Kenny Kosek

Has anyone ever pinned down the dates on which Kenny Kosek performed with JGAB on Broadway? I know he came out west for the Warfield and Wiltern gigs, but I have never pinned down when he was and was not present at the Lunt-Fontanne.

Where Was Garcia on May 29, 1987?

As I have noted, Garcia's final Keystone Family gigs before jumping ship to Wolfgang as his permanent and exclusive hometown promoter took place at the end of May 1987, as In the Dark was getting huge. The big fella would play very few club gigs after the Wednesday (27th)-Thursday (28th) and Saturday (30th)-Sunday (31st) Stone shows.

The Friday gap night always just struck me as a day of rest. But, well, was it?

The Hermes Project, based in Malibu, was promoting a world premiere showing of "The Hero's Journey", a film about mythologist Joseph Campbell, featuring the man himself, plus special guests on a panel, plus a reception. Music composed by Mickey Hart and Rand Wetherwax --presumably "The African Queen Meets The Holy Ghost"-- "with special performance by Jerry Garcia" [itals original], all scheduled for Friday, May 29, 1987, 8 PM, at the Director's Guild, 7950 Sunset in LA (map).

The event got other line announcements in the LA Weekly and the LA Times, but I found no ex post accounts, nor have I ever heard of this thing before. Of course, the November 1, 1986 "Ritual and Rapture" event at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco is well known, and it included a performance of the Hart-Wetherwax composition, with Garcia playing a headless Steinberger. Blair Jackson wrote it up in Golden Road (no. 13, Winter 1987, p. 6).

But did this encore event happen on May 29, 1987? I sure would like to know.

Last Freddie-ish Gig on Tape: JGB at the Stone, May 28, 1987

update: I can't believe I didn't know that Freddie didn't actually run the Stone and KPA. I knew the Coronas were involved, but Corry informs me in comments that they actually ran the KPA and the Stone, and Freddie really only had the Berkeley club. Learn something new everyday. I will still refer to this as Freddie-affiliated, since the "Keystone Family" as a real concept, whatever its substance. /update

As I just noted, the last Freddie  Herrera-affiliated room, The Stone on Broadway, couldn't hold the post-Touch of Grey Garcia Band. Two and a half weeks after filming the TOG video at Laguna Seca in Monterey, Jerry put a bow on his professional relationship with Freddie -- their friendship continued unaffected, as far as I know -- with four gigs in five nights starting May 27, 1987 and ending on May 31 a pair of midweek gigs on May 27-28, 1987. No tapes circulate for the last two nights, though one imagines they might have been recorded. Consider this a "bleg" for those tapes, because I dream that there was some special energy as the intimate, decade and a half relationship comes to a close.

No special energy is apparent in this May 28th gig. There are some good moments, and it's fine, but there's not much that especially lights me up. I enjoyed the relative rarity "Crazy Love", another Moondance track Jerry added to his post-coma repertoire (along with the much longer-lived "And It Stoned Me"). For my taste, 1987 Jerry Band falls at least a notch below the 1988 and 1989 versions, which I am having a hard time ranking. I need to think more about the decade as a whole, but I guess I do think that the post-coma shows ending 1986 and well into 1987 still find our boy re-establishing his footing.

Listening notes below. John Corley was an amazing taper. If you know how to reach him, please put him in touch with me!

Jerry Garcia Band
The Stone
412 Broadway
San Francisco, CA 94133
May 28, 1987 (Wednesday) - 9 PM
Corley shnid-20587 tagged flacs

--set I (6 tracks, 55:26)--
s1t01. Cats Under The Stars [8:46] [1:19]
s1t02. Mission In The Rain [9:58] [0:26]
s1t03. Think [6:52] [0:57]
s1t04. Let It Rock [06:52] [0:23]
s1t05. Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [9:14] % [0:39]
s1t06. Tangled Up In Blue [9:53] [0:08] %

--set II (7 tracks, 59:17)--
s2t01. //I'll Take A Melody [#11:54] [0:56]
s2t02. Stop That Train [8:05] [0:17]
s2t03. I Shall Be Released [6:40] [0:03] % [0:13]
s2t04. Love In The Afternoon [8:01] [0:29]
s2t05. Crazy Love [5:05] [0:19]
s2t06. That Lucky Old Sun [10:20] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [6:49] [0:07]

! ACT1: JGB #21b (THE Jerry Garcia Band)
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: David Kemper - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals.

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/19870528-01

! JGC: jerrygarcia.com/1987-05-28

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/20587 (this source)

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/Vr6EBXU6KvA2

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/07/stone-mothers-412-broadway-san.html

! historical: After 16 years of collaboration, from a New Riders gig the night before Thanksgiving 1970 to this four show JGB run May 27-28 and 30-31, 1987, Jerry had to walk away from Freddie Herrera as host of his local side gigs in favor of Bill Graham, who could offer rooms, and especially, eventually, the 3,000 seat Warfield, more commensurate with Garcia's post-In The Dark needs.

! R: field recordist: John Corley

! R: field recording gear: 2x Nakamichi 700 > unknown cassette deck

! R: lineage: MAC > ? > DAT > CDR >  DAE (EAC0.9b4, offset corrected, secure mode) > removal of some silent gaps (SF6) > tracking (cdwav editor) > sector boundaries confirmed (shntool) > SHN(shorten 3.4) via C.Ladner - "another installment of the misSHN in the rain TMNSP offshoot, 11/03".

! R: seeder Comments:  Couple of tape pauses/flips in between some tracks. Thanks to J.Powell for the CDR source."

! R: Flac encoding notes: All processing with Trader's Little Helper; Shn - st5 generated; Shn > Flac (level 8); Flac - st5 generated and matched to Shn st5.

! 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 st5 to validate audio integrity. Md5 values will change if tagging is altered. A Mills 12/5/14"

! R: muffled out of the gate.

! P: s1t01 CUTS Garcia some nice grungy guitar tone 5, unusual pulls. JG tries to draw it back to the tune out of the jam late 6, rest of the band needs another measure to get with it, he deftly works it back around. This is a nice version of CUTS.

! P: s1t03 Think very late 2 JG hits some killer blues notes. Very strong.

! P: s1t04 LIR more nice blues sustains late 2.

! R: s2t01 ITAM cuts in

! song: "Crazy Love" (s2t05): Post-coma, Jerry picked up two tunes from Van Morrison's 1970 classic Moondance. "And It Stoned Me" me stuck around until the end, but "Crazy Love" only lasted a year, making 15 appearances between 10/19/86 and 10/31/87. It strained his vocals a little bit, which might have contributed to its demise. It's a nice tune.

JGB19900302: Saturday, March 2, 1990, Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, CA

update: this was originally posted some years ago. I accidentally reposted it today. It looks like it is not perfectly together - you get what you pay for.

I wanted to try a little experiment by just unpacking a single show. I am not a very effective "prosopographer", so I can't do what Corry does, or what LIA does. Anyway, for various reasons, I ended up with Saturday, March 2, 1990, Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, CA.

IMO

The Jerry Garcia Band had its last sustained run of excellence from August 29, 1987 (Eel River, Piercy, CA) through August 26, 1989 (Greek Theatre, University of California, Berkeley, CA). Ask me again in two hours and I might have a different view. But, anyway, give or take a month or a year or two, this was the sweet period after the coma when Jerry had had enough time to get his chops back and was relatively healthy (though early 1989, I'd maintain, but that's a whole 'nother can o' worms), before turning south again, at least on the latter dimension. There were a few other local peaks (the last one being JGB February 6, 1994 at the Warfield), but no other sustained period combining such a high mean and such low variance.

/IMO


The Jerry Garcia Band show on Friday, March 2, 1990 at the Warfield Theatre, 982 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, 94102, falls outside of these boundaries. And, indeed, now having heard it, I can say that I find it well below the mean of, say, 1989. There are some very hot moments, but Jerry definitely has less steam behind him here than he had a year earlier.

Venue

Corry has covered this venue in crisp form (in a post on the Keystones, of course!), though it hasn't gotten the full Garcia-centric treatment that someone, at some point, will have to give it. In lieu of tacking that here and now, I'd first make the obvious point that the Warfield, a xxx 2,000 seat theater, [owned? operated?] by Bill Graham, is perfectly crucial to understanding late-period Jerry, having served as the Garcia Band's home base from late 1987 through the end. Second, I'd note that the Warfield replaced Freddie Herrera's 700-capacity The Stone at 412 Broadway, San Francisco, CA, 94133 in that home court role. I have started jotting down notes on a post about this change, we'll see when I can get to it. It'll be interesting. In the meantime, Corry has just recently engaged that issue!

The live JGB Album

March 2, 1990 was recorded, and at least one song ("Waiting For A Miracle") was included, on the The double live 1991 Arista release Jerry Garcia Band (record release information | deaddisc). It is a fantastic release and has really held up well as a representation of this near-peak period. The Jerry Garcia Band played five separate multinight runs at the Warfield during a six-month in 1990: February 2-3-4, March 1-2, April 13-14-15, June 12-13 and August 7-8-9. The April and August runs were multitracked for possible use on the album. Taping security was very tight at these shows, which is a story that I hope to be able to tell at some point.

Information has never been provided by The Powers That Be as to which songs come from which shows, and no fans have ever been able to try to piece the puzzle together because a few sets have never really circulated. Since I think old copies of just about everything have been dug up, that circumstance will change, and I'll tackle the project if no-one beats me to it. (It needs to happen for How Sweet It Is and Shining Star as well.) [update: done.] I expect that we'll be able to pin everything down in reasonably short order, though w/r/t Jerry Garcia Band I think the analysis will show that there is some splicing of various material here and there. Blair Jackson has already stated on Dead Net Central that the vocals on the beautiful, haunting version of Dylan's "Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)" had to be overdubbed in the studio, since Garcia never once (during the multitrack recording period for the album, anyway) got them straight live. There is also the occasional audible splice (a truncated cymbal, for example) that will need to be pinned down, but I think it can be done.

The producers managed to cull 2 CDs worth of pretty fantastic music. But, to repeat, I think 3/2/90 falls outside the peak. A couple of recent posts at Dead Net Central, most notably by Blair Jackson, suggest that the Jerry Garcia Band's raging playing of early 1989 --check out the 1/27 and 1/28 shows at the Orpheum, easily Garcia's finest post-coma shows to that point-- may have inspired the idea to record the live album. But by the time they got around to recording,

Caveat Lector: rest of the post is sketchy/drafty

The release is pretty fantastic, I admit. But ...

The problem is, the shows are extremely uneven, generally down to the song level. So, while I absolutely love the Jerry Garcia Band live release, I can't help but wish they had been recording a year to 18 months earlier.

To be clear, there were plenty of great versions of great songs. Enough for a really nice 2 CD release in 1991. There were some great setlist innovations during this period, with the additions of "Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)" on 2/2/90 and "Tears Of Rage" the next night being my favorites. But Jerry just doesn't sound as alive as he did a year previous.

circulation issues: VHS ... never jumped to DAT

Difficulty of taping 1990 Warfield shows.

songs (use Blair GR). Alex Allan song links

Setlist

--Set I--

Cats Under The Stars (Lyrics: Robert Hunter; Music: Jerry Garcia).

Forever Young (Lyrics: Bob Dylan;Music: Bob Dylan). From Dylan's Planet Waves (deaddisc, released January 1974).

Tough Mama (Lyrics: Bob Dylan; Music: Bob Dylan). From Dylan's Planet Waves (deaddisc, released January 1974).

The Way You Do The Things You Do (Lyrics: William Robinson, Robert Rogers; Music: William Robinson, Robert Rogers). This is a revival for TWYDTTYD, which JGB hadn't played publicly since January 14, 1984. BJ notes


Like A Road Leading Home (Lyrics: Nix, Penn; Music: Nix, Penn)

Deal (Lyrics: Robert Hunter; Music: Jerry Garcia)

Set I Comments: Garcia/Hunter tunes bookend two Dylans and two R&Bs. 

--Set II--

Mission In The Rain (Lyrics: Robert Hunter; Music: Jerry Garcia). A great San Francisco song for and by a great San Franciscan. By March 1990, though, Jerry is pretty phlegmy and has a hard time, for example with the "ten years ago, I walked these streets, my dreams were riding tall" line. He wants to put a little inflection on "walked", but he just doesn't have the range.

Waiting For A Miracle (Lyrics: Bruce Cockburn; Music: Bruce Cockburn). Late in his career, Garcia picked up a few Canadian-penned midtempos: this one and Daniel Lanois's "The Maker", which debuted a little later (xxx date xxx). Waiting For A Miracle was a really nice JGB tune for a bit, but by 1990 it had passed its peak. The best version is the one from the Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles, CA on November 26, 1988 [db | LL], which was only its second appearance. Jerry took special care with the "stand up tall, pretend you're strong / in the hope that you can be" line, which really seemed to speak to him (and certainly makes the song for me). But certainly after 1989 the song could just be a dud notwithstanding which Garcia kept playing it (all the way into 1994), bless his heart. The version from March 2, 1990 is sounds just like the one (!) the one that ended up on the double-live 1991 Jerry Garcia Band.

Tears Of Rage (Lyrics: Bob Dylan, Richard Manuel; Music: Bob Dylan, Richard Manuel). This is only the 3rd of 12 JGB versions. Oh my goodness, what a fantastic cover this was for Jerry. He delivered some gut-wrenchingly good versions of this lament, the best of which, from August 5, 1990 at the Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (TJS) was selected for the outtakes of the Garcia Plays Dylan release. deaddisc URL

Think (Lyrics: Jimmy McKracklin, Don Robey (note: often credited to McCracklin and Deadric Malone, which was the pseudonym Don Robey often wrote under); Music: Jimmy McKracklin, Don Robey)

My Sisters And Brothers (Lyrics: Charles Johnson; Music: Charles Johnson)

Tangled Up In Blue (Lyrics: Bob Dylan; Music: Bob Dylan)


REFERENCES
Arnold, Corry. 1986. Bob Dylan Approximately. Golden Road no. xx (Summer): 34. Songs discussed: "She Belongs To Me", "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry", "When I Paint My Masterpiece", "Positively 4th Street", "The Wicked Messenger", "Tough Mama", "Going, Going Gone", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", "Simple Twist Of Fate","Tangled Up In Blue", "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", "The Mighty Quinn", "Visions Of Johanna", "Desolation Row", "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".
Jackson

On Broadway: Act One – October 28th, 1987

http://jerrygarcia.com/on-broadway-act-one-october-28th-1987/

buy it here- --> https://www.garciafamilyprovisions.com/product/JYCD57/jerry-garcia-band--on-broadway-act-one-102887-3-cd-set

On Broadway: Act One – October 28th, 1987

We’re excited to announce the debut of On Broadway, a new archival series celebrating Jerry’s magical 13 night run at the historic Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City’s Broadway theater district. The first installment, On Broadway: Act One – October 28th, 1987, will arrive June 23rd on Round Records as a 3CD set or digital download and is currently available for pre-order in the Official Garcia Store.

On Broadway: Act One – October 28th, 1987 presents three complete sets of music, including previously unreleased matinee and evening acoustic sets from the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, as well as the evening electric set from the Jerry Garcia Band. The release was produced from newly remastered two-track soundboard recordings originally captured to digital audio tape and includes previously unpublished live photos, and a liner note essay by author, historian and Grateful Dead publicist, Dennis McNally.

“The (two) Garcia Bands’ – Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, and the electric JGB – 1987 run on Broadway from October 15th through Halloween was destined to be memorable for many reasons,” as Dennis McNally states in the liner note essay. There’s record setting ticket sale figures, a destiny tied to Jerry’s namesake (Broadway composer Jerome Kern) and of course the sheer visual oddity that is Deadheads descending upon The Great White Way, but what shines brightest is Garcia’s jovial and relaxed mood which sets the stage for the inspiring performances contained within the release.

A few thoughts.

First, glad to see releases happening. Thank you in advance. I look forward to reading McNally, as always.

Second, looks like this will be 10/28/87a JGAB and 10/28/87b complete (i.e., JGAB & JGB).

The early show JGAB set circulates among collectors from line recordings, as tricksy Deadheads spliced into speaker lines out to the hallways, arranged for Deadheads to dance around. Some gratitude - but then again, tapes is tapes.

In terms of the late show, Bill Koucky's orchestra pit Nakamichi 300s tape (shnid-79902) is missing the first three songs of the acoustic set, "I've Been All Around This World", "Ballad Of Casey Jones" and Jimmie Rodgers's "Blue Yodel No. 9", which was a standard in the JGAB rotation and holds the distinction of being the last song Garcia is known to have recorded (7/16/95, for Various Artists, The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers - A Tribute, Egyptian/Columbia 485189 2, 1997). It's also missing set-ender "Ripple". As far as I know, these songs will be new to circulation, a welcome addition. (edit: looks like the "Ripple" is MIA.)

Third, I have listened to Koucky's tape of the early show electric set (shnid-80044), and the performance didn't knock me out, so I guess I am glad that TPTB didn't pick it for release.

Fourth, the idea of an integral "Jerry on Broadway" collection has been floating around for a long time. Looks like they are not going to release the whole thing, while at the same time there is more to come. They have already released a bunch, per Deaddisc:

Pure Jerry: Lunt-Fontanne, NYC, 10/31/87, Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band/Jerry Garcia Band, 2004
Pure Jerry: Lunt-Fontanne, The Best Of The Rest, Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band/Jerry Garcia Band, 2004
Ragged But Right, Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, 2010 [certain tracks from Broadway]

Fifth, I am a little dubious about the whole prospect. Jerry was healthy, having fun, playing well, the acoustic band was a hoot and the electric band was fully lined up (JGB #21b had been together for 4 years at this point), but the setlists are very repetitive and the music is more competent than interesting. IMO, YMMV, etc. etc. But I am happy to buy this one and eventually more good ones if they meet expectations.

A Conversation With Jerry

https://youtu.be/2tamQ9Uj1Hk

So many data, so little time. One item on my lengthy "to-do" list is to try to process every Garcia interview. It's finite, naturally enough, and thus in principle do-able. In practice, well, only so many hours.

Anyway, this one is a bunch of raw tape for Rolling Stone 20th, 1987 sometime. Some really good material. Jerry seems a little uncomfortable on camera and this is not his most fluent interview, but still the sheer charismatic intelligence just jumps off the screen. There are a few neat lines in here that I really like.

Raw notes follow.

A Conversation With Jerry

1987 Rolling Stone interview uncut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tamQ9Uj1Hk&t=0m36s

grandmother listened to Grand Ole Opry when he was a kid

mother liked Hawaiian music 1:42 father was a professional musician surrounded by music all my life

The first record I remember was a record called "Gee" by The Crows. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvmGLV_GE0M

2:19 R&B black music

the first music I heard that I thought had an identity other than R&B was Chuck Berry 3:05 when he came out with Maybelline … and that guitar … the guitar was the thing that pulled me into those records first … Chucks stuff was the first stuff that had that other added thing

successful black record would be covered by lame white

Lil Richard Fats Domino

3:56 first started playing with my cousin Danny I had taken piano lessons as a kid

electric guitar accordion story with a good big laugh 4:20 he's the one that introduced the idea of improvising to me 5:23

Beatles it was more the movies than the records their first records were so sappy, I didn't really like em that much, frankly. 6:59 but when the first movie came out Hard Day's Night had great flow, great style and the thing of fun

that's what kicked the Beatles off on the west coast in terms of the folk music coffeehouse post-Beatnik circuit

acoustic to electric 8:43 really the big thing was the addition of drummers

the folk scene continental already Cambridge NYC Denver Chicago Berkeley SF Peninsula LA 10:26 interconnected university towns that was where you worked

1142 the thing about the Haight-Ashbury was that the rent was cheap 1205 economics pure and simple

1400 amazing contrast between traditional working class musicians who could get ripped off by sharpies. GD were more educated than that. [NB artifact of postwar America!]

1443 we were never climbers in that [showbiz success] sense. We were already having fun doing what we were doing. We already knew that it had almost no commercial potential, apart from the community we were in. more good talk late 14 minute

1538 Acid Tests one of the truly democratic art forms to appear in this century

it didn't require that we be intelligible on any level

1650 the Acid Test experience gave us glimpses into the form that follows chaos. If you throw everything out, and lose all rule and stop trying to make anything happen, on any level, other stuff starts to happen. 

Bay Area I've always thought it was the greatest place there is.

18-19 some Warlocks talk

late 19 story about Family Dog shows Lesh lady what this little séance needs is us

23 Sgt. Peppers

25 Bringing It All Back Home some moments of amazing poetic beauty Baby Blue that was when his songs started speaking to what the freak on the street was experiencing

27 Monterey we'd been hanging out with Hendrix before the shows etc. I knew him from when he played with John Hammond so he wasn't a complete stranger

The way it was with the friends of ours who died during that period of time, it was like most deaths, they were mostly just fuck-ups, they weren't suicides, or the culmination of a tragic existence. Janis was not that sort of person. 3136 She was a loose drug user. Like any drug user, sometimes you get more than what you think it's gonna be, and you take it, and the next thing you know, you're dead. That could happen to anybody.

3249 rock and politics I never thought it was a good idea. In the Bay Area at that time, there were two big philosophical pillars. There was the SF approach, there was the Berkeley approach. The B approach awas the politics, the endless argument, the pro-con dualism. The SF approach was psychedelic in the largest possible sense which is that everything that happens happens and that's the way it is. It lacks the polemic …

politics and music is taking something beautiful and putting it in service of something evil 3524

3830 I've always been a big fan of the classic Motown stuff of the 60s and the Muscle Shoals, Memphis, Otis, black music has a way of going in and out of bags …same as anything else

3922 the magic part of music, even today … 10% of special shit

41 it's always nice for the kids to have music. Punk music was music the kids could dig, and it was thoroughly obnoxious to adults.

4150 If commitment counts, when you're onstage, and whether you're bleeding over every note or whether you're wounding yourself physically or on whatever level [interesting look he gives], that's real. It represents a kind of commitment to music that I admire.

4237 Elvis's death had a special kind of significance for me. At the time, I was playing in a solo band of my own, and I was using Ronnie Tutt, who was Elvis's drummer. Elvis was about to go on tour, and I was having to cancel all my recording plans because Ronnie was gonna be on tour. All of a sudden, Elvis died and I got the drummer. So, in a way, it affected me very specifically.

4320 more Elvis liked the rawness of Mystery Train and Sun catalog … Elvis's power as a performer was incredible. Great about Elvis's dream of having his show be orchestra, white gospel, black gospel, roc and roll, etc. Garcia admired that.

4503 Elvis was a victim of the Judy Garland syndrome. What do you do when you've risen to absolute success. Where is there for you to go? Las Vegas? Wow, some reward. Gee, that's great: work as hard as you can, and you get to go from Mississippi to Las Vegas. It's wrong. He deserved something better. But the music world doesn't have the imagination to invent it for him, and he wasn't lucky enough to have come up with his own guidance system. He was under the influence of other people who felt they knew what he could do and what he couldn't do and what the business could open for him. He had no alternative. In some senses that's the music business's thing. It's reductive and unless you invent your own alternative for where you want to go, and how you want to improve, and how you want to contain your own improvement, it doesn't happen for you. The music business says to you 'Repeat your success, do your formula thing, and live on that, or die from boredom, or get pathetic like Elvis'. To me that's unacceptable. In that sense, Elvis is a martyr to the thoughtlessness, the mindlessness, of the music business. That's how little it cares for the performers, and how little it really cares about the music.

4840 We've been willing to sell out on some levels for a long time, but nobody's been buying!

4945 selling out, advertising, etc. "The new fascism is rock n roll."

5415 For me, music is the thing that moves me forward in my life.

56 minute Lennon talk

57 talk about Janis

59 The music belongs to the people who buy the tickets. If they want to take it home with 'em after the show's over, they're welcome to.

5945 the only thing that makes [rock n roll] happen is commercial exploitation.

6142 GD as institution: "By dint of having survived this long" …

LN jg1987-10-28.jgb.early.aud-koucky.80044.flac1644

Perfectly competent musicianship, but nothing here really lights me up. Good tape with lots of atmosphere.

Jerry Garcia Band
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 W. 46th Street
New York, NY 10036
October 28, 1987 (Wednesday) - Early Show - set II (electric)
Koucky MAC shnid-80044

-- set II + encore (9 tracks, 69:14)--
-- set II (8 tracks, 64:05 - 0:52)--
t01. [0:06] Get Out Of My Life Woman [7:52] [0:09]
t02. They Love Each Other [6:55] [1:07]
t03. [0:05] Mission In The Rain [9:02] [0:45]
t04. Like A Road Leading Home [8:01] [0:02] %
t05. [0:27] Love In The Afternoon [6:53] (1) [0:12] %
t06. ... My Sisters And Brothers [#4:15] [0:02]
t07. [0:10] That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day) [9:38] ->
t08. Deal [7:20] (2) [0:10] % [0:52]
--encore (1 track, 5:08 + 0:52)--
t09. [0:04] Crazy Love [5:04] (3) %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals;
! lineup: David Kemper - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] 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/19871028-02

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1987-10-28-lunt-fontanne-theatre-new-york-ny/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/25742 (Sony ECM939LT); http://etreedb.org/shn/80044 (this fileset).

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/lunt-fontanne-theater-205-west-42nd.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/Phfj1

! band: JGB #21b, THE Jerry Garcia Band (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html).

! R: field recordist: Bill Koucky

! R: field recording gear: 2x Nakamichi 300 > Sony D5 MAC

! R: field recording location: orchestra pit

! R: source: MAC > Sony D5 1st cassette copy > playback on Nakamichi DR2 > Presonus Firebox > firewire/PC XP Pro > Wavelab 5.0, recorded as 24 bit/96 KHz PCM WAV > Waves L3 Multimaxmizer (threshold -3.5, ceiling -0.1, type I dither, ultra shaping) > 16 bit/44.1 KHz PCM WAV > CDWAV 1.9 > FLAC (level 8). Transfer/mastering by C.Ladner. Seeded at bt.etree.org, November 2006.

! R: This is a nice tape.

! t01 taper or someone near taper says "That's it, my first one, That's What Love Will Make You Do", and then sounds disappointed when he gathers that it's GOOMLW.

! R: t01 GOOMLW bad overload to start, mix and level issues

! P: t01 GOOMLW Melvin on acoustic piano

! P: t02 TLEO Melvin switches to electric piano

! P: t05 LITA little flub 6:20ish JG comes in too soon on a vocal

! t05 (1) "We got an equipment failure. We've got a new organ comin' in, we're gonna take a coupla minutes, we'll back in a coupla minutes."

! R: t06 "My Sisters And Brothers" fades in, not much missing

! P: t07 TLOS JG is triangulating to the appropriate key for awhile

! t08 (2) "See y'all later." after the splice it's really pre-encore tuning

! t09 someone plausibly calls "Stoned Me", which is a reasonable inference, because they sound similar, but obviously incorrect.

! t09 (3) "Thanks a lot. See ya later."

The Fat Man Is Back - LN jg1987-02-24.jgb.all.aud-pinney-gems.82610.flac1644

Poster for JGB 2/24/87 at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Tuesday, February 24, 1987, image courtesy of Wolfgang's Vault.

Since I gathered an ad and a few listings in Santa Cruz, I gave the 2/24/87 JGB show at the Civic Aud a spin and discovered a great tape (a single one in circulation, thanks to taper Tom Pinney and all involved in getting his tape into the Official Record) of a Garcia Band sounding really good and band leader who sounds cogent, focused, engaged, and increasingly frisky. I'd need to listen to more of the surrounding shows to get a really clean sense, but I if I draw a straight line between some of the Rock Bottom shows (and even some of the early 1986 shows) to the great 18 months that would begin on 8/29/87 and end on 5/19/89, I pass right through this show on the way up. (I do now see that I wasn't doing backflips over 3/14/87.)

I cannot believe Bill Graham Presents ran this with what we might render today as #thefatmanisback, nor that the Garcia people allowed it to run. But here we are! That Lucky Old Sun is a stunningly improbable highlight for me. I never thought I'd hear of it highlighting, less still writing of it. I usually find it a bore. But of this version, on this listen, I have nothing but love. Let's use TLOS as a window on the show.

! song: That Lucky Old Sun [Allan | deaddisc]: The great Tin Pan Alley songwriter Haven Gillespie wrote this reverie with the lesser-known Beasley Smith, a glimpsed-thought-turns-philosophical-truism solar daydream, which makes a really good point. Americana? How about Frankie Laine, Sarah Vaughan, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Louis Armstrong covering your song -- in 1949 alone! Tony Bennett, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Bing Crosby, Bobby Darin, Aretha Franklin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, the Righteous Brothers, and too many others to name would follow.

Jerry put it in his repertoire immediately after the coma, draping it in mournful hopefulness, the man who six months earlier lay at death's door, three weeks in the hospital coming back to something like life, thinking "Man, if I get out of here, I'm gonna play every chance I get" (Vaughn 1987, 80), now coming back to health, regaining strength, maybe the coma wrung the junk-sickness out of him, too, because he's clear-headed for the first time in forever, like more than a decade depending on how you reckon it, and he's playing a neat little gig at the Santa Cruz Civic, the breathtaking little Civic Aud, and he's working his craft. Check out the Jerry Band on a Tuesday night, a worknight, February 24, 1987, and hear him right where he belongs, in a sweet little room working up a slice of Americana for an appreciative listener. It's not perfect, but it's careful, attentive arranging, singing and guitar playing. The song is perfect for JGB #21b because Melvin can swirl up a sweet, colorful Sunday garland right around your ears, drape it around you a little, the ladies supply the backing diaphragm that lets Jerry focus on articulation, phrasing, breath management, and the band simmers it just right, so there's room for the same guitar feel, well plucked and articulate rather than face-melting (though Jerry still plays LOUD!). You don't have to love Garcia to concede him his place, doing this song – see 2/24/87 for what I hope is the open and shut argument.

The whole show and tape have this sweet feel. Garcia sounds great, the band sounds great, the tape sounds great, and I wish I had been able to sit in deco splendor on this night, maybe drink some club soda and commune with the Jerry Band. "The Fat Man Is Back," indeed!

Jerry Garcia Band
Civic Auditorium
307 Church Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
February 24, 1987 (Tuesday)
Pinney shnid-82610

--set I (7 tracks, 50:09)--
s1t01. //Cats Under The Stars [#7:52] [1:34]
s1t02. Forever Young [8:48] [0:17]
s1t03. [0:20] Stop That Train [7:49] ->
s1t04. Run For The Roses [5:22] [0:11]
s1t05. And It Stoned Me [6:45] ->
s1t06. My Sisters And Brothers [4:10] ->
s1t07. D//eal [6:#53] (1) [0:08]

--set II (6 tracks, 57:29)--
s2t01. [0:47] Harder They Come [9:49] [0:17]
s2t02. I Shall Be Released [7:23] [0:09]
s2t03. [0:10] Think [7:49] [0:07] % [0:16]
s2t04. Dear Prudence [10:55] [0:06]
s2t05. That Lucky Old Sun [9:53] ->
s2t06. Tangled Up In Blue [9:38] (2) [0:09]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals;
! lineup: David Kemper - 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/19870224-01

! JGC: https://jerrygarcia.com/show/1987-02-24-civic-auditorium-santa-cruz-ca/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/82610 (Tom Pinney MAC, this fileset, only known source!).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/kkDtK

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/civic-auditorium-307-church-st-santa.html

! handbill: http://images.wolfgangsvault.com/jerry-garcia-band/poster/memorabilia/SCC870224-PO.jpg

! ad: Good Times, February 19, 1987, p. 21;

! listing: Good Times, February 19, 1987, p. 30;

! historical: Rather remarkably, the WV handbill has the tagline "The Fat Man Is Back". Jerry must have been in a sporting mood about it, I guess. Tuesday night gig, Garcia sounds amazingly clear and focused. This show is a delight to hear, after the darkness of the Rock Bottom series. This is a man working his craft with newfound enthusiasm. He is still regaining strength and stamina - the sets are about an hour. But he definitely sounds like he's getting stronger. Two snaps up on this vintage 1987 JGB.

! R: field recordist: Tom Pinney;

! R: field recording equipment: 2x Beyer M88 (XY 90 degrees) > Sony D5 MAC;

! R: field recording location: FOB Center - 20' from stage;

! R: lineage: cassette (1), Tape from the collection of: Russ Cansler;

! R: Cassette Transfer: By Todd Evans: Cassette (1) > JVC TD-V1050 cassette deck -> Lynx Two A/D (24-bit, 44.1kHz) -> Wavelab 6.0. Transferred February 15, 2007. Edited and Remastered:  Wavelab 6.0 with Waves Plugins and Ozone. Dithered L2,type2,ultra 16/44.1  SBE FREE by Jamie Waddell. a www.shnflac.net **GEMS** production  February 16, 2007.

! R: seeder notes: "a very solid recording"; "first circulating source of this show, 20 years later";
"very strong version of Think"; "tape flip at the start of Deal"; "seamless transition between the discs"

! R: seeder notes: "Big Thanks To Todd Evans for the Transfer! And Sincere Gratitude to Tom Pinney for Taping and Russ Cansler for the generosity and insight to share this missing show with GEMS and the community as a whole!"

! P: Jerry sounds in great voice this night. Very nice. This is an excellent all around show, not a weak spot in it.

! R: s1t07 Deal tape flip at start

! s1t07 (1) JG: "We'll be back in a few minutes."

! P: s2t05 TLOS is a great example of Garcia being attentive and careful in his vocal delivery. He's locked in. This version has some deliberate guitar playing, but nothing super-incendiary, which he could sometimes achieve in the unlikely setting of this song. Hits something cheeky at 6, again 6:25, reminding you he's playing rock, big downward thing 6:33, Melvin comes in big, on cue, scrubbing 6:59. This is an excellent version of a song that I normally don't pay much attention to. Melvin' swirly thing across 7:30. He always plays it the same, but it works; i.e., this is a good arrangement. Nice careful singing 9:15ff, nicely done. Very, very nice. Sounds gorgeous.

! song: That Lucky Old Sun (s2t05): The great Tin Pan Alley songwriter Haven Gillespie wrote this reverie with the lesser-known Beasley Smith, a glimpsed-thought-turns-philosophical-truism solar daydream, which makes a really good point. Americana? How about Frankie Laine, Sarah Vaughan, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Louis Armstrong covering your song -- in 1949 alone! Tony Bennett, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Bing Crosby, Bobby Darin, Aretha Franklin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, the Righteous Brothers, and too many others to name would follow. Jerry put it in his repertoire immediately after the coma, draping it in mournful hopefulness, the man who six months earlier lay at death's door, three weeks in the hospital coming back to something like life, thinking "Man, if I get out of here, I'm gonna play every chance I get" (Vaughn 1987, 80), now coming back to health, regaining strength, maybe the coma wrung the junk-sickness out of him, too, because he's clear-headed for the first time in forever, like more than a decade depending on how you reckon it, and he's playing a neat little gig at the Santa Cruz Civic, the breathtaking little Civic Aud, and he's working his craft. Check out the Jerry Band on a Tuesday night, a worknight, February 24, 1987, and hear him right where he belongs, in a sweet little room working up a slice of Americana for an appreciative listener. It's not perfect, but it's careful, attentive arranging, singing and guitar playing. The song is perfect for JGB #21b because Melvin can swirl up a sweet, colorful Sunday garland right around your ears, drape it around you a little, the ladies supply the backing diaphragm that lets Jerry focus on articulation, phrasing, breath management, and the band simmers it just right, so there's room for the same guitar feel, well plucked and articulate rather than face-melting (though Jerry still plays LOUD!). You don't have to love Garcia to concede him his place, doing this song – see 2/24/87 for what I hope is the open and shut argument.

! s2t06 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. See ya later."

REFERENCE:

Vaughan, Chris. 1987. (Grateful) Dead Fingers Talk. Spin 3, 4 (July): 74-76, 80.

LN jg1987-03-14.jgb.all.aud-archival_audio.124259.flac2448

Garcia doesn't quite have his stamina back. Nothing particularly noteworthy happening here. Good tape.

Ian Stoy's ticket stub for JGB 3/14/87 at the Wiltern Theatre in LA

Jerry Garcia Band
Wiltern Theatre
3790 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90010
March 14, 1987 (Saturday)
Ian Stoy MAC flac2448 shnid-124259

--set I (8 tracks, 60:40)--
s1t01. crowd and tuning [1:09]
s1t02. Cats Under The Stars [8:00] [1:33]
s1t03. Mission In The Rain [9:15] [0:29]
s1t04. They Love Each Other [6:42] [0:27]
s1t05. Simple Twist Of Fate [12:17] [0:29]
s1t06. Think [6:05] [0:01] % [0:22]
s1t07. Like A Road Leading Home [7:32] ->
s1t08. Deal [6:10] (1) [0:09] %

--set II (7 tracks, 51:53)--
s2t01. Get Out Of My Life, Woman [8:00] [0:20]
s2t02. Run For The Roses [5:28] [0:42]
s2t03. Love In The Afternoon [8:25] [0:17]
s2t04. Gomorrah [6:40] [1:01]
s2t05. Crazy Love [4:38] [0:16]
s2t06. That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day) [9:18] %
s2t07. /Midnight Moonlight [6:35] (1) [0:13] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals;
! lineup: David Kemper - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [x:xx] = 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/19870314-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/32006 (Sony 939 flac1644); http://db.etree.org/shn/124259 (this fileset)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/71INU

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/wiltern-theatre-3790-wilshire-boulevard.html

! band: THE Jerry Garcia Band, JGB #21b (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! R: field recordist: Ian Stoy a.k.a. Archival Audio

! R: field recording location: Orch Row D Seat 114 Aisle 4 (FOB)

! R: field recording gear: 2x Toa K1 (handheld about 4' apart chest high) > Sony WM-TCD-6C > ! ! R: field recording media: 2x Maxell XLII-S 90 (Dolby C on)

! R: transfer: Tascam 302 Dolby C on >  ArchivalSilver/Gold RCA/1/4" TS > 1/4" > Tascam DR-680 24bit/48khz (dual mono) > Transcend SDHC Class10 card > iMac 3.06 Ghz i3 12 GR 133MHz DDR3 > AudioFile Engineering Wave Editor 1.57. Normalize to -.9 db (each side) Remove DC offset regions [labels] exported .wav  > xACT v2.21to FLAC (level 8 ) Metadata (aka tags), generate ffp and len (shntool) output.

! R: seeder notes: "Second ever "stealth" show, hand held mics, cable connection crackles and a drop out or two in the left channel during Cats. I did my best to lessen the pops but left the slight dropout. At the beginning of set 2 security was trying to seat someone in our aisle flashlight out and pointed at us, and therefore the start of GOOMLW was a bit muffled and a second or two was missing. Also the tape flip at the end of set 2 caused a second or two of might nigh moonlight to be missing. Light phasing can be heard throughout the show due to hand held spaced cardiod mics. A light buzz in the PA can be heard , more prevalent in quiter passages.  Can be rougher at times but overall not that bad!"

! R: this is a nice tape, e.g., start set II. Great spot.

! historical: seeder notes: "As with a number of LA shows my friend James (Jim) Ford waited in line to get the tix when they went on sale. He and Ron Cook help me get my gear in and hold one of the mics. This show was before In The Dark came out, and was lacking many of the In The Dark heads that attended the December '87 run we recorded, post Broadway run.  These 2 shows Friday  3/13 and sat 3/14 were the first shows I ever "stealthed" and was surprised there was "No Recording" enforced.  I did record 10/31/86 JGB and Kingfish. That was open with stands but I had an impedance mis-match and my recordings came out horrid. Back to 3/14 Light phasing can be heard  throughout the show due to hand held mics. The right channel (if I recall correct) was held by me mostly, except starting stopping or adjusting levels on my D-6. I held my mic chest high and mostly still aimed at the right stack. Whereas the left channel was more casually held and potential lower. The night before due to my first steal thing, I managed to record the second set over the first set, and due to cable issues, I believe that only one channel was recorded super botched job. We had a bank of 4 seats each night we were in Row D  I was in  Seat 114. First time at the Wiltern and it was very sweet! Enjoy! AchivalAudio, 2013-03-26."

! R: quite a pleasant tape!

! R: s1t05 STOF drop @ 2:16, 10:40

! P: s1t08 Deal Jerry is not sounding very good here, running out of steam. He doesn't really hit the vocals properly, either with the verses or with the chorus ... but let's see if he can make it up with his guitar playing from 3:30ff? Indeed, good. As ever, Garcia's guitar playing is excellent, while the vocals are the canary in the coalmine in re basic health. I don't think he's using here (but WTF do I know?), but he just hasn't built back his stamina not just from The Coma, but from years, at least eight but probably a decade or more, of hard drugs and hard living. The Tom Davis book gives you the nadir, or the August 1984 recordings.

! s1t08 (1) JG: "We'll be back in a few minutes. Thank you."

! R: s2t01 GOOMLW fades in, but not really anything missing. Taper says ""Second ever 'stealth' show, hand held mics, cable connection [problems]. At the beginning of set II security was trying to seat someone in our aisle, flashlight out and pointed at us, and therefore the start of GOOMLW is a bit muffled and a second or two is missing."

! s2t01 GOOMLW JG is putting some extra measures in vocally, "I don't love you no mo' oo oh". It's nice. Guitar solo 2:20 is pretty good. Late 3, Melvin takes a feature.

! P: s2t02 RFTR I find this tempo just a little bit sluggish.

! P: s2t03 LITA Jerry's voice is shot. And the band is not all on the same page toward the end of the song, 7ff. Not great.

! song: "Crazy Love" (s2t05): 15 times from Oct 19, 1986 to Oct. 31,1987: https://jerrybase.com/songs/805

! R: s2t07 Mid Moon clips in.

! s2t07 (1) JG: "Thanks a lot, see ya later."