These sets aren't getting any longer: JGB #21a at the Beverly Theatre, October 1, 1983

One of the things that I expect will become possible at some point is to get some relatively valid data on set times across the years. One of the reasons I try to be so precise with my timing notations is that I am going to want to train a machine to parse song, set and show timings from my listening notes. The data will still be noisy and need cleaning, but the basic idea is solid.

Case in point, two ca. 50 minute sets on October 1, 1983 in John Kahn's old 'hood. Nothing offensive, but we are definitely sliding down toward the Minelli Line of 45 minutes. We are on the road to Rock Bottom. It'll be a pretty timeseries graph at some point. In my mind, this also connects to the fact that, as I only recently came to understand, this show, and the shows around it, were makeups for the shows canceled in August, a month which laid Jerry low more than once.

Deadbase said that the August shows were canceled because Jerry had an infected foot. I know from photographic evidence that he was suffering from edema a year later, and by this point edema, or sores, or goodness-knows-what could have been possible. But, heck, maybe he stubbed his toe or stepped on a tack while doing his calesthenics - what do I know? Anyway, him canceling August shows for health reasons definitely holds historical resonance, and then seeing the makeup gigs clocking in a little short -- not the only time Beverly Hills would experience this -- all feels narratively consistent.

A few other quickies while I have the table in front of me. First, some of those August dates are a little sketchy to me. The ads and listings and such were a little all over the map. Check 'em out at Jerrybase if you are so inclined. Second, same goes with 10/4/83. I am not sure about it. Third, more San Diego cancellations. That down was filthy with 'em in the Garciaverse. Fourth, Palomino Station in Riverside strikes me, prima facie, as a potentially interesting dive bar. I don't know anything about it, but it screams downmarket to me. It ain't the Beverly, of that I feel pretty confident.

Anyway, 10/1/83 listening notes: I like the atmospheric aud pull by Joe Pinedo, very ambient and showing off the ragged seams of the pause button and 45 minute tape sides. The show is probably a little below average for the period, or maybe average The Cats is peppy, the Catfish John is awesome, and in TWLWMYD Kemper does some syncopated splashing that resets my pulse. Kemper plays very well throughout. There's no "Don't Let Go" or "Rhapsody In Red", which were pretty much necessary if not sufficient elements of a great '83 Jerry Band show, and the whole thing just never really goes BOOM. But YMMV.

Listening note after the jump.

p.s. Blogger sucks

Bullshit! Bullshit! Reprise (LN jg1985-05-31.jgjk.early.aud-pinedo.32007.shn2flac)

updated 20140408

I have told the story once before of the Jerry Garcia/John Kahn acoustic duo early show on May 31, 1985, in the context of Bill Graham's branding of the '86-87 JGB tours down south as "The Jerry Garcia Band Electric".

I want to flesh out a bit more detail from the two named informants about this show, whose accounts line up quite beautifully. This post became a bit of a rabbithole for me around The Bust and other things from early '85, but let me drop this and a few brief notes as raw materials for a longer piece of writing about this period.

"Miller Beer Presents an evening of acoustic music, Jerry Garcia w/ John Kahn" should already give you that acrid, headachy feeling - Jerry and John were not in good shape during this period. I have started to dabble in Garcia's Rock Bottom period, which I estimate runs the second half of 1984 (especially, say, from late August) through early 1985 (say, ca. 5/31/85). Recent listening notes around 12/6/84 and 12/7/84 give some indication of my thinking, while an earlier listen to 5/19/84 suggest that things were still reasonably together.

Here's another report from the front of Rock Bottom: 5/31/85a. Thank you eyewitnesses!

Ben Karmelich:

This was Jerry Garcia at his worst.  He had a recent drug arrest and this was when he was in the worst shape physically. The day before the show, Jerry added a second show for the same night. Back then, one Jerry show meant two sets, while two Jerry shows per night meant one set per show, and you had to pay twice. In other words, he added a second show for that same night and expected the crowd to all go outside after the first set and buy another ticket to come back and see the second set.  Needless to say, the crowd was very upset.  One person brought a big banner that said "Jerry Sells Out L.A. Deadheads" with a sad face on it. After Jerry played an uninspired 6 song set, he said good night and left but the crowd refused to leave.  Eventually, Rock Scully came out to say that Jerry "meant to say" that he is taking a short break and eventually, a very pissed off Jerry came out for three more songs.

update 20140408: Ben's memory had the addition of a second show very soon before it was to take place. But I have just reminded myself of the ad in the Los Angeles Times, dated May 26, 1985 (p. N58) and it is interesting. I cannot post image, because I have it from ProQuest (albeit printed - d'oh!). But here's what I see: 1) a listing in the "Openings" section lists one show, 8 p.m. 2) A display ad above it calls the venue "The Beverly" in deco script, above which it says "box office open Monday [5/27], 11 a.m.". Even more interestingly, the ad lists two shows, 7:30 and 10 p.m., and the 7:30 is struck through to indicate that tickets have sold out.

(Memory is a tricky thing, and I am grateful to folks for sharing theirs, always. We should do more on the record, oral history kinds of things. Future historians will thank you if you give a recollection and especially if you go on record!)

I want to suggest that Ben's memory was off on a detail of timing but essentially correct. The paper evidence suggests that a second show was added not the day before the show, but four days before the show. The rest of Ben's story squares with what Erik VanO said (see below). But the incorrect detail has the spirit of what happened correct, and even more beautifully, it squares perfectly with the LAT material! Quite precisely, there was originally a single 8 p.m. show listed (per the listing). Ben reminds us that, in those days, this meant one ticket, two sets starting at 8 p.m. (ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!).

Instead, folks who bought any of the 1,500 tickets sold for the "8 p.m." show, whenever they bought them, were now going to get half as much as they expected (or, just as much at twice the price). They are going to turn the house between sets (now, by the magic of the market, and with all of its solemnity, rechristened a "show"). And this is Before The Internet, so you might not have found out until you got to the show. That is a freaking ripoff.

It looks to me like the Miller Concert Series was quite the enterprise. They sold out a show reasonably quickly and decided to check what the market would bear. They were only going to get one shot at it - one night only. I have this place holding 1,500 - at let's say $13 to the consumer, let's say $11 after ticketing fees, that's $16,500 gross (1984 dollars). Would you rather have just over $36k today for one show, or about $73k for two? I suspected as much.

I don't know what Mill would say about this, since I only pretend to have read him. On the one hand, those 1,500 early buyers get screwed. On the other hand, another 1,500 (maybe among them the same people, that's immaterial) get to buy a ticket to see Jerry. If it's worth it to them, so much the better. I don't know if those utilities cancel out in a utilitarian perspective. Pareto, of course, would reject it outright, since at least one person (the dude or lady who ran out to paint an anti-Jerry sign) was made worse off.

/update 20140408

Erik VanO picks up the story.

Erik VanO:

The show ended with Ripple and the crowd was pissed off at the short show and no encore. When the house lights went on the crowd booed and that morphed into a "bullshit-bullshit" chant. No one would leave. So Jerry had to come back out and play more tunes. I know this well because, me, being mister stat guy, know it all, laughed at everyone and said "it's over, this is standard, he never does an encore, this is it" and proceeded to put my money where my mouth was: I walked out to prove my point. Within moments, the lights went out and I watched everyone from the lobby run ecstatically back into the seating area. They would not let me back in. I ran around side and was allowed to sit with the security dudes on the fire escape since they were confused as well and had the doors open expecting the theatre to exit. So I saw and heard the tunes with my own ears, but from technically outside, but NO WAY that I missed a single note. So I'm not sure whether you'd even call it a second set, I never thought of it as that, more of an encore/riot control, but regardless, those were the only songs played in that unusual circumstance, and I'd say its safe to say that all tapes now, and yet undiscovered,  would support that as well.

There's only one tape of this show known to me, recorded by Joe Pinedo and preserved from first generation cassette copies by Brian Mandel (shnid-32007). Thank you, gentlemen. Alas, the circulating copy doesn't really reveal anything about this incident, except that Garcia tried to deliver to his paying audience, to the tune of $12.75-$14.75, a "complete show" that would fit on a single cassette side, comfortably - 35 minutes of condensed actual music. I don't have the quotes located right now, but I can give a long paragraph here about Garcia's professional standards, which were real. The key litmus test is giving the paying fan his/her money's worth. And I think that even Jerry would admit that he failed his own test, fell short of his own standard, on 5/31/85a.

Revealed preferences are tricky, but the fans certainly seem not to have felt that 6 songs in 40 minutes was worth what they paid. It was already bad enough, as Ben Karmelich reports, that they were feeling fleeced enough ex ante to get in Garcia's face about it. They're pissed, maybe he's pissed that they're pissed (and embarrassed, which would be wholly appropriate, IMO), he's passive aggressive with a short set, and they call him out on it. This wouldn't have happened in the Bay Area, on his home turf (and listenings to 3/2/85, 6/3/85 confirm); the LA heads were sufficiently without illusions, or sufficiently interested in getting their money's worth, or whatever, to demand a professional gig. They did.

"Bullshit! Bullshit!"

Garcia must have been mortified with himself for insulting his fans to this point. The "encore" set is a little bit of a dickslap,so I am not saying he's had a good healthy epiphany by any stretch. On the contrary, more passive-aggression. 15 more minutes? Fuck you too, Jerry.

I don't think he could help himself at this point. One has to think that 1/18/85 must have been rock bottom, but, I dunno, sometimes there's a valley floor down there, and one wanders around the bottom for a bit, because 5/31/85a is definitely staking its claim.

Listening notes below the fold.

Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
Beverly Theatre
9404 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
May 31, 1985 Early Show - 7:30 PM
Pinedo MAC shnid-32007 shn2flac

--complete show (9 tracks, 50:39)--
--main set (6 tracks, 35:57)--
s1t01. [0:05] Run For The Roses :06-4:39 [0:02] % [0:02]
s1t02. /I've Been All Around This World [#4:30] (1) [0:04]
s1t03. Friend Of The Devil [6:15] [0:04]
s1t04. Deep Elem Blues [7:02] [0:07]
s1t05. Simple Twist Of Fate [8:32] [0:05]
s1t06. Ripple [4:28] (1) [0:07]
--encore (3 tracks, 14:42)--
s2t01. [0:12] Jack-A-Roe [3:47] [0:09]
s2t02. Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie [5:19] ->
s2t03. //When I Paint My Masterpiece [#5:11] (2) [0:03]

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

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/19850531-01 (early); https://jerrybase.com/events/19850531-02 (late)

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1985-05-31-beverly-theater-beverly-hills-ca/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/32007 (this fileset).

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

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/beverly-theater-206-north-beverly-dr.html; https://sites.google.com/site/wilshiremoviepalaces/warner-bros-beverly-hills.

! historical: Ben Karmelich: This was Jerry Garcia at his worst.  He had a recent drug arrest and this was when he was in the worst shape physically. The day before the show, Jerry added a second show for the same night. Back then, one Jerry show meant two sets, while two Jerry shows per night meant one set per show, and you had to pay twice. [ed: they "turned the house"] In other words, he added a second show for that same night and expected the crowd to all go outside after the first set and buy another ticket to come back and see the second set.  Needless to say, the crowd was very upset.  One person brought a big banner that said "Jerry Sells Out L.A. Deadheads" with a sad face on it. After Jerry played an uninspired 6 song set, he said good night and left but the crowd refused to leave.  Eventually, Rock Scully came out to say that Jerry "meant to say" that he is taking a short break and eventually, a very pissed off Jerry came out for three more songs.

! historical: Erik VanO: The show ended with Ripple and the crowd was pissed off at the short show and no encore. When the house lights went on the crowd booed and that morphed into a "bullshit-bullshit" chant. No one would leave. So Jerry had to come back out and play more tunes. I know this well because, me, being mister stat guy, know it all, laughed at everyone and said "it's over, this is standard, he never does an encore, this is it" and proceeded to put my money where my mouth was: I walked out to prove my point. Within moments, the lights went out and I watched everyone from the lobby run ecstatically back into the seating area. They would not let me back in. I ran around side and was allowed to sit with the security dudes on the fire escape since they were confused as well and had the doors open expecting the theatre to exit. So I saw and heard the tunes with my own ears, but from technically outside, but NO WAY that I missed a single note. So I'm not sure whether you'd even call it a second set, I never thought of it as that, more of an encore/riot control, but regardless, those were the only songs played in that unusual circumstance, and I'd say its safe to say that all tapes now, and yet undiscovered,  would support that as well.

! R: field recordist: Joe Pinedo

! R: field recording gear: Sony 939 > Sony D5;

! R: transfer: transfer & CD mastering/shn conversion by Brian Mandel, gdplusmore@aol.com: 1st gen cassette (Maxell XLII 90 with Dolby B) > Nakamichi BX300 > Macintosh > Peak Bias > JAM > cdr > eac > mkw > shntool. shn2flac conversion by jgmf 3/20/2014.
! R: seeder notes: "previously had set II listed as incomplete, but this is all JG and JK played."

! s1t01 RFTR brutal tape drag first 20 seconds or so, and warble continues for awhile.

! s1t02 (1) JG: "Thank you."

! s1t03 I swear there's a really weird vibe. When he flubs lyrics, people seem to be laughing at him. In late 5, when he says "it don't look like me", I think a dude yells "thank God" and a chick near the mic laughs.

! P: s1t04 DEB JG sounds lost on the music, things are very off-kilter. Early 2-min John is actually stepping up and helping out, and they find each other. 2:25 ish Garcia takes a nice percussive lead, little fan 2:41, nice little solo coming down late 2. Lose each other a little again late 4.

! s1t06 Ripple the clapping is throwing everything off, or in any case there's some tempo weirdness and off-kilter feel.

! s1t06 (1) JG: "Thank you."

! s2t02 OBIANL guy yells we love you Jerry. Poeple yelling Jerry, he's trying to sing and play, STFU people!

! R: s2t02-s2t03 tape flip

! s2t03 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot everybody. See y'all later."

Jerry Garcia Band Electric

**update 1: final paragraph, 8:47 Eastern 20111212**

Jerry Site administrator slipnut just updated the venue name for a show given as Jerry Garcia Band, California Theatre, San Diego, CA, on Friday May 23, 1986. Handbill follows:

Handbill for Jerry Garcia Band Electric, California Theatre, San Diego, CA, 5/23/86. Possibly courtesy of Iver McLeod.

The venue appears to be an old movie palace originally known as the New California Theatre, and while the handbill says “4^th and C Street”, neither the Google Street view for that location, nor for the one given by the San Diego History Center webpage (1122 4th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101 – am I violating their terms of use by reproducing that address?) makes it obvious to me where the theater is/was. A Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO) site (a San Diego-area British expat, I presume) entry for the California Theatre does not give an address. The fact that this show took place in a fabulous old movie house is awesome and I am sure the venuologists would have a field day with this one. Perhaps I can egg Jerry Garcia’s Brokendown Palaces to do an entry on what looks to be a groovy, funky old place. ;-)

I am more interested in the billing, as “Jerry Garcia Band Electric”. Some small number of people knows the importance I place on institutional formalities, such as the names of bands. Many would dismiss these as mere trivia, and for certain purposes they might be right. But not for my purposes. My purpose is to understand Garcia on the Side as an institution, or a set of them. From that perspective, band names are really important. Names in recollections; on tape boxes; in newspaper listings; on handbills, fliers, posters, tickets; in published reviews, etc. etc. are some of the key data. To take one macro view on how I can use them, consider the following very simple descriptive statistic: variance across the names listed in those eight kinds of sources (recollections, tape boxes, newspaper listings, handbills, fliers, posters, tickets and published reviews). Hypothesis: cross-source band name variance reduces over time. Now I know that time is not a cause. I’d say that what this simple descriptive actually provides is one measure of the degree of institutionalization. Time is just the simplest proxy, for expository purposes. But if the data could be gathered—and I am not saying they can, to my satisfaction—I think you could show a much wider standard deviation in early years, closing almost monotonically over time. Just a hunch.

But I digress. For two out of town (Southern California) shows in May 1986, the one I am discussing and one on Saturday, May 24, 1986 at the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90010 –Jerry’s first at the Wiltern, I think—Garcia’s outfit was billed as “The Band Electric” by Bill Graham. I think this has always stuck in my mind a little bit because of the clever bit of headlining over a negative review of the May 23^rd show: “Band Electric Plays at Pace Languid” (Toombs, 1986). Toombs goes on at some length about how dull the Band Electric is, how tedious the Band Electric’s languid pacing, how pedestrian the Band Electric's song selection, and so forth. Heh heh. It's clever, and I don't doubt it's a totally reasonable evaluation of the show. A review in the L.A. Times of the next night’s show is only slightly more positive (Strauss 1986), and doesn’t mention the billing, although the handbill (below) shows it was the same.

What’s strange about this, of course, is that it prefigures a distinction that would come about over a year later, with the acoustic-electric shows of August-December 1987. Those would feature, first, the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band (JGAB), called by some (e.g., Jimbo Juanis of Relix) the Black Mountain Boys, comprised of Garcia on acoustic guitar, David Nelson on guitar, Sandy Nelson on dobro and mandolin, John Kahn on string bass, Kenny Kosek on the little fiddle and David Kemper on the snare drums. Second, the acoustic-electric shows featured the Jerry Garcia Band (JGB), i.e., the electric band comprised of Garcia, Kahn, Kemper, Melvin Seals on organ, and Gloria Jones and Jacklyn LaBranch on backing vocals.

I don’t doubt the canonical history of the JGAB, told by inter alia Sandy Rothman, that the thing started (quasi-publicly) with the GD’s Thanksgiving Party at the Log Cabin in San Anselmo on 11/23/86, when Sandy, David and a newly-hungry-to-play, post-coma Garcia sat around and regaled the gathered party goers with some old favorites. When Garcia, Nelson and Rothman got back together for the Artists’ Rights Today benefit at the Fillmore on 3/18/87, the story goes, Bill Graham came in raving about taking he show to Broadway, which is, of course, precisely what he did. Hence, the acoustic-electric shows. For more on this, see Silberman 2010.

But Graham’s May ’86 branding of the JGB as the Band Electric strikes me as foreshadowing this later distinction. I am not saying he was planning the acoustic-electric thing, per se, though in the limit it’s possible. But I had heard that some kind of product differentiation was important to John Scher out on the east coast, which is what brought us the famous (or infamous) solo acoustic shows on April10, 1982 in Passaic and, eventually, the Jerry Garcia/John Kahn acoustic duo. In short, after many years of touring as the JGB out in Scher’s territory, mixing it up with some different product would make it easier to sell tickets. At least that’s one thing I was told by somebody.

I wonder if Graham was after the same thing, i.e., some product differentiation, so he could sell separate acoustic and electric Garcia experiences to the SoCal audience? It would put a slightly different context on the canonical history of the JGAB, if so, making it seem a less spontaneous and a more cultivated Bill Graham strategy. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but I have always had the notion that these “Band Electric” billings earlier in ’86 were anachronistic unless we viewed them in this way, as trial balloons around a Graham marketing strategy that had to be put on hold a few months later when Jerry got sick, and really only took shape with the inspiration of the March 18 ART benefit. Again, I want to be clear: I don’t think this sullies the wonderful little history of the JGAB one bit, just puts it into a slightly longer causal chain.

The rival (really, probably complementary) hypothesis is that Wolfgang was after some product differentiation, but only because of the clusterfuck from Garcia’s previous (non-GD) visit to SoCal, with John Kahn at the Beverly Theatre, 9404 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA, 90212, on May 31, 1985. As related at the JB's entry for the early show, Graham et al. sold this night’s entertainment as two separately-ticketed (i.e., early and late) shows, rather than the two-set single show that Garcia would typically put on. Folks felt ripped off. According to Ben Kamelich (cited at TJS), one attendee brought a sign reading "Jerry Sells Out L.A. Deadheads". Erik VanO recounts that the crowd started up with a “Bullshit! Bullshit!” chant when Jerry announced that the show was over. And why not, after only six songs running a paltry 35 minutes? Apparently Angry Jerry came out for a three-song “second set” just to prevent a riot (or, knowing Deadheads, some hooting, jeering and reproachful looks).

Leaving aside the big question of how such a talented, usually professional (really!) and prideful man could act this way –and, while big, it’s easily answered with a word that starts with ‘d’ and ends with ‘rugs’, I think—it might have been simple good business sense for Graham to signal to the ticket-buying crowd that this was not going to be a Garcia-Kahn acoustic nodfest, but rather the Band Electric. The Toombs review of May 23 and the Strauss review of the LA show on May 24 suggest that the musical results were far from electrifying, but that has to be the subject of some listening notes. The commercial results, by contrast, seemed to have worked out just fine – not a sellout, but not a bad day at the office, either:

The fact that there were newspaper reviews (including, not trivially, the Los Angeles Times), the fact that it grossed pretty well and got this mention in Billboard ... the notion that Bill was also courting Jerry on his home turf, getting him to switch his local playing allegiance from Freddie Herrera and the Stone to Bill Graham and the Warfield (which would be accomplished by June 1, 1987) ... the new billing (what we'd now call an attempt to "rebrand" or maybe "reposition", right?) .... it all seems to suggest to me that the JGAB didn't emerge fully formed from Bill Graham's head, like Athena from Zeus's, on March 18, 1987. And the acoustic-electric structure would seem, at least, to have been a gleam in Bill Graham's eye before the coma ... much for me to chew on.

One last proposition: The JGAB contains the arc of Garcia On The Side (GOTS) in very concentrated dosage, something I hope further to unpack moving forward.

REFERENCES:

Silberman, Steve. 2010. The Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, The Definitive History: It’s a Long, Long Way to the Top of the World. Essay accompanying Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band [Almost Acoustic and Ragged But Right] (Rhino, JGCD-1004), 11 pp.

Strauss, Duncan. 1986. Garcia Shorts Out. Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1986, p. SD_D2.

Toombs, Mikel. 1986. Band Electric Plays at a Pace Languid. San Diego Union, May 24, 1986, p. D11.