A Rehearsed Post-Brent Garcia Band: Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles, November 15, 1990

LN jg1990-11-15.jgb.all.sbd-patched-miller.135953.flac1644

An all-time version of "The Way You Do The Things You Do", a top-shelf latter-day "Reuben And Cherise", and a tape with a story to tell - what's not to love?

Jerry Garcia Band
Wiltern Theatre
3790 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90010
November 15, 1990 (Thursday) - 8 PM
sbd-patched-miller shnid-135953

--set I (8 tracks, 60:13)--
s1t01. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [5:54]
s1t02. Stop That Train
s1t03. Let It Rock
s1t04. The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down
s1t05. Someday Baby
s1t06. Run For The Roses
s1t07. Sisters And Brothers
s1t08. Deal

--set II (7 tracks, 62:55)--
s2t01. The Way You Do The Things You Do [11:02] [1:00]
s2t02. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [9:40] [0:24]
s2t03. And It Stoned Me
s2t04. Reuben And Cherise [7:46] [0:09] %
s2t05. Evangeline
s2t06. That Lucky Ol' Sun
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight

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

JGMF:

! R: 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/19901115-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/23228 (sbd shnf deprecated); shnid-23774 (DeTally MAC); shnid-135953 (this fileset).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/6c14vkBJBMT2

! venue: http://www.rockandrollroadmap.com/los-angeles-area-venues/the-wiltern/view-details.html;

! JGBP: 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)

! historical: I have wrongly neglected post-Brent 1990 JGB, despite having big love for 12/22/90's burning "Let's Spend The Night Together". 11/15/90 is gig four of five at the Wiltern in a six-day span. This whole run would probably reward study, just to see how LA differed (and didn't), but there is no time. I find all-time interesting version of TWYDTTYD here, which is quite a claim. Note the 2x 60-minute set structure. Very nice pacing, content. Folks got their money's worth (contrast: "Bullshit! Bullshit! 5/31/85). Nice to see enterprising Deadheads patching out of speakers --generously run by Bill Graham out to hallways to allow people room to dance with nice fresh sound-- running tape in the bathroom. Some good sound on this!

! R: SBD -> ? -> Cassette; Sony TC-K677ES -> Sound Devices 744T (24bit/48k) -> Samplitude Professional v11.2.1 -> FLAC/16 (2 Discs Audio / 1 DVD FLAC). All Transfers and mastering By Charlie Miller, charliemiller87@earthlink.net, June 13, 2016.

! R: Patch Info: John Detally's TOA DM1200d -> FLAC (shnid-23774) supplies: How Sweet It Is (complete track), Stop That Train, Deal (5:05 - 7:24), That Lucky Ol' Sun (complete track), Midnight Moonlight (complete track).

! R: seeder note: Thanks to John Almirall for supplying that tape

! R: seeder note: This was made in the bathroom patched out of the speakers

! R: seeder note: This may not be perfect but I think it's still an upgrade

! P: overall, this show has a lot to recommend it. The second set contains, as it struck me in the moment, an all-time version of TWYDTTYD and a top latter-day version of Reuben And Cérise.

! P: s1t08 Deal: I FFd from after HSII to see how he does Deal. Interesting to hear from a sbd perspective.

! P: s2t01 TWYDTTYD this is really great, very far "out there" for this song throughout 7, over 8, very good. All through 8 Kemper is earning his keep, hammering out the floor like pounding out brass. Garcia picks up his pace 9:10 and Kemper is with him. This has to be one of the spaciest versions of this often-played song - check timings.

! song "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (s2t02): The rare tune Garcia could do simultaneously with GD and JGB. I don't think I being too partial in saying that the JGB versions stand far superior to the Dead ones, because the organ and the female harmonies and the reggae arrangement all make it beautiful. The Dead version is all angles and elbows, in comparison, IMO, YMMV. This is the last JGB version until 11/12/91. 7:38 Melvin is leaning his ample self down to blast the B3, when Garcia turns to another verse (managing to get to "the sun is setting in western skies", which wasn't always the case). Melvin is light on his feet for a big fella, and rears it back like a horse, letting the vocal go first. Nice. I also like how he pulls it to a close at 9:30, makes it compact.

! P: s2t04 RAC Garcia is right on it vocally - this sounds nicely rehearsed. I think the tempos feel a little squirrely, but he's got the words. He flubbede some lyrics as far as the general public might hear it, but it's pretty remarkable that he gets the whole long narrative in order. http://www.whitegum.com/~acsa/songfile/REUBEN.HTM. Powerful chording, tight ending. Bravo! This is one of my favorite latter-day versions of RAC.

! P: s2t05 Evangeline: I usually dislike this song, but this version is good. Garcia does a lot of great country jukebox descents, very telecasterish.

The Grateful Dead: Top-Grossing Act of 1991

I just picked up a copy of Pollstar's 1991 Year-End Special Edition, entitled Year of the Dead, dated December 31, 1991.

Though I don't do much GD stuff, blogger's stats tell me that GD posts are the most popular. People are funny. But I digress. One of the reasons I don't do it is that others are just so much better at it, and there's so much to do. I like my quieter, Garcia-on-the-side view of things.

But I couldn't pass this up. I just loved some of the data that I found in this magazine, and so want to present a few pictures, each with a few associated thoughts (though, thankfully, not a thousand words).

The GD was the top-grossing American live music act in 1991, bringing in almost $35 million for the year. At this point, Garcia is founder and de facto leader of a company grossing well over this amount, once we factor in GD merchandising, record sales, licensing, royalties (I'd love to know the details), in addition to all of that stuff from his "other" bands. He was an entrepreneur (I need to read Barry Barnes's book, I know). A lot of the messed up shit (such as the 1978 tax liens) that I report on needs to be put into this context. The Dirty Fucking Hippie was a massively successful businessman. He wasn't just some junkie rock star. He was an American success story: Jerry Garcia, Inc.

Here's the key table, with data from Pollstar. I have independently calculated the gross per ticket stuff and the column totals. Pollstar's narrative has some weird numbers, for example "76 shows in 27 cities", while I count 58 paid shows (plus free Bill Graham Memorial show on 11/3/91, no tickets of revenue, of course) across 23 cities.

Table xxx. Grateful Dead 1991 concert grosses.

I'll leave it to GD people to comment and parse as they might like. Let me just elaborate with one more picture from these data, focusing on promoters.

Figure xxx. Grateful Dead 1991 concert grosses, by promoter. Man that is some ugly-ass graph, isn't it?

Here are a few observations, bullet style.

• There is so much continuity in promoters! I was looking at tour information from the October 22 - November 2, 1975 JGB tour, and you see not only John Scher all over it, but Cellar Door in DC and Don Law in Boston, as with here. Seems like there were lots of first-mover advantages in this particular market.
• Barry Fey was the only holdout to the total market domination of Bill Graham and John Scher.
• This distribution is such a great artifact of high modernism. It's perfect how Scher and Graham divide the country, each with his domaine réservé or his chasse gardée, exclusive territoriality on a par with the sharply distinct domains of Westphalian states. No overlapping authority, à la the pre-Westphalian Holy Roman Empire, with its thousands of princes, dukes, suzerains and assorted monarchs and their associated principalities, duchies, suzerainties, and kingdoms.  Sharp lines. Modernity. From the article:

Grateful Dead Productions had the band's yearly excursions down to a science in '91 with Bill Graham Presents and Metropolitan Entertainment splitting the country in their roles as tour producers. All the Dead dates were co-promoted by one or the other except for a stop in Denver, where the two companies couldn't agree on who had the territory. It's safe to say the plan won't change much in the future. If there's one thing to learn from this success story in a year that had so few, it's 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

• Why would Bill Graham have co-promoted the May 1991 Shoreline shows, but not the August ones?
• Garcia, like all of us, wanted to simplify out the shit that didn't appeal to him (e.g., the business side of things) to make maximal room for the stuff that did. We should, and probably do, all strive for that sort of thing. Specialization and exchange. Pay the promoter to handle that stuff. Delegate.
• Look at how lucrative the eastern half of the country is. Man oh man! We have talked on the blogs, and the books talk a lot, about the importance of the core northeast fanbase over the years. It began very early on. The Dead perceived the importance of these folks (or are they markets?) early on and drew the appropriate conclusions in terms of engagement, marketing, outreach, etc. Constituency service, the pols would call it.
• The annual MSG and Boston Garden runs are just unbelievable. Again, high modernism. Capitalism at its finest.
• Scher seems to have been smart about working with local partners, and I am sure the GD folks were more than glad to have him sub-contract as he needed to. The Dead and Scher worked well together, they obviously trusted him, and you can't particularly argue with the results.
• The fact that the Dead staged an intervention after the Denver show 6/28/91, that Garcia entered a methadone-based recovery program that summer, and seemed burned out beyond all recognition in the fall (the Hornsby recollections, the Boston statement about taking a break from touring), gives us a little peek, as if we needed any reminder that life is full of tradeoffs, at the human toll, on Garcia in particular, of the "Year Of The Dead". A Year of Dying, too. Ain't creative destruction great?

One last point, on data and methodology: the entertainment industry has always documented itself very thoroughly, and especially in quantitative (and, specifically, monetary) terms. I guess that's true of all industries, but, like any ad-based industry, music, television, film, and the rest of the entertainment-industrial complex had a great incentive to make at least some data public. From very early on there are charts and lots of information about grosses and such.

So how is it possible that we don't have better quantitative data in the field of Grateful Dead Studies? We need  more graduate students writing more dissertations to start compiling more data; we oldsters can't handle the strain. Billboard, Pollstar ... etc. etc. I want graphs of the chart position of every Dead/Garcia record ever ... stat! (so to speak)