About Last Night

Hell may freeze over, but here I am. A new man. (Call it my epitaph for JGMF.) But I am going to post about the Post-Jerry-Garcia-Grateful-Dead-Cinematic-Universe (PJGGDCU). Just read Selvin 2018 for a sense of things. I think Thoughts On The Dead coined an acronym for this which is of course canon. I am just goofin'.

I have been mostly lukewarm, and so not paid much attention, to all of the members' doings since 1995. Phil in April 2000 from the 3rd row was utterly antiseptic, all brain and no soul. Ratdog in whatever year I went to the Tower Theater, we left at setbreak. Man needs his sleep. I never saw any of the others, I don't think, until Dead & Co., which I have seen a number of times because they come to me at Folsom Field. I have enjoyed those days in Colorado and grooving around, but the music was mostly incidental.

All that said, last night at Folsom Field was the first time I have felt the magic since I was in the same space as Jerry, that being:

GD August 14, 1991 at Cal Expo in Sacramento; and
GD December 28, 1991 in the Coliseum Arena in Oakland

Both were good, though I am not a fan of Vince's sound. The main thing was that I had to shift my energy to new things.

32 years later, I felt just a little bit, a flash, of that same ol' magic. I did the whole weekend volunteering with campus Guest Relations to wristband folks with floor seats for the first set, then free to roam in the second.

It was absolutely wonderful. If you have talked to me for 1 minute, you know I love Colorado with all my heard. I love Boulder. You know I love the University of Colorado Boulder. You know I love My People: Scholars, Students, Staff, Heads and Other! And you know I LOVE music.

It was all that! I think I may now be up to the mountains for some backpacking.

Taper Extraordinaire Sean Webber-Small

Spinning Sean Webber-Small's spaced omni recordings of the GD at Cal Expo on this date in 1990. I am not sure if I was there - I don't think so, but I can't really remember and I can't find my stubs to verify one way or the other.

But SWS generously shares some insights into what went into this pull, via a comment at the Archive fileset, and they are so valuable for the historical record that I wanted to reproduce them here. Thank you, Sean Webber-Small and all the tapers, including Marcus Buick and Tom Hughes, good ol' Campolindo buddies and members in good standing of the elite Bay Area taper community of the day, who are namechecked here.

This was the first year since the 1980's that there was no Greek and Frost shows, which was a bummer. Fortunately Uncle Bill booked the band into Cal Expo. It was not the Greek, but it was good. 

For me, these shows were stressful, but that was somewhat normal. I always felt the pressure of making the best recording at the show. It was not as much of an ego thing as much as it was that I believed I was capturing "the record" for the show. This was especially true when I knew that none of my Schoeps / Digital posse was going to be there. And that was the case for Cal Expo in 1990. 

The stress and planning for these shows started the day mail order was announced. I had just had knee surgery and knew I was going to be on crutches in June. Worse, I needed to plan for who was going to help as the show was general admission and I wanted to run spaced omi-directional capsules which would require managing a large territory. I would need a plan and of course help. While I might have owned the gear, positioned the mics and hit play/record, good recordings were a 100% team effort. And I needed a team!

For me, the key to making a good recording always seems to come down down to a few key things:

1. Having the right gear for the application. 
2. Placing the microphones in the right spot to get the best balanced sound in the venue. 
3. Controlling the people around the microphones so that talking and extraneous noise is not heard or only minimally heard on the recording. 

From my knowledge of the venue, basically an open field, Schoeps MK2s spaced omni-directional capsules were my first choice. I would be using them with my Doug Oade built microphone power supply and a relatively new recording device: a DAT. Sometime in 1989 the PCM crew made the jump to using DATs. At these gig's I was using the Panasonic SV250. 

Location, location, location.... From my show experience and listening pleasure, I always wanted to be as close to the Front of House console as possible. If you think about it, the band's audio engineer, Dan Healy, is mixing first and foremost for himself. Is he making it sound good in the entire venue, sure. But the nature of mixing a room has it that the sound is naturally best where the engineer is standing. My goal: get in front of, but as close to Dan as possible without making it too easy for security to come in and get us. As a reminder, although taping in 1990 was allowed, it was only allowed BEHIND the front of house console. Recording in front of the console was a big No No and as such, put us at risk of being thrown out every time we recorded there. Risky business every show for me.

For spaced omni's I would need two areas (blankets), one for each mic between 8' and 12 ' apart - with each mic being equidistant from the stage. Today I would do this with a laser measure, but in 1990, not an option. So I had to triangulate using the front of house console and the side grandstands. More "feel" than exact science. 

To pull this off I would need 4 to 6 people around each microphone and stand and two to three blankets. That's roughly ten people and two mic stands to coordinate and manage.

The bad news was that I was on crutches - which, was also the good news as I was able to enter the venue early with the blankets, the gear and a helper. We laid out our spot and waited untill friends and people sympathetic to our recording arrived. 

As I was always trying to figure out how to make a better recording, I decided to try and move the microphones from closer to 8' on the 8th, 10' on the 9th and 12' on the 10th. I know the notes on this say the mics were spread at 8', but I just checked my notes and this night we were closer to 9.5'. 

While I hate to leave people out that helped at the show, and there were many - I need to special thanks a couple of peeps. First and foremost, my helper extraordinaire Cindy R. Calling her a helper is not quite right. These days I would call her a co-producer or associate producer. She helped in the planning, standing in line, getting friends over to help stand near the mics and telling them all to be quiet. I should probably mentioned she also put up with my crazy "taper" idiosyncrasies - and I had many. Thanks Cindy R! I also remember our friend Marc T. was also there. He was there with B&K 4011's in the middle of our spaced omni's. Also there an of huge help was Marcus B. and Tom - my old roomies! Thanks Dudes.

The recordings for all three nights turned out pretty fine. I would say some of our finest. So fine in fact, a friend of shared them with his pal who was tight with Dan Healy. The next thing I know he had digital soundboards of all three nights! Of course the SB's became the "goto" recordings for the shows for a while. But upon further review from the officials in the booth, these recordings get me closer to what it was like being there on those warm summer nights in 1990.

On the 9th, I can still remember Garcia rocking back and forth during lovelight looking offstage at someone, playing his heart out with an energy that filled us all up.

It was good.

JGB: September 19, 1975, Crabshaw Corner, Sacramento, CA

Thanks to Corry for answering my query on January 26, 1976 which also included a question about 11/4/78.

Before starting my post, I  just want to take a second to recognize Corry's role in Garcia historiography. He has been not only an essential bridge across different documents (Soto, McNally) and traditions (from handwritten lists to here), but obviously provided a ton of what we know about the everyday JGB shows through his careful documentation of the phone messages.  These and countless other facts have made their way to the present time through Corry's initial hard work, then his sharing of everything with Deadbase, then the Jerry Site. Fantastic. I really started getting crazy about this stuff in about 2000, and The Jerry Site was already available. I now realize how utterly dependent that amazing site always has been on Corry's earlier work. (And while I am at it, thank you, Ryan. The Jerry Site has been the oxygen of my own researches.) (And thanks to Scofield and Allan as well, for their unbelieveable scholarship and generosity.)

Anyway, that said. From where does the listing for Jerry Garcia Band, Friday, September 19, 1975, Crabshaw Corner, Sacramento, CA originate?

This is a really important show in the Big Picture.

We actually know very little about how Garcia's 1975 bands were born and passed from the scene. We are still struggling with basics about Legion of Mary such as "when was the fist show billed under the name Legion of Mary?", and "Why and how did LOM terminate abruptly on ca. July 6, 1975? sometime in summer 1975?"  Then, we have this band: the very first Jerry side band to bear his name, a crucial transformation of the thing from fun and loose and "maybe-I-can-just-jam-while-staying-partly-anonymous" to "I need cash and have to monetize my name and myself to do it."

We know that Round Records was a serious and risky financial investment for for Garcia. (For more, a bit earlier on Round Records, see here. We have a lot of work to do on that issue.)  In September 1975, following the dates on Scofield's Round Records discography (which needs some corrections, but is a precious resource), it seems like they would have been digesting "sales numbers" (which may have had only tenuous connection to either "sales" or "numbers") and seeing the oncoming failure of the company, which I guess would be digested fully by December 1975. I'd like a cleaner timeline on that, but that's what I've got.

Might this business aspect have led to the various band changes that happen in this period of time?

Conjecture 1: there was an analysis suggesting that less money could be made working with Merl than with Nicky.
Conjecture 2: Merl's personal issues around this time maybe make it an easier moment to part ways with him.
Conjecture 3: Nicky Hopkins, Ron Tutt, John Kahn as The Jerry Garcia Band (with a definite article, i.e., meant to last) was foreseen as a possible permanent recording and touring entity. Think about the records one could make with this Band: the world's greatest rock and roll Session Man (Nicky Hopkins); a session monster in his own right and backbone of The King's own band, fer chrissakes  (Ronnie Tutt); your DNA-level musical, personal, professional and financial partner who brings lots of LA connections, studio players and resources, production expertise, and financial resources into the picture (John Kahn).

Now, we know that it didn't work out that way - in short, Nicky's personal situation made untenable, whatever the musical promise and problems of this aggregation (of which I think, perhaps, the latter outweighed the former). But that doesn't mean that it wasn't the goal. In fact, I have seen but can't locate evidence that this was precisely the goal, such that there were contracts and stuff signed creating the Jerry Garcia Band as a legal entity co-owned by these four men (or, alternately, and I think just a bit later, by Garcia-Kahn-Tutt). But this is the pivotal moment. After a couple of day flirtation with another deeply troubled piano genius --The Bayou Maharajah hisself, James Booker-- Jerry defaults to the "comfort band" of Keith and Donna. After Nicky and Booker, Jerry would never again play with a keyboardist who was either good enough or empowered enough to push/challenge Garcia, to supply any kind of authoritative counterpoint to Jerry. And, indeed, one might make the argument that it wasn't until Garcia and Grisman came back together almost 15 years later that he would play with someone who really challenged him outside the GD. The JGB became a comfort band. (NB the historical coincidence of Garcia's alleged last time playing with Grisman before ca. 1990: ca. August 1975. Then the shit would hit the fan with OAITW [Grisman not getting paid, apparently], and they'd be estranged. Again, I think this episode reflects things going sour with Round, and or the perfidy of Ron Rakow, or both.)

So, 9/19/75 is early in the tenure of the first JGB, but how early? Conventional historiography lists "Jerry Garcia Band" shows on Tuesday, August 5, 1975 (Keystone, Berkeley) and Weds.-Thurs, August 20-21, 1975 (Great American Music Hall, SF). But Corry has me totally persuaded that these were Keith And Donna Band shows. I also commented there that there were listings for Nicky Hopkins and Nils Lofgren at least on the 20th. Given that we have rehearsals that have circulated for decades with dates such as 9/1/75, and everything else, I'd concur that these August JGB listings are spurious and that the JGB of Garcia-Kahn-Hopkins-Tutt began in September, with a first gig on Thursday, September 18, 1975 at Sophie's in Palo Alto [TJS | shnid 108270 (Robert Castelli aud)]. (That gig, the 9/19 Sacramento show, and the 9/20 hometown gig at River City in Fairfax [TJS | shnid 109216 (Castelli aud)] would also be consistent with the undeniable historical observation that Garcia and Kahn liked to break new players in "off the beaten path" before taking things to the Keystone, Berkeley.) So the Sacramento show that is the nominal subject (one might say pretext) of the post would have been the second public gig.


I'll reproduce a few of the pieces from TJS here, and comment on them.

DB's list 1: Let It Rock, You Win Again, All By Myself, Tough Mama, Mississippi Moon, Pig's Boogie. DB's list 2: Lady Sleeps-> No Time, How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), I'll Take A Melody, Catfish John, Tequila, (I'm A) Road Runner, Edward.

This setlist looks absolutely characteristic. I wonder if the "Tequila" in the setlist indicates that they goofed on that song, or whether that was just Nicky asking for a drink (as he often did from onstage, most commonly, indeed, Tequila).

Corry, do you know where the DB setlist comes from?

TJS also added this note in late 2009:

An attendee notes the following about the show: "the band showed up about 90 minutes late for the show ... They called the venue from a pay phone to say they drove past Sacramento and were halfway to Reno before they realized their mistake. They were turning around and asked us to wait for them." The attendee also gave this account: "Seeing this quartet in Sacramento ... may have been my single most memorable show experience. It was a small venue with a small crowd, maybe twenty people out on the small dance floor in front of the band. ... The band came on late and obviously high and loose. After one sweet tune (I can't remember and have never seen a tape circulate) Hopkins was so moved he walked over and tearfully embraced Garcia. Then he turned and said that playing that kind of music was what he had wanted to do all of his life."

Sounds like a good old time. If that contributor or anyone else in attendance is reading this, can you please Comment? I am trying to figure out how late they started and anything more about the show. At some point, someone in the Sacto area needs to go through some papers and check on some dates. A lot of what we have is unsubstantiated, some dates may be wrong, and there may be others lurking around that we don't know about.

Anyway, a lot of buildup and circling around, not much payoff. But can anyone tell me more about this show? There's no tape in circulation.