Nina Blackwood Interviews Jerry Garcia for MTV, ca. June 2, 1983

Some classic lines here, like the studio as building a ship in a bottle and playing live like piloting a rowboat in the ocean. I wasn't super careful about getting everything 100% perfect, especially not where there's GD talk. I am not 100% certain about the geolocation, but it's got to be about right.

Jerry Garcia Interview by Nina Blackwood
MTV Studios / Teletronic Studios
West 33rd Street and 10th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
June 2, 1983 (Thursday)
Youtube > Tuberipper m4a > otter.ai

! metadata: date a little uncertain. The Relix version (Blackwood 1983) says "conducted at MTV by Nina in May, 1983". But the Gary Gershoff pix at Getty (https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-mtv-vj-nina-blackwood-and-rock-blues-musician-news-photo/1364449796) date this as 6/2, and that does seem likely.

! venue: At this time, MTV was housed in the Teletronic Studios on West 33rd Street, right around the corner from 10th Avenue

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/RkQZy4xDDLUyUWqG7

! ref: Blackwood, Nina. 1983. Jerry Garcia: Interviewed for MTV. Relix 10, 4 (August): 16-20.

! R: source: part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-zEcX9_nXM TT 13:02

! R: source: part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl85mQ49Rlw TT 14:16

rough transcription after the jump

DOWN in South Jersey? JGB at Glassboro State College, February 15, 1981

LN jg1981-02-15.jgb.all.aud.137422.flac1644

Rock Scully's book Living with the Dead (1996) gets mixed reviews for all kinds of reasons, among them that he presents lots of factually inaccurate information. But, on another intepretation --and, I think, relaying something Corry has expressed-- the book may not be right, but it contains lots of truth. Here is some of his narrative around early '81:

We use the airlines to ship dope. I have somebody run it out to the airport in an envelope, put it on a plane, and it gets there like clockwork until some weird hippie at TWA recognizes Jerry's name on the package and takes it. The first time it happens, we're in Philadelphia. I'm jonesing in the Philadelphia Arport waiting for the shit to arrive and it never shows up. I know it got onto the plane, but somewhere along the line somebody stole it. This little glitch leads to a day and a half of the shakes. Garcia is too junk sick to perform the following night. Prescriptions from the hotel doctor help, but we use up all the pills the first night to get rid of the shakes.

In Washington, a desperate Garcia decides to do a radio interview in the middle of the night and "put the code out." Garcia's nodding into the mike during the interview. On air he asks fans — in code — to bring their stashes down to the station and he will sign albums for them. He says, "Uh, anybody down with Garcia out there tonight? You wanna come down to the station? I'll come down from up here and sign autographs, but bring me some down." Thirty kids show up at the station reception with grass, 'ludes, uppers. Uh oh, the wrong drugs! Oh God, now he wants to get more specific on the air, spell out what precisely he needs. We send kids out to get downers and tranks to get us through the night (Scully 1996, 314).

I relay this here because seeder extraordinaire AF has relayed the following in connection with a recording of JGB in Esby Gym, Glassboro State College, February 15, 1981:

Before the show, Jerry went on the radio [campus radio WGLS] to invite people DOWN and if you were DOWN with it, then come on DOWN to the show. The story goes that they were at the end of the tour, way down in the boonies of South Jersey, and the stash was dry. Jerry had to put out the call for someone from Philly or nearby to drive over with a fix for him and Kahn.

Naturally, this sounds like the second part of Rock's little vignette above. I trust AF to have the date, time, and specifics more accurate than Scully. As for our jonesing hereo, maybe the trip into Glassboro, a charter flight from E. Farmingdale (Republic Airport) to Philly on an 8-passenger twin-engine King Air 200, had him just a little jumpy. (Take that, Rock!)

Plea: does anyone know of tape of that particular interview, 2/15/81 from campus radio WGLS? I will inquire with the school, though odds are strongly against there being a copy there.

What about the rest of Rock's narrative? It kind of fits Corry's characterization. First, I think he swaps Philly (end of the tour) and DC (start of the tour), with the package of drugs not making it to them in Washington. Second --and, yes, I see how petty this is-- they didn't fly TWA, but United (#58, since you asked). Third, there is no canceled show anywhere in the tour. Fourth, the interview was apparently before the show, not in the middle of the night.

Some of this other stuff might have happened on Dead tour, or on a different Jerry tour. He doesn't explicitly say this is the Feb. 81 JGB jaunt - I am just making the connection because of the radio interview, which it seems safe to say can only have happened once. Overall, all of this stuff probably sort of happened, and so Rock's account is true ("truthy," you might say), if not exactly right.

One of the great benefits to me of doing these listening notes, and trying to integrate them into the broader fabric of the Garciaverse, is how LITTLE the drug stories tell us about the music. Here we have relatively firm evidence that Garcia was jonesing hard for the show, specifically needing stuff to take the edge off, and that he got some stuff to get him DOWN to some level of comfort. Yet the show sounds peppy. I don't make a lot of notes, but they all point in the same direction: torrid scrubby goodness in "Catfish John", punch great energy in "Tangled Up In Blue", Gar sounding enthused on "Tore Up Over You". All of this speaks, as Twitterato and all-around great guy Mr. Completely might say, to the limits of drug determinism.

Ticket for JGB 2/15/81 at Glassboro State College, courtesy of gdsets.com.

Sounds like the place was packed, sweltering hot (Chambers 1981), and ol Jer, jonesing or not, put on a good strong show to end the tour. (Since you were wondering, fly home next day, 10:15 AM departure on United #719 through Denver to land at SFO by  2:30 PM, or TWA #31, out at 3:30 PM to hit tierra santa at 6:30 PM. I leave it to you to imagine which flight Jerry caught, and why.)

Listening notes below the fold.

We Need A Jerry Garcia Interviews Project

Jerry did many hundreds of interviews over the years. He had a lot of interesting things to say about a lot of topics. There are also lots of quotes and so forth that circulate without any proper metadata.

So, we, and by we I mean the community, need a Jerry Garcia interviews project. Collect 'em up in video, audio and text formats, and eventually get everything transcribed to text. Dates, as best as possible. Etc. Run a blog that gathers them up, a la LIA's Deadsources.

I don't have time to do it, myself, but I have plenty to contribute. Someone out there would be game for it. Maybe it's you! Step up to the big leagues of obsessiveness and tackle this project!

Garcia Interview by Ben Fong-Torres, ca. fall 1975

jg1975-xx-xx.interview.ben-fong-torres.gdao-379555

Garcia, Jerry, 1942-1995, "Ben Fong-Torres interviews Jerry Garcia. Interview recorded circa 1975 for the documentary radio program "What was that?" broadcast on KSAN-FM in San Francisco [radio broadcast]," Grateful Dead Archive Online, accessed November 10, 2013, http://www.gdao.org/items/show/379555.

The interview is given as 1975, at least some of it takes place at His Master's Wheels, and there's a snippet with Nicky Hopkins. I have Jerry and Nicky et al. there working on what would become Reflections mostly in September-October 1975, so this seems the most likely timeframe.

Sketchy notes below the fold.

MTV Interview, June 2, 1983

I don't know where this would have taken place, but the date of June 2, 1983 seems right, in between shows at the venerable Roseland Ballroom on 52nd Street and promoter John Scher's main room, the Capitol Theatre in Passaic outside of Philly.

I have gotten direct quotes on the Garcia-on-the-side (GOTS) material, and sketchily paraphrased the GD history and other stuff. The man was just so brimming with energy. Check him out around 7 minutes in to part one, talking about the amazing creativity and peculiar genius of so many Deadheads. Good stuff.

update: if you want verbatim, you can copy it from ... the published transcript. D'oh!

! ref: Blackwood, Nina. 1983. Jerry Garcia: Interviewed for MTV. Relix 10, 4 (August): 16-20.

Alice Kahn Fall 1984 interview annotations

These are for my purposes, no pretense to completeness.

I find his comments about Joe Garcia to be quite revealing. There are a few other good nuggets in here. Man, even in the depths of his Rock Bottom period, he sounds engaged and articulate. What a mind!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Howard Rheingold Interviews Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir

https://archive.org/details/RheingoldGarciaWeirInterview

Not sure I know this one, pinning it here so I can find it again!

Come back for Garcia Band. Come back, come back.

LN jg1978-03-10.interview.all.fm-zimmerman.82210.flac1644

I love these March '78 interviews. 3/11/78 is my absolute favorite, all kinds of great stuff. This one has less going on, but still interesting to the likes of me.

Jerry Garcia Band Interview
WCMF-FM Studios
129 Leighton Avenue
Rochester, NY 14614
March 10, 1978 (Friday) afternoon
46 minute Alan Zimmerman FM cassette

(7 tracks, 46:25)
jg19780310d3t001. Reuben and Cherise (album version) [3:45]
jg19780310d3t002. talk (1,2,3) [3:39]
jg19780310d3t003. Rain [5:46]
jg19780310d3t004. talk (4,5,6,7) [15:55] %
jg19780310d3t005. Love in the Afternoon [3:58]
jg19780310d3t006. talk (8,9,10,11,12,13) [10:46]
jg19780310d3t007. Gomorrah [2:40]

! Band: Interview
! personnel: Jerry Garcia
! personnel: John Kahn
! personnel: Donna Jean Godchaux
! personnel: ?? (primary interviewer)

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.

! TJS: none.

! db: shnid 82210 (this fileset)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/4fyWc14xjgm

! seealso: JGMF, "One of the Great Interviews of the Garciaverse," http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/11/jg1978-03-11interview45minsfm-gefen.html.

! seealso: JGMF, "The Little Engine That Could," https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-little-engine-that-could.html, for show listening notes. Spoiler: it didn't slay me.

! R: Recordist: Alan Zimmerman; over-air FM broadcast (WCMF, 96.5 FM) >  cassette, unknown gear;

! R: Transfer and FLAC encoding by David Minches: Master played back on Nakamichi Dragon > Digital Audio Labs Card Deluxe soundcard > Adobe Audition > flac encoding > FLAC.

! historical: John Kahn sounds zonked.

! t02 (1) talk about having just been in Rochester with the GD a few months prior. JG: "Rochester keeps calling us back. 'Come back for Garcia Band. Come back, come back.'"

! t02 (2) @ 1:14 Q How did Maria get involved with the tour?" JG: "Well, uhhhh ... luck, I suppose. [Donna chuckles sweetly] Actually, what happened was that back when I did an album about 3 or 4 years ago and John produced it and he had Maria come in to do some vocal work on the record. Since then we've worked kind of informally. And John and Maria live together. [He swallows his words a little bit. Asks John, aside, "if that's OK, if you don't mind my mentioning that?" JK: "Oh, it's quite all right."] And so on this album she participated a lot, too, on the vocals and stuff and she's also accompanied us on a few other tours. And it's neat to have her singing with us. Donna and Maria sing really well together and they like working together. So, just, chemically it works out really nicely." DJG: "We don't fly together [?], you know." JG: "And I like having all those pretty girls onstage." [Kahn laughs.]

! t02 (3) DJ: we have a super advanced pressing of your latest album. We heard a test pressing just before we left CA 3 or 4 days ago. Record radio stations will be getting promo copies, in record stores soon.  @0250 "What kinds of musical directions are you trying to take on this record? There's a touch of reggae in it--" JG: "Every direction. We don't really have a style, except that it's all us." JK: "It sounds like us, is the direction. It's trying to sound the most like us of anything we've done so far." Song introduction "Rain", written by Donna, orchestration and arrangement by John Kahn.

! t04: DJ (4) Young kids still into the Dead. What do you attribute that to? JG: we've been lucky in having a spotty record career. No real big hits. contra formulaic thing, slam-bang show. Exciting the first time. The theatrics. You realize you're seeing the same thing, that gets to be dull. Audience doesn't want to ... DJ: so when you take the stage, do you have any songs in mind? JG we don't know what we're gonna do. We have a low boredom index. It would be horribly boring for us to do the same shows all the time. Constitutionally incapable of doing it. some times a dud, other times magical, miraculous. Exceptionally high concentration of coincidence. Musical coincidences are occurring way higher than the law of probability would allow them to be. Like magic. People come to that because there's something genuine about it. A mysterious thing. Something that people require. Being encouraged by the audience. Audience is participating. This talk is vague between GD vs. JG. Jerry can't identify great moments per se. completely out of our hands high energy environment ... in this testing situation. people follow all around the country. Maybe they asked him not to mention GD?

! personnel: t04 @ 4:55 JK sounds totally wrecked

! t04 (5) @0846 working with Robert Hunter. JK sometimes Garcia will have pages of words and write music to that. Or sometimes we'll write music that doesn't have words and give that to him. So it goes different directions. JG: All kinds of fine tuning possibilities. I'll have ideas that have vocal phrasing and sing the phrasings to him. We work very freely together."

! t04 (6) domestic scenes. @0956 Do you live and work together. Too many of us to live together. @1030 JG Basically we all have our own scenes and families and so forth ... or whatever. We're all, live near each other, and we hang out an awful lot together, we spend more hours together than we do living anywhere else. @1055 DJG we'll be playing at place called Keystone "Long time, no see." We've chosen to work that way.

! t05 (7) Club Front @11:33 studio setup. @1139 JG This record is the first record from that studio. ... This record is the first thing from that studio, which ... was partly funded ... partly built from the budget that I was allowed to make this record. It's quite well equipped. It has a really nice Neve console, from England, and a really nice Studer machine, Swiss, and it's an excellent sounding room. It's a very large room and it really sounds very pretty. Has very pretty vocal sound, pretty instrumental sound. We're really delighted with the results. We're real happy." #Club Front

! t04 (7) DJ ask John for song intro JK "Influenced by reggae music, which I love a whole lot. Reggae was the most significant thing that happened, for bass players, in ten years maybe." More reggae talk JK: "We might have heard the best reggae records." JG: "I don't think there's going to be some kind of explosion. It's a local thing. It has a limited appeal. But from a musician's standpoint it has some very interesting things that American music could use right now." DJ: "Like what?" JG: "A rhythmic approach, a whole approach to rhythm that has to do with standing on the rhythm in a certain way. The easiest way I can relate to it is to figure about 93 degrees, with about a hundred percent humidity, in the middle of somewhere, just goin' real slow, y'know? [he has a grin]. And it has a steadiness to it that comes from a kind of island life, like the surf, y'know ... and the thing about the bass playing, that John was saying, the sense of the rhythmic ... the holes, the spaces, having rhythmic value, in the same sense of that positive-negative image sense. So, the holes have the same kind of rhythmic values that the notes do, and that gives it a tremendous power, and a lovely kind of rhythmic thing." JK: "as a bass player, a long time ago, especially r and b records, old motown records, the bassline was one of the most important elements, counterpoint to the vocal, and the drums. Music has gotten away from that now. ... music directly related to the bassline has died out in America, and it's an element of reggae music that appeals a lot to me." #reggae

! t04 DJ started spinning Palm Sunday instead, accidentally.

! t06 (8) current music: Elvis Costello JG: "I like it." likes some New Wave. Really like Cheap Trick. What I like about it is the spirit. They're puttin' out. They're trying hard. The heavy duty production trick ... the glib slickness so mechanical and predictable and safe. It's a formula trip. Raw and real nasty, and the players are not very good, but the spirit ... young people can always dig that. JK: I dig it. I'm not young anymore. 5-min mark talking about The Who

! t06 (9) @0645 solo project outside the GD. JG "It's an illusion. The illusion is that these are solo projects, when they're really not solo projects. Like what we do in this band, it's no solo project. It's really a group contribution, and believe me, it's not a matter of my own personal activity. I am involved with people who care about music the same way that I do, we have an affinity for each other, we enjoy working together, and, for me, a group dynamic is way more interesting than the concept of a solo project. I've done one solo project, my first solo record, in which I was foolish enough to try to play everything on it myself and I was really bored with it, fundamentally, because you already know everything that happened, there's no surprises. The thing of working with other people, that somebody's gonna shed a new kind of light on an idea of yours ... it gives you something to work with ... there's electricity, or chemistry, or something like that." #solo vs GD

! t06 (10) @0746 DJ is it true that the banjo was your first instrument? @0747 JG: "Yeah, it was my first serious instrument. DJ: "And then you went to the guitar, and then the electric guitar, because it was more of an extension of--" JG: "Uhh, I've, well, for me, the banjo got to be so, uhhh ... [long pause] [JK: "Swiss watch-like." JG: "Right.] Like a Swiss watch. It was like a cuckoo clock or a Swiss watch. It got to be tremendously mechanical and I, finally just had a tremendous reaction to it, it's like, 'I really can't make music with this instrument. I want something that moves the way a voice moves. I want to be able to play more expressively. ... I just burned myself out on the banjo, really, is what it boils down to." DJG: "It's kind of a one-toned ..." JG: "Yeah, it's got one thing going for it." DJ @0835: Do you ever think about going back doing something like the OAITW record? @0837 JG "For me, it was the music ... [cross talk that John was also involved] And for me, the neat thing, my whole interest in the banjo even was really not so much the banjo itself, but bluegrass music as a style of music. And it's the music that I cared about, rather than the banjo by itself. So it's very hard for me to, say, sit at home and practice the banjo. If the music were there --in other words, if I were out playing with friends, a couple of nights a week-- I could get into it. But really the music matters to me more than the banjo does." JK: "Yeah, really, it's a beautiful kind of music." JG: "It is, it's really neat music." JK: "But, y'know, I couldn't see practicing ... either ... uhhh ... [JG, laughing: "No." Some chuckling, as if the thought of practicing is hilarious.] DJG: "Jerry doesn't think he plays the banjo or the steel guitar" JK: "We're all crazy like that, that's normal" (??). #banjo

! t06 (11) @0927 DJG: "He's talking about his first record, my four year old listens to it three or four times a day." JK: "I like that, too. ... I remember going in there and watching him play bass on that." JG: "Oh Jeez, that was embarassing." JK: "No it wasn't."

! t06 DJ we should wrap things up, get them to soundcheck.

! t06 (12) DJG: "Singing with Maria's great." Stress the point that Maria is part of the band. JG: "Yeah."

! t06 (13) JG introduces Gomorrah. JG: "This is an Old Testament song. Everybody knows about Sodom, but this song is about Gomorrah."

"When you add a new member, it becomes a new band"

 LN jg1979-11-07.interview.26mins.fm.xxxxxx.flac1644

This is a nice little interview with Garcia after the 11/6/79 Philly Dead show. He talks about "Mission In The Rain" and "Reuben And Cérise", picks some gospel Dylan to spin, tells the story of the Rambler Room gig in '78, and drops the titular line, which I like a lot.

JERRY GARCIA
WMMR Studios
addy
Philadelphia PA zzzzz
November 7, 1979 (Wednesday) - 2:30 AM
26 min FM cassette

! historical: WMMR-FM Radio interview with Lyn Kratz & Michael Tearson at 2:30AM

01 intro [0:58] %
02 Brent in the band, Making Go to Heaven album [6:02] %
03 Story of Reuben & Cherise, Jerry's new guitar, Acoustic shows, Bertha the fan
04 Mission in the Rain, Egypt trip, Smaller venues, GD films, Eclectic listening
05 Terrapin II Suite, thanks & outro
06 DJ Talk [0:45]

! R: Transfer: TDK D90 > Nakamichi CR-5A > Edirol FA-66 > Wavelab > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644 tagged.

! R: seeder Note: This interview occurred in the wee hours of the morning after the 11/06/79 Spectrum show.

! R: seeder note: Thanks to Poordevil and Sounddawg for this historic tape!

! t02  "When you add a new member, it becomes a new band"

! t02 GTH: "I think it's our best album." Yeesh.

! t03 song R&C: movie Black Orpheus. "It's the Orpheus story, and the Black Orpheus adaptation of the Orpheus story. Plus we transmogrified it and put it into New Orleans and Mardi Gras. And we changed the outcome somewhat. It was one of those songs that was very slow growing. It started off with a melody that I was fooling around with, while we were working on Blues for Allah, and I gave a copy of the melody to Hunter, and he took it home and fooled with it, fooled with it, fooled with it. He came up with a lot of different ideas. And then, independently of the original melody, he set a group of ... those lyrics. And I liked the lyrics better than I liked the original melody. So, I dumped the original melody, held onto the lyrics, and, after fooling with the lyrics, and look at em for a long, long time, and really liking them, and really wanting them to work, I came up with the new melody."

! t03 @ late 5:50 11/17/78 "Dan Healy has a cousin who is involed in Loyola University in Chicago. They were doing a little small benefit for a famine relief thing in Pakistan, and so we got involved in doing just that - an acoustic show, Bob and I and Phil playing electric bass very quietly, and Mickey playing a little snare drum with brushes. ... we rehearsed it about 15 minutes before we went in and did it. We enjoyed it really a lot."

! t04 song: MITR. "It's about SF. It's about me in San Francisco. It's as close to autobiographical as it's possible for me to get working with another guy. ... Hunter is able sometimes to write if I would say ... it's very personal. It's him speaking about me. When I do the song, it's a very personal song, I'm talking about myself, my life.

! t04 @ 7:20 "I've always been a Dylan fan." "Music is music." "Even the worst music doesn't hurt anybody ... wound anybody." Jerry picked "Gotta Serve Somebody" to listen to.

Reading Notes: McNally 2015

McNally, Dennis, ed. 2015. Jerry on Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers.

I didn't quite know what to expect. On a read, it felt like this was all material that I already knew. From a strictly informational perspective I didn't feel like I got anything I didn't know out of Jerry's mouth. But when I went back to transcribe some key things, so engaged the book a second time, I felt like it really painted an intimate picture of Jerry by Jerry. McNally did a great job in using his own creative talent to let Jerry --a Jerry, a version of Jerry-- paint a lovely little posthumous self-portrait.

This is sort of like my "in praise of editorial judgment" thing --no reader here could possibly disagree-- Dennis McNally obviously knew Garcia well, was blessed to have spent a lot of time talking about everything under the sun with him, and he creatively arranges a lot of the material that I know (of), but hadn't really understood. It's nicely paced, a nice easy afternoon conversation, plenty of room to breathe, unlike so many of the Garcia interviews we get to hear. It's a nice piece of work, and it'll be on my shelf (or wherever I put it) for the long haul. (It's so nice that I won't even lament that absence of spatiotemporal identifiers for the quotes.)

A note on "reading notes": this is just my selective culling of quotes of particular interest to me. There's nothing representative about this stuff, I don't imagine. I pick up different stuff from LIA (who can remember it all without the contrivance of "reading notes"). The method is to sort these quotes into their respective topic buckets  (with little tags like #why and such), then put the book aside and move on to the next thing.

Raw notes below the fold. I lost steam with bolding the names at some point ...

Garcia's Creative Accounting, late March 1975

In late March 1975, Peter Simon interviewed Garcia at the "film house"  (230 Eldridge Avenue, Mill Valley, CA, 94941), for publication in New Age Journal (Simon 1975).

NAJ:

You’re also doing a solo album and touring with Merl Saunders. In that you have so many projects at once, how do you channel your energy so productively? 

Jerry Garcia:

Well, things tend to work and overlap, generally speaking. I wouldn’t really be able to concentrate on sitting in front of a movie editing device for eight hours a day; I can do it pretty easily for six, though. I feel my attention is on it and I can do a good job keeping up with it. I like to play music in a studio situation – that can also hold attention for six or eight hours. If I’m on the road, I’m not doing anything during the day; I’m playing evenings. So during the day is a time which is convenient to compose. I might sit around an hour a day just playing the guitar and practicing and maybe learn something and maybe some ideas would come out that are like songs. That represents maybe two or three hours a day on the road where nothing else is happening but television and a gig that night. Usually a gig will take maybe four or five hours, total time actually playing maybe two of those or two-and-a-half. It may look like more, but it isn’t really that much. (Simon 1975, 54).

Note to self: I want to juxtapose this creative accounting with other kinds -- Rakow's, for example --  and with other, perhaps less creative accountings (see "Accounting the JGB: October 8, 1975").

Alex Bennett interviews the Dead, September 16, 1970

Bennett, Alex, “Alex Bennett with the Grateful Dead. Interview broadcast on WMCA in New York City in 1970 [radio broadcast],” Grateful Dead Archive Online, accessed August 2, 2015, http://www.gdao.org/items/show/378659.

Nothing here is verbatim, but hopefully this can provide some markers if anyone else wants to go check this out.

A few things of interest.

First, the date is 9/16/70, just before the Fillmore East "An Evening With the Grateful Dead" run.

Second, this is the day they flew on the plane with Huey Newton.

Third, I love that Bob Weir was reading the Times.

Fourth, with Paul's passing I'd like to go back and see what they said about Kantner.

Fifth, some time-stamping on American Beauty, which is just being finished. I think we knew that, but anyway.

Sixth, note they say they are going to go out and jam somewhere this night. I wonder?

Seventh, already talking about playing the base of the Great Pyramids. Badass.

Sketchy notes follow.

~~~~~

Bill Cooper Interviews Jerry Garcia, May 1982

Here's a nice companion piece that really resonates with "Bob Coburn Interviews Jerry Garcia, November 8, 1982".

My notes/transcriptions are little sketchy, but here's what jumps out to me.

On Run for the Roses, with some anti-marketing:

I’ve been working on it for quite a long time. I’ve had to squeeze it in amongst and between lots of other projects. It’s been the project with the least [sic] priority of the things I’ve been working on, so I strung out the actual work on it over three years, which creates certain problems.” Does some work, comes back six months later, and thinks critically “I would just as soon do all of this over.” This project is one of those things that’s so far from what I originally started …
...
Select tunes, discarded them, I haven’t been working on it steadily. I’ve been working on it in an extremely fragmentary fashion. But it’s interesting for that, too. It hasn’t worked to the disadvantage of the music. On some levels it’s nice to be able to have the luxury to deal with something over a long period of time because your sense of perspective sometimes improves … So the record is pretty nice. … Because the tracks all come from different times and places … well, actually, they’re all from the same place, pretty much, but … that adds a certain textural variety to it which is, I think, OK. It has quite a range, from things that have an acoustic flavor, to … I have one thing that’s got a big massive horn piece, a big section of highly arranged sort of things. It has a lot of range as far as emotional content as well. To me that’s a nice quality for an album to have.

 On John Kahn: "All of the things that you hear of that are called the Jerry Garcia Band are, in reality, the John Kahn and Jerry Garcia Band” … simpatico, “with just enough difference to make it interesting”. That first line echoes something that Corry has said repeatedly - well done!

More on anti-marketing: "I’ll be coming east, and I’ll be promoting the album more or less incidentally, but not … I don’t really do the straight show biz formula, where you put out a record and then do a promotional tour"

Because of the priority of the GD over JG: "my solo career is not my primary thing. The GD is really the thing that I’m primarily involved in. My solo career is kind of like, it has to get what it can get. So, when time and space allow the opportunity, then I go out with whatever’s comfortable."

On the acoustic shows of the period:

I’ll also be doin’ some things that are solo concerts, just me and my friend John Kahn. 0550 I did a couple of them recently on the east coast, one at the Capitol Theatre and one at … [can’t remember the Beacon] the format was that the one at the Capital played all by myself, just me and my acoustic guitar. That’s a little too stark for me. I like the thing of having one other musician, at least. The bass gives me a little bit more room. But I had such a good time, and it’s something I’ve done very little. I’ve never really been a solo performer before. 0640 It’s something that’s exciting for me, and it’s challenging, and it’s also a chance to play around with acoustic guitar, which I’ve been doing at home a lot, but it hasn’t been my primary ... 0655 It’s really quite different from electric guitar, and so this is a chance to push off in that direction

Interesting contrast with how he'd feel about the GD nine years later: The Dead “hasn’t really affected my life in any negative way, to tell you the truth. It’s been really … It doesn’t impinge. I don’t feel in any way fettered or anything." 0955


Why? “Playing is my life. That’s what I want to do. If anything, I would play more. … It’s what I love to do. Personally, I can’t get enough of it.”

Listening notes, with other interesting tidbits, below the fold.

Bob Coburn Interviews Jerry Garcia, November 8, 1982

Garcia, Jerry, 1942-1995, “Bob Coburn with Jerry Garcia. "Rockline" radio show, hosted by Bob Coburn, broadcast on November 8, 1982. Includes an interview and phone calls from listeners [radio broadcast],” Grateful Dead Archive Online, accessed August 2, 2015, http://www.gdao.org/items/show/378595.

Garcia had two pretty good reasons to do a live national "Rockline" radio interview on Monday, November 8, 1982 with Bob Coburn.

The first was presumably to sell some tickets for the ongoing Fall 1982 Jerry Garcia Band tour (starting October 27 in SoCal, ending November 15th). From November 8th, the band still had shows in Worcester, Piscataway, New York City, Hartford, a college gig outside of Boston at Brandeis University, and a grand finale at Kean College in Union, NJ. The East Coast Deadhead paid a huge chunk of the Dead and Garcia's bills, better rally the troops.

The second is that Run for the Roses (Arista AL 9603, November 1982) had dropped, and for once Garcia was "touring behind an album" that people could buy from off the shelves of their local disc-O-mat on the way home from the show. For his last studio record, the 1978 masterpiece Cats Under the Stars (1978), work took so long that it remained undone during a putative promotional tour in March, probably not hitting shelves until a week or two after the tour ended. The Mystery Cats toured "in front of their" record, not your industry standard approach. Shocking that one sank like a stone despite representing some of Garcia's finest work, including in his songwriting collaboration with Hunter. Here, they're touring behind the record, but unfortunately, as one of Mike Myers's Scotsmen would say, "it's crap".

November 11^th would find the band playing for John Scher at The Felt Forum, part of an expansion push into the City itself, courtesy (or not) of Ron Delsener. Scher was going big in 1982,[1] and one of his early successes was Garcia and Kahn, in their first ever acoustic duet gig, at the Beacon Theatre, culminating with the good Dr. John sitting in with Jerry and John for some "Goodnight Irene", on April 21^st. That gig did so well (two 2,413 capacity sellouts, with gross $51,523)[2] that they made the same match in November. John Scher being John Scher --a multitalented guy who, from 1976, had basically taken over the GD's operations east of the Mississippi, and did lots more besides—he was fully locked into Garcianomics, on the recto and the verso.

John Scher Presents in New York City: Jerry Garcia Band at the Felt Foum, November 11, 1982.
John Scher Presents Program no. 270.

I don't know how many records they sold, but November 11^th grossed $107,661 on two sellouts @ 4,332 capacity.[3] Not bad – not bad at all. Biggest night of the tour.

Why do I get into the reasons for this interview? Because we find here yet another instance of Garcia being utterly incapable of marketing. In January 1976, he either forgot to announce a set of his band's gigs upcoming, chose not to, or else was reminded to book them when asked live, on the radio. I think there are a few other examples I can pin down of Garcia not really even swinging and missing on the tee'd up "new record" question, but kind of dodging it. And how's this for the soft sell, answer question of who's in the band:

I’ve had a band off and on for some time now, I guess about five years now … when you have musicians that you’re playing with on a regular basis, it’s easier to communicate with them, and they’re in the neighborhood, and things like that. Actually, the tracks on the record are recorded by parts of my band, as well as my current band, over the last, um, some of the tracks on the record were recorded as long as 4 years ago, 5 years ago.[4]

It’s a long slow process. See, when I make a solo record I have to make it in between the spaces, between Grateful Dead activity. So I have to do it as I can. Sometimes they accumulate, like a snowball rolling downhill.

Now, for someone like me, this is fascinating. First, "when you have musicians that you’re playing with on a regular basis, it’s easier to communicate with them, and they’re in the neighborhood, and things like that" could have come out of his mouth in January 1976 about Keith and Donna.[5] "I just picked whoever was around" isn't going to get me off the fence about these $11 tickets. Second, hearing that some of these tracks were recorded in 1977-1978 might signal to the discerning record buyer that they found at least some of this stuff sweeping up the cutting room floor. If they didn't buy Cats when it was released, why would they buy the lesser tracks now? Third, by interstitializing Garcia to the Grateful Dead, sublimating himself into the Borg, he gives further impression that the record might be rather second class.

Maybe he's just too honest, and can't shill the record that he may or may not feel good about. I guess I gotta respect that, even if it does thwart Global Corporation's master plan. Or maybe he just didn't get it. As McNally has recently said, "the celebrity interview, an opportunity for an artist to talk about himself and to pitch a current endeavor in as brief and efficient a manner as possible, was completely lost on Jerry".[i]

---

[i] McNally 2015, 9.

Other things I pull from this:

• Influences? Freddie King. Django, and he mentions Django's physical handicap – can there be any doubt but that Garcia felt a special kinship with Reinhardt?
• solo vs. GD: " When I compose a tune, I have a sense of what I want it to sound like. When I do ‘em for my own band, they sort of stay at that developmental level. But in the Grateful Dead, they have a tendency to keep moving. That’s true, I think, with Bob’s tunes, too."
• dodges a religion question
• Bashes Hank Harrison and his books; "wait for McNally's".
• a few other tidbits, depending on what interests you

Signpost to a New Space and Stoned Sunday Rap - Dates

I have just finished transcribing the parts of particular interest to me from Signpost to a New Space and the Stoned Sunday Rap (Garcia, Reich and Wenner 2003 [1972]), and I have now posted reading notes.

Me being me, I have always wondered about the dates of these sessions.

Here is the timeline for what went into the Rolling Stone Interview (RS 100, 1/20/1972), summarizing my own reconstruction.

• Summer 1970: Charles Reich visits Jann Wenner, urges him to interview Garcia
• Spring 1971: Jann called Jerry
• July 1971: Reich is ready to go. The "next Saturday", Reich and Wenner go up to Sans Souci, where Garcia and MG had only been living a few months (papers May 1971). We learn that Garcia had to be in Berkeley for a gig that evening.
• July 1971: Garcia is making his record, in the present tense
• I have concluded that the above, constituting the first five hours of the RSI, took place Saturday, July 24, 1971, ca. all afternoon and into the evening (dinner time), consistent with it being a Saturday and Jerry has to leave for a gig with the NRPS.
• When I went through Signpost three years ago I wrote "July 1971 gig @ New Monk – empty set as of 8/3/2012". In the meantime, I have spun more microfilm at the San Francisco Public Library, revealing the previously unknown gig that unlocked it all for me.
• Note: an Anonymous DeadEssays commenter did some great sleuthing on this and reported September 5, 2012, getting us some of these time points, noted in comments by LIA. I am not sure how much that informed my own thinking, or if we truly have multiple independent progress on the question. Either way, the key dating seems very likely.
• ca. August 1971: Reich did two more hours "A few weeks later" [from 7/24/71], which we can only pin to ca. first half of August 1971;
• undated: the GD are mixing Skullfuck at some point;
• ca. October 15-16, 1971: Reich came back "a few months later". This could be either October 15 or October 16, 1971, based on Jerry seeing Mickey Hart at the Croz-Nash concert "last night";
• ca. October 1971, Wenner did four more hours.

Here is the timeline for the SSR:

• March 1972: Reich dates his introduction to spring 1972, tagging the SSR to a "Sunday morning, a foggy, quiet day in March" (Reich 2003, xx).
• Garcia has to do some mixing work on Ace that night.
• ca. March 20 - May 27, 1972: Garcia in NYC and Europe.
• That leaves March 5, March 12, or March 19 as the dates of the SSR.
• Note Wenner's misrembrance: writing in May 1972, he says SSR took place "almost half a year after publication", which was 1/20/72. It looks more like two months to me, unless I am missing something.

I'll post some pretty voluminous reading notes, not sure how to format since I have way more tags than Blogger will allow. The RSI sessions are far more informative than the Rap, which indeed has all the hallmarks of really high people being high together, in highness. There's some great color - Mountain Girl is incredible, I would love to meet her some day, and Annabelle makes some cute appearances - but not much content of interest to me.

REFERENCES

! ref: Garcia, Jerry, Charles Reich, and Jann Wenner. 2003 [1972]. Garcia: A Signpost to New Space. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

! JGMF: "NRPS: July 24-25, 1971, New Monk - New to The List,"

URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/09/nrps-july-24-25-1971-new-monk-new-to.html.

! JGMF: "Reading Notes: Signpost to a New Space and Stoned Sunday Rap," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/11/reading-notes-signpost-to-new-space-and.html.

! ref: Reich, Charles. 2003 [1972]. Introduction. In Garcia, Reich and Wenner 2003 [1972], xi-xxi.

! ref: Wenner, Jann. 2003 [1972]. Foreword. In Garcia, Reich and Wenner 2003 [1972], vii-x.

Reading Notes: Henke 1991

LIA posted a quote from this, I stumbled across it amidst my materials, and I decided now was as good a time as any to annotate it.

Henke, James. 1991. The Rolling Stone Interview: Jerry Garcia. Rolling Stone, October 31, 34-40, 103, 106, 108.

Two September 1991 afternoons, hotel room overlooking Central Park.

July 1991 was release of JG DG, August 1991 was release of double live JGB. Meantime, JG was trying to kick H again.

“solo jaunts are often more entertaining than his work with the Dead, and one gets the feeling that if he felt he could easily extricate himself from the Dead and his attendant responsibilities, he might just do it. Still, when pressed, Garcia claimed the Dead take precedence. … We’ve all put so much of our lives into it by now that it’s too late to do anything drastic” (Henke 1991, 37).

Two separate interview sessions September 1991 NYC. In a family way with Manasha and Keelin.

“recent” meeting in which Garcia told the other band members that he wasn’t having fun anymore, that he wasn’t enjoying playing with the Dead. Garcia confirms this.

“The band is the board of directors, and we have regular meetings with our lawyers and our accountants. And we’ve got it done to where it only takes about three or four hours, about every three weeks. But anyway, the last couple of times, I’ve been there screaming ‘Hey, you guys!’ Because there are times when you go onstage and it’s just plain hard to do, and you start to wonder, ‘Well, why the fuck are we doing this if it’s so hard?’”

“We’ve been running on inertia for quite a long time. I mean, insofar as we have a huge overhead, and we have a lot of people that we’re responsible for, who work for us and so forth, we’re reluctant to do anything [38] to disturb that. We don’t want to take people’s livelihoods away. But it’s us out there, you know. And in order to keep doing it, it has to be fun” (Henke 1991, 37-38).

“we’re … going to have to construct new enthusiasm for ourselves, because we’re getting a little burned out. We’re a little crisp around the edges” (Henke 1991, 38).

They are trying to work up to taking a long break, a la 1974, “aiming for six months off the road” (Henke 1991, 38).

p. 38 Gar talks about how he dislikes trying to write songs. “It’s like pulling teeth.”

They saw Brent’s death coming. “About six or eight months earlier, he OD’d and had to go to the hospital, and they just saved his ass. … I think there was a situation coming up where he was going to have to go to jail. He was going to have to spend like three weeks in jail, for driving under the influence or one of those things, and it’s like he was willing to die just to avoid that. Brent was not a real happy person. And he wasn’t like a total drug person. He was the kind of guy that went out [39] occasionally and binged. And that’s probably what killed him” (Henke 1991, 38-39).

Getting older, people dying. Rick Griffin just died. “[F]or me at this point, I’m just happy if someone dies with a minimum of pain and horror” (Henke 1991, 39).

“I’m not a religious person” (Henke 1991, 39).

“The Grateful Dead is not where you’re going to find comfort. In fact, if anything, you’ll catch a lot of shit. And if you don’t get it from the band, you’ll get it from the roadies. They’re merciless. They’ll just gnaw you like a dog. They’ll tear your flesh off. They can be extremely painful” (Henke 1991, 39). Note that one word from Garcia could have put a stop to that, but he didn’t roll that way.

“Brent had a deeply self-destructive [40] streak.” (Henke 1991, 39-40). Talks about Brent lacking in culture.

“My life would be miserable if I didn’t have those little chunks of Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot” (Henke 1991, 40).

#drugs “I’ve been round and round with the drug thing. People are always wanting me to take a stand on drugs, and I can’t. To me, it’s so relativistic, and it’s also very personal. A person’s relationship to drugs is like their relationship to sex. … For me, in my life, all kinds of drugs have been useful to me, and they have also definitely been a hindrance to me. So, as far as I’m concerned, the results are not in. Psychedelics showed me a whole other universe, hundreds and millions of universes. So that was an incredibly positive experience” (Henke 1991, 40).

Still dabble with mushrooms: “It’s one of those things where every once in a while you want to blow out the pipes. For me, I just like to know they’re available, just because I don’t think there’s anything else in life apart from a near-death experience that shows you how extensive the mind is” (Henke 1991, 40).

“as far as the drugs that are dead-enders, like cocaine and heroin and so forth, if you could figure out how to do them without being strung out on them, or without having them completely dominate your personality … I mean, if drugs are making your decisions for you, they’re no fucking good. I can say that unequivocally. If you’re far enough into whatever your drug of choice is, then you are a slave to the drug, and the drug isn’t doing you any good” (Henke 1991, 40).

“I’m an addictive-personality kind of person. … with drugs, the danger is that they run you. Your soul isn’t your own. That’s the drug problem on a personal level” (Henke 1991, 40).

Says he was doing H on and off for 8 years.

Hard to quit H, but real problem now is smokes, that last thing left. “My friends won’t let me take drugs anymore, and I don’t want to scare people anymore. Plus, I definitely have no interest in being an addict” (Henke 1991, 40).

“I still have that desire to change my consciousness, and in the last four years I’ve gotten real seriously into scuba diving.” Also gives him some physical exertion (Henke 1991, 40).

With Keelin “I have a little more time to actually be a father. My other daughters have all been very good to me, insofar as they've never blamed me for my absentee parenting. And it was tough for them, really, because during the sixties and seventies, I was gone all the time. But they've all grown up to be pretty decent people, and they still like me. We still talk. But I never did get to spend a lot of time with them." (Henke 1991, 40).

Garcia got together with Heather (daughter of Jerry and Sara Katz) for first time 18 or 19 years ... (Henke 1991, 103).

At this point, JG and MG are in the process of getting divorced. “She’s real glad to get rid of me. We had a great time, a nice life together, but we went past it. … We haven’t really lived together since the 70s” (Henke 1991, 103).

Joe died when Gar was 5. Joe played clarinet and other woodwinds, in a big ol 40 piece jazz orchestra. “My father’s sister says he was in a movie, some early talkie.” (Henke 1991, 103).

“I remember him playing me to sleep at night. I just barely remember the sound of it” (Henke 1991, 103).

Jerry watched Joe go under and drown. “It was horrible. I was just a little kid, and I didn’t really understand what was going on, but then, of course, my life changed. “ (Henke 1991, 103).

Ruth was an RN, but after Joe died she took over his bar. “He had this little bar right next door to the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific, the merchant marine’s union, right at First and Harrison, in San Francisco. It was a daytime bar, a working guy’s bar, so I grew up with all these guys who were sailors. They went out and sailed to the Far East and the Persian Gulf, the Philippines and all that, and they would come and hang out in the bar all day long and talk to me when I was a kid. It was great fun for me. I mean, that’s my background. I grew up in a bar. And that was back in the days when the Orient was still the Orient, and it hadn’t been completely Americanized yet. They’d bring back all these weird things. Like one guy had the world’s largest collection of [106] photographs of square riggers” (Henke 1991, 103, 106).

His third grade teacher Miss Simon hipped him to the possibility of being a creative type. “’You mean you can spend all day painting pictures? Wow! What a great piece of news’.” (Henke 1991, 106).

Dwight Johnson was another teacher, “he’s the guy that turned me into a freak” (Henke 1991, 106). He was a motor cycle guy, 7th grade teacher.

Talks about liking Dylan songs: “they speak to me emotionally on some level. Sometimes, I don’t even know why. Like that song, Senor. There’s something creepy about that song, but it’s very satisfying in a weird sort of way” (Henke 1991, 106). “This is talking about a kind of desperation that everybody experiences” (Henke 1991, 108). Songs-S

More fun outside the Dead. “that’s always dangling in front of me, the thing of, well, shit, if I was on my own, God, I could … “ (Henke 1991, 108).

“Bruce, Branford, Rob Wasserman and I have talked about putting something together. I had this notion of putting together a band that had no material, that just got onstage and blew. And maybe one of these days we’ll make that happen” (Henke 1991, 108).

Garcia listens to Django, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Coltrane. “Michael Hedges is great. And my personal favorite lately is this guy Frank Gambale, who’s been playing with Chick Corea for the past couple of years” (Henke 1991, 108).

“Living Colour is a great band … Jane’s Addiction is another band I like” (Henke 1991, 108).

“I feel like I’m a hundred million years old” (Henke 1991, 108).

Why kids keep coming to see the Dead: “There must be a dearth of fun out there in America. Or adventure. Maybe that’s it, maybe we’re just one of the last adventures in America” (Henke 1991, 108).

Garcia, Cutler, Hunter, unidentified woman chatting, ca. 1970

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_g2GWeAgYQ

Not much very revelatory, but nice to hear Hunter rapping, and they talk together about Altamont. Around 20, we get some Hells Angels talk.

Garcia: "It's almost like having tigers on the streets."

Hunter, in a classic case of how these guys romanticized the Angels and other outlaws: "Hells Angels are Robin Hood.

Cutler is talking about one of their leaders, and even here he doesn't name names.

Garcia: "They've got a form that works. Like one of the old brotherhoods ..." Hunter: "They've been there from time immemorial. There have always been brotherhoods." Garcia: "... Samurai warriors ..."

update: LIA has transcribed this at Deadsources.

Reading Notes: Dupree 1974

Zoo World, January 31, 1974. "Cover photo captured by Mario Algaze the afternoon of a Leas Campbell presentation of the Grateful Dead at Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa, Fla.", December 18 or 19, 1973.

A clean-shaven Jerry Garcia in Tampa, Florida, December 18 or 19, 1973. Photograph by Mario Algaze, published in Zoo World, January 31, 1974, p. 12.

Dupree, Tom. 1974. Grateful Dead: Hipper Than the Average Corporation. Zoo World, January 31, pp. 12-13.

The pictures are from Tampa. As the Thoughts On The Dead guy might say, Billy looks like he wants to kick punch some dicks. Anyway, Donna Jean was back home giving birth, and the band played two kickass shows December 18-19, 1973, really great.

The article draws from December 12th in Atlanta, meetings and interviews with band members, a few expost reax to the show. As the title implies, the main topic of discussion is Grateful Dead Records, and business matters (this appears to have been an industry paper based in Nashville, I should probably know that).

p. 12

booking firm: Out Of Town Tours

Dead inspired travel agency Fly By Night

"Garcia's country group Old And In The Way"

Sparky And The Ass-Bites From Hell

Weir interview

Meeting in the Regency Hyatt House Hotel, not where band is staying. Bob is there to sightsee the tony hotel's glass elevator, architectural emanation of American opulence, on the side of a newspaper interview downtown. Pull-quote paints picture of a wine-snobby Bobby, which is partly true but pretty unfair for a guy who has worked hard for fifty years despite probably sitting on a pile of family money (the Atherton house he grew up in alone would make quite an inheritance). In his seventies as I type this, tonight he's playing the second night of GD50 in Santa Clara.

Weir: the hippie thing was a good time, but we've moved on.

Record company: "the Dead organization picked a network of conventional distribution firms" to get the Wake of the Flood into the stores.

p. 13

Rock Scully is current road manager – when did Cutler leave the road?

Weir says they have reduced their risk by having a less diversified portfolio than most record companies. They don't have to pay for the 6 or 7 Donnie and the Doughnuts records that lose money. They have just the 1 GD record, which they have some idea can sell. "Any fears about the company's success in its initial stages have been quieted: the album is about to go gold, with RIAA certification expected to come in January, just about two months after release" (Dupree 1974, 13).

"The Dead organization … is hoping the LP will provide capital to bolster and expand other aspects of its operation" (Dupree 1974, 13). Interesting – note that at this early stage, no mention of Round Records, Round Reels, etc. I want to triangulate to when we get the first mention of the Round stable of shell corporations.

Ever the anti-businessmen, Rock and others say the album kind of sucks! (Dupree 1974, 13).

"I like it," Garcia says of Wake of the Flood. "I thought the material was very good. And there's no question that we were rushed on it. We did that to ourselves, really, by leaving ourselves too short off time. But, considering, I think it turned out pretty well" (12/12/73, Dupree 1974, 13).

JG: "Phonograph records are misleading … First of all, there's an artificial start and stop, the physical dimensions of an album. … There's only, what, 22 minutes to an album side, and our thoughts are much longer than that" (12/12/73, Dupree 1974, 13).

Odd moment 12/12/73 Garcia to say they now like big rooms because of the WOS: "If we couldn't get off in them, we wouldn't play big halls. But now we understand them about as well as we understood theaters when we were playing them" (Dupree 1974, 13).

Rock 12/12/73 says the band will take five days off, play the Florida gigs, then take a month or two off. "That's the whole band I'm talking about. Garcia has never taken a moment off since he picked up his first guitar. He is playing somewhere every night" (Dupree 1974, 13).

Keith speaks! 4^th column, p. 13 "I'm sure there are a lot of relatively honest ways of calling attention to yourself, as long as it's not hype. We are not in a position to be ripped off. We can't afford yet to give $3,000 to a local distributor and then have him forge newspaper receipts on us. Where we're at right now is, we have people on the inside we can trust. Now we're trying to find the people on the outside that we can feel the same way about. But with this operation, we're gonna be honest if we have to beat some ass."

"Or take it in the ass," Weir says. "We've done both. We just are trying to take some of the sleaze out of it, and say that things should be done in an above-board manner or not at all."

At the end of the interview, Keith "Godchaux drags on his cigarette, then leans over purposefully: 'I'm not averse to hustling, either'" (12/12/73, Dupree 1974, 13).