AFM6 San Francisco Sessions Dataset, 1967-1972

Tony Orbasido was running the American Federation of Musicians' Local No. 6 in San Francisco when I started asking him about researching in whatever papers they had. What they had was two 4-drawer filing cabinets stuff with studio recording contracts. I think the union didn't keep gig contracts in hard copy beyond 3-4 years for space reasons, and there were no gig contracts relevant to me.

This was before I could take legible cellphone pictures. I had to run Xerox copies of what I wanted. In later years, I progressively digitized these paper copies. The sample is biased with respect to anything in the Garciaverse, because I was explicitly looking for and only gathering out to Spudfactor = 1 musicians, in addition to Garcia himself. As I have reported, the Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead contents of these files was dramatically light. I think Tony O said someone had come through and gathered them up. This could well have been the Jerry Garcia Estate, but I do not know that. Anyway, within the limits of the media I was working with, I was able to go through 1967-1972 pretty thoroughly.

I published the Garcia-relevant stuff in batches. By way of making an index, here they are.

San Francisco Sessions, 1967-1968 (August 4, 2015)

San Francisco Sessions, 1969 (August 5, 2015)

San Francisco Sessions, 1970 (August 9, 2015)

San Francisco Sessions, 1971 (July 3, 2016)

San Francisco Sessions, 1972 (November 18, 2017)

Altogether, this is my AFM6 San Francisco Sessions Dataset, 1967-1972

Stray "played with Jerry Garcias" (name but no date)

Here are people who are said to have played with Jerry who remain un-pinned down in Jerrybase because we don't have enough data specificity. Add more in comments!

Randy Bachman: "he played his fingers raw with Jerry Garcia, Leslie West and Delaney Bramlett" on the Festival Express (xxx citation)

Byron Berline: OAITW, ca. summer 1973 - likely backstage at Whipoorwill Festival in Warrenton, VA. I estimate that Berline and Garcia did not play together. Berline played with "Old And In The Way", which was Grisman, Rowan, Vassar to him. As far as I can recall, there's no evidence of Garcia picking around the grounds or backstage at this festival. I think he coptered up to DC for the Dead shows. Again, none of this is certain to me.

Frank Dardano of Jacob's Ladder (Portland, Oregon) - before March 1972: "We had a chance to jam with the Dead's Jerry Garcia. He's down to earth and not weird or anything. He even showed me how to work out some things on my guitar." -- Sunday Oregonian, 3/5/72

Rick Eshleman - 19 year old singer guitarist in June 1970 "who has performed with Jerry Garcia, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Byrds and John Fahey" -- Tacoma News-Tribune 6/12/70.

Luis Gasca. I imagine this was at the 9/22/72 United Farmworkers' Benefit.

Donny (or Danny?) Hanna: Orlando based rock guitarist and bassist, bands Power and New Days Ahead. "Hanna has played with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead" (McAleenan 1972).

Andy Narell: steel drum player, supposedly played with GD

Bernard Purdie: JGMS Bottom Line 1974, via Big Steve who recalled Kreutzmann drumming. That's not quite right. I actually know about this now and will write about it in Fate Music.

Ike Stubblefield: JGB 1970s

Ross Valory (phantom)

Linda Waterfall (Seattle folk soloist) "has shared a stage with ... Jerry Garcia"  -- Daily Astorian, 10/10/82 p 7

Carl Woideck - Eugene area saxophonist (Register-Guard, 3/29/84 p. 6D)

Grisman's Garcia obit in Bluegrass Unlimited

Does anyone have a copy of Bluegrass Unlimited from either August 1995 or, more likely, September 1995? One page has a Grisman obit for Garcia. I am not looking for the text, I am looking for scans, because I need the proper page number as well. Thanks!

Playing on the radio builds an audience, part the millionth: OAITW April 1973

I was just revisiting a little item in Todd Tolces's early 1970s column in the Berkeley Daily Gazette. From May 3, 1973:

Picking a very nicely at at banjo all weekend was Jerry Garcia with his new bluegrass group, Old and in Way.

The acoustic quintet played through two nights at the Keystone to a very crowded house each time. The word got out. Either that or everybody beard them on KSAN's 'live'' weekend where Old and in the Way did a smashing one-hour set from the Record Plant in Sausalito.

Also on hand that day and the Friday and Saturday nights at the Keystone was Richard Greene, Seatrain's former fiddler. Greene's presence makes two refugees from Seatrain. The other is Peter Rowan, their lead singer and guitarist.

Greene's presence may finally fill Garcia's desire to ''find a fiddle player and play the bluegrass festivals this summer." However because of the Greatful Dead's heavy work schedule he may not be able to. Let's wait and see.

So, a few things.

First, Tolces somehow got the idea that Greene was there to stay. But as far as I know he'd play the Pacific Northwest shows May 8 in Eugene and May 9 in Portland, and that would be all she wrote.

Second, Corry gets some nice capillary-level confirmation. He had said in re the 4/21/73 KSAN broadcast "Any doubts about Old And In The Way's strategy to popularize themselves like the Stanley Brothers are erased by this broadcast." And here we are the next weekend, packed house through buzz from the broadcast.

Third, I think my putative 4/28/73 Record Plant KSAN Broadcast *must* be a phantom, right? I think Richard Greene had himself at the Plant this date, and remembered doing a KSAN broadcast from there, and he and I conjured this event in the recollecting. Instead, I think RG was at the Plant doing some session work (I don't know for whom) on 4/28, and we both just mixed it with 4/21.

Can I get a collective ruling on that question?

Fourth, Tolces hearkens back to what Jerry had told him on March 13th, very early in the band's run, that he wanted a fiddle player.

Fifth, Tolces is also being communicated some doubts about how much time he'll really have for Old And In The Way. I can imagine three pathways to that. 1) It was just sort of "known". 2) GD sources (e.g., Cutler) planted that, as a shot across the bow to Jerry and his little buddies that they ate last. 3) Jerry planting it to start setting expectations among his bluegrass buddies. He wouldn't want to disappoint them, and he was averse to directly communicating anything even vaguely unpleasant. So maybe Tolces proved a useful conduit to soften the reality.

Sixth, whatever all that is, the whole thing nicely illustrates the burden of being Jerry Garcia (Gans).

The Muse

Thanks to Jim Powell for sending this my way. This aligns so well with my own experience of Her.

David Frawley, Hymns From The Golden Age:  Selected Hymns from the Rig Veda With Yogic Interpretation (Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1986):

The Muse is the presence of the Goddess within us, the presence of the cosmic feminine power which is the true creative power in life, the cosmic masculine force being more properly supracosmic transcendent being.  To create we must have the favor of the Muse, the grace of the Goddess.  For all true creation is the unfoldment of the cosmic feminine energy, the release of the Goddess-energy of Life for the culmination of its evolutionary transformations.  The Muse is our faithfulness to the Divine, our faithfulness to the cosmic vision and the creative work; our creative being as human beings to bring the Divine creativity into the world for its deliverance.  The Muse is our love of nature that is our openness to the cosmic creative force.  She is the yearning of our life for the immortal life in which all is a play of harmony.  As with creative endeavors so with the spiritual life; for the spiritual life is the projection of our creative energies inwardly fo the transformation of consciousness.  [209]

It is only through the Goddess that one can know the Gods; for it is only by ourselves becoming inwardly receptive that there can be the matrix for their manifestation....  Our own soul, the receptive, devoted, intuitive feminine side of our nature is the high priestess of the inner art.  She has the intuitive knowledge, the spontaneous sense of it.  We have only to let her stream of transformations flow.  She will pour on us the great inner ocean of light.  All growth is not though our personal effort but through her aspiring force, through letting it gestate within us....  No artifice can aid it which is the labor of abandoning all artifice.  This inner purity not of cultivated virtue but of the receptive mind, the motiveless heart, is the beauty of the Muse and Goddess.  [210]

Hartbeats to New Riders: from spacesuits to OshKosh

Somewhere I have Mickey Hart saying basically what's in the title, but I cannot for the life of me find where I got this, and the Google is not helping me.

Anyone know where Mickey might have said this?

TIA!

What I think is Might Be (?) a January 1976 keyboardists' tryout tape

The great Charlie Miller has gathered and shared many thousands of tapes. One that he got hands on somewhere along the line and then forgot about has just come into the light.

ca. 1975-1976 JGB rehearsals, outs: https://etreedb.org/shn/166364.

I hypothesize that this tape captures material from trying out / playing around with various keyboardists in January 1976. I think the need to summarize the ca. January 1976 keyboardist/repertoire options is what begat this tape --an artifact, emerging out of a distinct set of historical processes-- in the first place. It's a work tape.

I could be completely wrong about that. If you disagree, let me hear it! Tape is available to torrent from Lossless Legs (maybe be sub required).

Insofar as that's what's represented, then 

1) cool;

2) I was considerably wrong in my "Jerry's January 1976" post when I implied he was a slacker who settled for the most ready-to-hand keyboard player, Keith Godchaux;

3) I have additional material informing this idea of these as tryouts, which you'll be able to read about in Fate Music.

In the meantime, here are my very detailed listening notes, tracked differently (more baroquely) than Charlie's fileset.

Jerry Garcia Band
Probably His Master's Wheels
60 Brady Street
ca. 1976
85 minute 2 channel mono

--(20 tracks, 85:52)--
--fragment 1
t01. noisy noodle (1) [0:20] %
[MISSING: Tore Up Over You]

--fragment 2 (2 tracks,
t02. //untitled-197611xx-01-jam (2) [#21:12] %
t03. Magnificent Sanctuary Band Jam// [2:53#] %

--fragment 3 (2 tracks, 1 tune,
t04. //tape fragment// [#0:03#]
t05. //Tore Up Over You (3) [2:13] [0:06] %

--fragment 4 (3 tracks,
t06. //Freight Train [#2:47] %
t07. //Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie 1 [#5:56] (4) [0:03] %
t08. //Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie 2 [#4:30] [0:02] %

--fragment 5 (3 tracks,
t09. //Mystery Train// 1 [#7:04#] %
t10. (5) Mystery Train 2 [3:26] [0:16]
t11. Mystery Train 3 [7:09] (6) [0:09] %

--fragment 6 (5 tracks,
t12. I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) [9:36] (7) [0:14]
t13. It's Too Late [0:30]
t14. (I'm A) Road Runner 1 flirt [0:47]
t15. (I'm A) Road Runner 2 fragment [0:14] (8) [0:18]
t16. (I'm A) Road Runner 3 [4:15] (9) [0:21] %

--fragment 7 (4 tracks,
t17. Hey Bo Diddley [7:13] ->
t18. Hideaway [3:02] (10) [0:14]
t19. (11) Maybellene [0:42] ->
t20. Thirty Days flirt (12) [0:24]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band Z
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - electric guitar;
! lineup: John Kahn - electric bass;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums;
! lineup: unnamed-19761xxx-01 - keyboards (tracks,
! lineup: unnamed-19761xxx-02 - keyboards (tracks,

JGMF:

! t01 JG cites Tore Up Over You before tape cut

! P: I have no idea what this is - but it's a B3 player who can play!

! t01 (1) the noisy noodle has a vaguely Halloweenish feel

! R: t02 jam is munching tape at the start, super warbly, eventually gets up to speed. Jerry higher up in the mix 1:30ff.  Bass more audible late in 1. Garcia's guitar distorted, probably everything distorted.

! P: t02 jam Very New Orleans feel, bright B3. Is that really KG on organ? It does not sound like him. The organ is much more Brother Jack McDuff-sounding than I ever recall Keith being. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_McDuff. JG Nice lick 1:45. Organ feature 3:05ff, Garcia comping, John walking, drummer swinging. Right at 4 again very avian big bright organ - Jimmy Smith Brother Jack McDuff. John is walking it just like James Jamerson all up in here. 4:50 Jerry takes another lead turn. 13 more walking bass line. @13:32 you can hear Jerry's fingers on the strings - he's letting it make itself heard, as an accent. Sounds amazing - super slow late 13 as gentle as fresh a wildflower! B3 is mellifluous 14ff. Gentle, sweet tunes. Still a B3 "feauture", but it is buried in the mix and sounds a little rudimentary to my ear. Still walking along for a while, easy as you please. Nice melody Jerry lands on in 15 - something almost recognizable at 15:51. Fuzz makes it sound a little saxophonish around 16:40. Even more at 17:35 - superfuzz for Jerry, Link Wray tone for a bit. JG takes some rounds 18:19 and the organist steps forward (recording, too, I think) - things are hotting up 18:45, B3 in the classic sound - hits high right at 19, again avian. Swinging on an R&B groove around 19:15 and a N'awlins descent at 19:30. Jerry starts winding it down like 20:30, but it's hard to pin a real ending, so I just time the whole track.

! t02 (2) Jerry hits "Tore Up Over You" just before the tape cuts out.

! P: t03 Magnificent Sanctuary Band Keith (I think) is leading this, the drum is very foot-pedal heavy, and this is just Keith and a drummer, with Garcia and Kahn sitting this one out. Both of the pianist's hands sound great. Probably just KG and RT.

! R: t03 MSB drop right before the end, real time

! P: t05 TUOY starts with organist back a little bit, Jerry up front. The, delightfully @ 0:29 JG starts comping, and at 0:36 the B3 comes in like a bird - exactly the same style as the earlier jam had been, same personnel. Around 1:15 or so Jerry starts singing the lyric, but without a vocal mic. The organist doing a straightforward accent on "tore up" - sounds like Jerry gets in front of a mic for the last lyric.

! t05 (3) JG: "aw fuck - I keep forgetting that thing"

! P: t06 Freight Train Jerry sounds almost acoustic. Drums just snare. Electric keyboard comes in @0:52. Jerry singing so high in the register, almost falsetto, can't quite reach the notes. Very peppy tempo. Lyrically, he sort of gets the first verse, does a couple of choruses. Beautiful swirly keys 1:25, like a carnival. 1:42 he sings the "when I die o bury me deep / down at the end of old Chestnut Street / so I can hear ol number 9 as she goes running by". Another chorus - he calls a note at 2:27 not sure "[D E G] again". Nice plucky tone against the swirly organ.

! R: t07 OBIANL ff recording has more high end, I think. Hissier for sure.

! P: t07 OBIANL beautiful just Jerry and John falsetto - out of his range I think. Drums enter at 2:00, now electric keys @ 2:08. This aggregation and keys in around 2:05 -5:55. Pretty keyboard in 5:30 range - he puts a Baby Blue riff on around 5:46.

! t07 (4) JG: "I don't know what ... I don't really know//". This sort of tails onto t08.

! P: t08 OBIANL take 2 - lovely gentle stuff. Drums enter around 0:40. Snare-led.

! R: t09 MT1 sounds better than the chunk with the Elizabeth Cotten material. More dynamic range, less hiss. drums and guitar L, synth keys R, voice center, bass L. Tune cuts in and cuts out on what was probably the last "took away my baby"

! P: t09 Mystery Train take 1 keys are synth right now - fascinating! Different player, too? Just not sure. 2:29ff electric keys/synth takes first feature. Jerry comping fantastically behind, like check out 2:49. Sounds like there's an organ on one hand, electric piano on the other hand? Jerry in a little feature ca. 3. Organ lead 3:39ff. Drummer hard in the pocket - high hat driven, super steady. More electric keys lead 4:25. JG lead 4:52

! t10 (5) song is ending, an English guy *not Nicky* says "too much". Then they roll into MT2. I normally might have tacked a second or so from the front here onto the previous track, but it's all good. Electric keys - Rhodes plus the three members Jerry, John and Tutt.

! P: t10 MT2 right around 2 there's some conversation while the beat rolls on. Can't make it out. Jerry steps up for a verse 2:30. Keys sound really nice, nice little flourish over the end of that verse. This sounds tight as hell.

! P: t11 Mystery Train take 3 is faster and drives harder.  This drives like a motherfucker. Drums ease in at 0:17, Garcia has a nice country twang going just before 30 seconds in, the synth is upfront. What is the technique he uses at 0:43 called? He plucks a single note that's not offkey, but it certainly offsets the straight vocal, punctuating. It's awesome. Sweet country sound - I wonder if he's playing a tele, almost? I highly doubt it, but it definitely has that feel. Bend at 2:04 that is definitely Bakersfield. Here in 4 the keys sound familiar. At first I thought Jimmy Warren, but maybe now it sounds like Ozzie Ahlers. I am not saying it is either of these guys - I don't think it's either one of them. But I am trying to pin some comps down. Now at 5:20 two keyboard sounds, I think it's one player with two hands going - left is like an electric piano and right is the synth. Truly glorious string scratches from Garcia right at the end, a little scrubby-dubby from 7:02-7:05. Gaaahhh.

! t11 (6) Tutt: "Ahhh, shit. [inaudible] to try another one like that." JG: "[inaudible] like that?" Somebody else (Kahn?): "It's got layers." As I will narrate in Fate Music in a heading titled "Cats in the Studio," in July 1977 Tutt and Garcia held a very similar exchange after a jam, with Ronnie saying stuff like "that'll work - we can take that wherever we want to", and Jerry concurring. Who cares? I do! Kahn gets all the credit as Garcia's band director, and he was. But Tutt was in a "musical director" space -- validated by Garcia -- in those July '77 jams, and here he is the prior year playing the same role. Very important little fragment right there.

! song: "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" (t12): Yes, the Four Tops Tune tune, Holland-Dozier-Holland on Motown! Singleton. 

! P: t12 Sugar Pie Honey Bunch - oh my God this is stunning. Drums, organ, electric guitar, Garcia playing in a style like I have never ever heard before. 1:46 is he playing a Strat? Wow, fuzzy 2:16 what is the name of that effect? Not sure I have heard bass in this. Just keys guitar drums. God, Tutt starts some hi-hatting at 3:12 that is IMPOSSIBLE it's so good. Organ player takes a lead 3:20ff or thereabouts. @ 3:42 Garcia singing unamplified, way high in his vocal range, but amazing. This is cooking so sweet and hot and it bounces incredibly well. Band playing really well together. No idea who this organist is - DEF not Keith. This is a B3 aficionado, someone tearing it up. Any chance this is Larry Knechtel? By 6 Jerry is in more recognizable sound, still not sure which guitar he's playing. But my God is this AMAZING. Slow it wayy down at 8:48, half time, quarter time, decay to gentle @ 9:07, there's John Kahn, Jerry noodling some stuff to wind it down.

! t12 (7) @ 9:41, good hearty Jerry laugh. Tutt: "What time is it?" JG: "Too late." Someone else, affirming: "too late". Naturally enough, this leads Jerry to strum the beautiful xxx notes xxx chord of "It's Too Late".

! P: t13 ITL falsetto!

! t15 (8) JK is quoting an Abbey Road sounding piece - maybe Come Together? Powerful, McCartney sounding. Jerry hits the Lennon twang. Not sure which tune, but a Beatles riff I think.

! P: IARR 3 he doesn't lead with the first verse, I don't think? This is the quartet playing. Jerry, John, Ronnie, and organ player. Tempo slows 2:48, now sounding more like '76 JGB (heh heh).

! t16 (9) @ 3:45 IARR sort of unraveled gradually. Tutt called out a '1' to take it from the top, but Jerry starts moaning "1", becoming "whaaaa??" It's "1" a second moan, he is joined in by John I think, also moaning "1????????" They pick it up pretty continuously until 4:15, when he drops it again, Tutt calls out '1' again, and they all riff on the same goof from 30 seconds before, moaning and cawing. @ 4:10 someone yells out "Christ!", and it sounds like an English voice to me. Again, NB re: Tutt leading musically. He's the drumer and he's just counting down the beat in this case, but it's still fun to see him focused and the rest of these weirdos being weird.

! song: "Hey Bo Diddley" (t17): https://jerrybase.com/songs/326.

! P: t17 Hey Bo Diddley starts off with cool John Kahn liquid weirdness, some big bottom of the sea low amplitude forms, first 30 seconds of the track. Organ arrives 0:54. Neat interplay JG and organ player 1:38, he scrubs for the three beats, real basic, and the organist puts some color on it. Right after 3 Jerry steps back to play his guitar, and it's hot and great. Killer fuzztone 4:35 - like fuzzier than you will ever hear him. Shreddy, weaving through, around, over, the organ's melody lines. Big fuzzy R&R guitar 5:18ff. Grungy. Late 5 he finds a defined melody of something that might be identifiable. Jerry audibly unpedals the fuzz @ 6:20 with a killer rock chord, and it's back cleanly into the Bo Diddley beat, Jerry with some chunky ... all through this there is a drum that sounds like a hand drum, e.g., 6:45 for awhile, but it perfectly accompanies the drum, so I think ...?

! P: t17-t18 Jerry lets it decay and the organist hits "Hideaway", but Jerry takes a bit to really embrace it. At 0:39 Garcia is playing "Hideaway" with a guitar that sounds really unfamiliar. Wow! Groovy as fuck at 1:32 when everyone is walking it for awhile, organist splashes other tones. 2:27ish Jerry tries to end it, but not one takes him up on it, trying again 10 and Tutt catches the cue perfectly!

! R: t18 Hideaway track some static for sure

! t18 (10) Jerry playing some blues lines, Tutt drums fast to them.

! t19 (11) I track Maybellene to where Tutt starts drumming the beat. Over the start of it, he says "That's that other [?another?] Freddie King tune". I think he's referring to the melody he just hinted at - see note 10. I don't recognize it. Maybellene, of course, was written by Chuck Barry, so maybe he was just having a stoner moment with it?

! P: t19 Maybellene Jerry does some of the rough and ready vamp singing he's been having fun with all night to start, but pretty quickly he gets a verse together, like ten seconds into the noodle. John walking *incredibly* late 0:16 range. This is a boogeying little thing they are doing,

! song: "Thirty Days" (t20): Chuck Berry. Like "Maybellene", a rock 'n' roll standard.

! t20 (12) there are a couple of "fuck it"s at the very end.

John Coltrane has a spudfactor of 2?

Spudfactor is the number it takes to get from Jerry to another musician, using ties defined as making music together, in person.

Jerry Garcia = spudfactor 0

Anyone who played with him, live or live in studio, even picking in someone's living room, has SF1.

Then everyone they ever played with --same definition-- now has SF 2 (at most). And so forth.

The universe of SF1, when we draw all of the ties between all of the other players, defines the Side Trips Social Network.

Anyway, we were playing around with links out from Jerry to Coltrane, and my amazing commenters have determined that Jerry 0 > Ornette 1 > Coltrane 2.

So much fun. Original question was about John Chambers. We have moved on.

It's my understanding that Hartbeats era Matrix drummer John Chambers played with John Coltrane. I could check, but I wanted to pin this here before I head out to the ol' salt mines.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1292605-John-Chambers-2

Jerry Garcia - David Grisman Quartet at Sweetwater, December 17, 1990

Perfect soundboard audio of the debut of the Garcia-Grisman band (JGDG) at Sweetwater in Mill Valley came into the light a few weeks back.

It has now been sync'd to video and Christopher Hazard has worked his 4k wizardry on it.

Thanks to all involved in doing this work. We have an absolute gem of a copy of pivotal addition to Jerry's late life.

note to self: Affect Bias

The critical source of error in my listening notes, for sure.

"the world’s most recorded musician in the world’s most famous arena"

Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19911115-01

The Red Light folks tagged GarciaLive 16 (MSG 11/15/91) with the subject line, and I have to say that it's badass. That crew does a good job, IMO. I am not kissing up. It's a hard job and they have released some amazing stuff. And that's just a good line. Tip o' the cap.

I wanted to post my review of this release from Grateful Dead Studies.

It contains some pretty good distillations about which you will read again in Fate Music.

The performance by the ... JGB at Madison Square Garden on November 15, 1991, represents the acme of Garcia’s solo career, the culmination of a nearly quarter-century name-claiming journey by which he established his identity as an individual American musician, Jerry-Garcia-full-stop, beyond and distinct from his wider fame as Jerry-Garcia-of-the-Grateful-Dead.

...

Jerry Garcia never planned a solo career; it just sort of happened as he sought more and different avenues for expression than the Dead allowed. Inchoate jams at the Carousel Ballroom became tempo études (“Mickey and the Hartbeats”) at the Matrix, which became regular but musically formless Monday night jams with Howard Wales, which morphed into ongoing and more musically grounded gigs with Merl Saunders. Even after four years, the amorphous aggregation resisted naming itself, going by “The Group” in the Bay Area, or just listing members’ names, before coalescing into “Legion of Mary” for its last eight months. The meantime saw numerous aggregations under other (and others’) names, playing diverse musics, cutting some records, running some drive-by tours, and banking an increasingly sizeable pile of accomplishments, including the country New Riders of the Purple Sage, the space-jazz Hooteroll? proj- ect with Wales, and the incandescent bluegrass all-stars Old and In The Way. Otherwise off-nights found Garcia making a singular solo record, engaging protean Dawg Music (David Grisman’s Great American Music/ String Band), renewing bluegrass ties with the Good Old Boys, vibrating electrons with Ned Lagin, and making time for a vast array of sessions, sit-ins, dalliances, and one- and few-offs.

But the Jerry Garcia Band (1975–1995) bore his name, and it played the music its eponym liked, the way he wanted to play it. Over the years the JGB, always featuring Garcia’s friend bassist John Kahn but with an evolving array of other musicians, grooved to soul, R&B, Motown, contemporary gospel, reggae, and other Black idioms that fit the band’s changing personnel, especially after the arrival of church organist Melvin Seals in 1981 and his handpicked backing vocalists starting the next year. A second tranche of cover tunes drew from the contemporary White Anglosphere, both the British Isles and North American settler colonies, heavy on the Americana. Garcia-Hunter originals, some shared with the Dead and others exclusive to the JGB, rounded out the repertoire. The six players integrate seamlessly. This is the canonical Jerry Garcia Band, a lineup that lasted 1984–1993, the core three plus steady David Kemper on drums and harmony vocals by Jackie LaBranch and Gloria Jones, Oakland church singers with day jobs who took to calling themselves the Jerryettes.

Read the whole thing as they say. I dig this show, and I dig imagining how this son of an immigrant musician might have felt seeing that family name in lights at the Garden.

Great Moments in Taping History: Jim Durkin and Jim Wise @ Red Rocks, July 28, 1982

https://archive.org/details/gd1982-07-28.fob.senn421.wise.miller.102571.flac16/gd82-07-28d1t01.flac

https://jerrybase.com/events/19820728-01

Setting 

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO. Threatening midsummer Rocky Mountain rain clouds and all the rest; beautiful people everywhere.

Cast

Jim Wise (jimwise), a.k.a. aoxoa, a.k.a. tapersfriend, legendary East Coast taper, good friend of Dick Latvala's, all around good human

dude in the middle (DITM)

Jim Durkin (JD), who would go on to become sound engineer for Jose Feliciano and many other greats

nearby woman (NW)

the Grateful Dead (GD)

[crosstalk]

JD to DITM: I know. He can move over, too.

JD to jimwise: What are you doin' to my levels, man? [jimwise mumble] Don't put 'em up. Put it - dammit, Wise, I'm gonna fuckin' butcher -- [jim inaudible, crosstalk] Whaddya mean?!? You just put my fuckin' levels up! I'm gonna scream in the mics all night long if you fuckin' touch my levels, man. That fucking sucks!!"

DITM to jimwise: Calm down, Jim!

jimwise: OK. It's real good, now.

GD:

chk-PHWAWWWW----  chk-PHWAWWWW ==== 

phwen-u-wamp phwen uwam phenu wamp when whow

DAWWWWWWHHH

["Shakedown Street" continues]

[more crosstalk @ ca. 5:15]

I >>FF to LL -> Supplication

Bob forgets lyrics.

RIP Sam Cutler, March 10, 1943 - July 11, 2023

Three vast corpora, to start

As I am writing and looking at the things I may have to leave undone, it strikes me that we have some amazing sources of oral history, which can and should be systematically converted to text for close study by humans and pattern extraction by machines. I have in mind the following sources:

Jake Feinberg, The Jake Feinberg Show, various episodes.

David Gans and Gary Lambert, Tales From the Golden Road, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, Grateful Dead Channel, various episodes.

Steve Parrish, The Big Steve Show, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, Grateful Dead Channel, various episodes.

For both the Feinberg and Big Steve shows, I have played around with grabbing audio, converting to text using otter.ai, and editing in the otter.ai interface (which is quite good). These transcripts have much to teach us. 

Feinberg has interviewed literally several dozen Garcia collaborators, many on more than one occasion totally a few hours. He has a great jazz head and draws great stuff out of his guests.

Big Steve's is mostly his recollections, with interviews not uncommon. He has a very good memory, and some of these stories are pure gold. I have found many factual errors in them, but can you blame the guy for not getting 54 years of memories from roadying for the Dead and Garcia Just Exactly Perfect? There are absolute golden nuggets throughout the show.

But you have to pan for them.

In both cases, the transcriptions emerge from the machine *very rough*. A 45 minute Feinberg interview can take me 90 minutes or two hours to clean, maybe even more. And he's doing these for broadcast, so care is taken to speak somewhat clearly. Big Steve is talking around giant Grizzly Peak doobies and, for some reason, juggling a mouthful of rocks. Polishing these transcriptions is more like 3:1 time ratio. The machine isn't the first not to know what to make of Big Steve, and we humans just process too fucking slowly.

So, it hurts me to know how much I am probably missing from these and countless other sources. I am glad the Good Ol Grateful Deadcastis making transcriptions - awesome stuff.

But these three shows alone have been running for *years*, and have generated probably millions of words altogether. These currently exist as sound data, and we need to get them transcribed.

Bottom line: the voice-to-text process is where the time/energy bottleneck still is. Once we have text, the machines can do their things, and we can do ours, and there are many opportunities to apply digital humanities kinds of methods to our corpora. I think it will yield great results. But someone other than me is going to have to get that ball rolling!

Musician Children of Musician Fathers

I am identifying lots of musician children of musician fathers in the Garciaverse.

So, consider this a request: if you know someone with Spudfactor 1, who is male-identifying, and whose father was a musician, please post to comments. I will start the list here, alpha by last name but presented first-last.

• Martin Fierro
• Jerry Garcia [José or Joe Garcia]
• Zakir Hussain [Alla Rakha]
• Tony Saunders [Merl Saunders]
• Bill Vitt

I have also bracketed father's name in cases where they are otherwise in or orbiting the Garciaverse.

Have at it!

Setting Right What Was Rent Asunder

Or something like that.

Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have added entropy to the world. I am here to make amends.

When the Falanga-Menke Stash of Garcia-Saunders tapes from 1974 first came to me, one of them was labeled 8/14/74. I had what I thought was another recording of the show connected to Lou Tambakos. Somewhere along the line, in the first decade of the 21^st century, I decided that the correct date was 8/15/74. Because I was an early source of recording metadata, that dating has really stuck. I even wrote about it once because of a mystery trumpeter.

But I think I was wrong. I now believe that Wednesday, August 14, 1974 is the correct date of this mid-August 1974 JGMS show at the Great American Music Hall.

Three streams of evidence.

8/14/74 JGMS at GAMH has no contrary listings and these confirmatory ones: Bill Alex, "Around Town," San Francisco Examiner, August 9, 1974, p. 23; San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, August 11, 1974, p. 4; Todd Tolces, "Out to Lunch," Berkeley Gazette, August 14, 1974, p. 11; San Francisco Examiner, August 14, 1974, p. 27.

8/15/74 JGMS at GAMH has no confirmatory listings and the following contrary listings: Hayward Daily Review, August 9, 1974, p. 40; Daily Independent Journal, August 9, 1974, p. 20; Bill Alex, "Around Town," San Francisco Examiner, August 9, 1974, p. 23; San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, August 11, 1974, p. 4; Todd Tolces, "Out to Lunch," Berkeley Gazette, August 14, 1974, p. 11. All of these bill John Hartford at GAMH on this date.

Tapes: not only was the Falanga-Menke tape labeled 8/14/74, but so was a beat-up old dubbed cassette the Jerry had in his tape collection.

So, QED. Change your lists. Change your fileset info!

About Last Night

Hell may freeze over, but here I am. A new man. (Call it my epitaph for JGMF.) But I am going to post about the Post-Jerry-Garcia-Grateful-Dead-Cinematic-Universe (PJGGDCU). Just read Selvin 2018 for a sense of things. I think Thoughts On The Dead coined an acronym for this which is of course canon. I am just goofin'.

I have been mostly lukewarm, and so not paid much attention, to all of the members' doings since 1995. Phil in April 2000 from the 3rd row was utterly antiseptic, all brain and no soul. Ratdog in whatever year I went to the Tower Theater, we left at setbreak. Man needs his sleep. I never saw any of the others, I don't think, until Dead & Co., which I have seen a number of times because they come to me at Folsom Field. I have enjoyed those days in Colorado and grooving around, but the music was mostly incidental.

All that said, last night at Folsom Field was the first time I have felt the magic since I was in the same space as Jerry, that being:

GD August 14, 1991 at Cal Expo in Sacramento; and
GD December 28, 1991 in the Coliseum Arena in Oakland

Both were good, though I am not a fan of Vince's sound. The main thing was that I had to shift my energy to new things.

32 years later, I felt just a little bit, a flash, of that same ol' magic. I did the whole weekend volunteering with campus Guest Relations to wristband folks with floor seats for the first set, then free to roam in the second.

It was absolutely wonderful. If you have talked to me for 1 minute, you know I love Colorado with all my heard. I love Boulder. You know I love the University of Colorado Boulder. You know I love My People: Scholars, Students, Staff, Heads and Other! And you know I LOVE music.

It was all that! I think I may now be up to the mountains for some backpacking.

From JGMF to Fate Music

What you see happening is that I can't really blog much anymore. I think.

The communication medium known as blogging mostly invites me to express paragraph- subheading- and heading-level ideas. All of that now needs to go into the Fate Music manuscript. At least, that's what I expect.

It's certainly not over. Hell, it may thrive. But thanks to all of you reading this for all your support. Please follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FateMusicJG AND on Mastodon at https://heads.social/@FateMusic. I can spin off sentence there to clear my mind and then focus on the task at hand.

"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all" -- unk

Fate Music in a Nutshell: JGB at MSG: November 15, 1991

I just changed the name at the top of the blog from Jerry Garcia's Middle Finger to reflect the progress I am making on Fate Music: Jerry Garcia's Name-Claiming Journey Beyond the Grateful Dead. That subtitle subject to change, that lead title not.

The best summary narrative is in my review of Jerry Garcia Band. Garcia Live volume 16: Madison Square Garden, November 15th, 1991 (Round Records JGFRR1037, 2021) in Grateful Dead Studies volume 5 (2021/2022): 228-234 [pdf].

If Carousel and Matrix jams present the uhr moment for Jerry Garcia Beyond the Dead, this musician's son's first time headlining Madison Square Garden under his own name supply the acme.

Anyway, read the whole thing if you are so inclined. And, of course, stay tuned!

Thank you all for reading Jerry Garcia's Middle Finger, commenting, correcting, all the rest. The function of this bit of cyberspace will remain mostly unchanged, maybe a bit more pimping. But this will still capture whatever random slop I can generate in the meager time I have.

If you are a lurker - come on out and play! "We're trying to have a reasonably good time here", and all that. I know the partly depends on me generating posts. I wouldn't hold my breat, but, either way, gimme a shout here, email, or if you find yourself in Colorful Colorado.

On Accuracy

The recent June 5th brought out more than a tiny number of people to recognize the Oregon State Penintiery show on the anniversary of its performance -- June 5, 1982 -- rather than on the date given by the old bootleg tape. Because the bootleg was one of the mostly widely held Garcia recordings in the CD era, the spurious date of May 5, 1982 --imagine bootleggers getting something wrong!-- has been persistent and hard to uproot. Bad information crowds out the good even years after the latter has been established with 100-ε% certainty. Certainly the last decade of politics has demonstrated the dark underbelly of the availability heuristic, as the simple (but relentless) repetition of untruth persuades people to believe it. (Note to self: Kahneman 2011, 62, 66, 67).

And it is now 100% established that May 5, 1982 is incorrect, and June 5, 1982 is correct. latter is now the case here. I first established the correct date of June 5th based on the tour itinerary hidden in the GD Archives at UCSC. I learned more in a piece about Steve Stilling, the OSP prisoner who put the Garcia-Kahn event and a number of other notable gigs on. Dick Latvala's Scrapbooks supplied a picture of the event from a local newspaper! Most of this is pinned at Jerrybase, natch. But there is really no doubt about this, beyond the epsilon (ε) I always reserve on metaphysical grounds

So I want to express my appreciation not only for those who are open to updating their beliefs about this sort of thing, but for those who endeavor to use accurate information, even in relatively casual conversation, when it comes to Jerry Garcia's musical life and activities and the rest of the stuff we are passionate about.

Accuracy matters, even in this "hobby" space, this "amateur" space which, Steve Silberman reminded us years back in one of the Taping Compendiums, simply means "lover" or "lover of". I am fully bought-in to Umberto Eco's view that we make lists in a vain attempt to tame infinity in a vain attempt to live forever -- together. Any efforts along these lines should never be described with the pejorative "obsession", IMO. I greatly prefer the label "passion". And why not? We are dying, after all! We've got work to do!

I get that not everyone cares, and I am not going to try to police their usages ... too much. Maybe a nudge, providing the correct information. Maybe an implicit plea for them to use the correct information as much as possible, not because they care, but because I (and lots of us) care. In that specific form of community known as culture, pinning down our past helps us live together in the present and feel just a little calmer about the future, since at least this piece of infinity has been tamed.