Preface: JGB in SoCal
1988: no SoCal
1990: LA in November
1991: no SoCal
1992: summer dates
So much to say, but so little time. Let me just foreshadow some of what might get some write up in Fate Music.
'83: Hell's Angel George Christie, Jr., a rather remarkable dude, promoting in Santa Barbara (again in '84). I have some super-sweet material here about how much better it was for Jerry working for an outlaw than it was for some of the "straight" promoters in the area.
'84: not sure yet, but definitely mention the killer music and DeeDee Dickerson's swan song.
'85: "Bullshit! Bullshit!" and all that
'86: Wolfgang trying to product-differentiate the "Band Electric" 10 months before the birth of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. And one of the great sardonic review headlines of all time: "Band Electric Plays at Pace Languid".
'93: maybe some stuff based on this post
'94: "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!!"
Among the themes that will pop up are NorCal vs. SoCal, maybe some nods toward playing on John Kahn's home turf, and definitely the evolution of the SoCal jaunt as a commercial proposition: 1) from local promoters (with John Scher's help) to conceding Bill Graham the west coast monopoly he so badly wanted. (He wanted it all, but John Scher was simply too great to work with to give him up.) And 2) obvs., the switch from clubs and theaters to amphitheaters and basketball arenas. Of course, too, some great music.
JGB SoCal Spring 1993
So much for the long windup. I really just wanted to plop down some notes around a listen a month or two ago to the April 16-17, 1993 gigs in Pauley Pavilion and the 18th in the San Diego Sports Arena. I have listening-noted the Warfield 4/23/93 show on these pages, and found it somewhat low energy, though I abso-fucking-lutely love its version of "Señor" (released on Garcia Plays Dylan) and "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game" (released on Shining Star). It seems like I haven't listened to the 4/24 or 4/25 Warfield shows, which I guess I will need to do at some point.
These three SoCal shows from the week before strike me as overall better than 4/23, generally strong, rarely really bad and occasionally fantastic. If forced to rank these three, I'd say 4/18 > 4/17 > 4/16. I note that The Powers That Were released 1 tune each from the 18th and 17th, but none from the 16th. That seems about right to me, and I have to say that they made fantastic choices. Despite its execrable cover art and (not unrelated) the fact that it was released under the reign of She Who Shall Not Be Named (whom I nevertheless name below), the Shining Star release contains some outstanding music, and the selections from this run of shows are top-shelf.
The great David Gans and Blair Jackson asked Garcia about the tune in a 1981 interview.
Q: Do you have any trouble singing a song as bitter as "Positively 4th Street"?
Garcia: Not at all. It's easy for me to cop that asshole space. I was that guy, too. For me, it occupies the same space as 'Ballad of a Thin Man'. It tells that person who's lame that they're lame, and why they're lame, which is a very satisfying thing to do. 'Positively 4th Street' has this way of doing it where it's beautiful, too. And 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' is basically a put-down, too. It's one of those things like, 'You're losing bad - dig yourself.' It was the beautiful sound of 'Positively 4th Street' that got to me, more than the bitterness of the lyric. The combination of the beauty and the bitterness, to me, is wonderful. ... That's something that only Dylan has been able to pull off in terms of modern songwriting, I think (Jackson and Gans 19810911, 29).
Jerry played it somewhat regularly with the Garcia-Saunders aggregation in 1973 (as represented, e.g., on the original Saunders-Garcia-Kahn-Vitt Live at Keystone, and re-released by Fantasy endlessly since then). He picked it back up for a month in 1975 in the first JGB with Nicky, then dropped it again until Ozzie Ahlers came on board in 1979 (check out the 12/21/79 version, one of the greatest single-song performances of Garcia's playing career). He dropped it again in the middle of the February 1980 tour for more than ten years, bringing it out staccato in the 90s. Here are the all of the post-1980 versions. Because I think the song held special meaning for Jerry, I offer up some conjecture as to what I think might have motivated the revival.
3/1/91, which I have called "Certainly One of the Best and Most Interesting Shows of the 90s" (which may be damning it with faint praise): I note that 4th Street is "just about perfect - I think he gets all of the lyrics, and he does it with the right degree of bitterness." What might have led Garcia to dust this gem off after 11 years, obviously rehearse it with the band, play it for this "just for this one moment", and drop it for two years again? Well, first we know that he was using again, and not just chipping but to the point that the GD would stage another intervention four months later, whereupon Jerry went onto a methadone program. (It didn't stick.) Second, we know from his September '91 interviews that he was wildly burned out on the Dead, and he explicitly said that it was during the spring that he was asking the band about chilling out for six months, only to be told that the show had to go on. *cough* Phillesh *cough* So, in this case, I blame the Grateful Dead. Does any of this have anything to do with why he played 4th Street? Neither you nor I has any idea. But, while it may not have been carefully planned out, I think something definitely caused its appearance. What do you think?
There were other things going on in this window, of course. The last time he had played the Warfield, in late February, there was a "mini riot" outside the venue, involving 20 cops, rock-and-bottle throwing, and a dozen arrests ("12 arrests at Garcia concert," Argus-Courier [Petaluma, CA], March 2, 1993, p. "Deadheads blame riot on S.F. Police," San Francisco Examiner, March 1, 1993, p. A-13). So, to whom, or about whom or what, would he be venting his spleen in April 1993, by again dusting off, rehearsing, performing, and again dropping 4th Street? I have no idea. But I will say that, as on 3/1/91, on 4/18/93 he dusted the tune off and played it nearly perfectly, as close to perfectly as he ever did any song. I think he nailed every single lyric. And, heart? What heart! My only note about the song is this: "this is stunningly good".
There is lots of other really nice stuff in these shows, as my notes below narrate. The "Don't Let Go"s are too brief for my taste. But even tunes I don't generally love --I am looking at you, "Dixie Down"-- have a little extra something, again more on the 18th than the 17th and more on either of those than the first night. The Garcia Band at this point was running like a pretty well-oiled machine, putting plenty of bread in the breadbox --around $225,000 for these three nights!-- punching in solid 60-minute sets, and delivering good stuff to the faithful. They hold up well after 30 years, and I can recommend them to you --especially the 18th-- if you are searching for something to spin.
Oh yeah, what about the 1995 versions of 4th Street? On 1/13/95, he botches the words ("Jerry can't sing 4th Street if he can't remember the lyrics", I snipped). But I also note that he manages to remember more of them than I would, and as far as I know I am not on death's door. On 3/4/95 he says "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes" no fewer than four times - so he does the "I could be you" and "what a drag it is to see you" responses twice. Not lyrically correct, I don't think (?), but could be (over-) interpreted as really feeling true to the man in that moment. By 4/15/95 he is running on fumes, though the version certainly makes up in feeling what it lacks in power. If my whole reasoning about the song's appearance reflecting a particularly embittered mindset is right, it certainly makes sense that it was around for these three months. He had crashed his car in January, canceled shows in February, and, not least, he was dying. So 4th Street certainly fit the Zeitgeist.
Listening Notes for April 16-18, 1993 below the fold.
