This show has long been AWOL among collectors, but a nice 1st gen copy of an undetermined master audience tape has just come into the light (shnid-134922). Thanks to Alan Richman and dminches for getting it out there!
I decided to post a little miscellanea, maybe a few notes.
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| Listing for JGB at Page Auditorium, Duke University, April 4, 1976 (NC Anvil, April 3, 1976, p. 10) |
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| 8:30 PM (early) show ticket, via psilo.net |
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| Listing for JGB 4/4/76, unknown (campus?) paper, p. 3. |
The last is the cover of Carolina, April 8, 1976, which includes a great review by Richard McManus of the late show. These shows have a sweet energy that McManus captures nicely. Here are a few of the quotes I like from McManus (my copy is barely legible)
It was minutes before one o'clock on Monday morning when a filtered mist of white and blue light emptied onto the stage, where green monitors and yellow dots of light indicated that the show was tuned up, gassed, and ready to take off. A stubby man, his face shrouded with black, curly hair, straps on his specifically-made Doug Irwin-Alembic guitar, loiters in the electric silence for a moment, then steps into the light as he strums a beautiful introductory chord. The stage lights have found the rest of the band as the anxious crowd [illegible] a roar of anticipation and approval, and suddenly it's Jerry Garcia and Friends, lilting into a sexy 'Sugaree'.
- He describes Garcia's gaze as "beneficent, raptured". He continues "Garcia has a habit of gathering his enthralled audience within a web of gestures, emotions, spiralling guitar work and plaintive vocals that is nearly impossible to resist". NB gestures? In later years, he'd barely move.
- McManus loves "Duke's tasty little Page Auditorium, a room whose intimacy is inadvertently masked by the pretense of the surrounding architecture". On the tape, the room does sound good.
- Donna Jean's "harmonies with Garcia, particularly on Dylan's 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door', were sweet, sensual pieces that elevated, reassured, and satisfied", while the band overall generated a "Smooth, smile-inspiring warmth".
The references to "Jerry Garcia and Friends" are strange, given my own frame of reference, which is that the Jerry Garcia Band had been institutionalizing itself quite quickly since it formed a half-year prior to this show, and central to this, present in every contract that I have seen, is consistently "Billing the JGB". The Page Aud gig contract references Jerry Garcia Band on the front, it was a John Scher operation (partnering with the campus events outfit, DUU Attractions). I didn't get to see later pages of the contract, but I have to assume that the boilerplate for "Billing the JGB" was in there - they didn't vary much in any given period. Who knows? Crazy College Kids.
"Jerry Garcia and Friends" got $5k guaranteed, but did not earn the 60% top-up on revenue over $17k. Sunday night, or something.
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| Table xxx. Final Box Office Report - JGB at Page Auditorium, Duke University, April 4, 1976 |
Not that anyone but me cares, but let me come clean on Clio here. Note that I use 11:59. We know from McManus that the late show took place early morning of Monday April 5th. so I am not being strictly accurate, here, but I want people to be able to recognize what I am talking about, so convention must trump strict accuracy in this case. Too bad, not sure what the solution can be.
Last point: McManus captures something that I think was very fleeting - a period when sweetness and light really suffused the Garcia Band. It was all that, natch, this being planet Earth. But he really picked up on this, and I don't think he was just being googly-eyed. I think that it was true, sometime very early morning of Monday, April 5th. And that makes me happy. I am reminded of Ed Perlstein's amazing picture on the cover of the Don't Let Go CD release, soft blue light, the reflection off the white Travis Bean guitar, Jerry thin and reasonably groomed and dropping into a vocal or a lick - lovely.
Selected info and listening notes below.
My bottom line is that I *love* the early show and really like the late show - both are above average for the period, IMO, YMMV.
! seealso: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/11/ln-jg1976-04-03jgbearlyaud.html
Last point: McManus captures something that I think was very fleeting - a period when sweetness and light really suffused the Garcia Band. It was all that, natch, this being planet Earth. But he really picked up on this, and I don't think he was just being googly-eyed. I think that it was true, sometime very early morning of Monday, April 5th. And that makes me happy. I am reminded of Ed Perlstein's amazing picture on the cover of the Don't Let Go CD release, soft blue light, the reflection off the white Travis Bean guitar, Jerry thin and reasonably groomed and dropping into a vocal or a lick - lovely.
Selected info and listening notes below.
My bottom line is that I *love* the early show and really like the late show - both are above average for the period, IMO, YMMV.
! seealso: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/11/ln-jg1976-04-03jgbearlyaud.html
