Jerry Garcia at the Warfield - August 21, 1982??

What a strange thing this is.

SFC listing for Jerry Garcia at the Warfield, August 21, 1982.

It almost certainly wasn't JGB: that band had last played June 24 out east, and wouldn't play again (in a new configuration) until October 13th.

It was almost certainly planned to be the Garcia/Kahn acoustic duo, two days before they'd play the Kabuki Theater a mile and a half away.

But it almost certainly didn't happen. This is the only whiff of this I have ever seen, and it's just so random ... yet it didn't come from nowhere. Someone in Garcia's orbit called the Chronicle and told them about this. Weird.

I don't know whether to call this is a phantom or a cancellation. Anyone?

Twenty-Seven Performances in Twenty-Four Days: April 6-30, 1973

update 20240414: we now know that the Four Nights at the Boarding House were all two-show nights. Math may have to be updated. I am also dinging the uncertain 4/28 at the Plant, as recently discussed here. I now believe this was spurious.

Yup: I now count 27 performances in these 24 days. Edit title yet again.

update: commenter RoG has brought two more gigs to my attention, Wed-Thurs April 25-26 with JGMS at Keystone, so the title has changed from "Twenty-Two" to "Twenty-Four". All the more remarkable.

update2: oh yeah, I forget to mention another little detail from this period: on April 19th, the Dead decided to start up their own record label (Perry 1973, 50; Troy 1994, 155). Because Garcia didn't have enough going on.

I got to commune with more Chronicle microfilm a few days ago, and managed to spin through January 1, 1973 through August 10, 1973. I didn't gather every last listing, just too little time, but I gathered a bunch. These first eight months of 1973 yielded three New-to-The-List gigs, all Garcia-Saunders: April 10-11, 1973 at the Orphanage, and May 24, 1973 at the Keystone.

SFC19730409p45, listing for 4/10/73 JGMS at the Orphanage

SFC19730410p36, Datebook listing for 4/10/73 JGMS at the Orphanage

SFC19730411p41, listing for 4/11/73 JGMS at Orphanage

SFC19730523p58, listing for 5/24/73 JGMS at Keystone

Ah, Garcia, you amaze me.

The last entry lets us see that Jerry played with three bands, three different styles, over three days in May '73: Jerry and Merl on the 24th, plus already-known shows with Old And In The Way at Bimbo's on the 25th, and of course the Dead, with NRPS and Waylon Jennings also playing, at Kezar Stadium on the 26th.

Even more strikingly, these new-to-The-List April shows, Tuesday-Wednesday gigs, fill in a remarkable run from that month. I have already written about OAITW in Santa Barbara on the 12th, a four night run at the Boarding House right after these gigs, two with Merl playing inter alia black contemporary, and two with Dawg and Pete Rowan and the rest playing white roots music, taking a deep dive into Friday the 13th, which got a review in the Stanford Daily (Harlow 1973), and also some listening notes from the 16th. But with these shows, we see a truly insane month of shows once the Dead got back from the east coast.

April 6-8: JGMS at Keystone

April 9: off night (Monday - slacker)

April 10-11: JGMS at Orphanage

April 12: OAITW at the Granada in Santa Barbara (2 shows)

April 13-14: JGMS at Boarding House (4 shows)

April 15-16: OAITW at Boarding House (4 shows)

April 17: off night (Tuesday)

April 18: OAITW session at the Record Plant (uncertain)

April 19-21: OAITW at Lion's Share

April 21: afternoon FM broadcast live from the Record Plant

April 22: off night (Sunday)

April 23: OAITW at Orphanage

April 24: OAITW at the Inn of the Beginning

April 25-26: JGMS at Keystone off nights, only consecutive nights off since this run started, and since 3-4-5 after Dead flew back home

April 27-28: OAITW at Keystone

April 29: night off (Sunday)

April 30: OAITW at Orphanage

Now, there are a few uncertain dates in there. But if my reckoning is correct, and without counting thigh dubious 4/18 session in Sausailo, this is 272422 performances in 24 days, 

I note that Selvin referred to the Orphanage as a "cocaine speakeasy" (Selvin 1996, 37). This which might have come in handy given the unprecedentedly hectic pace of the month's musical pursuits.

Merl Saunders and the Rainforest Band, featuring Jerry Garcia

Here's a weird one bottom of column 1 to top of column 2:

"Merl Saunders and the Rainforest Band, featuring Jerry Garcia. Performing music from their album Blues From the Rainforest, July 26 at the Great American Music Hall and July 27 at the Cotati Cabaret"

Several possibilities.

First, perhaps most likely (?), whoever called this in to the Petaluma Argus-Courier dropped Jerry's name in connection with Merl's 1990 Blues From the Rainforest release, and the person at the paper was somehow left with the impression that Jerry would play the listed gigs. It wouldn't be the first time that Garcia's name would pop up in unexpected ways in the promotion of a Saunders gig that Garcia really wasn't involved in. For example, almost a year after their last shared agglomeration had knocked off, a preview for an August 1980 Saunders gig in far northern California teased that Merle [sic] was "currently playing with Jerry Garcia under the name of 'Reconstruction'." (1)

Second, maybe Gar really was going to play these gigs, but, as with two other prospective July 1991 engagements (JGB on the Eel, 7/13/91 cum 8/10/91, at the Frost on 7/14/91, and at Telluride, 7/19/91), he ended up not doing them because he was in rehab (as I surmise about the other three dates), or just forgot.

update: heh heh, my own files would help me. I know he was scuba diving on 7/27/91 in Hawaii, which would likely involve flying out no later than 7/26. I don't know if that trip would have been planned by whenever the 7/19/91 item was called in, but I strongly suspect so. This makes Hypothesis 1, that the Saunders camp somehow, surely innocently, gave mistaken impression that Jerry would play, to the Petaluma paper, seem most likely.

Thoughts?

REFERENCE:
(1) "A weekend of jazz planned at the Back Door Aug. 8, 9," Ukiah Daily Journal, August 6, 1980, p. 10.

Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner, December 19-21, 1976 (UNCERTAIN)

I am a stickler for accuracy with things like band names, and yet, given what we know, you would think that the words in my title, "Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner", could not be strictly accurate. Garcia stopped playing Keystone Korner in 1972, three years before the Jerry Garcia Band existed, the stickler would say.

That's true, but, imagine my surprise when, in spinning through some more BAM listings that I gathered this summer, I find the following.

BAM no. 9 (December 1976), p. 34. (Sorry about the obnoxious watermark over it.)

Listing for Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner, December 19-21, 1976. Fascinating.

Did These Shows Happen?

12/21/76 almost definitely seems not to have happened, since JGB played Keystone Berkeley (1st of three nights just before Christmas). The show was reviewed (Kelp 1976), there's tape (shnid-20474), and there was a listing in the Oakland Tribune based on considerably fresher information than BAM, still a monthly at this time, could have had.

What about Sunday-Monday, December 19-20? My hunch is that they did not happen, confident to maybe 75%. I couldn't tell you how I come to that assessment so, again, a hunch. Maybe the note to call to confirm the dates plants an extra seed of doubt about it in my mind.

The Listings Themselves Are The Point

Even if the shows did not happen, the listing is fascinating. Someone with calendaring knowledge at Keystone Korner conveyed to someone at BAM that JGB would play Todd Barkan's Keystone Korner in December 1976. Beyond merely stretching the period of known Garcia-Barkan engagement by four years, it ties back into a legendary jazz room. Garcia wasn't playing very jazzily at this time, so bringing him in would have been an exception to the regularity that, after the first six months or so of Barkan's proprietorship (let's say, starting January 1, 1973) it was strictly jazz.

I have a sneaking suspicion the shows never materialized, but either way I am fascinated to contemplate the possibility.

REFERENCES

! review: Kelp, Larry. 1976. A Showcase for Garcia’s Styles. Oakland Tribune, December 23, 1976, p. 22

! listing: "Bay Area Calendar," Oakland Tribune, December 19, 1976, p. E-14

! ref: URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/10/december-21-22-1976-keystone-berkeley.html

! JGMF: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/10/john-rich-question-reply-to-corry.html

! listing: [contra: Keystone Korner] BAM no. 9 (December 1976), p. 34.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

??

Near-Miss with the Rubber Duck Mime Band: June 2-3, 1970, Mandrake's, Berkeley, CA

WAS TITLED "NRPS: June 2-3, 1970, Mandrake's, Berkeley, CA"

But Paul Dresher has confirmed that, while Garcia was in the ad, he did not play this night.

So, the Mandrake's ad from the Berkeley Tribe v2 n21 (issue 47) (May 29 - June 5, 1970), p. 16, lists the following for Tuesday & Wednesday, June 2-3, 1970: "The Rubber Duck Mime Band and Jerry Garcia." It looks to me like there was some last-minute rough resetting of the listing. I am going to assume that this is the New Riders of the Purple Sage, probably warming up for the big Fillmore West gigs that would run June 4-7, 1970. That would be the first hometown appearance of the "An Evening with the Grateful Dead" format, and I am guessing they wanted everything to be Just Exactly Perfect (i.e., rehearsed/warmed up). Since COAU doesn't list this, I thought it should be added to our various lists.

It seems that Garcia was used in the advertising, but didn't play this gig with the Rubber Duck (nor was it a NRPS gig). Paul Dresher, commenting chez LIA:

Glen [Frendel] played the Mandrakes show that some think Jerry Garcia also played. I was there, and Garcia did NOT play that evening. I would have remembered that well, as at that point, Jerry was my greatest guitar hero and the Dead my favorite band. While Garcia’s name might have been in the marketing for the show, he didn't play that show, Glen did.

The end of the November 1974 Jerry Garcia - Merl Saunders (JGMS) east coast tour

There is so much to say about the November 1974 east coast tour undertaken by the Jerry Garcia / Merl Saunders group (the quintet of Garcia [el-g, vocals], Saunders [keyboards, vocals], John Kahn [el-bass], Martin Fierro [horns], and future Lawrence Welk drummer Paul Humphrey).

Garcia had done two national "tours" outside the Grateful Dead prior to this one.

• First, in January 1972, he went out with Howard Wales behind the Douglas Record Hooteroll? on something like a 10-date tour. I think we have barely scratched the surface with that tour.
• Second, in June 1973 Old And In The Way booked a midwest/east coast bluegrass festival tour which seems to have fallen apart after a scant 3-4 gigs. Again, we know next to nothing about this.
• Third, we have this tour. (The gigs at the Bottom Line, New York, NY, July 1-3, 1974 were one-offs, more like "scouting trips" for the tour, in my eyes. One helluva party, it seems like, and another barely documented episode.)

It began at the Bottom Line on Tuesday, November 5, 1974, and ended, I will argue, on Sunday, November 17, 1974 at the Auditorium Theatre in Rochester, NY. By my count the group played 22 shows in 12 days. I am not going to narrate the whole tour, just the end.

TJS currently has the tour running through a Monday night (November 18, 1974) show in The Dome at C.W. Post College in Greenvale, NY. Ryan's note says "All tapes I've seen with this date are really 11/08/74." Indeed. There was a show on Friday, November 8, 1974 in The Dome at C.W. Post College. There are several different tapes and lots of eyewitness accounts (though I'd love to gather more!). It seems pretty open and shut to me that the "11/18/74" dating is just a transcription error from "11/8/74". Not sure the point even needs belaboring, but I guess I'll go ahead and summarize all of the reasons this date is probably bogus:

• there is lots of evidence for 11/8, no evidence for 11/18 except mislabeled tape;
• easy to make "11/8" become "11/18".
• Why would they come back to the same venue ten days later?
• Why would they do so on a Monday night?

So this is what I think of as a "mere mislabel". The chances that it happened are tiny. How should these data be kept, and for example how should they be displayed at TJS?


In sum, I conclude that the current listing for Garcia and Saunder at C.W. Post College on November 18, 1974 is based on a mislabel of tapes from November 8th.

If "11/18/74" wasn't the last show of the tour, what was? For the night before (Sunday, November 17, 1974), TJS lists Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at the Auditorium Theatre (*not* the Rochester War Memorial Auditorium) in Rochester, NY. It notes a 145 minute audience recording, which I do not believe I have heard. It also notes information from "Mark Wilkins", who presumably attended the show. There's a quite complete looking setlist as well. I would note, finally, that there is a listing in the (Canandaigua, NY) Daily Messenger, Thursday, November 14, 1974, section two, front page. So, lots of evidence that this show happened, and finishing on a Sunday makes a certain amount of sense.

So far I hope to have done the following:

• established that "11/18/74" is a "phantom gig";
• invite feedback on this is a type of phantom gig, and how TJS might represent such data;
• established that 11/17/74 did occur and was the final show of the 12-day, 22-show marathon (or is it a sprint?) northeast tour.

One last point I'd like to make is that John Kahn seems to have finished up with Garcia and Saunders and picked right up with Maria Muldaur's road band. Nice scheduling!

• The first Maria Muldaur gig from this tour that I have come across is, you guessed it, Monday, November 18, 1974 (Avery Fisher Hall in New York, NY). It was reviewed in Billboard (1). John Kahn is not mentioned.
• 
  
• The second one I came across was the same billing (Maria Muldaur, Livingston Taylor) at the Music Hall in Boston, MA on Friday, November 22, 1974. This was in an ad in the Boston Phoenix (November 12, 1974, p. 6, in the "Don Law Presents" space). 

Obviously I am not trying to narrate this Muldaur tour, though the Kahn story will eventually require all of that to be done. I am just noting the transition for John: finish with Jerry on the 17th, head back to the city for Maria on the 18th. Few more paying gigs (and maybe quite a few ... where were they until the 26th?), not too bad!

I suppose my point about this is that, in those days, Kahn was quite a busy musician. I don't think Garcia was carrying Kahn in 1974.


REFERENCE:
Stephen, Jim. Talent In Action: Maria Muldaur, Livingston Taylor, Avery Fisher Hall. Billboard, December 14, 1974, pp. 21, 31.

TJS and phantom gigs

How should The Jerry Site handle phantom gigs?

In another post, commenter David Minches said that disconfirmed dates should be left in with a note that they are incorrect.

I agree. But I think the "misdates" need to be filterable and should be marked off by text or color or font or border or something.

Does everyone agree that this would be the optimum solution, were it to be implementable?

When did Melvin Seals begin with JGB?

Edited 20110216

The Jerry Garcia Band show listed as Saturday, December 20, 1980, Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA, has always struck me odd. I argue here that (1) "12/20/80" is a "phantom" listing, a mislabel of 12/20/79. Along the way (2) I argue that "1/18/81" is also a phantom, a mislabel of 1/18/83. This leads to a new-to-me understanding of when Melvin Seals joined the band; I (3) conclude here that Melvin Seals's public debut as keyboardist with the Jerry Garcia Band was Thursday, January 22, 1981 at the Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA. This can be seen as a companion piece to my query about the start of the Garcia-Saunders relationship.

Observation #1: all circulating tapes of "12/20/80" are actually copies of 12/20/79. No-one with ears to hear (or eyes to see, if one had been there) could confuse Melvin and his Hammond B-3 with Ozzie Ahlers and his electric piano (can't remember the precise gear right now).

Observation #2: the last reasonably well documented JGB show before "12/20/80" is August 9 (*shiver*), 1980, Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA (shnid-29088 [partial sbd]). As we presently understand it, that is the last show of the Garcia-Kahn-Ahlers-Errico quartet version of the Jerry Garcia Band. (Errico would return on October 13, 1982, for another 8-month stint.)

Observation #3: I know of no hard evidence (newspaper ad, ticket stub, attendee recollection, distinct tape, etc. etc.) of a JGB show on 12/20/80. Gordon Sharpless, credited as contributor at TJS, has shared his conclusion that "12/20/80" is a misdate of 12/20/79 in comments.

Observation #4: there have been tape recordings labeled "Melvin Rehearsals", dated Wednesday, January 14, 1981 through Friday, January 16, 1981, at Club Front in San Rafael, CA. I have January 16th to listen to (thank you, wk!) but haven't gotten around to it yet. It's the kind of thing that is going to be all consuming for 90 minutes, and I tend not to have chunks of time like that. Tape datings are among the least reliable data sources we have --I have created a new tag called 'methodology', by the way-- but the coincidence of Wed-Fri rehearsals right before starting up the new configuration the next week is a strongly suggestive one. (I would have guessed that they'd gig on Saturday 1/17, but if they weren't ready they probably spent a few more nights rehearsing.) There may well have been further rehearsals, but there is no public information about that. Anyway, these rehearsals are consistent with a later starting date than "12/20/80" ... I don't think workaholic Jerry would have been rehearsing this new band for the 3-4 weeks required to have started up before 12/20/80 and still been rehearsing in the third week of January.

Observation #5: The next conventionally-listed JGB gig is Sunday, January 18, 1981, Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA. This would be a plausible first gig for a band with a new lineup: Sunday night at the relatively out-of-the-way Catalyst. I see three reasons to conclude that this date is bogus, though. First, the tapes circulating with this date are all from January 18, 1983 (same venue, the Catalyst). Mislabels being what they are, this doesn't mean an '81 show on this date and venue didn't happen. Second, TJS had this note: "DeadBase's setlist for this show is a duplication of their 01/18/83 setlist and incorrect", and it credits gorshar as a contributor. This is exactly like the profile of 12/20/80, of course. Third, the manucript tradition (i.e., Corry's lists) never contained information on this show. Strike three and this date is out, as far as my current reasoning goes.

Interim Analysis. Here's what I think happened for both "12/20/80" and "1/18/81". The old manuscript tradition correctly had no listing for these shows. At some point a tape of 1/18/83 gets mislabeled "1/18/81" (easily enough), just as a tape of 12/21/79 became "12/20/80" (though this one has a less obvious orthographic explanation). This tape forms the basis of a Deadbase listing (most of which, but obviously not this one, drew from Corry's lists). When the Jerry Site comes around in ca. ?1999? or ?2000?, gorshar tells Ryan about the mislabel, but Ryan (rightly, conservatively) makes the note but keeps the entry in, just in case. But I am prepared to conclude here that 1/18/81 is also a bogus listing.

Observation #6: the next known JGB show is Thursday, January 22, 1981, the first of two nights at the Keystone Palo Alto in Palo Alto, CA (Jerrybase, shnid-97266 [Latvala's partial audience recording]). These are Melvin's presumed third and fourth shows, after "12/20/80" and "1/18/81". But I argue there that 1/22/81 is the correct dating for Melvin Seals's public debut with the Jerry Garcia Band. The two preceding dates, "12/20/80" and "1/18/81", are both phantoms, by my analysis.

Aside, re: personnel: Melvin would never leave the JGB's keyboard chair, putting in an astonishing 14+ years. Without checking the numbers, I think this makes Melvin Jerry's #2 onstage musical collaborator (in terms of frequency) outside the Grateful Dead, following Jerry's ol' buddy John Kahn. There is obviously much, much more to say about Mr. Melvin Seals, who continues, 30 years on, to engage this music as "Melvin Seals and JGB".

Aside re: venues: Corry's pathbreaking work on the Keystone complex, including his Garcia shows at Keystone overview, deserves to be borne in mind at all times. His economic analysis is especially important, really providing some good hard evidence about the Garcia-Keystone (let me use that as shorthand for Freddie Herrera and the whole complex here) symbiosis. He mentions the nice complementarities of Jerry being able to rotate through the various clubs, especially in this period when the Keystone Berkeley, Keystone Palo Alto, and the Stone (San Francisco) were all operating. I don't read him as identifying any further division of labor, but I have a hypothesis: the Keystone Palo Alto was more likely to be used midweek than either of the other two clubs. That's not to say the KPA never got weekend shows, just that, by the early 80s, if there was woodshedding to be done and a Keystone club was to be involved, it was more likely to happen in Palo Alto than in Berkeley or SF. Otherwise, it seems like slightly more out-of-the-way places such as the Catalyst and the River Theater got a disproportionate share of the "debut" action. And given the fluidity of JGB membership in the early 1980s (e.g., in terms of backup singers and drummers), there was an unusual amount of woodshedding to be done. I do think we could get at this with some very simple statistic tests, but I'll add that to the "to-do" list.

And a meta point underneath (or "over", anyway) that: maybe the fact that less central venues tended to get the "debut" performances in the early 80s is why information on precise starting and ending dates has been so inconsistent. Fewer notetakers and tapers = less carry-though to the present. An interesting sociology of knowledge involved in all this, but I digress ...

Upshot:

1. I argue and conclude that the "12/20/80" JGB date is a phantom
2. I argue and provisionally conclude that the "1/18/81" JGB date is a phantom.
3. I argue and conclude that Melvin Seals's public debut with the Jerry Garcia Band was January 22, 1981, following at least some rehearsals the week prior.

Source Check:
McNally, LST: no mention
Jackson, Garcia, p. 321: Melvin's arrival and tenure noted, but no starting date/timeframe given.
Jackson, cutting room floor: no mention.

GD: September 11-12, 1970: Pepperland, San Rafael (POSSIBLE) (NOW DISCONFIRMED)

**UPDATE: DISCONFIRMED. SEE COMMENTS**

I don't have tremendous confidence that this ever happened, but since Corry has educated me a little about booking practices and such, the fact that it's a Friday-Saturday that is otherwise unfilled in GD/Garcia chronologies makes me more open to it.

In a July 1970 Billboard article on Pepperland ("scheduled to open on Labor Day Weekend") , venue operators Nat Shind and Ben Blatt report that they have booked the Grateful Dead for the September 11-12 and 18-19 weekends. They also note that the band planned to record for a new live album, which is presumably what became "Skullfuck" and featured spring 1971 recordings.

We know the dates are at least half wrong, with the GD at the Fillmore East on September 18-19. But my spreadsheet shows September 11-12, 1970 to be an open weekend for Garcia, so it certainly seems possible. I'll file it as such.

Jerry Garcia and Howard Wales: June 7, 1970, Matrix, San Francisco, CA (PHANTOM)

The Jerry Site still doesn't have any way to keep a list of deleted shows. If one is deleted or its date is changed, the old entry evaporates. So I am trying to keep track of what disappears under this "TJS-deletion" tag.

Anyway, TJS has listed a Garcia/Wales show for Sunday, June 7, 1970, probably based on a listing in the Berkeley Barb contributed by Joey Newlander. Gordon Sharpless was also credited as an information contributor, though I don't know in what capacity. Here was the note for the show:

Billed as "Jerry Garcia, Howard Wales and Friends". Listing from newspaper advertisement. The Dead played this same date at the Fillmore West. Although it's a possibility both shows took place (this being in the afternoon), it's unlikely.

As Ross points out to me, Sunday shows almost never happen at the Matrix. Gary Jackson's list of Matrix dates has the club closed on June 7th. The GD were playing at Fillmore West, as noted above. Finally, there is good evidence, apparently including a recording in the Garcia vault, for a June 8, 1970 Garcia/Wales gig at Matrix, their usual Monday Night thing.

In brief: seems like there was no HWJG thing at the Matrix on June 7, 1970. I'd guess that the Barb had a typo or other misinformation.