John Coltrane has a spudfactor of 2?

Spudfactor is the number it takes to get from Jerry to another musician, using ties defined as making music together, in person.

Jerry Garcia = spudfactor 0

Anyone who played with him, live or live in studio, even picking in someone's living room, has SF1.

Then everyone they ever played with --same definition-- now has SF 2 (at most). And so forth.

The universe of SF1, when we draw all of the ties between all of the other players, defines the Side Trips Social Network.

Anyway, we were playing around with links out from Jerry to Coltrane, and my amazing commenters have determined that Jerry 0 > Ornette 1 > Coltrane 2.

So much fun. Original question was about John Chambers. We have moved on.

It's my understanding that Hartbeats era Matrix drummer John Chambers played with John Coltrane. I could check, but I wanted to pin this here before I head out to the ol' salt mines.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1292605-John-Chambers-2

Pearl's Wake

Around November 3, 1970 the Associate Press (AP) had an item in lots of papers noting that Janis Joplin had left $2,500 in her will for a big ol' celebration of her life after her passing. Invitations went out reading "The drinks are on Pearl", and it happened at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. The AP story (e.g., in the Red Bluff Daily News, November 3, 1970, p. 8) says that the GD and other rock groups entertained.

Mastropolo 2015 puts the date of this event as 10/26/70. I don't know how he knows that, but there it is. (update: as usual, Corry was on it before I was --in this case, a decade!!-- and the date comes from his post.) He references the memoir of Janis's road manager John Byrne Cooke in saying that members of the Quick, Big Brother, and the GD formed various playing combinations, which is a little different than a GD gig per se.

As of now, I am listing this as a GD gig. I am also coding the Wales-Garcia Matrix gig advertised for this date --the latest with Howard's name on it, as far as I can recall-- as canceled. Any thoughts on that?

I also note that LIA hipped me to a canceled GD gig in Columbus, OH, between 10/24 and 10/29. Janis's wake may well account for the cancellation.

New-to-The-List from the Digitized Chronicle

After spending X hours over X years spinning microfilm to try to find the needles of unListed Garcia gigs in the haystack of the Chronicle, the paper has been digitized.

Je ne regrette rien!

That said, I was able to find a few listings for The List. At this point, I cannot imagine we are missing more than a handful of Bay Area gigs about which information was actually printed somewhere.

2/15/71 JGMS at Matrix (via JLW "Something Else").
11/3/71 JGMS at Keystone Korner ("" "").
12/22/71 JGMS at Keystone Korner ("" ""). Just says Jerry Garcia, presume JGMS.
12/28/71 JGMS at New Monk ("" "").
12/29/71 JGMS at New Monk ("" "").
1/31/73 JGMS at Keystone Berkeley (via listings). This one turned up on a search for Tom Fogerty, who is listed, because JG is listed as Jerry Garcilea.

Update your Lists.

New-to-The-List from the Examiner, 1970-1972

In addition to the tantalizing May 20-21, 1969 Garcia gigs at the Matrix, the newly-digitized Examiner has yielded a good number of previously unlisted, mostly-midweek Garcia gigs. A little list  from 1970-1972 follows.

update: see also a subsequent list from 1973-end

11/2/70 (Monday): Jerry Garcia / BBHC / Ice / Cleveland Wrecking Company. Harding Theater. Benefit for A Learning Place. I don't know if this would have been NRPS or JGMS; I am listing as JGMS for no particular reason.
! Listing: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, November 1, 1970, p. 27;
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, November 2, 1970, p. 35.
! seealso: https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2019/11/ca-november-1-2-1970-fragments.html.

1/5/71 (Tuesday): JGMS at Matrix
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 5, 1971, p. 24.

2/4/71 (Thursday): JGMS at Matrix
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, February 4, 1971, p. 25.

3/30/71 (Tuesday): NRPS at Matrix. I interpret this as warmup for the east coast tour. BTW, they also played the next night, according to a redacted source, so we can add 3/31/71 (Wednesday), same band and room.
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, March 30, 1971, p. 24.

11/24/71 (Wednesday): JGMS at Keystone Korner. Garcia's first-known gig for Freddie Herrera had happened the night before Thanksgiving the year before with the New Riders. Jerry and Merl reprise the gig on its first anniversary.
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, November 24, 1971, p. 20.

1/18/72 (Tuesday): JGMS at Lion's Share
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 18, 1972, p. 21.

3/1/72 (Wednesday): JGMS at Keystone Berkeley (formerly New Monk). I now understand this to be the very first night for the so-named Keystone at the corner of University and Shattuck. It's a fitting indicator of the centrality of Garcia to Freddie's enterprises that he would play this opening night at the old Monk. (See also "Jerry and Freddie, mid-March 1972".)
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, March 1, 1972, p. 33.

6/3/72 (Saturday): JGMS at Keystone Korner
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, June 3, 1972, p. 10.

8/31/72 (Thursday): JGMS at Keystone Berkeley
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, August 31, 1972, p. 31.

12/26/72 (Tuesday): JGMS at Keystone Korner. This one puzzles me, because the KK would have been under Barkan's ownership at this point. Barkan has narrated that he once hosted Jerry and Merl (after he started booking the room on July 7th), but didn't dig the vibe and stuck thereafter with jazz. This could well be that very gig. I still don't know what to make of a listing for JGB at KK four years later, of course ...
! Listing: San Francisco Examiner, December 26, 1972, p. 28.

Jerry Garcia and Friends, Sanpaku at the Matrix: May 20-21, 1969

Fascinating.

I told you all that the Examiner would yield many interesting things. Well, this is one of the most interesting. Sometimes skimming cream is worth the price of later anticlimax.

Jerry Garcia and Friends and Sam Paku [sic: Sanpaku] at the Matrix, Tuesday, May 20 and Wednesday, May 21, 1969.

Garcia's first understood public pedal steel playing happened 5/14/69 at the Underground, supposedly a Hofbrau house in Menlo Park, understood just to be him and Marmaduke. The second instance was the second day of this listing, 5/21/69.

So, do we imagine this is Jerry and his pedal steel, and maybe Marmaduke and his songs?

If not, then what?

Ron Polte on the Demise of the Carousel

Bottom line:

A bunch of hippies, a bunch of good people, got together and refused to run a business. And, I'm sorry, you've got to live in that world if you're gonna run a business.

On Rakow, in particular:

What Ron Rakow did to those people, he chained them to a machine that couldn't make money. It wasn't free. And the energy of all those good people in that building wasn't going anywhere, It was being trapped. Because he chained them to a financial problem, which was $9,000 a month rent, plus 20%. They couldn't have made it in 25 million years, man.

And then when he was going down, and he was $66,000 in the hole and they were in danger of losing it, they ran to the community and said, "Let's get the community together, together we can save it." It was a bummer to lay on the community.

In front, had Ron Rakow been honest with himself about business, he would have said, "$9,000 a month is too fucking high. And if we can't get this dance hall for $5,000, let's not take it. But instead, he took it. So it just went down the tubes.

On Graham taking over:

The only reason that Bill Graham got that dance hall was because they gave it to him. He would not have taken that dance hall. Ask Ralph Gleason, Ron Rakow, Bill Thompson, Rock Scully ... They said, "If we can't score it by Wednesday, if we can't make any deal with the owner to come up with the eight grand or a new ballroom manager, and a new organization, then you're free to go do whatever you want on Thursday. And that's what he did.

Ideas for the future:

Let's get together, do a benefit or a festival, and rent two places like the Matrix for a year, one at the south end and one at the north end of the city. And hire a couple of people to manage those 2 or 3 hundred capacity rooms, and put the young bands in there. … We should do that. Right now, there's a lot of wounds to heal and everybody is tired after the Carousel, so it's gonna take a little while. But it should come to pass.

The festival idea would manifest as the ill-fated Wild West Festival. At the same time, the Matrix really did take up some of the slack left by the Carousel (the  Tuesday Night Jam morphed into the Monday Night Jam), and the Family Dog had the south end of town covered, albeit in a bigger room with the problems of rent and overhead and all that Polte identified as problematic for the prospective hip community musical operations. Indeed, Chet Helms never could make the Dog work, and he was out in less than a year.

REFERENCE:

Darlington, Sandy. 1968. Ron Polte: A Good Word for Bill Graham. San Francisco Express Times, July 31, 1968, p. 13.

NRPS (formerly The Murdering Punks) - August 7, 1969

There has long been a tape identified as New Riders Of The Purple Sage (NRPS), Thursday, August 7, 1969 at the Matrix in San Francisco. Corry has found corroborating evidence for the dating, though of course the tape cannot be tied to the Ralph Gleason "On The Town" listing he found, which bills the band August 6-9.

Matt Smith has recently undertaken a great high end transfer of Will Boswell's tape of this show, somewhere (but not too far) downstream from Matrix proprietor Peter Kafer's copy.

What an opportunity! We get to hear more or less the first gig of the New Riders an sich (Corry, see link above). Marmaduke jokes that they formerly called themselves the Murdering Punks, and they certainly murdilize a few arrangements here in what sounds for all the world like a public rehearsal. Thanks to everyone involved in creating a world in which we can hear this stuff.

My notes aren't very extensive, so let me just drop a few markers.

1) Proto-New Riders. Fascinating, exceptionally sloppy stuff.

2) The tape distorts throughout, especially on the pedal steel.

3) "Kaw-Liga" is a great freaking song. See also 7/30/70, another Thursday at the Matrix.

4) Garcia's tone on the pedal steel is unlike any other I hear him achieving. I doubt he's technically very proficient, but the soaring sound of the instrument grabs you right in the lonely spot more than a few times.

5) This copy is missing a second iteration of "Last Lonely Eagle" - see my notes, which conclude that it probably was played in both sets, since the second LLE segues over continuous tape into the show-closing "Six Days On The Road". More generally, I suspect that this reel #1 and reel #3, with a reel #2 MIA from public circulation.

LISTENING NOTES

New Riders of the Purple Sage
Matrix
3138 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
August 7, 1969 (Thursday)
70 min PNW flac2496 shnid-133326

--15 tracks, 69:53)--

--set I (10 tracks, 43:04)--
t01. [0:27] Kaw-Liga -4:28 [0:14]
t02. If You Hear Me When I'm Leavin'
t03. tuning (1) [1:25]
t04. Superman [3:42] [0:36]
t05. Mama Tried [2:25] [0:02] % [0:11]
t06. Games People Play [5:53] [0:21]
t07. Last Lonely Eagle [5:24] [0:01] % [0:06]
t08. Truck Drivin' Man [3:09] [0:05]
t09. Me And My Uncle [3:30] (2) -4:07
t10. Delilah [3:47] (4) % pre-set II [-0:05]

--set II (5 tracks, 26:48, incomplete)
t11. Long Black Veil [5:44] % [0:06]
t12. All I Ever Wanted [8:02] [0:10]
t13. Henry [3:35] % [0:10]
t14. Don't Take Any Chances [5:21] [0:03]
[MISSING: Last Lonely Eagle ->]
t15. Six Days On The Road (5) [3:30] [0:08]

! ACT1: New Riders Of The Purple Sage
! lineup: John Dawson - rhythm guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - pedal steel guitar;
! lineup: David Nelson - lead guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Bob Matthews - bass;
! lineup: Mickey Hart - 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/19690807-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1969-08-07-the-matrix-san-francisco-ca/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/133325 (PNW flac16); http://etreedb.org/shn/133326 (PNW flac24)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/htd1l

! venue: http://www.chickenonaunicycle.com/Matrix%20Shows.htm 

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/08/matrix-3138-fillmore-san-francisco-ca.html

! seealso: Arnold, Corry. 2010. August 6-9, 1969 The Matrix, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage. Lost Live Dead, February 16, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/02/august-6-9-1969-matrix-san-francisco.html, consulted 6/21/2015.

! historical: The material is pretty primitive ... the official NRPS concert history at http://www.nrps.net/music/1969.html suggests that this is their 6th show, though that would include what are understood to be Garcia/Dawson duets on at least two occasions.  They certainly seem to be trying to find their feet here, and it wouldn't surprise me if this were one of the very first full-band gigs.

! personnel: LIA (comments to this post): "That is absolutely not Phil on bass. He couldn't play this primitively in '69 if he tried. The bass player has a totally different sound & fingering than Phil - he only plays the root notes, crudely & repetitively. I say it's Bob Matthews, unless a two-fingered bass player steps up as candidate."

! setlist: I surmise that we have reel #1 (the set II material) and reel #3 (the end of set II and the show). Furthermore, other dubs of the Peter Kafer tape have a second version of "Last Lonely Eagle" in set II, segueing without tape discontinuity into "Six Days On The Road". I am guessing someone left it off because they thought it extraneous, what with repeats being nearly unheard of in the Garciaverse. But the band the song are brand new, the whole thing feels like an avowed rehearsal, and I would not be surprised to learn that they had tackled it in both sets.

! R: Recording Info: MR > R (Peter Kafer) > 7.5 ips reel (Will Boswell)

! R: Transfer info:  Akai GX636 direct tape head output  > Bottlehead tube tape pre pair Tesla tubes circa 1980  > Apogee Mini Me 24/96  > Apogee Mini DAC monitoring and mastering  > FLAC. Mastered By Matt Smith, April 2015.

! R: seeder comments: Notable gain difference between songs.

! R: stunning SQ in terms of a representation of the source tape. The source tape is super bright and oversaturated, especially on the steel guitar, and the fileset faithfully captures all of that. (What else could it aim to do?)

! P: t01 What an incredible song. Not 100% together, but Hank Williams ... early 2 Garcia's pedal steel lead is just incredible - not the most gifted, but just in terms of the sound he is getting out of the instrument, trying to give acoustic form to that sound in his head.

! t03 (1) JD: "The name of this organization is the New Riders of the Purple Sage, formerly the Murdering Punks." A little later, after some stage chatter. "Oh ... I'm told there's a Murdering Punk left. There's still a murdering punk in the organization. We ain't sayin' ... for the protection of the audience. For the protection of the band, for that matter." Someone says "Let's do that 'Superman' song, JD into mic "the 'Superman' song".

! P: GPP is rather shambolic.

! R: t07 LLE tape warble 4:48, I think I hear some warbling after that.

! P: t08 TDM late 2 kind of falls out of key.

! P: t09 MAMU has that real drippy "Kaw-Liga" feel, very dark.

! t09 (2) "We're gonna play 'Delilah' and then we're gonna take a break for a couple of moments." Someone else: "Then come back and play some more."

! R: t10 more tape warble

! R: t10 (4) "Thank you. Right. //"

! P: t12 AIEW early 3 there is some very ethereal playing that reminds me of some of the bending that Garcia would do in latter-day versions of the Manhattans' "Shining Star" (youtube). Nelson is doing some real nice stuff, is that Nelson, or the steel? Wow, this is some amazing steel ethereality.

! P: t13 Henry mess up ending, but not bad overall, given the other songs.

! P: t14 DTC again there is some real ethereal stuff happening in the guitars.

! P: t15 SDOTR they don't know how to end it. These arrangements are checkered at best. This is a public rehearsal.

! t15 (5) "We're gonna make it home right now. Thank you very much."

Lurid Nightclub Atmosphere

https://archive.org/details/gd66-12-01.sbd.sirmick.26968.sbeok.shnf

Garcia, after Minglewood:

Welcome to another evening of confusion and high frequency stimulation. And, Sucrets, cold beer on tap, lurid nightclub atmosphere, and Beatniks … more Beatniks than you can count on two hands.

The Demise of the Matrix, 1971

The Matrix at 3138 Fillmore Street (San Francisco, CA, 94123) [map | JGBP]: it's daunting to type those words and then imagine adding much to what we know, so meticulously gathered over decades. So I'll zero in on a relatively blank space: the venue's demise in 1971.

Ross Hannan and Corry Arnold's Chicken on a Unicycle hosts the data. Here's what we have from 1971 through the end of the year. (I won't discuss the venue's 1973 manifestation, which was in a different space, formerly Moulin Rouge, Casa Madrid, Mother's and Mr. D's, and later the Soul Train, Hippodrome and The Stone, at 412 Broadway (San Francisco, CA, 94133) [map | JGBP].)

Tuesday	02 February 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Wednesday	03 February 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Thursday	04 February 1971	John Fahey
Friday	05 February 1971	John Fahey
Saturday	06 February 1971	John Fahey
Monday	08 February 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Tuesday	09 February 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Wednesday	10 February 1971	Boz Scaggs
Thursday	11 February 1971	Boz Scaggs
Friday	12 February 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Saturday	13 February 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Tuesday	16 February 1971	Larry Coryell
Wednesday	17 February 1971	Larry Coryell
Thursday	18 February 1971	Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Friday	19 February 1971	Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Saturday	20 February 1971	Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Tuesday	02 March 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Wednesday	03 March 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Thursday	15 April 1971	Danny Zeitlin Trio
Friday	16 April 1971	Danny Zeitlin Trio
Saturday	17 April 1971	Danny Zeitlin Trio
Tuesday	11 May 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Tuesday	02 March 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Wednesday	03 March 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders
Thursday	15 April 1971	Danny Zeitlin Trio
Friday	16 April 1971	Danny Zeitlin Trio
Saturday	17 April 1971	Danny Zeitlin Trio
Tuesday	11 May 1971	Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders

Here is an updated table. I have posted this as a Google Documents spreadsheet which, shockingly, Blogger is entirely unable to handle other than as a link. I reproduce the table as a picture here. These data, based mostly on my research in San Francisco Chronicle microfilm at the amazing San Francisco Public Library, will be concatenated into the Chicken at some point.

Table xxx. Matrix 1971 gigs, as of 9/28/2014.

January and February don't reveal anything particularly noteworthy. On February 7, Joel Selvin (1971) published an interesting little piece in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook (my beloved SFSECD), retracing the history of the venue and tying it to Garcia and Saunders experimenting with jazz-rock fusion in the contemporary period. Identified co-owners Ray Bregante and Peter Abrams give no hint of trouble in paradise. But then, after the reformed Sopwith Camel performs in the first week of March, the listings dry up. On March 8^th, John Wasserman reports “Disheartening news -- the Matrix closed, maybe permanently," promising more information in the Wednesday column (Wasserman 1971a). Following up, as promised:

Nobody – mainly owners Ray Bregante and Peter Abrams – seems anxious to be contacted. From good second-hand information, it appears that they just got tired of hassles and, as long as two months ago, had expressed a desire to find a bigger place or just shut down. The Matrix has been surviving by the skin of its frets for a long time but had hoped to make a profit through the release of live albums. Among other things, this hasn’t worked out. More later. (Wasserman 1971b).

The promised further information never materialized, as far as I could find. On March 24^th Wasserman (1971c) notes that the Matrix has reopened --this ended up being about a two-and-a-half week hiatus--, and listings pick up a little bit. There is no indication that the weekend with Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller, May 14-15, will bring the curtain down. The Matrix drops from view, the Pierce Street Annex moves into the space, and the rest is history, at least until the relative present.

What happened?

I don't know. There's no reason to doubt JLW's rendering, that people just got burned out. It's probably just that simple, and is so characteristic of the human condition, bangs and whimpers mixing company, fraternizing. But I love the bookending: as the Matrix preceded the ballrooms on the front end of San Francisco's psychedelic era, it also anticipated their passing, little more than six weeks before the closing of the Fillmore West.

REFERENCES:

Selvin, Joel. 1971. The Matrix Club and the Rise of Rock. San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle Datebook, February 7, 1971, p. 4.

Wasserman, John L. 1971a. Aretha Franklin – Boss Blues Lady. San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1971, p. 39.

Wasserman, John L. 1971b. The Real Match Was at the Fillmore. San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 1971, p. 54.

Wasserman, John L. 1971c. Some Travesties in the Music Biz. San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 1971, p. 42.

See also:

Some recent cites: on 3/3/71, see "Contradictions Are Fun"; on 5/11/71 see "Hey Merl, you wanna do that tune in 'G'? Get spaced out a little?"; on Jerry and Merl at the Matrix see my lengthy discussion with Corry Arnold, "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue". More generally, click on the Matrix tag to see when it has come up here on the blog.

Contradictions Are Fun

The human spirit ... is the favorite home of contradictions, indeed they do not seem to prosper or even find viable living conditions outside it.

José Saramago, All the Names, p. 228

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders were advertised to play the Matrix at 3138 Fillmore on Wednesday, March 3, 1971. But as far as I know, GD played a benefit that night at the corner of Van Ness and Market.

Indeed, the same-day SFC listed both, which is a neat reminder that maybe whoever was taking the calls for the "Something Else" listings under Wasserman's byline might not have known that Garcia was in the Grateful Dead. Occam's Razor suggests just a basic mistake, but the former idea tickles me more.

I wonder if Merl played the Matrix anyway? He had played there a week and a half prior with Carlos Santana, but Carlos was already in Ghana for the big gig in Africa. I wouldn't have minded hearing what Saunders-Kahn-Vitt would do as an organ trio, had I been down in the Marina this particular midweek. But there are lots of other interesting possibilities, which I invite you to speculate about in comments.

Hey Merl, you wanna do that tune in 'G'? Get spaced out a little? LN jg1971-05-11.jgms.partial.aud.28784.flac1644

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Matrix
3138 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
May 11, 1971 (Tuesday)
20 min flac1644 shnid-28784

--(2 tracks, 19:58)--
t01. talk and tuning (1, 2) [1:03]
t02. Save Mother Earth [18:44] [0:10]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards, ?synthesizers?;
! lineup: ?John Kahn? - el-b;
! lineup: ?Bill Vitt? - drums.

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/19710511-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1971-05-11-the-matrix-san-francisco-ca/

!db: http://etreedb.org/shn/28784 (this fileset).


! venue: JGBP; COAU.

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/htd1l

! listing: "Benefit Tonight to 'Bring Back Jack'," San Francisco Chronicle, May 10, 1971, p. 45;
URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/jgms-matrix-may-11-12-1971.html.

! general: I am listening to this 9/20/2014 in the context of trying to piece back together the "5/20/71" tape (listening notes). This piece of tape is the only leverage we have on those pieces of tape. Garcia's guitar does have a 1968 feel to it there, but I hear the same tone on this tape. This analysis partly informs two other posts from today Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue (9/24/2014) , and JGMS 5/20/71" is probably really JGMS 5/20/71 (9/24/2014). I noted the listing at JGMS: Matrix, May 11-12, 1971.

! historical: A freaking Tuesday night!

! R: Unknown source > reel > CD > Plexwriter PX-W4824A extraction (EAC v0.9 beta 4) > tracking (CD Wave v1.6) > sector boundary verification (shntool v1.01) > level 8 FLAC encoding (FLAC Frontend v1.7.1 Etree edition).  Reel >> digital by Harvey Lubar, EAC >> FLAC by jjoops.

! R: seeder notes: "Mono recording, hissy but basically very nice.  The Jerry Site lists a soundboard, but I'd guess it's an upfront audience recording.  I don't know anything else about the lineage."

! R: seeder notes: "Thanks to Harvey Lubar for getting this wonderful little gem into my hands! Here's hoping the rest of it turns up someday."

! R: I'd add that there is some wow, flutter, warbling, variable tape speed, and the like.

! t01 (1) @ 0:10: "Hey Merl, you wanna do that tune in 'G'?  Get spaced out a little?"

! t02 (2) @ 0:30: JG: "What's that?" MS: "I don't know."  JG: "Hey, c'mon man, the orange one, now it's the orange one, whatever that is.  Amber.  That one. Do away with it.  That's the exit light.  It's plenty. No, no, man.  Thanks.  Photo field [?]."

! P: t02 SME slow swampy start over the Navajo tone, then it jumps up in the 2 minute range, almost sounding Motownish, foreshadowing this group's take on Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made To Love Her". Late 6, if you forced me to choose, I'd say that was 1968. Merl doing some really nice playing late 8. Darkening tone, slowing pace second half of 9, drummer does some swinging, Jerry says hello to him, but slowing the horses, very high up the neck 10:18. Jerry is playing a dream 10:45ish, gorgeous, BEAUTIFUL to 11, plucks some kooky stuff 11:08, but that was a terrific little 20 second piece. Now he's fuzzy and modal, drummer sets a driving beat 11:30, Jerry is with it, in the SME rhythm but closer to the hop at 2 than the swampy start, Jer pulls some bigguns 12:10 and he's decaying it, don't rush me, says hello to SME 12:30, bassist and band behind it, someone (Merl?) singing "nah nah nah nah" to it? Whoa. At 16:30 Jerry launches them to space again, until 16:42, when Garcia strums the big old Navajo chord at the heart of "Save Mother Earth". At 18:10 someone gives a voice signal and Jerry and the band wind it down. Nice.

! R: t02 Applause analysis: More upfront, larger audience, ?bigger room? Not the same room as 5/20/71?

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix - A Dialogue

[ed: Corry sent me an email about Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Matrix, which turned into a rather elaborate exchange on the subject. One piece of our correspondence involved the tape traveling as 5/20/71. This is some of Garcia's finest playing on tape in any context. I highly recommend that you check it out. I have done a little metadata analysis of the tape and reckon that there's no reason to doubt the David Lemieux-inspired conclusion that it is what it purports to be, and plenty of reason to concur in it.

Corry was stunned at how "out" this material is, sounding more like Howard Wales than Merl Saunders on keys, unmooring totally, in quasi-free jazz style, from the songs. I agreed with him, but, if my metadata analysis is right --and we both think it is-- then it is indeed Merl, and we may need, in my words (pace Bayes), to update our priors.

With Corry's permission, I am posting it more or less as we have it in email, with a few tweaks here and there. I originally planned that Corry would be in black and I would be in blue ("Tasty hemlock!"), but the quoting arrangement seems to work all right. Don't want too much formatting else Blogger will up and walk away on me.

Dialogue below the fold.]

"JGMS 5/20/71" is probably really JGMS 5/20/71

The tape traveling as Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, May 20, 1971, Keystone Korner (a.k.a. xx/xx/71 and 5/xx/71) probably really is Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, May 20, 1971, Keystone Korner (750 Vallejo Street, San Francisco, CA 94133) [map | JGC | JGBP | shnid-93137 | shnid-100855 | shnid-126365 |shnid-126389 and listening notes]

The most important reason to believe this is that Dead audio archivist David Lemieux, who has also had his hand in a number of Garcia releases, says it is, having compared it to an uncirculated Garcia Vault recording dated the next night, 5/21/71. Update: now officially released as GarciaLive volume 15!

For whatever reason, maybe because the music is just so mindfuckingly awesome and people get distracted, the metadata around this tape have been slippery. Corry prompted me to clarify my own understanding of the tape, which I have done and report here.

Current Metadata

As of late 2013, this presented as a Debbie tape of JGMS 5/20/71 at Keystone Korner. Note the four dimensions: the provenance of the tape, the band, the date and the venue.

1) Tape: Pat Lee (from JGMF shnid-93137 notes): "It originated from a stash of tapes that Kidd Candelario made for JG back in the early '70's for his listening pleasure. It was labeled Garcia/Saunders jams with no venue or date associated with the tape. I don't remember if it was a cassette or reel source." I have gathered that Jerry's tapes found themselves in the possession of his ex-/"it's complicated" Debbie, whose Cincinnati-area acquaintance, or acquaintance's acquaintance Will Boswell obtained copies in ca. spring 1979. Note: contrary to the assertion in shnid-93137, the tape did not come from Peter Kafer. Later shnids have more accurate information, though none of them have complete and correct information.

2) Band: see Pat's testimony: "Garcia/Saunders".

3) Date: We are given the date of 5/20/71 based on an analysis by David Lemieux, apparently comparing this with Garcia Vault tape dated 5/21/71. See shnid-100855.

4) Venue: Pat Lee and friends concluded that the tape was from the Matrix, based on its sound profile. Matt Smith reached the same conclusion, as reported in shnid-93137. The venue is currently given as Keystone Korner, which seems to derive from Lemieux's analysis. I think KK is right, see below.

Metadata Analysis

First, along with Rob Eaton, Lemieux would be the guy likeliest to be able to make this judgment, just for his ears and understanding of the music. The fact that he has access to a piece of tape that no-one else can compare, and that his A/B comparison leads to the JGMS 5/20/71 KK, is probably sufficient to call QED.

But, of course, I don't give up that easily when there are dead horses to beat. ;-)

Second, related, DL2 understands something that I think is hard to see from outside the Vault: tapes were probably recorded in batches at this early stage. In Bayesian terms, knowing that there's a tape of 5/21/71 in the Vault leads us to raise the subjective posterior probability that the prior night was also taped. Jerry wanted to have some tapes of this newish outfit to listen back to. He did that sort of thing. He had Kidd or Bob Matthews or someone come down to the club and spin a couple of nights' oxide. Maybe he leaves with the tape, or maybe he asks Kidd for it a day or month later. Kidd grabs one of the nights, while another night travels a different path, to an acclimatized Vault shelf in southern California somewhere. (It is noteworthy that "5/20/71" does not appear to be in the Vault, while 5/21/71 does - I agree with MS that this suggests that Jerry's tape --i.e., Debbie's tape-- was a master reel, so we are listening to a first copy. However, the tape feels edited down, too, so unless Will introduced these, it's possible that master reels are with Kidd or elsewhere.) Regarding specifically whether this might be Thursday 5/20 or Saturday 5/22, that's of course hard to say, but the tiny crowd makes Thursday sound more likely than Saturday. These shows were listed in the paper ("Rock, Pop Entertainment Here," San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 1971, p. 59), but a Thursday might have been reasonably quiet.

 

Third, we are blessed with a 20 minute tape fragment traveling as "5/11/71 Matrix" (shnid-28784 | listening notes), also featuring "Save Mother Earth". Lemieux A/B'd two pieces of tape, but we can triangulate to publicly-traded tape. The "5/11/71 Matrix" performance of SME sounds very much like this one, on every level. It especially strikes me that Garcia's guitar sounds the same, and it sounds a little 1968ish to me. A few times I said "sounds like Hartbeats 1968" when auditioning. Yet these two pieces of tape must be very nearly contemporaneous to each other, and they seem to have arrived by reasonably independent routes within 9 days of each other in May 1971. (To ensure independence of observations, I'd like to ask Lemieux if he has listened to 5/11/71 or not.) Again, the fact that these seem to say "May 1971" makes it more likely that they really are from May of 1971. And, Bayes again, the fact that we have collector tape called "5/11/71 Matrix" joins the fact of Vault tape from 5/21/71 in increasing the likelihood of escaped-Vault tape from 5/20/71.

Contra

What about the old notion that this was a Matrix tape? I agree with Pat et al. that it sounds like the Matrix, both in terms of some monitor fuzz around the recording characteristic of tapes made there and in terms of the room feel. I did an "applause analysis" after t03 and t04, and it sounds like a few dozen people in small room. Moreoever, it sounds for all the world like a few dozen people in small room at 3138 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, based on all of the circulating tape from that room from about the same time period. It sounds like a Matrix Tape.

Yet, as Pat has said, "It was purely our guess that it came from the Matrix, due to the sound, nothing else" and here's the kicker - we have no idea what Keystone Korner sounded like. My notes have it as capacity 200. So, while I guess it was bigger than the Matrix, it was not a big room. If Lemieux is correct that this is a Thursday night, a reasonably small crowd might be indicated.

What worries me more is the consonance of this tape with every Matrix tape I have ever heard, which is, well, a lot, in terms of monitor fuzz, the sound of the hardware. The fact that "5/11/71 Matrix" is labeled as such and is very similar worries me a little bit, too, but not as much. He could have asked for tape to be spun both times and places that month, and although "5/11/71 Matrix" sounds like an ambient (i.e., aud) rather than a line (i.e., sbd) recording, that's not dispositive, either. Dead sound guys were known to record from the hall, no reason it couldn't have happened on a Tuesday at the Matrix. The tape is a little degraded (SME is pitched very differently on the two tapes), and it's hard to see. But, again, my point here is that we don't have a baseline of what KK should have sounded like. Lemieux does, and he thinks it sounds the same. So I reckon that what we are picking up is that as contemporaneous performances in small rooms, possibly recorded on the same gear, tend to sound a lot alike.

Bottom line

I conclude that these pieces of tape are correctly labeled JGMS 5/20/71 Keystone Korner.

Corry concurs: "I have done a little listening and decided that your analysis is fully supported by the evidence, even if the evidence itself is pretty sketchy. A Thursday night tape (May 20), recorded and casually edited by an insider (like Kidd Candelario) for Jerry's pleasure and analysis makes sense of what is missing and present."

JGMS: Matrix, May 11-12, 1971

There is a great half-hour tape labeled as Garcia-Saunders at the Matrix, May 11, 1971. I had always thought it was a little suspect, as I had never seen any other corroborating information, though it is listed at the Chicken's Matrix List.

This calendar listing from the San Francisco Chronicle (May 10, 1971, p. 45) not only puts JGMS at Matrix on Tuesday, May 11, but also Wednesday, May 12 - a new show to The List.

For color, I have been entering most everything I come across for 660 Great Highway. In 1971, I track Keystone Korner listings, since Freddie was still running it. I have also been entering the Tuesday auditions at Fillmore West whenever I find them - they have historically been absent from the Chicken's Fillmore West List, which originated in posters (of which there were none for the auditions). See Corry and Ross's lists of Tuesday Fillmore auditions for 1968-69 and 1970-71 for what I think is a more updated take on all of that.

No, I don't know who titular Jack is. I assume it's related to the SF mayoral elections, as many benefits seem to have been held at Friends and Relations. I assume based on today's electoral calendars that these were primaries, to select party candidates for the ca. November elections, but I don't know that.

New to The List

I'll be posting some new-to-The-List dates ad seriatim.

JGMS: Wednesday, December 9, 1970, Matrix

San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1970, p. 62.

 JGMS: Wednesday, January 6, 1971, Matrix

Wasserman, John L. 1971. A Talent Bigger Than Her Name. San Francisco Chronicle, January 6, 1971, p. 38.

NRPS: Monday, January 11, 1971, Lion's Share
JGMS: Tuesday, January 12, 1971, Matrix
JGMS: Wednesday, January 13, 1971, Matrix

Wasserman, John L. 1971. John Lennon's Windy Candor. San Francisco Chronicle, January 11, 1971, p. 38.

"Opening Today," San Francisco Chronicle, January 12, 1971, p. 35.

Wasserman, John L. 1971. Big Names on the Peninsula. San Francisco Chronicle, January 13, 1971, p. 44.

JGMS: Monday, February 8, 1971, Matrix. Note that the Chicken's Matrix List shows a second night on Tuesday, February 9, but that is contradicted by the Chronicle listing, which tips John Lee Hooker.

Wasserman, John L. 1971. The Man Who Picks The Hits. San Francisco Chronicle, February 8, 1971, p. 42.

 JGMS: Thursday, March 25, 1971, Keystone Korner.

Wasserman, John L. 1971. On the Town: Some Travesties in the Music Biz [Something Else]. San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 1971, p. 42.

Carlos Santana and Merl Saunders - February 22, 1971, Matrix, San Francisco

Wasserman, John L. 1971. The Big Sound At Lake Tahoe ["Something Else" subhead], San Francisco Chronicle, February 22, 1971, p. 40.

The Chicken's Matrix list  doesn't show a few of these Matrix gigs, so I'll throw them out there.

Monday; February 22, 1971; Carlos Santana and Merl Saunders
Tuesday; February 23, 1971; Larry Coryell
Wednesday; February 24, 1971; Larry Coryell

I think you guys will also be interested in the Tuesday night Fillmore West rehearsals. Since there were no posters (and presumably not terribly many attendees), these have probably been a little more elusive. All of this will be entered into shared data at some point.

Don't even get me started about Hubbard and Hancock. I don't know if Herbie was into Mwandishi by this time or not. I have a sense of what Freddie was playing around this time, interpolating through a few 1970 and 1971 dates that are out and about. Red Clay and all that ... would be absolutely smokin', I am sure. I wonder what was the capacity of the Both/And?

My main thing was to point out Carlos Santana and Merl Saunders gigging at the Matrix. By this time, Jerry and Merl were a regular thing. So here's a nice little instance of where Jerry's out of town with his day job, Merl is working gigs of his own. Naturally enough. Gotta eat.

But that this was Carlos and Merl at the Matrix makes it all the more interesting. I assume there are Santana freaks out there who know about this. I should assume that it's in McNally and Jackson and probably that Corry has already blogged about this, at length. :) But I, for one, don't recall hearing about this.

2/22/71, Monday night. Carlos and Merl (and who else??) jamming at the Matrix. Yeah, I'd soak up some beer for the privilege. Must have been a good payday all around. I wonder how the music was? I wonder if it was taped? This is just a marker, have at it.

Hope you are all well. While I still need to be on hiatus from this material, one has to be opportunistic when the research opportunities present themselves. I'll probably do more of this as summer rolls around.

Matrix footage

https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/210748

KRON-TV News report from February 3rd 1967 at The Matrix nightclub in San Francisco, at 3138 Fillmore Street. Features views of rock band The Only Alternative & His Other Possibillities rehearsing onstage and an interview with new singer Kay and songwriter Tor Olson. They discuss the difficulty of defining their 'sound' and the creativity of the San Francisco music scene.

Wow. h/t Yellow Shark.

Hartbeats as Tempo Études

LN jg1968-10-30.hartbeats.163mins.sbd-gadsden.xxxxxx.flac1644

Well, we probably won't ever be able to identify everything about the various Matrix Tapes (dates, personnel, etc.), with 100% certainty. But there's no particular reason to doubt that this is something like Mickey and the Hartbeats (here, as Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, with guest Elvin Bishop on a few tunes) from around Wednesday, October 30, 1968.

Many people find this too noodly, but I appreciate them in all kinds of ways, among them that the middle section (t08-t16) is a like a long tempo Étude. I can appreciate this material as such.

I have listened closely to the bass playing and other context clues in the last fragment. I hear Phil repeatedly speaking and have to conclude that it's Phil-souding-like-Jack, rather than Jack-sounding-like-Phil.

Mickey and the Hartbeats
The Matrix
3138 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
October 30, 1968 (Wednesday)
163 minute sbd via Bill Gadsden 2008 reel transfer flac1644 JGMF

(23 tracks, 163:04)

t01. noodling [0:53] ->
t02. Dark Star [17:09] ->
t03. Death Letter Blues [8:57]
t04. talk (1) and tuning [2:19]
t05. The Other One // [15:57#] %

t06. talk and tuning [0:30] %

t07. // Turn On Your Lovelight [#9:30] [0:09] %

t08. talk (2) and tuning [0:40]
t09. noodling (New Potato Caboose theme) [1:10] ->
t10. talk (3, 4) and noodling [3:48]
t11. Clementine [3:57] ->
t12. The Seven [9:30] ->
t13. Elevens, Sevens and Sixes [2:04] ->
t14. The Eleven [7:35] ->
t15. Death Don't Have //% No Mercy [8:#32] (5)
t16. talk (6) and tuning [1:18]
-enter Elvin Bishop-
t17. untitled 19681030a [14:53] ->
t18. untitled 19681030b [6:20] (7) [0:10]
t19. talk (8) and tuning [0:33]
t20. Prisoner Blues [10:49] (9) [0:05] % [0:09]
-exit Elvin Bishop-

t21. ... The Seven [9:29] (10) [0:35]
t22. tuning and talk (11) [6:39]
t23. Dark Star ... [19:10#]

! Band: Hartbeats
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Phil Lesh - el-bass;
! lineup: Mickey Hart - percussion;
! guest: Elvin Bishop - el-g (t17-t20), vocals (t20).

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/19681030-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/1205 (Gadsden/Wise/Sacks, presumed same source tapes, but older transfer than the present fileset); http://etreedb.org/shn/112737 (PNW flac2496 presumed lineage MSR (Abrams) > R (Kafer) > R @ 7.5ips (Will Boswell) > digital, leading me to believe that 112737 has an extra reel gen, since IIRC Gadsden in 2008 transfered the Kafer "1st copy" reel, which is represented in this fileset; 112737 is also mono); http://etreedb.org/shn/116833 (Berger flac2496 from Moore unlineaged stereo reel, TT 89 minutes (so "incomplete).

! Deadlists Comments [abridged]: The 'On The Town" column in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, by Ralph J. Gleason, which which gave listings of what bands were playing locally, says that "Jerry Garcia & Friends" are playing at The Matrix" on these dates (see the San Francisco Chronicle for Monday October 28, 1968 p. 45). Bobby and Pigpen were absent. On page 26 of issue #34 (Summer 1996) of Dupree's Diamond News, Dick Latvala stated in an interview 'What I know exists in our Vault are the shows, and they are on four-track 15 i.p.s." and 'There are two dates, 10/28 and 10/29, both of which have four reels. On 10/30 there's a Dark Star Jam into a Jerry vocal, could be Death Letter Blues'. He also stated 'That's what's written on the box. I haven't listened to it.'"

! Historical/dating: Note that Dick's statement contradicts itself in saying that there are two days (28 and 29) but then describing what's on the tape of the 30th. I do not know whether the GD Vault copies are masters, copies from Abrams's house tapes, or something else. I suspect they're copies from Abrams's house tapes, but I do not know for sure. Regarding how this relates ... [edit: not sure where I was going to go with that]

! R: Tape Provenance: Peter Abram's 7" 1/4 track SBD reels @ 7.5ips > Peter Kafer/Bill Gadsden's 7" 1/4 track Maxell reels @ 7.5ips > Revox B77 playback > Alesis Masterlink (sampling @ 24 bit, 96kHz) > CD > EAC > CDWave > TLH (FLAC level 8) > foobar2000 (tagging).

! R: the sound quality is what you'd expect for a Matrix Tape. This is a stereo recording.

! historical: on shnid 116833 Berger speculates that only the first 90 minutes is from this date, while the rest is from 10/8/68. I don't think so. I have listened to and noted both, and I can confirm that the talk around the various pieces of music is different. I haven't A-B'd them directly, which would seal the deal, I think.

! P: t02 Dark Star: Phil Lesh is a monster right from the get-go. He is fiercely melodic right from the start. This really is an attempt to have two lead instruments simultaneously, because Lesh and Garcia are on the same plane. Jerry seems to quote Tighten Up @ 1:49, and he's still dancing with some of that feeling around 2:15. Very sweet stuff. . Back to Star at 2:30. @ 6:24 Garcia quotes Born-Cross-Eyed for a a little bit. At 11 min mark things take a darker, slower turn. While JG is signalling the return of Dark Star @ ca. 13:00, Mickey makes a little statement on the toms. Jerry considers but re-asserts Dark Star. Mickey and Phil assent, Mickey picking the scrapy-turny things again and Philip doing his Dark Star melodic statement. That rough breadcrumb framework established, Garcia wanders around again, but with Dark Star now providing a tighter backbone.

! setlist t03 Death Letter Blues is the Leadbelly song (see Jackson 1987); @ 6:24 Jerry early engagement with a little bit of what would become the And We Bid You Goodnight/Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad theme. This is just about a one-off version.

! t04 (1) JG: "Thank you. Uhh, I might explain, uh, that we're ...we're really here just playin' ... just goofin'. I mean, we really don't have anything in mind or anything. Yeah. (laughs) We're just thrown together by fate ... and so we're uh playin' Fate Music. Also called Luck Music." Someone else: [inaudible]. JG: "Good one, good one. ... fateful."

! P: t05 TOO @ 7:20 Jerry starts a crazy hot, pretty fast 12-beat up-down pattern -- very unique. Phil hears the promise and jumps on it right away. @ 8:17, a little Latin feel. Jerry picks up that earlier progression @ 8:31. It's real nice, very power-tro-ish. Not quite Latin (though there were some Spanish inflections between the two groups of 12-note runs), but hot as hell. @ 8:52-9:02 Phil lands on some pretty deep two-beat march space, then a little Spanish 4-beat, then they are back on the Other One by 9:15.

! R: t05 TOO cuts out.

! R: t07 Lovelight cuts in.

! t07 Lovelight is insrumental.

! R: t08 there are various tape splices and some static during this long tuning

! t08 (2) can hear Elvin Bishop say something like "Let's play, man." @ 0:35 JG: "I don't think we have any straps. ... I'll sit down [?if we need?]." Maybe they are looking for a guitar strap for Elvin.

! t10 @ 1:49 (3) Mickey Hart: "Hey Ram?" Ramrod: "Yeah." MH: "Did you get the hammer? Did you get the [inaudible]?" More inaudible talk.

! t10 at end (4) Phil Lesh: "Wanna try the six?" JG: "Yep. Sure."

! setlist: t11 Clementine: This is an instrumental version. See LIA's post for an analysis of the song and how this version fits into its short, uneven history.

! t12 The Seven: I track "The Seven" where I track it, but the whole 3-minute range of "Clementine" is really the gradual transmogrification of The Six into The Seven. I put it here because I take Mickey's hard assertion of the tempo at this point to signify the change. Since this is a series of tempo Études, well, the tempo *constitutes the "song".

! P: t12 This version of "The Seven" , notes from a musical person, MJ: "3/4 time jazz waltz, but technically not because and it swung of course because it was a jazz waltz. If it is a 6/8 it's slow. The fact that it's swung means that if it was a normal 6/8 it would ... usually if it's in 6/8 at a normal speed ... so the combo of 6/8 with swing beat makes it unusual. A slow 6/8. Sounds more like a 3/4" to MJ.

! P: t12 Note the sequence: "The Six" -> "The Seven" -> "The Eleven" ... this is a tempo Étude. Insofar as we like attributions from The Horse's Mouth, we might even consecrate (by officializing, naturally) this track as "The Six", per Phil's identification (see note 4, above).

! t13 @ ca. 0:13ff Jerry is playing The Eleven while Phil is back to Clementine/The Six! @1339 hear someone say something. Now Phil is playing The Seven while Garcia is playing The Eleven. That's really what Hartbeats is all about. Mixing tempos. Garcia is mostly staying on 11/8, while Phil plays around with sixes (Clementine) and sevens. So I am just coining a term for this: Elevens, Sevens and Sixes.

! t14 The Eleven is instrumental.

! R: t15 DDHNM a little static @ 0:53, 1:14; hiss seems to come up during this track.

! R: t15 DDHNM splice @ 5:08, unknown amount missing.

! t15 (5): JG: "Thank you."

! t16 (6) JG: "Well, where's Elvin? Where'd he go? Where'd that skunk go? Where'd he go?"

! personnel: t17 Elvin Bishop is present from this point forward (from 94 minutes in). As far as I can hear, he is only present until the end of t20 (about 33 minutes).

! t17 untitled 19681030a is a nice mournful theme. It has a name, I think (hence me calling it untitled 19681030a-I think this can be substituted with an actual name ... if it were just a theme, I might have called it "mournful theme" or something like that). Before the track mark, you can hear Jerry asking something like "what's that tune?" I want to say that it's probably an Elvin Bishop melody, but I have no idea. It's really pretty. Damnit, what is the name of this? It surely has a name. @ 6:38ff Elvin is doing a theme that sounds almost related to New Potato Caboose thing. It sounds a little bit like Donovan's First There Is A Mountain, as well. @ 7:40 quotes The Seven a little bit. He, especially, is focused on these tempo Études. In the 11-12 minute marks it has more NPC feel. Around 12 minutes in, someone yells a change to someone else, but I can't hear what it is. Things slow down. By 14-min mark Phil is referencing The Seven again. @ 14:18 Garcia takes up a four note repeating thing, and then by 14:30 he is doing a slowed-down version of his ending riff from Born Cross-Eyed! His work here is very much more reminiscent of early 1968 than of, say, the Fillmore West shows four months later.

! t18 untitled 19681030b is a blues instrumental. It sounds very similar to Prisoner Blues. It cooks pretty well. In the late 3-min mark it has a little Death Letter Blues vibe. In the 4-minute mark Jerry and Elvin have some very nice call-and-response going ... Jerry is being the gunslinger here, for sure.

! t18 (7) JG seems to say "That's right" at the end. Then he says, obviously in answer to a query about what to play (presumably from Elvin): "Anything you like. Just start it."

! t19 (8) JG: "JG: "Hey, you got a vocal mic for over at that end? Elvin's gonna sing one." He's smiling behind his (?non-? beard) as he mentions Elvin singing.

! setlist: t20 Prisoner Blues: This is presumably just a way of being conventional about this. It's not a song so much as a theme around a slow blues.

! t20 (9) Elvin Bishop: "Thanks."

! setlist: We can't know for sure if the stuff from this last piece (t21-23, 35+ minutes) is from the same night as the other material. For that matter, it's really impossible to know whether anything on opposite sides of any tape discontinuity is from the same night. This could be snippets. I have separated out what I view as the different pieces with an extra line in the tracklist. I don't know that it is from one night or several, and I am not trying to sow obscurity or confusion. We might as well assume that this is from the same night and that that night is approximately correctly dated as October 30, 1968. I mention this only to get in front of the question that might arise from the presence of "repeat" engagements with The Seven and Dark Star. Given the exploratory nature of these Hartbeats dates, it's entirely possible that they took repeated, separate passes at these tunes. But it's also possible, given the nature of Matrix Tapes, that this material is a separate snippet from a separate night or set.

! personnel: There is no second guitar on the last piece.

! R: t21 The Seven cuts in.

! t21 @ 1:36 JG is yelling something. Sounds like he says "It all falls in, man", mentions Phil and the bass.

! t21 (10) JG: "That's not necessary. You don't really have to do that. We're ... uhhh ... We're here primarily to screw around. And, uh .. so don't expect anything that isn't screwing around. Because everything we're doing is screwing around unless otherwise stated in advance." JGMF NB this makes me think this piece is from early in a set/show/date.

! R: t22 tick @ 1:16.

! t22 (11) Phil Looney Tunes goof @ 2:45. They are talking about drinks, I think. Phil asks "Ohhh, 7-Up this time?" @ 4:11 Mickey says "Hey Ramrod?" Around 6-minutes in Mickey's gear is ready and he says "OK, now let's play." So this long interlude sounds like it was to do with gear. Indeed, the drums seem to be audible in the right at the start of the track, then move middle/left. Phil: "A little bossa nova, huh?" JG: "Bossa nova?"

! t23 compare this Dark Star with the "November 1968" version. This one starts off with the bass and guitar together, jumping right into the guiro -- a classic start to primal Dark Star. I think that one is different.

! R: t23 hard for me to tell if it's a tape fade (I think it is) or if they just soften to a close with Dark Star.

REFERENCE:
Jackson, Blair. 1987b. Roots, part 14. Golden Road no. 14 (Summer): 44.