UMass 'Master of the Fretboard': JGB, February 20, 1980 (late show)

LN jg1980-02-20.jgb.late.aud-Sony_23F-Nak_550.131018.flac2448

The Jerry Garcia Band (JGB #11a) played 22 shows in the 29 days of February 1980, warming up locally and then touring college and off-campus theaters, reportedly to help pay for the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut's "Sirens of Titan". I have all kinds of information about John and Jerry's quest for those rights, and their ultimately fruitless efforts to make a movie, just need to find time to write it all up.

While some dislike the sound of this band, often because of Ozzie Ahlers' electric keyboard and synthesizer tones, I have big love for its, and especially Garcia's, playing during this period. The After Midnight release of the Kean College shows on 2/28/80 give an excellent representation of what the group was all about. Lots of very expressive Garcia guitar playing, by turns fast, fluid, cogent, energetic, inventive, plucky, pensive, burning and corrosive. His voice generally sounds pretty good, the repertoire mixes things up nicely, and everything cooks about as it should. I like lots of shows from the tour, with 2/15/80 (Orpheum Theatre in Boston) and 2/17/80 (SUNY Oswego) maybe topping the list, though they're pretty much all good. And, to repeat, it's mostly about energy and guitar playing.

The early (7 PM) show at UMass Amherst on Wednesday, February 20th has only a rotten multigenerated cassette tape in circulation. I must have listened to it at some point, but maybe not. Anyway, the 10 PM show is much better represented, by a recently-polished 1st gen cassette dubbed from an unknown taper's 2x Sony ECM-23f > Nakamichi 550 setup. It's a good tape. It's not great, cut up a little bit and with some overloading.

But it's worth a listen because it's a good show. I don't have a ton of specifics, see my listening notes below the fold.

I found archives for the UMass Amherst Daily Collegian, which naturally held a few ads, such as this one:

Garcia had his hair long like that during the Reconstruction era, in 1979. The picture is almost certainly from the Dead's May 12, 1979 gig in the UMass campus stadium. Ex-post, one of staff photog Wayne Rosenberg's Jerry snaps appeared the next day, and then there was a review the next week.

In addition to confirming that Robert Hunter opened (which I did not have pinned down), and though not a Dead/Garcia fan, the reviewer (Alvord 1980) is mostly pretty impressed. Garcia is a

master of the fretboard … mesmerizing … Garcia did not get involved at all with the audience, although there was dynamic interaction on the stage between the band members, trading off exquisite solos and jovial expressions of delight and amusement between Garcia and the keyboardist, blank expression by the bassist, and multiple expressions of estranged nature by the percussionist. The bass solo was the only low point of the concert ... it sucked!

I assume he saw the early show, since the bass solo in "Simple Twist" is presumably even more feathery and fluttery than the one in the late show's "Russian Lullaby" (which is, perhaps suspiciously, cut out of the tape under consideration). It is nice to hear that Jerry and Ozzie seemed to be having a good time, anyway.

Anyway, good show. "Sugaree", "Tore Up Over You", and even "Midnight Moonlight," which is too often Jerry starting to pack it in, especially impress me.


REFERENCE:

Alvord, Rick. 1980. The Dead's head plays it true to form. Daily Collegian (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), February 25, 1980, p. 7; via URL https://archive.org/details/massachuse19791980univ, accessed 11/9/2014.