OAITW 19730424 Inn of the Beginning, Cotati, CA

Tuesday, April 24, 1973: Old And In the Way featuring David Diadem (Grisman), Jerry Garcia and Peter Rowan played the Inn of the Beginning at 8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA, 94931. George Edwards opened. This was billed as a "Special Show" (as 3/5/73 had been) and the $2.50 ticket price was just about the most expensive the Inn had ever offered.

April 1973 Inn of the Beginning Calendar, courtesy of Mark Braunstein.

OAITW had just come off their first weekend gigs, April 20-21, 1973 at the Lion's Share (60 Red Hill Avenue, San Anselmo, CA, 94960), and would do another Friday-Saturday in a few days, the 27th and 28th at Keystone (2119 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA, 94704). (See Corry's post at LLD on the 4/27/73 billing, with broader analysis.) This is what I call the second period of OAITW's too-brief existence, during which they are trying to integrate fiddle into the band, working specifically with Richard Greene during this period. But Greene was and remains a very busy musician, and my imprecise reckonings suggest that he was around or not pretty sporadically. Here's how I currently code Greene's presence/absence during this period, though none of this is very firm.

4/12/73 Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara: present (stuff | listening notes)
4/15/73 Boarding House: present ("Four Nights at the Boarding House")
4/16/73a Boarding House: present (listening notes | "Four Nights at the Boarding House")
4/16/73b Boarding House: absent ("Four Nights at the Boarding House")
4/19/73 Lion's Share: present
4/20/73 Lion's Share: present
4/21/73 Lion's Share: present (listening notes)
4/23/73 Orphanage: absent (see below)
4/24/73 IOTB: absent (see below)
4/27/73 Keystone: present
4/28/73 Keystone: absent (I think)
4/30/73 Orphanage: absent
5/8/73 Eugene: present
5/9/73 Portland: present
5/18/73 Homer's: present
5/25/73 Bimbo's: present

Then Vassar comes in, and as far as I know Richard is done. For more on April 1973, see "Twenty-Four Performances in Twenty-Four Days: April 6-30, 1973".

The 4/23/73 gig at the Orphanage (807 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, 94133) was reviewed by Philip Elwood in the San Francisco Examiner (1). Scan below.

Elwood, Philip. 1973. A New Country Ear-Opener. San Francisco Examiner, April 24, p. 26.

Among other things, he notes that the band needs a fiddle and that Greene occasionally sits in to fill that need, implying that he was not there on the night in question. So much for Monday 4/23.

How do I reach the conclusion that Greene was not present for this Inn gig on Tuesday 4/24/73? Well, Richard Greene and Friends would play the Inn on August 2, 1973, and in that month's Inn of the Beginning Flyer, we are told that "Richard Greene played the fiddle with Seatrain the last time he was at the Inn." I think Mark Braunstein wrote that blurb, and I highly doubt the remark was an oversight. If Richard Greene had played the Inn with OAITW on 4/24/73, the blurb probably would have told us so, and certainly would not have told us anything to contradict that. Combined with the fact that such a gig was not in Richard Greene's own contemporary datebooks, I am about 99.9% sure he was not there on the date in question.

REFERENCE:
(1) Elwood, Philip. 1973. A New Country Ear-Opener. San Francisco Examiner, April 24, p. 26.

JGMS: Bo Jangle's, SF, February 11, 1972

edited, corrected

Lost Live Dead and related have inspired me. Sorry to steal your schtick! I don't get into depth (nor turn a phrase) the way LLD does, but it sure is fun, anyway.

So the SF Chronicle is almost certainly loaded with stuff of interest. Unfortunately, unless I am missing something it does not seem to be available electronically prior to 1985. The San Francisco Public Library has paper indexes back into the 70s, and fiche indexes from before then. These latter seem unreliable at best. The former (paper indexes) are fine, but obviously don't pick up things like ads or concert listings. So it's really a needle-in-a-haystack resource, involving the dizzying and eye-drying work of scanning microfilm, the quality of which ranges from OK to illegible.

Anyway, one of the really good articles I found, based on a lead (though I think it had a mistake in it) from David Dodd's quite amazing annotated bibliography (1), is the Ellwood one referenced below (2). There is so little known about these early Garcia gigs that every little piece of information is golden.

correction: I had this listed as the Chronicle, but of course Elwood was the music guy at the San Francisco Examiner. Same situation applies, a fortiori.

The article references a Jerry Garcia - Merl Saunders gig "last night" (i.e., 2/11/72) at "a far out club, Bo Jangles, at 709 Larkin" (San Francisco, CA 94109). It notes that Armanda [sic] Peraza was present on congas and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. There is no information about tunes played.

This article interests me for a few reasons.

First, until now there has not been a show for this date at the Jerry Site (TJS). I have remedied this.

Second, there is a show dated 2/12/72 at TJS, with location given as Bojangles Club, Sacramento. This listing seems to derive from the list of uncirculated Betty Boards, and gives Roger "Jellyroll" Troy as one of the guests. A few thoughts on this.

2a. Although TJS goes so far as to say that "The venue is known today as Beau's Bojangles", I certainly wonder whether this show was actually played in SF. It always seemed odd to see that Sacramento show in the mix this early - this band at this time was pretty exclusively a Bay Area (and largely a San Francisco) phenomenon. Given that they played at a Bo Jangles in SF on 2/11, I suppose its possible that the "Iranian combine" that ran the place also had one in Sacto ... stranger things could have happened.

2b. We are also left to wonder whether the "2/12" show is actually the 2/11 show discussed by Elwood. A listen to the tape, to check for the presence of Peraza, might shed some light, but at this point that's not one of my options. So this remains an open question.

As an upshot on this point #2, I'll just work under the assumption that JGMS played a Friday (11) and Saturday (12) engagement for Bo Jangles. I'll list the Friday show as SF and will leave the Saturday listing as Sacramento unless more evidence emerges. Perhaps I'll put a note on TJS listing to mention the uncertainty around the Sacramento location.

Third, in a case of Serendipity, Corry had asked in comments on the NRPS ca. 11/1/70 post whether the Both/And club was still open as late as late 1970. While it could well have opened and shut and taken on various permutations, I simply note that Elwood's article also mentions a gig "at the relatively sedate and traditional Both-And jazz club". So something by that name was running in early 1972, FWIW.


References
(1) Dodd, David G., and Robert G. Weiner. 1997. The Grateful Dead and the Deadheads: An Annotated Bibliography. Music Reference Collection no. 60. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

(2) Elwood, Philip. 1972. Distinctive Variety of Musical Styles. San Francisco Examiner, February 12, 1972, p. 8
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