Nice RAC, Señor: JGB at the Warfield, April 25, 1994, set II

Not much bandwidth these days, so some bullets.

1) I am way behind on posting listening notes. I have lots backed up, and many of them are pretty spare. I have sometimes threatened to post these kind of notes in batches, just to get them out of my mind, and not always followed up. This time might (or might not) be different.

2) I wonder what the story is behind the random 90s JGB board tapes that circulate? I suspect every one of them has an interesting story, because there was not systematic leakage of these - Cutler kept a pretty tight lid on things, and there was just less demand for these than for contemporary GD tapes.

3) Jerry sounds old, but much better here than five days earlier. Higher asymmetric --downside-- variance in this period than any other. The Rock Bottom period had higher overall variance, comparing the killer high guitar peaks with the killer low vocal troughs. Ten years later, the highs don't get so high, but, as on 4/20/94, the lows could get really low. 4/25/94 II is pretty good, nothing too problematic.

3) "Money Honey" got a re-arranged ending somewhere in the late period. I would kind of like to pin down when it showed up.

4) Nice "Reuben And Cherise" here. It's my favorite Garcia Band song, and I think I hold it to a pretty high standard. It sometimes went 'round the bases too many times at the end, stuck in the same rut that its album-mate "Cats Under The Stars" often found. But Jerry is mindful here to throw in enough wrinkles to make things interesting.

5) Final JGB "Señor". Sigh. I love love love love love this tune so much. He mumbles a fair share of the lyrics, but there's some good stuff here, too, like the growly "magnetic field" and a repeated "I'm ready when you are" at the end.

6) Crazy dense period for Jerry at the Warfield: April 18-19-20 and 25-26-27 with JGB, then May 4-5 with Grisman. Maybe Deborah needed some new shoes, and goodness knows that golden eggs don't lay themselves.

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
April 25, 1994 (Monday)
s2 sbd shnid-77711

--set II (7 tracks, 59:56)--
s2t01. Harder They Come [12:12] [0:41]
s2t02. Mission In The Rain [9:55] [0:14]
s2t03. You Never Can Tell [7:00] [0:02] % [0:04]
s2t04. Money Honey [7:07] [0:10]
s2t05. Reuben And Cherise [9:05] [0:27]
s2t06. Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power) [6:47] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [6:09] (1) [0:03]

! ACT1: JGB #23
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, v;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Donny Baldwin - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [x:xx] = 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/19940425-01

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/12257 (same root tape, shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/77711 (this fileset); https://etreedb.org/shn/97864 (Vasseur MAD, complete).

! band: JGB #23 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/warfield-982-market-street-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/ZW52vfHTbjs

! R: SBD > 1C? > DAT? > CD > flac. Seeded 8/2006 by Teddy "GoodBear" Selby. A Teddy "GoodBear" Production ~ www.goodbear.com :wave: 

! P: s2t03 YNCT some mumbly here and there, e.g., around 6:25. Jer sounds old, but good not bad.

! P: s2t04 Money Honey w the newly arranged ending

! P: s2t05 RAC Donny is offbeat. It takes 45 seconds at the start to set the 1. That said, I think he nails every word of the lyrics! He has finished singing the lyrics 5:28, goes around several times, goes higher up 5:40 and Melvin synths a little alongside. A little bit of variation in the phrasings in the 6 minute mark. Now I fear this is going to get stuck going around for too long without enough happening to justify it. And I find myself there 6:45. Jerry needs to mix things up, or end it. A little more wrinkling right over 7, longer phrases than one might often hear in RAC (not sure), but good that he is making it more interesting. Descending bit 7:45 good. He's hitting the deeper chords to signal the end 8:30 and so forth, then digs in to finish it 8:50. A very good late era RAC, I have to say!

! song: Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power) (s2t06): final Garcia performance.

! P: s2t06 Señor a few lyrical stumbles. 1:48 is that mumble mumble still playing in that hay-cant lot. 2:27 mumble mumble, maybe should have been "I can't stand the suspense". Then mumble waiting there Senor. 4:40 mumble I remember. Returns to eyes glued to the door, instead of picking himself off the floor.  He does some nice low growly stuff, as on "magnetic field", which is how Bob did it and I don't recall Jerry doing it so much. He repeats "I'm ready when you are" in the last line, rather than "can you tell me what we're waiting for", but it WORKS.

! s2t07 (1) JG: "Thanks a lot. See y'all later."

Donny's Debut: JGB at the Warfield, February 4, 1994

LN jg1994-02-04.jgb.all.aud-vasseur.146010.flac1644

Friday, February 4, 1994 through Sunday, February 6, 1994 are super interesting, for reasons that may not be independent. The amazing drummer David Kemper was let go at some point between the end of the fall '93 tour and the first night of this run, for reasons that seem unclear even to him. After over ten years in the chair, they didn't give him so much as an explanation. It is well established from the historical record, and has been repeatedly stated by those who knew him best -- I am not going to cite chapter and verse here, so if you want to imagine I am going beyond my paygrade, sure, fine, whatever -- that Garcia's greatest personal failing involved an unwillingness to tell (former) lovers and (former) bandmates that they were out. He seemed more inclined to have Big Steve deliver hard news. So, first, this inaugural set of 1994 shows featured the debut of Donny Baldwin, from the Starship orbit and also a veteran of the Elvin Bishop Group. I imagine, but don't have it pinned down, that this latter connection between Donny and Melvin facilitated the drummer's entry into the Garcia Band. Second, as astute student of the music Nick has framed it, the run provides "one last flash of greatness" for Jerry and friends. This is most obvious in the 2/6/94 "Don't Let Go", which my memory tells me is a true monster that stands up to any versions that Jerry ever played. I have found a lot to love in '94 and '95 Jerry Band over the last few years, but I agree that he never again played anything so great as that "Don't Let Go".

Indeed, I have often held February 14, 1994, eight days after that show, to augur Garcia's irreversible (though not monotonic) physical decline. The game of trying to pin such things too precisely doesn't get us very far. I might point to GD keyboardist Brent Mydland's passing on July 26, 1990 as signaling Garcia giving up the emotional ghost, and impresario Bill Graham's death on October 25, 1991, as removing all doubt. (See how this game works?) We can point to plenty of pictures from before Valentine's Day '94, the day on which Jerry married Deborah Koons, showing him looking haggard. But, after that day, he never looked anything but like a man shambling toward death's door. Deadheads held no love for Garcia's "Black Widow", who certainly treated the legendary Mountain Girl and all of the other women in Jerry's life very badly during the probate and other proceedings that followed his death, whose taste in music (no "Reuben And Cherise"??) and cover art (Shining Star - what in the almighty fuck?!??) affronted fan sensibilities, who allegedly either passively accepted or actively abetted Garcia's hard drug use, and whose love of tasteless licensing and merchandising strikes us, from the vantage of 2021, as decidedly Trumpian. Be all of that as it may, the observation I just cannot shake is that Garcia's decline accelerated markedly after those nuptials.

All of which makes the triumph of the February 4-6, 1994 shows so remarkable. Nick speculates that the band actually, y'know, rehearsed some with the new guy. The older pattern would have been to break him in on an off-night, off-the-beaten path, or both. Just about every new addition to the Garcia Band prior to Donny was afforded this possibility. So, they may or may not have gotten any rehearsal time, but they did get a gig. But, by 1994, as Bob Barsotti reported a few years later, "the only place [Garcia] could get it together physically to play with the Jerry Garcia Band was by getting in his car and driving for a half an hour to the Warfield" (Greenfield1996, 300, cited in context on my post on 3/4/95). So we might imagine that there were some rehearsals, and, indeed, as Nick points out, Jerry sounds generally together and the band sounds quite tight, consistent with some rehearsal. I have no data to that effect, but it seems likely.

So, onto my sense of Donny's Debut, 2/4/94. He's good, and it's good. Jerry sounds especially together in the first set, sprightly for the very common --indeed, statistically modal-- How Sweet -> Stop That Train opener, and working some great strong grunge into "Lay Down Sally". Nick elaborates:

The one major [2/4/94] high point is a steaming Lay Down Sally jam: Garcia's chugging along, sounding fine, and then decides to hit his distortion pedal and something clicks into place.  The audience feels it, Garcia responds, and you get one of those brief moments of aud-tape perfection as everything clicks into place.  Nice work, old man!

Jerry fades pretty hard at the end of set I (Deal) and through much of set II, sundowning especially noticeably in "The Maker", where I swear he departs from the lyrics and sings @ 1:40 "cannot see for the pain in my life". "Don't Let Go" is the other relative highlight of the show. It's a compact version, 12 minutes, and you'd think they might have held off on it to let the new guy get up to speed. But Donny plays very strongly. True, Jerry does no vocal-instrumental doubling on either the front or the back end of the song, which could often provide him a rare opportunity to engage in true vocal improvisation. But, even listening for limitations, I find a lot to like in this version, and a foreshadowing of the monster that'd spring forth two nights later, before the tune mostly faded into a shadow of its former self in its remaining fourteen months.

All in all, then, a nice show from a characteristically gorgeous Janet and Chuck Vasseur aud pull with the vintage Neumanns. Check it out if you can. If you are feeling impatient, go straight to 2/6/94 - do not pass Go, do no collect $200. If it's as good as I remember it being, and as (more reliably) Nick says it us, you can thank us later.

Oh yeah, one more thing: Melvin Seals sounds awesome this night, all big loud joyful swirly energy.

Listening notes follow.

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
February 4, 1994 (Friday)
Vasseur shnid-146010

--set I (7 tracks, 53:29)--
s1t01. [0:05] How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [6:00] [1:04]
s1t02. Stop That Train [7:11] [1:16]
s1t03. You Never Can Tell [6:41] [0:08]
s1t04. Lay Down Sally [10:01] (1) [1:39]
s1t05. Struggling Man [6:25] [0:42]
s1t06. My Sisters And Brothers [3:56] ->
s1t07. Deal [8:11] (2) [0:09]

--set II (7 tracks, 61:16)--
s2t01. Shining Star [15:24] [0:13]
s2t02. Money Honey [6:31] [0:13]
s2t03. Wonderful World [4:29] [0:15]
s2t04. The Maker [7:10] [0:11]
s2t05. Don't Let Go [11:45] [0:15]
s2t06. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:41] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [6:04] (2) [0:07]

! ACT1: JGB #23
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, v;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Donny Baldwin - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals.

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/19940204-01

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/15602; https://etreedb.org/shn/94747; https://etreedb.org/shn/95234; https://etreedb.org/shn/146010 (this fileset). Every one of these derives from the Vasseur master.

! band: JGB #23 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/warfield-982-market-street-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/ZW52vfHTbjs

! ref: Nick, "Feb 94 JGB: one last flash of greatness", URL https://deadthinking.blogspot.com/2017/11/feb-94-jgb.html.

! personnel: Donny Baldwin's first show in the drum chair, succeeding the impossible-to-replace David Kemper. I am typing this listening to Don't Let Go - you have to give the guy his due, because this cannot have been easy.

! R: field recordist: Janet and Chuck Vasseur

! R: field recording gear: 2x Neumann KM54 > DAT

! R: transfer: DAT Master > CDR (Kyle Porter); extract: CDR clone > EAC > WAV > FLAC16 (Bill Shaw aka Shark)

! R: Source Notes: Sometime in the early 2000's, Chuck loaned Kyle all of his 92-95 JGB masters to transfer to CDR. Kyle "mastered" the DATs to CDR, fading in/out as needed, adjusting levels (as needed) and tracking. Kyle then gave Chuck his masters back, with nice CDR copies of all of it. Chuck offered to clone the entire set for me, so I gave him a spool of 100 blank MITSUI CDRs and the next time I saw him, he gave them back to me, filled with his JGB recordings. Many of the Chuck V. JGB recordings do circulate already, but probably not all of them, and those that do may not be the Kyle Porter transfers. So, Here they are! --Shark

! P: s1t01 HSII Jerry sounds stoked. Melvin swirls up huge peaky feature late 3.

! P: s1t01 STT everyone sounds good. Donny hits nicely. Jerry bending some pitch.

! P: s1t03 YNCT Melvin, 3:30 I am typing, is on fire this night. He really sounds enthusiastic.

! P: s1t04 LDS oh man, what a killer grungy tone on LDS in the 7 range. A little modal, very firey. Nick: "The one major high point is a steaming Lay Down Sally jam:  Garcia's chugging along, sounding fine, and then decides to hit his distortion pedal and something clicks into place.  The audience feels it, Garcia responds, and you get one of those brief moments of aud-tape perfection as everything clicks into place.  Nice work, old man!"

! s1t04 (1) JG: "The new guy is, uhh, Donnie Baldwin. Playin' drums."

! P: s1t05 Struggling Man is done peppy - very good. Late 1 it slows down a little bit.

! P: s1t07 Deal a number of lyrical miscues. He is sounding a little tired.

! s1t07 (2) JG: "... take a break for a little bit ..."

! P: s2t04 The Maker he sounds pretty wobbly on the lyrics. @ 1:25 trying to get to second verse, mumbles. @ 1:40 sounds like he says "cannot see for the pain in my life". Goes across the great divide to Jean-Baptiste here early on. @ 2:09 "Body | is bent and broken". Donny nicely triggers Garcia's feature at 3ff.

! P: s2t05 DLG he doesn't do any vocal doubling at all. So by 3:15 he has already stepped back and away from the mic. But I confess that this is just perfectly good Jerry Garcia guitar work happening, e.g., around 6:30, when it has a real edge. I think I came into this listen of this wanting to hear its limitations. They're there, because this is not Eden. And I keep looking at the clock realizing that this is only going to run 12 minutes. But the quality is high. He strums it without quite such thick effects, Melvin swirly, Donny nicely picks up the pace. 8:15 Jerry definitely signals a connection to the tune. 9:20 assertively back to the tune, Donny be damned. Fully back to tun 10:12, no doubling.

! s2t14 (2) JG: "See y'all later."

Jerry, tògòtigi - JGB at the Warfield, Wednesday, March 9, 1994

Marquee for Jerry (who?) at the Warfield, March 9, 1994. I would LOVE to find out who the photographer is and give credit.

I love the image above, of the Warfield marquee reading just "Jerry" for the March 9, 1994 JGB show, because, assuming his last name is not photoshopped out, it speaks to who Jerry had become by the last year of his life. In the Bamana language of the Mandé culture of West Africa, he had become a tògòtigi - "proprietor of his own name" (Skinner 2004, 157). "In Mandé social thought," musicologist Ryan Skinner has elaborated,

the purpose of these acts of self-making is to make a name for oneself (ka tògò sòrò, literally “to find one’s name”) and become what people call a tògòtigi, or an individual who is the owner (tigi) of his or her given name (tògò)".  Malian literary critic and cultural theorist Chérif Keïta summarizes that "The togo is the axis of individuality and desire for personal distinction" (Skinner 2015a, 22).

The concept applies across artistic fields in the Mandé world, especially among griots "expert hereditary professional" (Dubois 2016, 32) storytellers --musicians, poets and artists-- charged with carrying forward the collective knowledge embodied especially in the oral tradition (but see Chérif Keïta 2005). In the musical realm,

the artist who improvises a running solo, incites the dance with a syncopated rhythm, and makes his instrument sing with a novel melody asserts his dynamic and creative agency as a performer. He claims his individuality, a distinctive subjectivity symbolized by his first name, or tògò, and the status and identity of being a tògòtigi the achieved state of making a name for oneself, of being an owner (tigi) of one's name (tògòtigi ) ... There is an existential risk in such acts of musical distinction and innovation (Skinner 2015a, 88).

Anyway, not that, in certain circles, people didn't know who just-Jerry was before 3/9/94, but I have always loved this marquee for capturing it, the culmination of the name-claiming journey which began on a seasonal May day in 1968, when the name "Jerry Garcia" appeared on a sheet of paper billing a musical event for the first time since the formation of the Warlocks. Over decades of gradual assertion and musical differentiation, and eventual commodification, he had successfully made his name. That progression is probably the main arc of Fate Music, where I'll get into it hopefully more artfully and definitely at greater length.

The show is off-pattern in a few other ways. First, it was a single-shot on a Wednesday night. While midweek Warfield gigs were not unheard of, they almost always took the form of multinight runs. Indeed, though I have not gone and checked, I can't think of another Warfield one-off like this one in the Wolfgang-Warfield era (December 1989-April 1995). Second, the handbill is especially lame.

I wonder if this show was pinned down late, and/or if ticket sales were slow, or if BGP was just on a tight budget, but this is about as basic as it ever got.

Third, as to the show, it's fine, but what jumps out at me is that there is not a single Garcia-Hunter original here - it's all covers. Jerrygarcia.com makes this relatively easy to see, since the originals have hyperlinks and the covers do not. I spun through '93-'95, I think, and didn't see any other shows without at least a "Deal" or a "Run For the Roses" or something else. If I find time and motivation I might dig deeper, though I understand that this has no particular importance, it's just a curiosity. But it's a Garciaverse curiosity, which is kind of the bread and butter of JGMF, so there you go.

An hour first set was just about what he seemed to be going for, and 75+ minute second set is nothing to sneeze at. Chuck Vasseur pulled a typically great tape. The performance is fine, all pluck and less fire, which was his style at the time (no onion on his belt, as far as I know). Donny does some nice hard trapping in Don't Let Go, and everyone sounds just fine. Well, John doesn't "sound" much at all, but that was pretty much par for the course in this timeframe, too, and it's all good by me.

Listening notes below the fold.

"I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes": JGB at the Warfield, March 4, 1995

LN jg1995-03-04.jgb.all.aud-sonics.141470.flac1648

I don't feel like I have time or energy to do a full write-up, so let me try to sketch a few thoughts around a recent listen to taper Wilson66's very enjoyable Sonic Studios DSM-6 drink rail tape of the Jerry Band on home turf, March 4, 1995.

Tone and Technique > Lyrical Precision and Power

This formulation provides my key to appreciating very late vintage Jerry Band. On the down side, the man can mumble through entire songs such as Daniel Lanois's beautiful "The Maker", or repeat himself, well, repeatedly, as with Dylan's it-has-to-be-meaningful-for-old-Jerry line from "Positively 4th Street" about what shuffling a mile in famous moccasins feels like. He sometimes loses himself, as in the mountain stream waters of Van Morrison's "And It Stoned Me". Both his singing and his guitar playing lack power.

But he generally makes up for all of this by upping the intentionality of his vocal and guitar phrasings. He changes things up, syncopates, rolling with the sometimes gurgling, sometimes more turbulent flow of his own uncertainty. He makes up in more deliberate and careful choice what he lacks in oomph and volume, taking his time to work with the subtler possibilities that an earlier him would have just blasted right through. "Stoned Me" offers some extremely fragile and sweet passages that the younger slinger just couldn't credibly generate, his considerable pain, while real, just not overflowing the cup the way it does here. Clapton's "Lay Down Sally" exemplifies the varied technical approaches (I won't say attacks) engaged by late Jerry  He doesn't melt your face off the way he regularly did with this tune between 1990 and 1993, by turns, anyway. But he bobs, weaves, ascends, doubles up, descends, plucks and innovates in ways that wouldn't win over an eager newbie so much as they can reward the patient fan.

Interesting Song Selection

! song: "Let It Rock" (s1t02): John Kahn had selected this Chuck Berry rock and roller for Garcia's second solo album, Compliments (Round RX102, 1974), and it formed a staple of Jerry's non-Dead diet, with fallow periods in 1978, 1985, 1988, then came out with declining frequency in the 1990s. Prior to this final version, it had last been played 5/15/94 in Irvine, which gives you a sense of the elongated late rhythms of its appearances. When they first started playing it, John opened with big fat bass lines, and Jerry could make it WAIL. Here, at the end, John is even less audible than he is creative (not very), and while Jerry's ideas and attack remain interesting --he still knows *how* to play rock guitar-- he just lacks power. I do love the tone he gets very late 8 over 9, with some great high-sustain followed by plucks, then scratches. The man was still full of sound, no doubt about that.

! song: "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry" (s1t05): The band soundchecked ITALTL, ITATTC, and then played it here for the last time, and the first time electric since 2/22/80. (The GD did it six times in 1991-1992.) What a bustout - a one-time revival after 15 years, never to be played again in the short time remaining.

! song: "Positively 4th Street" (s2t10):  After landing on the shelf in early 1980 (the day after "Train To Cry"), JGB brought the Dylan classic back for six appearances in the 1990s: 3/1/91, 4/18/93, 4/24/93, 1/13/95 (see and see), 3/4/95 (this version), 4/15/95. I have a little theory, which I haven't thought about how to test, that interesting song selections arose more early in the year, and I have a causal mechanism in mind, namely, that the Dead took time off in January and Jerry and the band maybe thought about, and sometimes also worked up, some different material. I have no evidence for that. This version moves pretty briskly, and Jerry mostly has the lyrics together. It doesn't sneer the way it needs to, but it's interesting to contrast how focused he sounds for it after muddling his way through "The Maker". 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 ...

The End Is Nigh

Random/blinded selection and listening would be the best practice to reduce bias, but I just can't do it. We know in listening to this that it's late in the game. January and February had both provided evidence of decline. First, on January 18, 1995 (ten years to the day after The Bust in GGP), Jerry spun out in a brand new gold BMW 525i on loan from Sonnen BMW --"a cherry", according to CHP officer Jerry Monge, valued at over $30,000-- while his own was in the shop. He was northbound between Mill Valley and Corte Madera, and the car "bounced off the guardrail on the right side of the roadway several times, spun around, and came to a stop facing oncoming traffic." Conditions were dry, and "Garcia was unable to explain how he lost control" (! ref: "Jerry Garcia OK after crash," San Francisco Examiner, January 19, 1995, p. A-2.)  According to unknown source, "The section of road this happened on (Corte Madera, literally 100 yards from a major CHP office) has guardrails well off the road. Jerry didn't take his eye of the wheel for no 1/10 of a second. 1/10 of a minute, maybe." Second, the February 10-11-12 shows were canceled (including an envisaged 2/13 makeup for the first night) after Garcia was stung on the hand by a jellyfish while diving in Hawaii and couldn't play.

Bob Barsotti, who ran the Warfield for BGP, puts this stuff in context:

We had to cut back on Jerry Garcia Band shows because he wasn't capable of doing it anymore. We had to keep canceling shows and stopping tours because physically he wasn't able to do it. That was why he used to play twenty times a year at the Warfield. The only place he could get it together physically to play with the Jerry Garcia Band was by getting in his car and driving for a half an hour to the Warfield. If he could do that, then he could play (Greenfield1996, 300).

On this night, the next, and five more in April, he managed, and I am glad he did.

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
March 4, 1995 (Saturday)
Wilson66 Sonic Studios DSM-6 drink rail shnid-141470

--set I (6 tracks, 62:56)--
s1t01. [1:30] How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [7:43] [0:39]
s1t02. Let It Rock [11:39] [1:19]
s1t03. And It Stoned Me [12:08] [0:38]
s1t04. (1) Lay Down Sally [11:12] [0:23]
s1t05. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry [6:51] [0:07]
s1t06. Deal [8:23] [0:22]

--set II (7 tracks, 69:33)--
s2t07. [2:14] The Harder They Come [8:25] [2:09]
s2t08. [0:19] Simple Twist of Fate [11:44] [0:30]
s2t09. Tore Up Over You [9:35] [0:14]
s2t10. The Maker [9:48] (2) [0:21]
s2t11. Positively 4th Street [7:25] ->
s2t12. Lucky Old Sun [10:01] [0:05]
s2t13. Midnight Moonlight [6:14] (3) [0:27]

! ACT1: JGB #23
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, v;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Donny Baldwin - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals.

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/19950304-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1995-03-04

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/warfield-982-market-street-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/ZW52vfHTbjs

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/16443 (Vasseur shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/78007 (set 2, unlineaged); https://etreedb.org/shn/79635 (Russ B. MAD); https://etreedb.org/shn/141470 (this fileset).

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

! seealso: JGMF, "Old Garcia Running to the Rock for Rescue" [LN jg1995-03-05.jgb.all.aud-michaelB-goodbear.79634.flac1644], URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2017/05/old-garcia-running-to-rock-for-rescue.html.

! historical: Garcia was scheduled to play the Warfield in January (13-14-15), February (10-11-12), March (4-5), and two weekends in April (14-15 and 21-22-23). This was the first show after two events that might have concerned the fans. First, on 1/18/95, Jerry spins out in a brand new gold BMW 525i on loan from Sonnen BMW while his own was in the shop. He was northbound between Mill Valley and Corte Madera, and the car "bounced off the guardrail on the right side of the roadway several times, spun around, and came to a stop facing oncoming traffic." The car was "a cherry", according to CHP officer Jerry Monge, valued at over $30,000.  Conditions were dry, and "Garcia was unable to explain how he lost control." According to unknown source, "The section of road this happened on (Corte Madera, literally 100 yards from a major CHP office) has guardrails well off the road. Jerry didn't take his eye of the wheel for no 1/10 of a second. 1/10 of a minute, maybe." (! ref: "Jerry Garcia OK after crash," San Francisco Examiner, January 19, 1995, p. A-2.) Second, the February shows were canceled (including an envisaged 2/13 makeup for the first night) after Garcia was stung on the hand by a jellyfish while diving in Hawaii and couldn't play.

! R: field recordist: Wilson66

! R: field recording gear: 2x Sonic-Studios DSM-6 > Sony TCD-D7 (48k)

! R: field recording location: first tier drink rail

! R: lineage: DAT Master > Tascam us144-mkII > PC > Audition > CD Wave > TLH FLAC 16/48. Brought to you by Shark420, fresh transfer from DAT master, Dec 2017.

! P: One has to ask how this would hit me if I didn't know the date and the dénouement of the whole story. The vocals are certainly low, probably some correlated combination of weakness and being turned down in the mix.

! song: "Let It Rock" (s1t02): John Kahn had selected this Chuck Berry rock and roller for Garcia's second solo album, Compliments (1974), and it formed a staple of Jerry's non-Dead diet, with fallow periods in 1978, 1985, 1988, and declining frequency in the 1990s. Prior to this final version, it had last been played 5/15/94 in Irvine, which gives you a sense of the late rhythms. When they first started playing it, John opened it with big fat bass lines, and Jerry could make it WAIL. Here, at the end, John is even less audible than he is creative (not very), and while Jerry's ideas and attack remain interesting --he still knows *how* to play rock guitar-- he just lacks power. I do love the tone he gets very late 8 over 9, with some great high-sustain followed by plucks, then scratches. The man was still full of sound, no doubt about that.

! P: s1t03 AISM JG takes an interesting vocal approach, a little off-the-1, seemingly intentionally. He forgets the third verse, so he takes a sweet little guitar turn instead. Three minutes later, we still haven't had another verse. It's pretty compelling to hear how he manages around not remembering the lyrics. @ 5:24 we get the "rain let up" verse. @ 6:38 after that verse JG is lost again, and he takes another turn - when in doubt, play. And, again, after the last verse they used to just end the tune, but here we get another turn, and then @ 10:51 JG returns to "oh the water", which he gets himself from a mountain stream. Pretty damn sweet. Flawed, and sweet. Finally at 12 he drops a big chord to signal the end. Fragile, flawed, lovely.

! s1t04 (1) woman near taper calls LDS just before it starts. Good call, woman near taper!

! P: s1t04 LDS Jer is really playing around with the timing of his little runs out of the gate, seemingly intentionally, and Donny does a good job holding down the 1. Interesting little piece right over 1 min, a neat intro to the tune (which might be because he can't remember the words, but I dunno). Lyrics kick off 1:40ish. 8:20 ish interesting set of doublets. I really like how Donny plays this tune. Garcia plays so patiently. Now some interesting ascending pieces very late 8. Very inventive stuff. 9:16 more innovation - I don't listen to late era very much, but this is very interesting. Jerry and everyone but John hit the ending just right. That was really, really good.

! P: s1t05 ITALTL, ITATTC he blows the first lyric. John doesn't appear to remember the song, but the ladies are doing some nice backing vocals. Nice to hear, even if imperfect.

! song: "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry" (s1t05): The band soundchecked ITALTL, ITATTC, and then played it here for the last time, and the first time electric since 2/22/80. (The GD did it six times in 1991-1992.) What a bustout!

! P: s1t06 Deal you can really hear the impotence of his guitar playing on this number, which wants to burn barns, but here just casts a warmish glow.

! P: s2t07 HTC goes nowhere. Shortest version I recall ever hearing.

! P: s2t10 Maker he doesn't remember any of the words, at least as far as anything audible - his vocals are very low. @ 3:41 he misses his chance to take a guitar lead, which he gets into ten seconds later. He has sounded really lost so far on this tune.

! s2t10 (2) @ 10:01 guy in crowd yells out "Positively!" Might he have heard the soundcheck? I didn't hear the lick, maybe he did.

! P: s2t10 P4S is done at a pretty quick tempo. Jerry seems to have the lyrics together. This version doesn't sneer the way it needs to, but it's interesting to contrast how focused he sounds for it after muddling his way through "The Maker". 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 ...

! song: "Positively 4th Street" (s2t10):  After landing on the shelf in early 1980, it came back for six appearances in the 1990s: 3/1/91, 4/18/93, 4/24/93, 1/13/95, 3/4/95 (this version), 4/15/95.

! s2t13 (3) JG: "Thanks a lot. See ya later."

Last Time in Irvine: JGB at Irvine Meadows, May 15, 1994

I forewarned a few posts back that I had some backlogged listening notes, and have been posting them this weekend. They were backlogged, in many cases, because I just didn't have that much to say. I often check the date index for the blog in picking something to listen to, looking for gaps or inflection points that I might not have covered. I won't be able to cover it all, ever, but I want to get a nice sampling.

So, here we are in May of 1994. Garcia had been doing brief SoCal jaunts for many years, and especially from the early 80s on these were Bill Graham joints. From the early 80s these were generally small club and theater gigs, but by 1994 our hero was in big spaces that the Dead had pioneered, such as Irvine Meadows, behind the Orange Curtain. The venue, had the honor of hosting Jerry on his 50th birthday, years after the Grateful Dead had been banned by the city because of unruly fan hairdos behavior. The May 15, 1994 gig came just three days after Jerry had signed the last, eventually highly-contested version of his will, and was the third of six shows in seven nights. This little southwest mini-tour, his last, ended with a thud when our hero, for the only time in his career that I can think of, started a show but couldn't finish it, a flu in Phoenix ending the May 19th show after a single set.

If Robbi Cohn's photos from Irvine are any indication, Jerry may well have caught the flu from John, who looks decidedly green.

Jerry and John, 5/15/94. Photo by Robbi Cohn, reproduced with permission. Visit www.deadimages.com and www.robbicohn.com to see more!

Anyway, the show has a few good moments, as in "Let It Rock", on its penultimate appearance (3/4/95). Other tunes mix some good guitar work with lots of forgotten vocals (though he never entirely falls and can't get up, nor leads me to exclaim "confused, trainwreck, yeesh, yikes", as would happen with other shows plus or minus a few months). Only "Midnight Moonlight" is worryingly bad, with Jerry changing key a few times and the whole thing not coming apart at the seams only because it was never together in the first place.

This is a great tape, as so many of these 90s DAT masters are, and generally this landed about where I expected it to, our protagonist declining but still smiling enough for Robbi to capture.

Smiling Jerry calling a song to a close, 5/15/94. Photo by Robbi Cohn, reproduced with permission. Visit www.deadimages.com and www.robbicohn.com to see more!

Jerry Garcia Band
Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre
8808 Irvine Center Dr.
Irvine, CA 92618
May 15, 1994 (Sunday) - 5 PM
Neumann KM140 shnid-145697

--set I (7 tracks, 47:54)--
s1t01. How sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [6:01] [0:28]
s1t02. They Love Each Other [6:17] [0:31]
s1t03. Let It Rock [6:58] [0:59]
s1t04. Run For The Roses [4:27] [0:14]
s1t05. Ain't No Bread In The Breadbox [10:27] [0:11]
s1t06. My Sisters And Brothers [3:58] ->
s1t07. Deal [7:13] (1) [0:10]

--set II (7 tracks, 67:27)--
s2t08. Shining Star [17:25] [0:20]
s2t09. Tore Up Over You [7:08] [0:19]
s2t10. Wonderful World [4:32] [0:54]
s2t11. Simple Twist Of Fate [11:21] [0:16]
s2t12. The Maker [9:05] [0:28]
s2t13. Lucky Old Sun [9:17] ->
s2t14. Midnight Moonlight [6:14] (2) [0:08]

! ACT1: JGB #23
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, v;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Donny Baldwin - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals.

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/19940515-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1994-05-15

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/6632 (unknown MAD, shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/145697 (this fileset)

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

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/CddGMG2NU4x

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/02/irvine-meadows-8808-irvine-center-drive.html

! historical: $29 tickets. Robbi Cohn's pix show Jerry looking white-haired and haggard, but John looking absolutely terrible - pale greenish-greyish.

! R: field recordist: unknown

! R: field recording gear: 2x Neumann KM 140 > DAT

! R: field recording location: FOB

! R: Transfer Info: Dat Tape (Panasonic SV-3700)-> Marantz CDR-615-> CD (Late 90's); Extract Wav-> Flac Level 8-> Tagged (16/44.1). Transfers by Pete Ebel, Late 90's and March 15, 2019.

! R: Really nice tape. The guitar tuning after HSII, e.g. at 6:29, sounds right in your face.

! P: s1t01 HSII his voice sounds wheezy, but he brings some energy.

! song: "Let It Rock" (s1t02): this is the penultimate version of the Chuck Berry rocker, last one coming 3/4/95.

! P: s1t02 LIR his guitar tone is awesome. He blows the second verse. But, again the guitar work is pretty killer, great buzzsaw tone, chopping rhythms.

! P: s1t07 Deal late 2 Jerry forgets his place and reprises the "since it costs a lot to win" thing for the third time. Ladies are doing their backing thing for awhile, and finally at 3:40, JG figures out how to fling into his big guitar. Pretty big fanning 5:21, but this hasn't burned me up yet. Some good technique, but not quite the power I need. Maybe it's the recording, which has the guitar back, but it's not melting my face. Relatively short version.

! s1t07 (1) JG: "Thanks a lot. We'll be back in a few minutes."

! P: s2t14 Mid Moon oh no - Garcia is totally off-key in the first verse, doesn't remember how to sing this. The tempo isn't settled across members of the band. I can't hear John at all.

! s2t14 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. See y'all later."