Santa Cruz Blues

LN jg1985-10-16.jgjk.all.sbd-Miller.139756.flac1644

One of the most widely bootlegged Garcia performances, alongside the '82 Oregon State Penitentiary gig, is another Garcia-Kahn acoustic duet performance from the Catalyst in Santa Cruz on October 16, 1985. As with other beautiful recordings from this venue, an enterprising insider made a 4-channel tape combining stereo sbd feed and stereo ambient mics hung over the stage, and partly insofar as sound quality colors our perceptions of performance quality --and it does to a considerable extent, by what I think of as the Cornell Effect-- lots of people think highly of the performance, too.

The performance feels pretty standard to me, which is to say, since it's Garcia-Kahn in the Rock Bottom era, it's mostly OK, sometimes good, sometimes not so good.

I am more interested in drawing your attention to a review in the Santa Cruz Sentinel Spotlight by Dave Gingold. In this telling, the "fat man" made his fawning followers, who had been sprawling around town all day long keeping the bugs down with their characteristic homebrew of smoke and patchouli, waiting for more than two hours to start the early show.  Opener Paul Mehling claimed car problems, but "some cynics attributed the delay to nostril, rather than engine, trouble." Gingold liked the music, but then,

Poof! It was over. The audience was stunned at the barely 40-minute set, and took to 20 minutes of irate shouting and stomping to bring their deity back ... 'A dollar a song!', some muttered ...

Then, adding insult to injury, the operators turned the house, which Gingold calls nothing less than a "betrayal".

Maybe ol Jer just didn't want our intrepid recorder to have to flip his tape? Sheesh, take it easy on the guy.

Regular readers will, of course, recognize this dynamic from a Beverly Hills gig four and a half months earlier., when Jerry and John mailed in a sub-40 minute first show, eliciting angry chants of "Bullshit! Bullshit!" from the SoCal Deadheads, savvy enough about the biz to understand they'd been ripped off. Short sets were a key feature of Jerry's Rock Bottom period, of course. Hometown fans might raise legitimate questions --"awww, no last song?"-- or offer some heady wisdom --"Jerry's gotta clean up his act, man"-- , but often they'd just dance their asses off and sing along, knowing Jerry'd be back at the Stone soon enough, likely as not. Even as far away as Santa Cruz, though, visits were rare enough that even dready gon' raise a ruckus when things aren't right. When even the Santa Cruzers are irate and stomping, you know you've crossed the Minelli Line.

Sadly, Jer and John either didn't get the message, didn't care, or were too far gone to care, and the late show attendees got a mere 38 minutes. Deadheads are a very understanding and compassionate lot, but I conjecture that at least a few left shaking their manes, glad for the music but maybe worried about ol' Jer. He may even have lost a few fans this night, despite getting a "Ripple".

A few other random bits.

• I wonder if the idea for "The Fat Man Is Back" poster from Jerry's next Santa Cruz stop (2/24/87) was a "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" reply to Mr. Gingold's earlier characterization? I know the phrase, which became a t-shirt and parking lot meme for the time, also appeared on posters for the Reno gig, but I do have to wonder of the Santa Cruz review didn't provide some inspiration.
• John Kahn picks a little bit of Mingus's "Haitian Fight Song" at the start of the late show, which almost redeems his otherwise-forgettable night for me.

Listening notes below the fold.

Garcia and Kahn
The Catalyst
1011 Pacific Avenue
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
October 16, 1985 (Wednesday) - Early & Late Shows
4-mic sbd flac1644 shnid-139756

--early show (8 tracks, 7 tunes, 42:53)--
e-t01. tuning [0:47]
e-t02. Deep Elem Blues [6:42] [0:06]
e-t03. Friend Of The Devil [6:40] ->
e-t04. Little Sadie [4:50] ->
e-t05. She Belongs To Me [7:26] ->
e-t06. Jack-A-Roe [4:47] ->
e-t07. Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie [5:00] ->
e-t08. Reuben And Cérise [6:25] (1) [0:11]

--late show (7 tracks, 6 tunes, 38:13)--
l-t01. tuning [1:10]
l-t02. When I Paint My Masterpiece [7:04] [0:03]
l-t03. I've Been All Around This World [4:37] ->
l-t04. Run for the Roses [4:31] [0:03]
l-t05. Bird Song [9:39] ->
l-t06. Gomorrah [6:42] ->
l-t07. Ripple [4:16] (2) [0:08]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - ac-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - ac-b.

JGMF:

! jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19851016-01 (early), https://jerrybase.com/events/19851016-02 (late)

! JGC: jerrygarcia.com/show/1985-10-16 (early); http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1985-10-16-the-catalyst-santa-cruz-ca-2/ (late).

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/4387; http://etreedb.org/shn/13231; http://etreedb.org/shn/24072; http://etreedb.org/shn/34905; http://etreedb.org/shn/78849; http://etreedb.org/shn/139756 (this fileset). It seems that all circulating sources come from this same basic recording. 78849 claims that earlier sources derive from an analog mix to PCM done ca. early 1990s, while it represents the first true digital mix from the masters.

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/06xq0

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/catalyst-1011-pacific-ave-santa-cruz-ca.html

! venue: Garcia played 11 shows at the Catalyst from 1979-1985 with Reconstruction (2), JGB (7), and these two acoustic with John. Here's a list of the dates and days of the week: 3/31/79 (SAT), 5/27/79 (SUN), 2/7/80 (THU), 1/29/81 (THU), 4/21/81 (TUE), 2/2/82 (TUE), 2/3/82 (WED), 10/13/82 (WED), 1/18/83 (WED), 10/16/85 (WED, 2 shows). The fact that 90% of these shows were not weekend (i.e., Friday or Saturday) shows reflects a few things, I imagine. First, he came rarely enough to Santa Cruz, and was popular enough with the town and area's multidinous hippies, that he could probably more or less sell out even in the middle of the week. Win-win for him and the room. Second, during this period he played most of his weekends for Freddie, who was running the three rooms in Berkeley, Palo Alto, and, from 2/1/80 --with JGB christening the room-- San Francisco.

! review: Gingold 1985 (early show). Jerry was two hours late. Opener Paul Mehling explained that it was car trouble, but "some cynics attributed the delay to nostril, rather than engine, trouble." Critic, who calls Garcia "the fat man" and may have coined the term --I note that posters for Garcia's next Santa Cruz appearance advertised that "The Fat Man Is Back" (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-fat-man-is-back-ln-jg1987-02.html)-- liked the music, but then, "poof! It was over. The audience was stunned at the barely 40-minute set, and took to 20 minutes of irate shouting and stomping to bring their deity back ... 'A dollar a song!', some muttered ..." then they turned the house. Reviewer calls this a "betrayal". In "Bullshit! Bullshit!", about a similar reaction in Beverly Hills five months earlier, I suggested that L.A. Deadheads were probably a little less tolerant of being ripped off than Jerry's Bay Area fans. Well, if even the Santa Cruz kind felt ripped off and let him know about it, you know things were bad. See the "seealso" links below for more, and you can also search the Rock Bottom tag at JGMF, http://jgmf.blogspot.com/search/label/Rock%20Bottom.

! seealso: "Bullshit! Bullshit! Reprise," http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/04/bullshit-bullshit-reprise-ln-jg1985-05.html.

! R: source: From Charlie's Coffer: SBD: 4 channel mix (2 channels of soundboard & 2 channels of Crown PZM microphones over stage) > Yamaha MT44D 4 channel recorder > Master Cassette (Maxell XLII-S (Dolby C) > DAT

! R: Transfer: DAT (Sony PCM-R500) > Tascam DA-3000 > wav 16/48

! R: Edited & Mastered in Audacity by Joe Noel: Wave > Flac 16/48, Checksum & tags created in xACT.

! R: patch info: - shnid-24072 supplies - s1t03; 1:38-1:51 - s2t05; 2:09-2:15

! R: Notes: Bootlegged as "Jerry Garcia, Santa Cruz Blues".

! R: seeder comments: grateful to - Charlie Miller for sharing his DAT & all his efforts transferring it; - Joe Browning & Patrick Murphy for suppling the patch material.

! R: Tagging notes: Show information is embedded within the header of each flac file. It will display on any player capable of directly playing flac files. If converted to wav during processing, all tags will be stripped, however audio data will remain unaffected. If you must transcode to a lossy format, do so directly Flac > Lossy.Use ffp or st5 to validate audio integrity. Md5 values will change if tagging is altered. (J.Noel 12 October 2017).

! P: e-t05 SBTM is a nice selection, but it's quite flawed.

! e-t08 (1) JG: "Thank you. Thank you - see y'all later."

! P: l-t01 JK is referencing Mingus's "Haitian Fight Song"!

! l-t07 (2) JG: "Thank you. ... Thanks a lot, see ya later."