JGB Spring '93 SoCal

Preface: JGB in SoCal

Little springtime SoCal jaunts became a regular thing for JGB starting in 1983. (OK, that was very late winter, but March is generally pretty springy down there.) Some were one- or two-offs, others were a little more elaborate. Here's a sketch.

1983: 3/11a and 3/11b in Santa Barbara; 3/12a and 3/12b, 3/13 in Beverly Hills

1984: 5/17 Beverly Hills, 5/18 Irvine, 5/19 Santa Barbara, 5/20 Reseda

1985: Garcia-Kahn 5/31a and 5/31b in Beverly Hills

1986: 5/23 in San Diego, 5/24 in LA

1987: 3/13 and 3/14 in LA

1988: no SoCal

1989: 5/19 Irvine, 5/20 San Diego, 5/22 LA

1990: LA in November

1991: no SoCal

1992: summer dates

1993: 4/16 and 4/17 at UCLA, 4/18 in San Diego

1994: 5/13 San Bernardino, 5/14 Ventura, 5/15 Irvine, 5/17 and 5/18 San Diego + 5/19 Phoenix

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.

From the 17th, they selected "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love", which the Stones had covered soon after Solomon Burke's original 1964 version on Atlantic, and which was most successfully covered by Wilson Pickett. This Garcia Band version is absolutely killer, a truly fine late era performance ranging across some stanky pedal effects to some very spare sections, sung together and tenderly by Jerry and the ladies, but also across some growly exclamatory "I need it! I need it!" from ol 'Jer. More detailed notes, probably not all that illuminating, below.

From the 18th, they selected Dylan's "Positively 4th Street". (Happy belated 82nd birthday to Mr. Dylan, BTW!) What can I say about Garcia and 4th Street? Of all the Dylans he did, I think this one was the most special. It was almost never not amazing. It is one of those tunes that I still haven't found quite the right word for, which appeared across the decades, but typically in short spurts, which I think have a particular quality of Jerry loving them but finding them either challenging to do or too special to wear out. This is speculation, of course, but it's what my gut says. And none of these tunes --also including "Tough Mama", "Like A Road", a few others-- better captures that profile for me than "4th Street".

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?

4/18/93 (this version) and 4/23/93 (on Shining Star): Here, I primarily blame woman troubles (Jerry's, not necessarily the women's). Humiliatingly, San Francisco institution Herb Caen led a January 1993 column asking "would the beloved Jerry Garcia dump his longtime ladyfriend, Manasha (the mother of his 3-yr-old daughter), and take off for Hawaii with a new inamorata?" (Caen 19930112). I can't recall where this occured, but when People wrote about his personal life in 1976 Garcia lost his shit, and I can't imagine the isolated and private 1993 version of himself would have been happy about having his love-life laundry aired in public. The new inamorata in January was the sweet and lovely Brigid Meier, but he had already left her in March after a) running back into Deborah Koons (also involved the 1976 complications) in Mill Valley and b) Brigid finding out he was using and asking him to get clean (McNally 2002, 603). Her recollections of that encounter supply some of the darkest images we have of the man in the grip of his addiction. Maybe he had her in mind when singing about "what a drag it is to see you" and all that. After a little fling with one Shannon Jeske (ibid), it seems like by April he would have been back with Deborah. Indeed, having heard some of the inside skinny about how She worked, the fact that She and Jerry were back together right around this time may have motivated the selection of material from these very shows.

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.

Where Was Garcia on May 29, 1987?

As I have noted, Garcia's final Keystone Family gigs before jumping ship to Wolfgang as his permanent and exclusive hometown promoter took place at the end of May 1987, as In the Dark was getting huge. The big fella would play very few club gigs after the Wednesday (27th)-Thursday (28th) and Saturday (30th)-Sunday (31st) Stone shows.

The Friday gap night always just struck me as a day of rest. But, well, was it?

The Hermes Project, based in Malibu, was promoting a world premiere showing of "The Hero's Journey", a film about mythologist Joseph Campbell, featuring the man himself, plus special guests on a panel, plus a reception. Music composed by Mickey Hart and Rand Wetherwax --presumably "The African Queen Meets The Holy Ghost"-- "with special performance by Jerry Garcia" [itals original], all scheduled for Friday, May 29, 1987, 8 PM, at the Director's Guild, 7950 Sunset in LA (map).

The event got other line announcements in the LA Weekly and the LA Times, but I found no ex post accounts, nor have I ever heard of this thing before. Of course, the November 1, 1986 "Ritual and Rapture" event at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco is well known, and it included a performance of the Hart-Wetherwax composition, with Garcia playing a headless Steinberger. Blair Jackson wrote it up in Golden Road (no. 13, Winter 1987, p. 6).

But did this encore event happen on May 29, 1987? I sure would like to know.

Legion of Mary at 8162 Melrose, March 7, 1975

LN jg1975-03-07.lom.early.aud-ladner.23338.shn2flac

I wanted to hear "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game", the only circulating version from this time period, so I revisited the whole show. Nothing else jumped out at me, but man is that a great song.

Legion Of Mary
Pitschell Players Cabaret
8162 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90048
March 7, 1975 (Friday) - early? show
aud misSHN shnid-23338 shn2flac and retrack

--(8 tracks, 7 tunes, 90:52)--
t01. tuning (1) [0:26]
t02. That's The Touch I Like [10:09] [1:34]
t03. Favela [16:02] [1:11]
t04. Last Train From Poor Valley [8:16] % [0:40]
t05. Mystery //Train [13:#14] [0:19] % [0:40]
t06. You Can Leave Your Hat On [15:23] [0:36]
t07. The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game [11:23] % [0:05]
t08. Let It Rock

! ACT1: Legion of Mary
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards, vocals;
! lineup: Martin Fierro - flute (t02, t05), saxophone, percussion;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums.

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/19750307-01

! JGC: jerrygarcia.com/show/1975-03-07, giving this as the early show. 

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/23338 (this fileset).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/s4EY6L4V6e82.

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/07/ash-grove-pitchell-players-cabaret-8162.html. I guess this was the Ash Grove building, which was being leased for various performances, and eventually became the Improv. JGBP gives capacity as 250.

! ad: Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1975, p. Z45.

! ad: Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1975, p. U45.

! listing: Los Angeles Free Press, March 7, 1975, p. 27.

! metadata: Not clear if this is really the 8:30 PM early show (as per JGC), the 11:30 PM late show (as I have had it at some point), or some combo thereof. The LAFP listing on the day-of only gives an 8:30 show, from which I infer that the late show was already sold out.

! historical: band got $1,500 flat guarantee each night, so $750 per show.

! R: source: AUD (mics and taper unknown) > ? > C > DAT > WAV > SHN; cassette > DAT transfer:  Nakamichi DR-2 cassette deck > Tascam DA-30 Mk II by J. Powell; DAT > SHN transfer: Sony PCM-R500 > coaxial S/PIDF > M Audio Audiophile 2496/P4 2.0 GHz > WAV recording/editing (Soundforge 6.0) > tracking (CDWave editor) > sector boundaries confirmed (shntool) > SHN (mkwact) by C. Ladner. misSHN in the rain, 4/04. shn2flac by jgmf 20091122, retrack 20171203.

! R: seeder note: "decent amount of hiss - you've been warned."

! t01 (1) JG, talking to sound man: "That's much nicer."

! R: t04 MT tape flip @ 7:52, speed warbling after the cut.

A Rehearsed Post-Brent Garcia Band: Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles, November 15, 1990

LN jg1990-11-15.jgb.all.sbd-patched-miller.135953.flac1644

An all-time version of "The Way You Do The Things You Do", a top-shelf latter-day "Reuben And Cherise", and a tape with a story to tell - what's not to love?

Jerry Garcia Band
Wiltern Theatre
3790 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90010
November 15, 1990 (Thursday) - 8 PM
sbd-patched-miller shnid-135953

--set I (8 tracks, 60:13)--
s1t01. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [5:54]
s1t02. Stop That Train
s1t03. Let It Rock
s1t04. The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down
s1t05. Someday Baby
s1t06. Run For The Roses
s1t07. Sisters And Brothers
s1t08. Deal

--set II (7 tracks, 62:55)--
s2t01. The Way You Do The Things You Do [11:02] [1:00]
s2t02. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [9:40] [0:24]
s2t03. And It Stoned Me
s2t04. Reuben And Cherise [7:46] [0:09] %
s2t05. Evangeline
s2t06. That Lucky Ol' Sun
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
!lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-guitar, vocals;
!lineup: Gloria Jones - vocals;
!lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals;
!lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;
!lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
!lineup: David Kemper - drums.

JGMF:

! R: 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/19901115-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/23228 (sbd shnf deprecated); shnid-23774 (DeTally MAC); shnid-135953 (this fileset).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/6c14vkBJBMT2

! venue: http://www.rockandrollroadmap.com/los-angeles-area-venues/the-wiltern/view-details.html;

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/wiltern-theatre-3790-wilshire-boulevard.html.

! band: THE Jerry Garcia Band, JGB #21b (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! historical: I have wrongly neglected post-Brent 1990 JGB, despite having big love for 12/22/90's burning "Let's Spend The Night Together". 11/15/90 is gig four of five at the Wiltern in a six-day span. This whole run would probably reward study, just to see how LA differed (and didn't), but there is no time. I find all-time interesting version of TWYDTTYD here, which is quite a claim. Note the 2x 60-minute set structure. Very nice pacing, content. Folks got their money's worth (contrast: "Bullshit! Bullshit! 5/31/85). Nice to see enterprising Deadheads patching out of speakers --generously run by Bill Graham out to hallways to allow people room to dance with nice fresh sound-- running tape in the bathroom. Some good sound on this!

! R: SBD -> ? -> Cassette; Sony TC-K677ES -> Sound Devices 744T (24bit/48k) -> Samplitude Professional v11.2.1 -> FLAC/16 (2 Discs Audio / 1 DVD FLAC). All Transfers and mastering By Charlie Miller, charliemiller87@earthlink.net, June 13, 2016.

! R: Patch Info: John Detally's TOA DM1200d -> FLAC (shnid-23774) supplies: How Sweet It Is (complete track), Stop That Train, Deal (5:05 - 7:24), That Lucky Ol' Sun (complete track), Midnight Moonlight (complete track).

! R: seeder note: Thanks to John Almirall for supplying that tape

! R: seeder note: This was made in the bathroom patched out of the speakers

! R: seeder note: This may not be perfect but I think it's still an upgrade

! P: overall, this show has a lot to recommend it. The second set contains, as it struck me in the moment, an all-time version of TWYDTTYD and a top latter-day version of Reuben And Cérise.

! P: s1t08 Deal: I FFd from after HSII to see how he does Deal. Interesting to hear from a sbd perspective.

! P: s2t01 TWYDTTYD this is really great, very far "out there" for this song throughout 7, over 8, very good. All through 8 Kemper is earning his keep, hammering out the floor like pounding out brass. Garcia picks up his pace 9:10 and Kemper is with him. This has to be one of the spaciest versions of this often-played song - check timings.

! song "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (s2t02): The rare tune Garcia could do simultaneously with GD and JGB. I don't think I being too partial in saying that the JGB versions stand far superior to the Dead ones, because the organ and the female harmonies and the reggae arrangement all make it beautiful. The Dead version is all angles and elbows, in comparison, IMO, YMMV. This is the last JGB version until 11/12/91. 7:38 Melvin is leaning his ample self down to blast the B3, when Garcia turns to another verse (managing to get to "the sun is setting in western skies", which wasn't always the case). Melvin is light on his feet for a big fella, and rears it back like a horse, letting the vocal go first. Nice. I also like how he pulls it to a close at 9:30, makes it compact.

! P: s2t04 RAC Garcia is right on it vocally - this sounds nicely rehearsed. I think the tempos feel a little squirrely, but he's got the words. He flubbede some lyrics as far as the general public might hear it, but it's pretty remarkable that he gets the whole long narrative in order. http://www.whitegum.com/~acsa/songfile/REUBEN.HTM. Powerful chording, tight ending. Bravo! This is one of my favorite latter-day versions of RAC.

! P: s2t05 Evangeline: I usually dislike this song, but this version is good. Garcia does a lot of great country jukebox descents, very telecasterish.

oh my

https://archive.org/details/gd1978-01-11.135498.sbd.miller.flac16

Check out the Let It Grow.

UCLA Acid Test (CXL)

! ad: Daily Bruin, March 16, 1966, p. 2.

Preface

Suggested audio accompaniment for this post: http://tinyurl.com/hthnmgb, especially 30 minutes in when Ken Babbs is just raving, and things are just WILD.

The UCLA Daily Bruin has been digitized, and is accessible via the Daily Bruin Print Archive at http://samhoff.github.io/archive/. The access is rather cumbersome, basically at the volume level, and this runs from spring to spring. I recommend 1) targeting a date and searching on it, 2) verifying the resulting date range, 3) clicking on "Back to Item Details" toward the top-left, 4) right-click-and-saving-file-as... (or whatever you Macs do), using either the PDF (quite large files) or, for a first sweep, text (much smaller). The text can be searched for your key terms. But I will say, just looking at the text, the OCR'ing appears highly imperfect. So you might need to try many different searching strategies to find anything. I had a pretty low yield rate on the things I was interested in.

Discovery

Since I didn't have a canceled UCLA Acid Test in my cxl spreadsheet field, it didn't exist for me, even though I guess your average w00k might know of it. So I got inordinately excited when I found stuff around it, until reality came around and burst my bubble.

Anyway, still fun.

Preview

I found the preview first, and it is just about the most distilled piece of Babbsiana you'll ever encounter.

Barring the apocalypse, GSA ASUCLA, will allow the Merry Pranksters of Intrepid Trips, Inc. to let loose their version of interpersonal nuclear fission. The Acid Test, from 8 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. March 19 in The Student Union Grand Ballroom. What is The Acid Test? Well, it is a sort of a happening, a very total happening. There is no audience, no group of performers; everyone comes and the thing happens. There is music — The Grateful Dead will play genuine rock-'n-roll for dancing. But anyone can play music — there will be mikes and amplifiers available — and any person or group is urged to bring their equipment. There will be movies, three or four at a time, of the Pranksters and others doing whatever they do. But anyone can bring their own films and/or equipment. There will be people in strange clothes; come as you will. There will be strange lights, strobes and color wheels; bring more if need be. There will be Neal Cassady of On The Road doing battle with the fabled Thunder Machine, Roy's Audioptics, the Electric Man, the Psychedelic Symphonette, assorted miracles and marvels, more noise and yet more music. Tickets ($1.50 for students) are on sale at the Kerckhoff Hall Ticket Office or can be purchased at the door.

! preview: “Acid Test to Happen Here,” Daily Bruin, March 11, 1966, p. 14

In my recent post on the 1/17/69 UCSB show I posted about the winky-winky LSD references. Three years earlier, before acid was illegalized, there is no winking, there is just straight-up "come drink some acid punch with us and trip your _____ off right here on campus", presumably decodeable by enough Initiates to make it a happening.

I love the thought of Cassady ("of On The Road") doing battle with Babbs's Thunder Machine, the soundimage of whatever Roy's Audioptics was capable of laying down, "mindless chaos" as Garcia says in the late 33 minute of the audio accompaniment - the whole scene, naturally enough. Is "the Electric Man" anyone special? I'll leave this mostly to the commentariate to have at. Links to existing work will be gratefully received.

Ad

The ad mentions Tiny Tim and Paul Butterfield, whom we were just discussing in a comment thread, coincidentally enough, and drops the canonical name for the liquid medium of choice. Uncle Sam is in the house. Good stuff.

Furthur

Universities document themselves religiously, full of their own senses of historical importance, and so I imagine that there might be materials in the University Archives about this. I didn't know of this cancellation, and even a closer scan of the Daily Bruin and probably the LA Free Press would reveal more. Perhaps Ross has already gone through it all and already knows everything I am saying! I thought it was fun.

Simon and Garfunkel meet Anthem of the Sun

"Grateful Dead Records," Rolling Stone, November 23, 1967, p. 4.

The Grateful Dead hopes to have some new records out soon, particularly a single in late November and an LP in January. If the group obtains the approval of Warner Brothers, the January release will be a two-record set chock full o' goodies. Some of the titles already recorded for the LP include "Alligator," ''No [sic] Potato Caboose," and "Dark Star." The single is an as yet unnamed original tune. Live tracks may also be included. Warner Brothers is setting up an eight-track remote tape unit at concerts the Dead are doing November 10 and 11 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The Dead hopes to include a marching band on their LP and make use of the arranging talents of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who have indicated a desire to help the Dead while in Los Angeles during November.

Thelma

Paul Liberatore has a good review in the I-J. Looking forward to checking this one out.

LN jg1987-03-14.jgb.all.aud-archival_audio.124259.flac2448

Garcia doesn't quite have his stamina back. Nothing particularly noteworthy happening here. Good tape.

Ian Stoy's ticket stub for JGB 3/14/87 at the Wiltern Theatre in LA

Jerry Garcia Band
Wiltern Theatre
3790 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90010
March 14, 1987 (Saturday)
Ian Stoy MAC flac2448 shnid-124259

--set I (8 tracks, 60:40)--
s1t01. crowd and tuning [1:09]
s1t02. Cats Under The Stars [8:00] [1:33]
s1t03. Mission In The Rain [9:15] [0:29]
s1t04. They Love Each Other [6:42] [0:27]
s1t05. Simple Twist Of Fate [12:17] [0:29]
s1t06. Think [6:05] [0:01] % [0:22]
s1t07. Like A Road Leading Home [7:32] ->
s1t08. Deal [6:10] (1) [0:09] %

--set II (7 tracks, 51:53)--
s2t01. Get Out Of My Life, Woman [8:00] [0:20]
s2t02. Run For The Roses [5:28] [0:42]
s2t03. Love In The Afternoon [8:25] [0:17]
s2t04. Gomorrah [6:40] [1:01]
s2t05. Crazy Love [4:38] [0:16]
s2t06. That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day) [9:18] %
s2t07. /Midnight Moonlight [6:35] (1) [0:13] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals;
! lineup: David Kemper - drums.

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/19870314-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/32006 (Sony 939 flac1644); http://db.etree.org/shn/124259 (this fileset)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/71INU

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/wiltern-theatre-3790-wilshire-boulevard.html

! band: THE Jerry Garcia Band, JGB #21b (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! R: field recordist: Ian Stoy a.k.a. Archival Audio

! R: field recording location: Orch Row D Seat 114 Aisle 4 (FOB)

! R: field recording gear: 2x Toa K1 (handheld about 4' apart chest high) > Sony WM-TCD-6C > ! ! R: field recording media: 2x Maxell XLII-S 90 (Dolby C on)

! R: transfer: Tascam 302 Dolby C on >  ArchivalSilver/Gold RCA/1/4" TS > 1/4" > Tascam DR-680 24bit/48khz (dual mono) > Transcend SDHC Class10 card > iMac 3.06 Ghz i3 12 GR 133MHz DDR3 > AudioFile Engineering Wave Editor 1.57. Normalize to -.9 db (each side) Remove DC offset regions [labels] exported .wav  > xACT v2.21to FLAC (level 8 ) Metadata (aka tags), generate ffp and len (shntool) output.

! R: seeder notes: "Second ever "stealth" show, hand held mics, cable connection crackles and a drop out or two in the left channel during Cats. I did my best to lessen the pops but left the slight dropout. At the beginning of set 2 security was trying to seat someone in our aisle flashlight out and pointed at us, and therefore the start of GOOMLW was a bit muffled and a second or two was missing. Also the tape flip at the end of set 2 caused a second or two of might nigh moonlight to be missing. Light phasing can be heard throughout the show due to hand held spaced cardiod mics. A light buzz in the PA can be heard , more prevalent in quiter passages.  Can be rougher at times but overall not that bad!"

! R: this is a nice tape, e.g., start set II. Great spot.

! historical: seeder notes: "As with a number of LA shows my friend James (Jim) Ford waited in line to get the tix when they went on sale. He and Ron Cook help me get my gear in and hold one of the mics. This show was before In The Dark came out, and was lacking many of the In The Dark heads that attended the December '87 run we recorded, post Broadway run.  These 2 shows Friday  3/13 and sat 3/14 were the first shows I ever "stealthed" and was surprised there was "No Recording" enforced.  I did record 10/31/86 JGB and Kingfish. That was open with stands but I had an impedance mis-match and my recordings came out horrid. Back to 3/14 Light phasing can be heard  throughout the show due to hand held mics. The right channel (if I recall correct) was held by me mostly, except starting stopping or adjusting levels on my D-6. I held my mic chest high and mostly still aimed at the right stack. Whereas the left channel was more casually held and potential lower. The night before due to my first steal thing, I managed to record the second set over the first set, and due to cable issues, I believe that only one channel was recorded super botched job. We had a bank of 4 seats each night we were in Row D  I was in  Seat 114. First time at the Wiltern and it was very sweet! Enjoy! AchivalAudio, 2013-03-26."

! R: quite a pleasant tape!

! R: s1t05 STOF drop @ 2:16, 10:40

! P: s1t08 Deal Jerry is not sounding very good here, running out of steam. He doesn't really hit the vocals properly, either with the verses or with the chorus ... but let's see if he can make it up with his guitar playing from 3:30ff? Indeed, good. As ever, Garcia's guitar playing is excellent, while the vocals are the canary in the coalmine in re basic health. I don't think he's using here (but WTF do I know?), but he just hasn't built back his stamina not just from The Coma, but from years, at least eight but probably a decade or more, of hard drugs and hard living. The Tom Davis book gives you the nadir, or the August 1984 recordings.

! s1t08 (1) JG: "We'll be back in a few minutes. Thank you."

! R: s2t01 GOOMLW fades in, but not really anything missing. Taper says ""Second ever 'stealth' show, hand held mics, cable connection [problems]. At the beginning of set II security was trying to seat someone in our aisle, flashlight out and pointed at us, and therefore the start of GOOMLW is a bit muffled and a second or two is missing."

! s2t01 GOOMLW JG is putting some extra measures in vocally, "I don't love you no mo' oo oh". It's nice. Guitar solo 2:20 is pretty good. Late 3, Melvin takes a feature.

! P: s2t02 RFTR I find this tempo just a little bit sluggish.

! P: s2t03 LITA Jerry's voice is shot. And the band is not all on the same page toward the end of the song, 7ff. Not great.

! song: "Crazy Love" (s2t05): 15 times from Oct 19, 1986 to Oct. 31,1987: https://jerrybase.com/songs/805

! R: s2t07 Mid Moon clips in.

! s2t07 (1) JG: "Thanks a lot, see ya later."

Kid Charlemagne

I absolutely love this song. I never knew it was about Owsley et al., roughly.

The List Tradition: Chronicling Infinity

Beyer, Susanne, and Lothar Gorris. 2009. SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco: 'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'. Spiegel Online International, November 11, http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/spiegel-interview-with-umberto-eco-we-like-lists-because-we-don-t-want-to-die-a-659577.html, consulted 1/4/2016.

I don't know Eco very well, and there's a bit of mumbo-jumbo in here, but I think it's also a lovely little piece of cultural history, very important to me.

·         "The list is the origin of culture."

·         "What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order ..."

·         "How, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists -- the shopping list, the will, the menu -- that are also cultural achievements in their own right."

·         "Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century."

·         "In the 'Iliad' [Homer] tries to convey an impression of the size of the Greek army. At first he uses similes: "As when some great forest fire is raging upon a mountain top and its light is seen afar, even so, as they marched, the gleam of their armour flashed up into the firmament of heaven." But he isn't satisfied. He cannot find the right metaphor, and so he begs the muses to help him. Then he hits upon the idea of naming many, many generals and their ships."

·         "At first, we think that a list is primitive and typical of very early cultures, which had no exact concept of the universe and were therefore limited to listing the characteristics they could name. But, in cultural history, the list has prevailed over and over again. It is by no means merely an expression of primitive cultures. A very clear image of the universe existed in the Middle Ages, and there were lists. A new worldview based on astronomy predominated in the Renaissance and the Baroque era. And there were lists. And the list is certainly prevalent in the postmodern age. It has an irresistible magic."

·         "Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that. We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by the endless stars and by galaxies upon galaxies. How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see. Lovers are in the same position. They experience a deficiency of language, a lack of words to express their feelings. But do lovers ever stop trying to do so? They create lists: Your eyes are so beautiful, and so is your mouth, and your collarbone … One could go into great detail."

·         SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can't be realistically completed?

·         Eco: "We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die."

·         SPIEGEL: In your exhibition at the Louvre, you will also be showing works drawn from the visual arts, such as still lifes. But these paintings have frames, or limits, and they can't depict more than they happen to depict.

·         Eco: "On the contrary, the reason we love them so much is that we believe that we are able to see more in them. A person contemplating a painting feels a need to open the frame and see what things look like to the left and to the right of the painting. This sort of painting is truly like a list, a cutout of infinity."

·         "ever since the days of Aristotle, we have been trying to define things based on their essence. The definition of man? An animal that acts in a deliberate way. Now, it took naturalists 80 years to come up with a definition of a platypus. They found it endlessly difficult to describe the essence of this animal. It lives underwater and on land; it lays eggs, and yet it's a mammal. So what did that definition look like? It was a list, a list of characteristics."

·         "The list is the mark of a highly advanced, cultivated society because a list allows us to question the essential definitions. The essential definition is primitive compared with the list."

·         "Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating."

The piece refers to a forthcoming book under title The Vertigo of Lists, but my copy turns out to be The Infinity of Lists, "first published with the title La Vertigine della Lista in 2009 by Bompiani, Milan"), 2009 translation by Alastair McEwen.

Eco, Umbert. 2010. The Infinity of Lists. Maclehose Press Quercus.

Frankly, the text of that very well done Spiegel interview contains the essential idea of the book, which is a true delight to consume, full of amazing ideas and images. The text is a little uneven in terms of interest to me. Here are some of the words:

What Beyer and Gorris 2009 has translated as "topos of inexpressibility", translator Alastair McEwen renders as "topos of ineffability",[i] a lovelier phrasing to my ear. I am a little bit confused on the translation, in fact, since there is a "Note on translation of the anthology" by Alta L. Price, explaining her translation.[ii] Can anyone explain this to me?

contrasts "practical or 'pragmatic' and 'poetic' lists (Eco 2009, 113). Here we get a real sense of his style: he doesn't define a practical list, but deals out exemplars: shopping list, guest list, library catalog, inventory, list of assets, invoice, menu, tour guide, dictionary.[iii]

Practical lists are purely real-world-referential and finite. He also says they are unalterable, but that's the wrong term and I think the point is redundant.[iv]

He loses that thread, never tells us what poetic lists are. That distinction mostly disappears after the intro, or maybe I just missed it.

"In as much as a list characterizes even a dissimilar series of objects as belonging to the same context or seen from the same point of view (for example, Jesus, Caesar, Cicero, Louis IX, Raymond Lully, Jeanne d'Arc, Gilles de Rais, Damiens, Lincoln, Hitler, Mussolini, Kennedy and Saddam Hussein constitute a homogenous whole if we consider them as people who did not die in their beds), it confers order, and hence a hint of form, to an otherwise disordered set.[v]

defines a congeries as "a sequence of words or phrases that all mean the same thing, where the same thought is reproduced under different aspects".[vi]

museums are "voracious by definition … because they spring from private collections, and private collections spring from rapine, the spoils of war".[vii]

"infinity of properties that may be attributed to the same object".[viii]

"we use definitions by properties if we do not have a definition by essence or if this last does not satisfy us".[ix]

Providing a "semantic representation by essence" requires a strictly constitutive logical hierarchy – platypus. This can generate "dictionary definition", to which actual dictionaries need to provide a great deal more color. Dictionary definition is true in terms of the logic tree and its relations of super- and sub-ordination, but true only as far as it goes. He uses the example of a dog.[x]

We might need to use, instead, semantic "representation by accumulation or series of properties". An open-ended list.[xi]

"Los Angeles … has no center and is practically the outskirts of itself. Los Angeles is an 'etcetera' city and so, if we wish to accept the metaphor, it is a 'list-city' rather than a 'form-city'".[xii]

ch 17 "chaotic enumeration".[xiii]

"disjunctive enumeration expresses a shattering, a kind of schizophrenia of the person who becomes aware of a sequence of disparate impressions without managing to confer any unity upon them".[xiv] Recall Koestler's (1975 [1964]) Act of Creation, the "bisociation of previously independent matrices of thought" … this might be like thinking you spot a pattern, searching around for it, but never pinning it down.

"On considering both coherent excesses [ch. 16] and chaotic enumerations [ch. 17]" Joyce and Borges "did not make lists because they did not know what to say [like Homer, he asserted earlier], but because they wanted to say things out of a love of excess, hubris and a greed for words, for the joyous (and rarely obsessive) science of the plural and the unlimited. The list became a way of reshuffling the world, almost putting into practice Tesauro's invitation to accumulate properties in order to bring out new relationships between distant things … In this way the chaotic list becomes one of the modes of that breakdown of form set in motion in different ways by Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism or by New Realism".[xv]

---

[i] Eco 2009, 49.

[ii] Eco 2009, 407.

[iii] Eco 2009, 113.

[iv] Eco 2009, 113.

[v] Eco 2009, 131.

[vi] Eco 2009, 134. This reminds me of my ol' favorite, the fish-scale model of omniscience (Campbell 1969).

[vii] Eco 2009, 170.

[viii] Eco 2009, 217.

[ix] Eco 2009, 218.

[x] Eco 2009, 231.

[xi] Eco 2009, 231.

[xii] Eco 2009, 241.

[xiii] Eco 2009, 321.

[xiv] Eco 2009, 323; re Koestler, need to get documented formulation, full reference xxx.

[xv] Eco 2009, 327.