A JGB drum solo by Bill Kreutzmann - Cape Cod Coliseum, June 18, 1982

LN jg1982-06-18.jgb.all.aud-craigl.138576.flac1644

For about a minute-twenty in "Don't Let Go," Billy K. solos. It's a little surreal.

I have historically loved this show, but nothing much jumps out at me on this listen.

JERRY GARCIA BAND
Cape Cod Coliseum
White's Path off Route 6
South Yarmouth, MA 02664
June 18, 1982 (Friday) - 8:30 PM
Craig L MAC flac1644 shnid-138576

--complete show (8 tracks, 85:36)--
--main set (7 tracks, 78:33)--
t01. [0:26] How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [9:46] [0:02] %
t02. Valerie [7:10] [0:03]
t03. Dear Prudence [13:42] [0:02] %
t04. Mississippi Moon [9:58] %
t05. Don't Let Go [18:31] [0:19] %
t06. Simple Twist Of Fate [12:15] ->
t07. Run For The Roses [6:12] [0:05] %
--encore (1 track, 7:03)--
t08. They Love Each Other [6:57] [0:06] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #14a/c
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards (organ);
! lineup: Jimmy Warren - keyboards (electric piano);
! lineup: Liz Stires - backing vocals;
! lineup: Julie Stafford - backing vocals.

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/19820618-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1982-06-18

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/18065 (MSC, shn); http://etreedb.org/shn/34071 (variant of shnid-18065); http://etreedb.org/shn/76599 (inferior of this source tape, deprecated); http://etreedb.org/shn/108318 (Rolfe Nak 700s MAC flac1644); http://etreedb.org/shn/119077 (Morrone-Friend MAC flac2448); http://etreedb.org/shn/119095 (Morrone-Friend MAC flac1644); http://etreedb.org/shn/138576 (this fileset).

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

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/phdAsu6ouRP2

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/cape-cod-coliseum-whites-path-off-route.html.

! historical: little tour with Bobby and the Midnites. This gig sold out 7,200, grossing $82,581 (Billboard, July 3, 1982, p. 39).

! seealso: JGMF, "Music Mountain Is All That," URL https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2020/05/music-mountain-is-all-that.html.

! seealso: JGMF, "Long Ago and Far Away: JGB at Cumberland County Civic Center, Portland, ME, June 20, 1982," URL https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2019/08/long-ago-and-far-away-jgb-at-cumberland.html.

! seealso: JGMF, "Lizless Sextet: JGB at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, June 23, 1982," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2013/03/ln-jg1982-06-23jgbs1s2paud.html.

! R: field recordist: Craig L.

! R: field recording gear: 2x Nakamichi CM300/CP4 shotguns > Sony TC-D5

! R: field recording location: mics secured to a railing in the side riser.

! R: field recording media: Maxell XLII

! R: Transfer: MAC > Nakamichi CR-5A > Edirol FA-66 > Wavelab 2448 > R8Brain > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644 tagged. Transfer by Andrew F. 06/2017.

! R: seeder note: "Upgrade to shnid-76599 sourced from the master. Several songs clipped-in abruptly, covered with small patches from ID-119077."

! P: I have loved this show in the past, e.g., from the soundboard. On this listen, it doesn't move me. Billy K. provides perhaps the only drum solo in the history of the Jerry Garcia Band.

! P: t02 Valerie Garcia in a grungy space for so early in the show, a little bit of big chording happening.

! P: t05 DLG has a drum solo - Billy K! - 15:35-16:50. How weird - don't recall this.

! P: t06 STOF very brief Kahn solo, though I wasn't necessarily listening that closely.

! P: t07 very GD wah sounding guitar, round notes.

Garcia and Kahn Sell Out: Orpheum Theatre, Boston, November 17, 1984

LN jg1984-11-17.jgjk.all.aud-drew-seaweed.110537.flac1644

Regular readers will know I have been exploring Garcia's putative Rock Bottom period by listenings to tapes and more or less noting what I hear. Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

I harbor considerable ex ante animus toward this tour - I have heard some first hand reports of its deep, dark, junky feeling, recoil at the pictures of the greasy, sweaty, strung out Garcia from this tour, and have never been lit up by what I heard when I listened to the shows. This is the classic "Garcia's side projects were all about Jerry and John making drug money" tour, which is a line which my devotion to the side stuff already indicates I don't altogether buy, and which makes me feel icky inside. But here it is.

These listening notes are mostly from some unknown number of months ago. As I was finishing them up with links and stuff, I decided to listen to "Goodnight Irene" [Allan | deaddisc], which is a favorite of mine and which I have always thought must have resonated emotionally with Jerry - "I want to jump overboard in a river and drown" could not have failed to bring his father to mind, could it?

And I guess I hear that it's not as bad as I feared it might be, and is not bad at all if this is Rock Bottom. He cannot sing very well, to be sure. But he is giving it his all. It's flawed, but he's trying. Yeah, the first set is about 38 continuous minutes, not a ton. But, I dunno, it's not horrible. I am looking forward to hearing more from this tour, all of a sudden (though I feel like detouring to some other material, cleansing my palate of Rock Bottom for awhile).

Billboard (December 1, 1984, p. 37) reports this as a sellout, just a hair under $37k gross on 2,800 tickets, and the fans sound happy enough being treated to Jerry Garcia playing "Ripple". Not a bad night's work, all in all.

Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
Orpheum Theatre
1 Hamilton Place
Boston, MA 02108
November 17, 1984 (Saturday)
Seaweed 1st gen cassette shnid-110537

--set I (6 tracks, 37:53)--
s1t01. crowd and tuning [0:47]
s1t02. Deep Elem Blues [8:52] [0:07]
s1t03. When I Paint My Masterpiece [7:50] [0:06]
s1t04. Little Sadie [4:02] [0:06]
s1t05. Simple Twist Of Fate [11:11] ->
s1t06. Run For The Roses [4:37] [0:15]

--set II + encore (8 tracks, 53:10)--
--set II (7 tracks, 48:38)--
s2t01. crowd and tuning [0:58]
s2t02. Friend Of The Devil [7:56] [0:10]
s2t03. I've Been All Around This World [6:50] ->
s2t04. Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie [6:50] ->
s2t05. Gomorrah [6:16] [0:05]
s2t06. Birdsong [11:39] [0:02]
s2t07. Goodnight //Irene [8:#00] (2) [0:26]
--encore (1 track, 4:32)--
s2t08. Ripple [4:13] [0:19]

! 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; [ ] = 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/19841117-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/30874 (Mark flac, deprecated); http://etreedb.org/shn/31343 (speed correction of shnid-30874); http://etreedb.org/shn/110537 (this fileset); http://etreedb.org/shn/113549 (aud flac)

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

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/orpheum-theatre-1-hamilton-place-boston.html

! ref: Billboard, December 1, 1984, p. 37;

! review: [positive] Daykin 1984: Reviewer Daykin notes JG started off shaky, head on chest and no engagement with audience. He says things improved, and really liked Bird Song (except for one bad note). Overall positive review.

! review: [negative] Gewertz 1984: This review in the Boston Herald ran under the headline "Garcia gives a dreadful concert". "Garcia delivered perhaps the worst single performance this writer has ever witnessed in a major concert". Yet the crowd went wild. His voice "ravaged and ruined". Deadheads were "dancing to some stereo in their own heads, not the plodding guitar and bass duets that wheezed from the stage." Garcia was "a listless troll lost in some inner world".

! R: field recordist: unknown

! R: field recording gear: unknown mics > Sony TC-D5

! R: source tape: 1st gen cassette provided by Drew and Seaweed1010 (Maxell XLII)

! R: transfer: Nakamichi CR-5A playback > Edirol FA-66 > Wavelab > R8Brain > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644 tagged. Transfer by Andrew F.

! R: seeder notes: Decent audience recording, an upgrade to shnid-31343, and also includes the two songs that were missing from that source. The levels in 2nd Set are a bit over-driven, not too bad.
! R: I think this is a perfectly good tape.

! R: s1t02 Deep Elem the sound is muffled 0:05 > 0:32, and mic-bumps at 7:11 and 7:14.

! P: s1t05 STOF Not a terrible performance. The line about the sailors coming in and all that is given with some sensitivity. Then the end of the song has a pretty nice guitar buildup. JG even says "Thank you" as he takes it from STOF into RFTR.

! The timing of set I is basically continuous. So, in real time, that really was about a 38-minute set. And I doubt they were back "in a few minutes" after the "short break" announced by JG after RFTR.

! s2t05 JG says "Thank you" again between OBIANL and Gomorrah.

! R: s2t07 Goodnight Irene @ 6:29 tape flip, mended by Drew

! P: s2t07 GI is played totally respectably. He can't sing at this point, but we knew that. This is not bad. John is even playing late 5. Jerry bringing some energy right at the splice 6:29, too bad. Long version. Might check one of the other tapes of this night. I love this song (songs-G). Weird finish about "see you in my dreams". A for effort.

! s2t07 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. See y'all later." There must be a tape splice in here somewhere.

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)