown recounts GDR era: "One day David Bromberg showed up and the two of them went for a whole afternoon just playing together and laughing." Man, I wish I knew more!
ReplyDelete! ref: Jackson and Gans 2015, 204.
Cash Box, 1/26/74, p. 32: "Rumors are flying hot and heavy as to some of the “Friends” who will be appearing at David Bromberg’s benefit concert for NYU radio station WNYU-FM on January 25. Names dropped include Jerry Garcia and Merle [sic] Saunders whose scheduled concert in New Jersey was cancelled". The scheduled/canceled concert can seemingly only be referring to 2/16/74, but three weeks is a rather long window for this connection.
ReplyDeleteFascinatingly, in a 6/13/72 KSAN interview Garcia's interlocutor asks if he knows Bromberg, is planning seeing him. Says he's a nice cat, hopes to check him out. No notion at all that he's gonna get into the studio with him eight days later. ! ref: Kathy 1972, 24.
ReplyDeleteAnd that last non-barking dog is odd, because Aronowitz's piece (which shouldn't be confused with fact, but still ...) says he approached Jerry about playing on Bromberg's record a few weeks before the sessions.
ReplyDeleteIt had never quite entered my brain that some of these tracks ended upon DiD, while others appeared on 1974's Wanted Dead Or Alive. At next update, Jerrybase will spell this stuff out.
ReplyDelete