JGMS: June 11, 1974 Keystone Berkeley - new to The List

So here's a new one for The List: JGMS at Keystone on Tuesday, June 11, 1974.

But note, too, that Merl is playing Sand Dunes on Monday the 10th - this could very easily be a Monday on which Garcia sat in. The fact that Tony Saunders played with Merl and Jerry the week prior (June 4 and June 6) makes it seem even more likely to me. The fact that Jerry played under Merl's billing on May 31-June 1 at the Inn of the Beginning is also suggestive.

No proof will ever turn up, of course, so this can remain little more than speculation. But I sure would have liked to belly up to the bar at the Sand Dunes on this Monday, in the thick fog and salt, and catch some tunes.

Read more:

• Jerry with Merl and/or Martin, ca. 1974, The Sand Dunes 
• JGMS: "July 21-22," 1974, Keystone, Berkeley, CA

JGMS: "July 21-22," 1974, Keystone, Berkeley, CA

**updated 20111216 2057 GMT**
Tony Saunders is the bassist on these two tapes.

The Jerry Site has listings for Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at Keystone, Berkeley, on July 21 and July 22, 1974. I doubt both date/venue combinations, for reasons I'll lay out below.

A) "JGMS 7/21/74, Keystone, Berkeley"

This first date is so obviously spurious that it barely bears laying out, but in the interests of completeness I'll do it anyway.

1) The GD played the Hollywood Bowl this date. Depending on show times both would be possible, but this seems extremely unlikely on its face.
2) Keystone billed Moby Grape and Earthquake on Sunday, 7/21, as evidenced by a Scenedrome listing in the Berkeley Barb:

 3) The recording, which is high (Betty-Board) quality but only in light circulation, contains two versions of "When I Die".


Regarding "7/21/74", I therefore conclude that this date was attached to some Betty Board snippets merely as an anchor (i.e., for ease of identification). When/where the material is actually from is anybody's guess (and I'll take a flyer below).

B) "JGMS 7/22/74, Keystone, Berkeley"

This may be the tougher case, since there is a quite delicious Betty Board (e.g., shnid 86198) in long circulation. (If you don't have it, get thee to the to your favorite Bit Torrent site forthwith!) The tape is notable for an as-yet untitled standard that starts things off, as well as the only-known (to me) JGMS version of Cucumber Slumber.

However, there is some reason to doubt this date/venue combination.

1) Saunders and Fierro appear to have been billed at the Sand Dunes bar on this Monday night:

I have posted about the Sand Dunes and the fact that Merl and Martin were playing there on Monday nights, with Jerry's at-least occasional participation. It seems likely that all three of them were at the edge of the Western World (i.e., the far western Sunset District of SF) on 7/22.

2) The bassist on these tapes is confirmed to be Tony Saunders. Tony Saunders played in his father Merl's bands at the Sand Dunes and The Generosity.

3) Keystone Berkeley's listing in the Hayward Daily Review, July 19, 1974, p. 36, bills Nite Shift and audition bands. Now, this could easily be moved for a Garcia appearance, I am sure, but it's just another strike against a JGMS show at Keystone Berkeley on this night.

4) As the Jerry Site notes, in remarks added by slip and seemingly attributed to 'strumminsix,' the recording features "Boogie On Reggae Woman" from Stevie Wonder's Fullfillingness' First Finale, which was apparently released on July 22, 1974. Now, it wouldn't shock me that Merl and/or John might run down to the record store first thing and get the new Stevie Wonder album. But I'd be slightly more surprised if the band could have absorbed it enough to play it that night. This leads me to question whether the circulating material dated as 7/22 is actually from that date.

5) Finally, reinforcing these doubts just expressed, the newest iteration of this "7/22/74" material (again, shnid 86198), may not be all from one performance. This would have to be checked more carefully than I am able to do, i.e., in listening for source changes in the recording, but it's a possibility that joins with all the others to raise some doubts.

Based on all of this, I conclude that Garcia and Saunders were not at the Keystone, Berkeley on July 22, 1974. The material circulating as "JGMS 7/22/74, Keystone, Berkeley" is either from another date, or from another venue, or is a hodge podge of material from other dates/venues.

C) A Final Thought

Putting things together this way reveals a tantalizing possibility: maybe all of this material is actually from the Sand Dunes from around this time (e.g., 7/21/74)? Everything we have, including a tape label the dating of which coincides with a brief flurry of Martin-related items in the Oakland Tribune, and includes Tony Saunders, who played in the band at the Sand Dunes.

Alternatively, maybe it's from The Generosity. The newly polished/circulated Castelli tapes from 2/14/75 (shnid 108896) and 5/9/75 (May 9th) (shnid 107829) reveal some things in common with these "1974" tapes, the appearances of "When I Die" and other seemingly-very-rare instrumentals (Cucumber Slumber, What's Going On, and the unidentified tunes) being most prominent. [Note added 20111216:  These song selections are only unusual if this is actually JGMS, which it almost certainly isn't. This may have been the standard Monday night set for the Merl Saunders/Martin Fierro outfit at the Sand Dunes, or Aunt Monk at The Generosity! Tony Saunders played bass in both outfits, and he is present here.] The possibility identified in point B4 above, that BORW might need to be from later than 7/22/74, could be seen as reinforcing this possibility.

If forced to bet I'd say that both of these tapes are approximately-correctly-dated performances of the Merl Saunders-Martin Fierro group --Saunders, Fierro, Garcia, Tony Saunders, and an undetermined drummer-- at the Sand Dunes, 3599 Taraval Street in the Sunset District of San Francisco, CA, 94116.

And, regardless of all of this, I highly recommend all of these recordings to you. They're awesome and show Jerry playing amazing, unfamiliar material when he is truly at the top of his game. Two snaps up.

Jerry with Merl and/or Martin, ca. 1974, The Sand Dunes

We know that Jerry Garcia was playing around outside the GD to a varying, but always non-zero, extent throughout the career of his most famous band. We have a sense that this was happening more, and more loosely, in the early days (at least pre-1976) and less, and in a more routinized/institutionalized way after that. How much this was happening in the "early days" is probably impossible to fathom, because by definition the less institutionalized stuff leaves less of a footprint (tapes, advertisements, etc.) than the more so. Measurement is harder, and the data are biased against the real loose stuff. We are left with some stories, a vague sense, but little else.

I don't want to go into more detail about all that here, but I want to report on a few tantalizing tidbits I found in the Oakland Tribune in 1974. A first reads as follows (1):

The Merl Saunders Band, which featured Jerry Garcia on guitar and Martin Fierro on sax on alternating weeks at the Sand Dunes in San Francisco, has changed its name to Aunt Monk featuring Saunders and Fierro with equal billing. Mondays at the Sand Dunes.

A second article discussing the Sand Dunes (2) at slightly greater length also notes that "Merl Saunders and Martin Fierro play Monday nights when not with Jerry Garcia, and Garcia has shown up on some Mondays, too."

Gaaahhh.

It certainly sounds plausible. We know that 1974 was a busy year for Jerry playing around (TJS has 119 entries for the year). We know that Merl had regular non-Jerry gigs as the house performer around this time (as, apparently, at the Generosity in 1975), at which Jerry would sometimes drop in (as, apparently, at the Generosity on Feb. 14, 1975 and May 9, 1975). As the information below will show, Jerry had almost every Monday night in 1974 free as far as is known to me: 27 free and not known to be outside Bay Area, 12 booked and/or out of town. So what's to stop him?

Regarding the venue, based on another mention from earlier in the year (3), it seems that the Sand Dunes was at 46th and Taraval. Here is a regular Google map of the location:


View Larger Map

Here is a street view:

View Larger Map

Hard for me to tell on this basis where the bar might have been. I am intrigued by the idea that it might be 3639 Taraval, apparently a watering hole now called The Riptide ("On the edge of the Western world"). It's not the corner of 46th and Taraval, but it's less than a block away and may have been the obviously intended location at the time, who knows.

[update: in comments, Yellow Shark has confirmed the address as 3599 Taraval St, San Francisco, CA 94116]

Anyway, below is a list of the Mondays in 1974 up until the October 6th article. I have provided info where there seems to be a conflict. That leaves lots of open dates, about which we are of course very unlikely ever to know anything. BTW, the dates with (*) probably warrant some explanation (i.e., a further post), and I do think I'll get to the 7/22 one at some point, but not now.

19740107
19740114
19740121
19740128
19740204
19740211
19740218
19740225
19740304
19740311
19740318
19740325
19740401
19740408
19740415
19740422 - JG probably in LA*
19740429
19740506
19740513 - GD between Reno and Missoula
19740520 - GD between Portland and Seattle
19740527
19740603
19740610
19740617 - GD between Des Moines and Louisville
19740624 - GD between Miami and Providence
19740701 - JGMS in NYC
19740708
19740715
19740722
19740729 - GD in Landover
19740805 - GD in Philly
19740812
19740819
19740826 - Merl Saunders's Aunt Monk at Macarthur's in San Anselmo
19740902 - JGMS gig in Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park
19740909 - GD in London
19740916 - GD still in Europe
19740923
19740930

References:

- (1) "Rap-Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, August 25, 1974, p. 2-RAP.
- (2) Art George, "The State of the Small Club," Oakland Tribune, October 6, 1974, p. 4-RAP.
- (3) "Rap Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1974, p. 2-RAP.