Gloria NON Advenit! JGB at Keystone Palo Alto, Saturday, July 10, 1984

update 1: Jeez ... I now think Gloria must have arrived 7/10/84-7/11/84, a Tuesday-Wednesday in Palo Alto. Working backward: she is mentioned in reviews of August 1984 east coast shows. It is an iron law that the band played local warmups before leaving on tour, which would be these birthday shows. And it is just about an iron law that new members broke in on off-nights, off-the-beaten path, or both. Tues-Weds in Palo Alto fits the pattern better than a Saturday (7/28) in Berkeley the weekend of Jerry's birthday.

Having spent some time with it, I am prepared to declare that I hold that the titular show, JGB at Keystone Palo Alto on Saturday, July 28, 1984 Tuesday, July 10, 1984 represents Gloria Jones's public debut with the outfit. It thus also marks the birth of JGB #21b, THE Jerry Garcia Band, which would play together through November 1993, making it Garcia's longest-running aggregation outside the Brent Mydland-era Grateful Dead.

I have been circling around this conclusion for almost a decade now. Let me reconstruct. Older reckonings had Gloria starting on 7/21/83, or 9/30/83. In late 2010, I found an ad for 11/27/83 naming DeeDee Dickerson and not Gloria alongside Jackie LaBranch, which got me to thinking those earlier understandings were wrong. Five years later, I went through band itineraries for the November-December 1983 tour, which included DeeDee's flight arrangements and so on. So far, this has DDD present through '83, consistent with Corry's current reckoning (as JGB #21a, b. 7/20/83, d. 12/13/83).

I did a bunch of stuff in 2014. First, I conjectured that 1/8/84 was Gloria's first gig, which probably led to Corry's current dating for JGB #21b. I am now pretty sure that was wrong because, second, I found a show review from Santa Barbara (5/19/84) which namechecks the band, including DDD. This is no guarantee, of course, since JGB member names were not always  correctly rendered by local journos, but it was suggestive. And, third, I found pictures from 8/11/84 which show Gloria onstage. So, the bookends have now moved forward quite a bit - DDD was in the house 5/19/84, and almost certainly the last night of the little mini SoCal jaunt it was a part of, 5/20/84 at Wolf & Rissmiller's in Reseda. The next show was 7/28/84, part of a four-night birthday run for Garcia, warming up for the East Coast tour.

So I did some listening around those bookends, the May shows now presumed to be with DeeDee, and the July-August shows now presumed to be with Gloria. Despite obviously strong priors (and probably other bias in favor of finding a difference), I hear differences in the backing vocals. I couldn't characterize them beyond saying they are different. Basic methodology was to find clean tapes (sbd preferred) that have clear backing vocals. I ended up focusing on the first chorus of "Cats Under The Stars" on 5/18/84 (an FM-SBD tape, shnid-32156) and on 7/28/84 (sbd, shnid-14428). Again, the backing vocalists sound different. There aren't a lot of board tapes in these frames, so then I compared the opening stanza of "Catfish John" on the same 5/18/84 and the next known version, 8/10/84. Again, I detect a difference.

update 2: the original version of this post had Gloria arriving July 28th. But I now think it must have been July 10th.

On this basis and on the basis of earlier sniffing around 10/82 and 7/83, I am prepared to "call" the following:

• DeeDee Dickerson's tenure with the Garcia Band ran from 10/24/82 1/13/83 (with JGB #15b) through 5/20/84 (with JGB #21a)
• Jacklyn LaBranch's tenure with the Garcia Band ran from 1/13/83 to the end (4/23/95).
• Gloria Jones's tenure with the Garcia Band ran from 7/10/84 (with JGB #21b) to the end.

My only concern is that I thought there was a new member on 1/8/84 based on audience chatter. That, combined with the fact that journos didn't always have the most up-to-date information about who was in the Garcia Band, gives me some pause. I hope the listening analysis I did holds up!

Now, how about 7/28/84, listening notes for which I post below?

The setlist novelty here is Allen Toussaint's "Get Out Of My Life, Woman", which came in strong and stuck around pretty much to the end of the Garcia Band. The JGB never varied its setlists that much (certainly not relative to the GD), and I don't really have the data I'd need to map song debuts, but this is just about the only new-to-the-repertoire tune I can think of between, say, 1981 and 1985. Are there any others, like, is there a single other cover tune that JGB added to the repertoire between, say, "Eleanor Rigby" in 1980 (sort of) and "It Stoned Me" in 1986? Anyway, great tune, done well, and at points "hot-hot-hot", per my notes.

The show, overall, offers plenty of sloppy pep. I hated when he couldn't figure out how to end "Cats Under The Stars", and this version suffers from that. There's plenty of mumblyverse, slop, and hot energy in tunes like "Tore Up Over You". Not bad, all told.

Listening notes below the fold.

Jerry Has Fallen, and He Can't Get Up

OK, maybe I am feeling a little bit cranky. I have been doing some late era listening, and it's not always easy.

Wednesday, April 20, 1994 at the Warfield, for example, has a "Don't Let Go" - which is good! - but it falls into quite a remarkable rut. From 3:22-6:03 of this lovely Vasseur tape, he sings "Hold me tight and don't let go" no fewer than thirty times, by my count. Now, if he were embellishing more, if he were varying his vocal attack, if he were pairing it with guitar expressions, I would, in principle, be fine with that. He'd be feeling it. But, in this case, he seems to be feeling a little lost, a little stuck. There is a bit of variation in how he sings the line, but not much. There's almost no interplay between the voice and guitar, which could make "Don't Let Go" from any era pretty compelling, since it's not something he did much of on any other song. It's like he's trying to remember how he exits into the jam part of the song, but can't bring it forth.

The show's not as bad as 8/14/94. Married about nine weeks to Deborah Koons, he played "Get Out Of My Life Woman" with some nice burn and real conviction. But the penultimate "Señor" suffers for lack of steady drumming, and in any case the "tail of the dragon" is smelling dangerously strong at this point, so perhaps best to put it to bed. The closing "Midnight Moonlight", I note, "is a little hard to hear."

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
April 20, 1994 (Wednesday)
Vasseur shnid-141480

--set I (7 tracks, 65:07)--
s1t01. [0:14] I'll Take A Melody [10:59] [0:54]
s1t02. Get Out Of My Life Woman [9:23] [1:41]
s1t03. Forever Young [10:50] [0:23]
s1t04. Run For The Roses [5:50] [0:15]
s1t05. Ain't No Bread In The Breadbox [10:22] [0:04]
s1t06. My Sisters And Brothers [3:58] ->
s1t07. Deal [9:56] (1) [0:09]

--set II (6 tracks, 74:36)--
s2t08. Shining Star [21:31] [0:23]
s2t09. Think [8:09] ]0:10]
s2t10. Señor [7:34] ->
s2t11. Don't Let Go [14:49] [0:39]
s2t12. Mississippi Moon [8:35] ->
s2t13. Tangled Up In Blue [12:40] (2) [0:06]

! ACT1: JGB #23
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, v;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Donny Baldwin - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals.

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.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19940420-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/21299 (Vasseur shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/141480 (this fileset).

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/warfield-982-market-street-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/ZW52vfHTbjs

! R: field recordist: Chuck Vasseur

! R: field recording gear: 2x Neumann KM54 > DAT

! R: Transfer: DAT Master > CDR (Kyle Porter); Extract: CDR clone > EAC > WAV > FLAC16 (Bill Shaw aka Shark)

! R: Source Notes: "Sometime in the early 2000's, Chuck loaned Kyle all of his 92-95 JGB masters to transfer to CDR. Kyle "mastered" the DATs to CDR, fading in/out as needed, adjusting levels (as needed) and tracking. Kyle then gave Chuck his masters back, with nice CDR copies of all of it. Chuck offered to clone the entire set for me, so I gave him a spool of 100 blank MITSUI CDRs and the next time I saw him, he gave them back to me, filled with his JGB recordings. Many of the Chuck V. JGB recordings do circulate already, but probably not all
of them, and those that do may not be the Kyle Porter transfers. So, Here they are! --Shark"

! R: tape sounds so great

! R: s1t01 ITAM splice 0:32-0:43, repeated section, a bit missing. Lame.

! P: s1t01 ITAM 3 range he is just making sounds, having forgotten the words.

! P: s1t02 GOOMLW the vocals are low but the guitar is nice and grungy, e.g., in the 4-minute range. Nice playing. Crowd stoked 5:40ff, and for good reason - good stuff. Melvin feature 6:35ff.

! P: s1t03 FY he puts the pitch-bender to work 7:49ff. DB doesn't really know how to end it, but they get there.

! P: s1t04 RFTR sounds half-speed

! s1t07 (1) JG: "Back in a little while."

! P: s2t10 Señor Donnie doesn't seem to know how to drum for this. Nothing much happens in this version.

! song: Señor (s2t10) penultimate version of this song (4/25/94).

! P: s2t11 DLG he doesn't really know the words. In 4 he's just repeating "hold me tight and don't let go" without much interesting vocal variation or guitar accompaniment, so it just feels a little stuck. I count thirty iterations between 3:22-6:03, which would be fine if he were embellishing, mixing it up. He is a little bit, on the margins. But mostly it just feels like he's fallen into this rut, and he can't get up.

! P: s2t12 Miss Moon is a little hard to hear.

! s2t13 (2) JG: "See ya later."

Kicking off the January '86 Garcia/Kahn acoustic tour

LN jg1986-01-24.jgjk.all.aud-CC.138168.flac1644

A huge bulge of heretofore elusive Garcia tape from the late 70s and especially the 80s has been hitting cyberspace. I don't have much time for this, just a few scattered notes laying down some markers for eventual discussion of the tour.

First, a tour snapshot.

Snapshot of the January '86 Garcia/Kahn acoustic east coast tour

Then, listening notes from newly-circulating closet call material from the first night out. For some reason, two short sets for JGJK seems fine - it's not always easy to listen to.

Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
D.A. R. Constitution Hall
1776 D St NW
Washington, DC 20006
January 24, 1986 (Friday) - 8 PM
CC shnid-138168

--set I (7 tracks, 37:13)--
s1t01. /Deep Elem Blues
s1t02. Friend Of The Devil
s1t03. When I Paint My Masterpiece
s1t04. Little Sadie [4:19] ->
s1t05. Spike Driver Blues [4:26] ->
s1t06. Jack A Roe
s1t07. Run For The Roses

--set II + encore (6 tracks, 38:52)--
--set II (5 tracks, 31:07)--
s2t01. Dire Wolf
s2t02. To Lay Me Down
s2t03. I've Been All Around This World
s2t04. Bird Song
s2t05. Ripple//
--encore (1 track, 7:45)--
s2t06. Goodnight Irene [7:37] (1) [0:08]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and John Kahn [JGJK]
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - ac-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - ac-b.

JGMF:

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19860124-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/138168 (this fileset). Nothing in digital circulation prior to 4/17. Probably very few copies of this show were traded.

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/constitution-hall-311-18th-st.html. Notes the following gigs in a room in which "every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended events": 11/2/75 Jerry Garcia Band; 11/27/83 Jerry Garcia Band; 8/8/84 Jerry Garcia Band; 11/20/84 John Kahn (acoustic); 1/24/86 John Kahn (acoustic).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/8FVYgH5QiCK2

! ref: Billboard, February 8, 1986, p. 37.Ticket I see went for $14.50. Show did well, selling out 3,741 for reported gross of $53,288.

! R: AUD (marked 2nd Gen) kindly provided by wk & http://jgmf.blogspot.com/

! R: transfer: TDK SA90 > Nakamichi CR-5A > Edirol FA-66 > Wavelab 2448 > R8Brain > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644 tagged. Transfer by Andrew F. 04/2017

! R: s1t01 DEB enters in progress, not much missing. PA mix improves about a minute in, and tape follows.

! historic: The January 1986 Garcia/Kahn acoustic tour --seven shows in nine days for John Scher in interesting, core northeast halls-- was a lucrative proposition for the two partners. Billboard reported this show as a 3,741 sold sellout grossing more than $50,000.

! song: "Little Sadie" (s1t04): Every Deadhead of this era knew the tune from the amazing and massively circulated 2/13/70 Fillmore East tapes, but of course it's draws in several great American song forms and traditions. See http://www.deaddisc.com/songs/Little_Sadie.htm.  "Sadie" presents a character fragment of the sort that avowedly drew Garcia in, illiterate antihero Lee Brown having shot the titular girl in the street for no apparent reason, slept soundly, and rather ineffably turned himself in to get "41 years to wear the ball and stripes".

! P: s1t04 LS @ 1:20, 1:35 very good guitar work at these instances and around. Very solid. There are moments here that sound as engaged as the later work with Grisman, very nice acoustic guitar, John also holding things down well. @ 3:30 Garcia revisits the first verse, then closes the song. There was a little fumbling around the end, but he was decisive and mostly hit it. This was an *excellent* Little Sadie.

! song: "Spike Driver Blues" (s1t05): Garcia didn't do many work songs, but this one is fun.

! P: s1t05 SDB: The acoustic setting is really good in letting him just sing vocals without too much strain. That helps him give more expression. "This is the hammer | that killed John Henry" is done with great around-a-fire-in-a-holler feeling and movement.

! P: s1t06 JAR here's another one that the show-attending Deadheads would have known, from Reckoning. But, yikes, the vocals are too much, first half of 2.

! R: s2t05 Ripple cuts out at "there is a fountain".

! P: s2t06 GI I am coming to this after having FF >> from Jack A Roe to here, not necessarily compelled to hear set II. 

! song: "Goodnight Irene" (s2t06): This is a favorite of mine. "Gonna take another walk downtown" is Garcia alchemizing New Orleans and his beloved San Francisco, and of course "jump overboard in the river and drown" is a mighty close reference to his own father's death. He played it with the Dead on 12/31/83, the night he and MG finally married after 17ish years.

! P: s2t06 GI @ 2:37 he does "sometimes I live in the country" -- but did he miss the "ramblin | stop all that gamblin'" verse? A little voice scratch early 3. I expect he'll want to play his guitar. He digs in with gusto, fluid and dextrous and with great energy. Good stuff. The vocals are too rough to really make this one to recommend to a novice. @ 4:20 he hits ramblin' / gamblin' ... "come home to your wife and children" all given great feeling. Shaky vocals late 4. 5:10ff he really swings and digs into his guitar pieces here, which I really like. 5:35ff drops into a jazzier swing, John not all there with him. Now John walking it up over 6, but I find him mostly not quite where I want him.

! s2t06 (1) JG: "Thanks a lot. See y'all later."

Green Green Grass Of Home

This show (GD 5/31/69) is a maxed-out masterpiece. Mamma mia. Play it loud!
Random tape archaeology: this is shnid-76, very early in the shn game.

https://goo.gl/maps/T4udv2YuEAR2
44.0417292,-123.0763108

! Corry: "when the Dead headlined McArthur Court on May 31, 1969, it was one of the biggest rooms that they had headlined up until that time. The show appears to have been scheduled for the track stadium (Hayward Field) and moved indoors, but in any case it was a sign of the Dead's status in Oregon."

! ad: Oregon Daily Emerald, May 28, 1969, p. unk, via URL http://home.earthlink.net/~deadtraders/images/from_oregon/HAYWARD.JPG;

! Corry: Arnold, Corry. 2011. Grateful Dead Pac-10 Home Court Analysis. Lost Live Dead, February 15, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/02/grateful-dead-pac-10-home-court.html, accessed 5/31/2016.


! song: Green Green Grass Of Home
Lyrics: Curly Putman
Music: Curly Putman
http://www.whitegum.com/~acsa/songfile/GREENGRS.HTM
http://www.deaddisc.com/songs/Green_Green_Grass_Of_Home.htm.  5/31/69 version struck me as a real Garcia masterpiece. He achieved that sound he was searching for quite nicely, thankyouverymuch (as Babbs might say). Weir sings it well - he had a great memory for these country tunes, and he "Bobby Ace" was stepping forward for the first time right in this period. He sounds great. Garcia's steel is getting "that sound" that you want from the steel, Ralph Mooney and Tom Brumley's sounds, for starters.

"Gimme some chords, Jerry Garcia, gimme some chords"

LN jg1976-01-07.jgb-rehearsal.93mins.sbd-tjs.8385.shn2flac

I will just post raw listening notes, because I will be sweeping bit and pieces of it up into a larger narrative that I have been working on. (update - see "James Booker, Classified")

Jerry Garcia Band
Club Front
20 Front Street
San Rafael, CA 94901
January 7, 1976 (Wednesday) - rehearsal
93min TJS sbd shnid-8385 shn2flac

--(14 tracks, 93:02)--
t01. Tico Tico (1) [11:11] ->
t02. Tico Tico [4:42] 
t03. talk (2) [0:40]
t04. Don't Try To Be Your's Brother's Keeper [15:51]
t05. Something You've Got [5:21] ->
t06. Just A Closer Walk With Thee [4:00] ->
t07. Goodnight Irene (3) [4:50] ->
t08. Just a Closer Walk With Thee (4) [0:50]
t09. //Goodnight Irene// [#1:43#]
t10. //Goodnight Irene (5) [11:29#] [0:32]
t11. (6) United Our Thing Will Stand [8:21] [1:23]
t12. Classified [6:08] ->
t13. Right Place, Wrong Time (7) [3:31] [0:23]
t14. Slowly But Surely [11:37] [0:10] % dead air [0:14]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #2
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: James Booker - piano, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums.

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.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19760107-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/4466 (shorter shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/8385 (this fileset); http://etreedb.org/shn/28366 (EAC-FLAC of shnid-4466, probably deprecated).

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/club-front-20-front-st-san-rafael-ca.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/Ree7m

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2012. January 9-10, 1976: Sophie's, Palo Alto, CA: The Jerry Garcia Band with James Booker. Lost Live Dead, May 24, 2012, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/05/january-9-10-1976-sophies-palo-alto-ca.html, consulted 12/31/2013.

! R: source: MSR > ? > 1C > 1D > 1CD > EAC > SHN. Extraction using EAC, re-tracking using CD Wave, and .shn encoding using mkwACT. Proper sector boundaries verified using shntool.

! R: shn2flac jgmf 1/8/2015.

! R: seeder notes: "This version should be compared to the previously circulating version to be understood.  This one is slightly more complete (the two takes of Goodnight Irene, here laid out at the start of disc two, are absent from the other version).  It also has slightly clearer lineage, at least in terms of the analog-to- digital transfer (John Kahn's cassette to Ryan Shriver's DAT). In terms of sound quality, it seems a bit of a toss-up.  The other version had some noise reduction and other work done in Sound Forge, and actually seems to have considerably more high end than this version, which is considerably flatter and bassier. d2t01 & t02 both cut in"

! t01 TT this first version with Booker on piano, then on organ for t02. (1) @ 3:47 they bring it to a little close, JB "Play that part again". Until about 6:15. JB explains: "I do one medley of that. I do one chorus of that, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, please let me explain, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen means that you're grand." "Hey John, you wanna try this 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen'?" until 6:45 ish. Jerry doing more of his Tico Tico stuff 6:45ff with Tutt. Not sure I have heard John yet.

! t02 Tico Tico JB on organ

! t03 (2) JB: "Hey what about this tune 'Your Brother's Killer'" -- band laughs, eggs him on, whoa, whoa! Being goofy. JB, coquettishly: "Oops - I slipped." Garcia laughing. @ 0:33 JB: "Hey, look here - listen at this - hey John, listen at the changes in this" -- starts playing.

! P: t04 DTTBYBK is just Booker for the first two minutes. Jerry comes in around 2:18 a little, Tutt is real light behind. Booker is a rather amazing one-man band. Jerry comes in more seriously 3:17, lands safely, catches the ground running like a parachutist, real soft, turns himself up 4:10. If Booker was looking for a backing band, this guy's not particularly backing. JB calls it to a halt, 5:45, sounds a little frustrated - "you stay on that 'C', stay on that 'C'", and he hits it, calling out some chords over the progressions, with lyrics. 6:15: "Look, John, do this. Listen at me." He's showing it to John. By 6:48 John is with him.

! P: t05 SYG JB stops, "Wait a minute - I done messed up the changes."

! t07 (3) JB: "Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen!" as they start the song, and he's playing it as outro music as the bar winds down. @ 0:38, Booker starts playing, calls out "pick your feet up and shuffle!", and Garcia digs into a good strong shuffle. "That's how we're gonna go out" - Booker is structuring the show. And, fuck yeah, this is the way to take the band out. This is Jerry Garcia playing Goodnight Irene with James freaking Booker. Thank you, tape Gods. "See ya later ladies and gentlemen! How about a hand for Jerry Garcia, and brothers, and others! Yeah! "Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead: thankful as evah. Yeah! How 'bout a hand for gratitude ... in the grave -aw!-- how about a hand for resurrection ... and reincarnation ... and all that karma, and all that jazz."
! song "Goodnight Irene" (t07, t09, t10): The earliest known recording 1/7/76 is the first extant recording of Garcia playing the New Orleans classic, and he's doing it with the Bayou Maharajah, Professor Longhair student and Mac Rebbenack (Dr. John) mentor, entertainer to anyone who ever kept his presence, the great piano wizard James Booker [x-ref earlier Booker materials - probably prefer to keep this discussion for later JGJK].

! t08 (4) JB "Gimme some chords, Jerry Garcia, gimme some chords" (sung to this shuffle of "Just A Closer Walk With Thee"), then breaks it down for instruction: "Jerry, gimme some chords ... a few places, you know? Don't just wire it all up, you dig? Try to settle down a little something so we can keep some contrast in it."

! R: t09 there's a cut here, but this sounds like it follows from what they were just doing.

! P: t10 (5) @ 4:20, James is telling John to "ride the tonic" - "John Kahn, ride the tonic, like I'm doin' rightchere wit my lef' han'" - Tutt thinks he's found the end @ 4:35, hits it clean, but no-one else appears to have taken note.  At the end of the song, Booker asks "Now, what was the name of that?" Garcia: "Goodnight Irene". JB: "Yeah". What an odd little exchange. JB @ 11:45 "Now, this other tune is the one we did before. Oh no no no no ... yeah? Didn't we do that, 'So Swell When You're Well'? What key did I do that in?" Garcia: "That's what we were tryin' to figure  out." JB: "Oh no, I wanna do this first." JG: "Just tell us the name of 'em." I figure they must have had charts, but Garcia didn't read music, did he?

! t11 (6) JB: "'United, Our Thing Will Stand' - it's in F." The guys say "yeah", and they jump right in, so they are working from something. 5 JB brings in some nice loud B3. After the song, 8:24, James says "This thing in D-flat? I think I'm gonna do it in C instead." I think I hear Jerry say "all right". No, E-flat. I better try it in C." Last song title discussion. @ 9:23. "I wrote that in the New Orleans Parish prison in 1970." More: "I wanna do this, here's another one (t12) - do it in C. we did it last night, but it was in D flat."

! P: t12 Classified JB is calling out the notes. At 2 Jerry could have made it sounds like his great jam in Hard To Handle, but he resists. JB wants him to play some chords 2:18. 4 he tells Jerry to vamp on that C.

! t13 (7) at the end JG asks what was the name of that again? JB: "'Classified', but I just made a medley of it." Then: "This other thing ... 'One Helluva Nerve' - oh no no, not that, yet."

! P: t14 SBS John and Ronnie are on it. Garcia slow to join, than @ 0:30 JB: "No - it's not a straight thing, it's choppy - real choppy fonk, regular choppy New Orleans fonk." 10 he dedicates the song to his Aunt Bessie down in Bay St. Louis. She used to say that all the time - "slowly but surely". And she'd say this: "Dead and gone, I may be dead and gone, just under the ground rottin' [??]. Oh but the truth will live on, you know, it never be forgotten, oh no." etc Jerry does some nice scrubbing 10:44.

A Motley Crew Down at the Nunnery (LN jg1984-08-11.jgb.all.aud-weez.111743.flac1644)

Ticket stub for JGB 8/11/84 show at Caldwell College, contributed by Ed.

Photo of JGB 8/11/84 at Caldwell College, courtesy of Jck007.

What a weird show. Reviewer Bill Breen (1984) sets the stage.

The August 11 Robert Hunter/ Jerry Garcia Band gig at Caldwell College, New Jersey had to be one of their stranger forays. ... Their venue was a Catholic girls' school, complete with neo-Gothic towers and Celtic crucifixes. ... The stage was built at the bottom of a grassy hillock ringed by two hundred foot balsams, which formed a natural ampitheater. The crucifix topped towers peering through the trees lent a medieval look.

He notes the incongruity of Garcia and his fans in these pious surroundings. A TJS informant writes that there were "nuns patrolling the parking lot", while TJS contributor Mike Vand also notes heavy security without specifying whether it was the good sisters.

I'd say this is an average show for the period. It has the grungy, filthy, feedbacky August 1984 Garcia guitar playing that I really like, right in your ears on this FOB tape.

I *love* that Garcia had brough Allen Toussaint's "Get Out Of My Life, Woman" (Allan | deaddisc | Jerrybase) into his repertoire. Now, not everyone loves Jerry Garcia, and fewer still love the Jerry Garcia Band. Since it's less exploratory than the Grateful Dead, it loses everyone who needs the collective improvisation at work in that band. That's fine. But let's recognize the American musical vein Garcia is tapping here, with legit Bay Area R&B, soul, church musicians. JGB introduced it on 7/28/84 at the Keystone Palo Alto, prepped it one more time locally, and then took it on the road, playing it every night but one on the August 7-18, 1984 tour. The song's introduction doesn't fit within a "Rock Bottom" narrative. I maintain pretty consistently that fresh material is a pretty unalloyed good, at least as a proxy. Variance in the repertoire means he's at least thinking about things, engaged. And when he picks a number as cool as this, with his Bay Area players flavoring the really tight mix, It Is Good, and true to his self conception as a local kid running around multihued San Francisco, a Mission Street R&B guy. Nice.

One further note on GOOMLW: The song's ebb and flow in the repertoire is generally interesting. Some tunes come in and never leave. Some tunes come in and leave right away. Some tunes he played mainly with one group of players, and others he kept picking up through the many iterations of the JGB or many different periods. This one was ebbed and flowed a bunch, with lots of six month or even year long gaps between performances. That's not that common in the JGB repertoire.

"Like A Road Leading Home" (Allan | Scofield | Jerrybase) is a song I have discussed in connection with its earliest appearance, on 1/24/73, where I conjecture that it's a song Jerry really liked, qua song. And who can blame him? It's a good one. And I'll make a post sometime connecting this performance with another one from early 1989, so I won't say much more here, except that this version is too short and not quite together.

Now, what about this 35 minute second set? Very suspect.

In the Rock Bottom series I have pondered some endogenously short sets, including 5/31/85 and 6/3/85, and some that were at least partly exogenously foreshortened (3/2/85, late band members). (I won't consider here shows that were fully exogenously truncated, as by the power outage at the Boston Orpheum on 11/13/81.) Though Jerry sounds better here than on 3/2/85, I think he didn't have to play so short on this night. Breen (1984) notes that with a crowd "10,000 strong, it was a pretty motley crew down at the nunnery". I am surprised the crowd was that big, but anyway. During the sixth ever JGB version of Allen Toussaint's "Get Out Of My Life, Woman" (Allan | deaddisc | Jerrybase), "a local aborigine, madly gyrating, crashed through the drumset." He was booed, security gave him the heave-ho, they were booed. Breen recalls that, "drumless, Garcia soloed right on through, never dropping a note. Afterward, the band huddled briefly, considering their next move." Things never quite go drumless, to my ears, but one can definitely hear the action @ 4:45 of s2t02. As he so often does, Garcia responds to this sort of thing with some burning, molten guitar playing - check it out.

Attendee Mike Vand remembers our gyrating freak:

Halfway through the second set some crazed individual got on the stage, leaping on it from behind the band, and knocked over part of the drum kit. The band finished the song and left the stage. That explains the short set and no encore. Don't know what happened to the guy. He jumped into the area between the stage and a security fence which I think was full of cops.

Vand seems to suggest that the stage crasher truncated the show, but clearly Jerry comes out and plays a couple more songs. He might have left the stage for awhile - this tape isn't clear because it splices. The David Dyche tape (shnid-120062) has a little more after GOOMLW, and it does sound like someone near him is urging the band to stick around or something. I can't quite tell.

Long story long, this was a disruptive event. I don't necessarily blame Garcia for not putting out more -- I wonder what the temp was on this day, and it's never fun having someone invade your space when you're trying to work-- but the fact is, after it happened he played a tender but short "Like A Road" and then galloped Peter Rowan's "Midnight Moonlight" back to the barn. Not sure the other 9,999 assembled nuns, goons and trippers deserved the short change, but there you have it.

So, I like the narrative tensions around this show. Incongruous context, and Garcia showing the era's spark and limitations. Oh yeah, one other thing: check out the east coast tapers representing: seven separate master tapes of this circulate in the lossless realm! Speaking of motley crews ... :)

Jerry Garcia Band
Caldwell College
120 Bloomfield Avenue
Caldwell, NJ 07006
August 11, 1984 (Saturday) - 7 PM
Da Weez flac1644 shnid-111743

--set I (6 tracks, 61:21)--
s1t01. [0:06] Cats Under The Stars [9:28] [0:54] %
s1t02. /They Love Each Other [8:06] [0:12]
s1t03. Simple Twist Of Fate ->
s1t04. Run For The Roses
s1t05. Dear // Prudence
s1t06. Rhapsody In Red [12:42] (1) [0:16]

--set II (4 tracks, 35:34)--
s2t01. [0:07]  Mission In The Rain [11:22] [0:06] %
s2t02. Get Out Of My Life, Woman [8:33] [0:07] % [0:03]
s2t03. Like A Road Leading Home [7:02] ->
s2t04. Midnight Moonlight [7:49] [0:12] % dead air [0:07]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - backing vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - backing vocals;
! lineup: David Kemper - drums.

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.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19840811-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/4411 (Steve Ziemba shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/9504 (Jeff Silberman shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/21718 (Bill Reutelhuber shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/78159 (Jim Vita flac1644); http://etreedb.org/shn/91396 (Joe D'Amico flac1644);  http://etreedb.org/shn/120062 (David Dyche flac); http://etreedb.org/shn/111743 (Da Weez flac, this fileset).

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/caldwell-college-120-bloomfield-ave.html

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

! review: Breen, Bill. 1984. Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter: Caldwell College, New Jersey. Relix 11, 5 (October): 28-29.

! band: JGB #21b, THE Jerry Garcia Band (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html).

! historical: Reviewer Bill Breen (1984) paints a nice picture: "The August 11 Robert Hunter/ Jerry Garcia Band gig at Caldwell College, New Jersey had to be one of their stranger forays. ... Their venue was a Catholic girls' school, complete with neo-Gothic towers and Celtic crucifixes. ... The stage was built at the bottom of a grassy hillock ringed by two hundred foot balsams, which formed a natural ampitheater. The crucific topped towers peering through the trees lent a medieval look." He notes the incongruity. A TJS informant writes that there were "nuns patrolling the parking lot", while TJS contributor Mike Vand also notes heavy security without specifying that it was the good sisters. The other thing to note is the 35 minute second set. In the Rock Bottom series I have pondered short sets (3/2/85, 5/31/85, 6/1/85, 6/3/85). I have also occasionally bumped into exogenously truncated sets, as when a nearby fire cut short a show at the Boston Orpheum Theatre xxx on 11/15/81. I think this is a little bit of both. "At 10,000 strong, it was a pretty motley crew down at the nunnery" (Breen 1984), and during the sixth ever JGB version of Allen Toussaint's "a local aborigine, madly gyrating, crashed through the drumset." He was booed, security gave him the heave-ho, they were booed. Breen recalls that, "drumless, Garcia soloed right on through, never dropping a note. Afterward, the band huddled briefly, considering their next move." Attendee Mike Vand remembers our gyrating freak: "Halfway through the second set some crazed individual got on the stage, leaping on it from behind the band, and knocked over part of the drum kit. The band finished the song and left the stage. That explains the short set and no encore. Don't know what happened to the guy. He jumped into the area between the stage and a security fence which I think was full of cops." Vand seems to suggest that the stage crasher truncated the show, but cclearly Jerry comes out and plays a couple more songs. He might have left the stage for awhile - this tape isn't clear because it splices. The David Dyche tape (shnid-120062) has a little more after GOOMLW, and it does sound like someone hear him is urging the band to stick around or something. I can't quite tell. Long story long, this was a disruptive event. But Jerry could have chosen to come out and play more than two songs even after the incident. I don't blame him for not putting out more -- I wonder what the temp was on this day, and it's never fun having someone invade your space when you're trying to work-- but the fact is, after it happened he played a tender Like A Road (I have a post to make about freaky stage crashers and that particular song) and then galloped Peter Rowan's "Midnight Moonlight" back to the barn.

! R: field recordist: The Weasel ("Da Weez");

! R: field recording gear: 2x Sennheiser 421 microphones > Sony TC-D5M;

! R: field recording media: unknown cassette stock;

! R: field recording location: close to the stage;

! R: transfer: Sony TC-D5M (original record deck) > Pre Sonus Inspire GT > Sound Forge > .wav files > Trader's Little Helper > flac files, by D5scott. Seeded to Dime.

! R: seeder note: "R.I.P. Sandy. aka 'Bigfoot'"

! R: s1t01 guitar is right in your face, and vocals are way back. So we are hearing the stage. (Looks at notes, and sees recording location of "close to stage". Indeed!)

! R: s1t02 TLEO clips in. God, this recording captures Garcia's guitar so beautifully! He is playing really well, e.g., in the 5-6 range.

! P: s1t02 Melvin sounds great to start TLEO, really forward on the recording. Garcia's voice ragged, what did you expect? His inflection is good, his singing is very intentional, very present. @ 2:50, Melvin hits a real loud thing, the crowd reacts and Melvin has stepped in front of *Garcia* for a lead turn. Yeah, man! That announcement of his intention is very cool. Now, however, Jerry is comping behind him 3:20s and Melvin doesn't have anything to say. Does a little thing 3:45ff, but not loud enough! Now a little louder over 4, but I expect that Jerry's done enough comping. Indeed, he bends out 4:11, his first turn is interesting, sounds ilke an early GD tune, not a great solo, but a little weird. The band is on the '1' though, so he can get back to TLEO, set his feet and go again, as he is late 4 over 5.

! P: s1t03 man, now Jerry's vocals sound very clear, and again he is singing with care. He muffs the first part of the second of verse. He is singing so beautifully here. In the 2 min mark he takes a nice solo, gets fsome real echo and feedback on it 2:29, high up 2:39. John going to take a lead turn 6:40ff, since Garcia is so forward in the mix you hear him comping more than John's fluttery lead. By 8:30 Jerry is signaling his intentions, and 8:40 ish he steps forward. John's thing wasn't terrible, but it did nothing for me.  STOF giving it his all vocally. Next run through early 3 is very grungy. This tape captures the guitar, the feeling of his electric guitar playing on this night. The band is *on*. Screaming 4:15, after the "I sing the blues, where has it led?" line. Band is super tight.

! s1t06 (1) JG: "Thank you. We're gonna take a break for a few minutes. We'll be back a little later."

! P: s2t01 MITR hard to say if this is a P or an R artifact. Let me explain. At 6:40 it is Mevin's turn to play some lead. He signals it, Garcia steps back, comps, creating the space for Melvin. Melvin is playing the sorts of notes that would be indicative of "leading", but he's not very audible. So, is it that he's not really putting his belly into it because he's a little tentative? Or is it just that we are right in front of Jerry, listening to his stage monitors, and Melvin's not high in this particular mix? It'd be cool to check against some of the other tapes (most of which were seeded in shn and need a shn2flac treatment), because the implications are totally different. The first is that Melvin's not stepping up. The second is that he might be, and though we can't hear it very loudly, we are listening from a Jerry-centric vantage. Back to a P note: Around 7:50 JG playing beautifully, laying down some complete chords for Melvin to run around. Jerry teardrop run 8:20ff gets a yell from the audience, nearly one from me. They almost lose each other over 9, but Kemper lays out a nice tight net and they come back together. Jerry is singing with real heart this night.

! P: s2t02 Jerry started in the wrong key (I had been blaming John), but Jerry switches and then it's all good. He takes two instrumental turns to reall set the groove he wants with this song. Around 4:45 there's some PA funkiness, Jerry turned himself up, but there was some popping and electronic zing. I wonder if this is where the guy came on stage? Crowd is hootin' and hollerin', but the drums never stop. Garcia's pouring out molten electricity, shredding all through the 5 minute mark, turning up again 5:48, now it's really loud. Definitely some PA funkiness here as well, though. It's all good. The crowd feels it, and this is top shelf JGB listening. Hear the note 6:24. Drop it right back to the song 6:40ish. The arrangement is a little squirrely 7:35ish, they'll tigthen that up - this is only 6th time played.

! song: "Get out Of My Life, Woman" (s2t02): (Allan | deaddisc | Jerrybase): Listen, not everyone loves Jerry Garcia, and fewer love the Jerry Garcia Band. Since it's less exploratory than the Grateful Dead, it loses everyone who needs the collective improvisation at work in that band. That's fine. But let's recognize the American musical vein Garcia is tapping here, with legit Bay Area R&B, soul, black church musicians. JGB introduced it on 7/28/84 at the Keystone Palo Alto, prepped it one more time locally, and then took it on the road, playing all but one night on the August 7-18, 1984 tour. The introduction of this song provides a useful counterpoint to the "Rock Bottom" narrative. I maintain pretty consistently that fresh material is a pretty unalloyed good, at least as a proxy. Variance in the repertoire means he's at least thinking about things. And when he picks a number as cool as this, with his Bay Area players flavoring the really tight mix, It Is Good, and true to his self conception as a local kid running around multihued San Francisco, a Mission Street R&B guy. Nice. The song's ebb and flow in the repertoire is generally interesting. Some tunes come in and never leave. Some tunes come in and leave right away. Some tunes he played mainly with one group of players, and others he kept picking up through the many iterations of the JGB or many different periods. This one was ebbed and flowed a bunch, with lots of six month or even year long gaps between performances. That's not that common in the JGB repertoire.

! P: s2t03 LARLH giving it his all, "the pain is too much / for you to bear / turn around / turn around / turn around / and I'll be there / like a road leading home". Nice. Long vocal extensions 1:27, nice guitar counterpoint 1:29. I am a little worried that they're moving too fast with it, but we'll see where it goes! Man, this first big guitar work late 3 is quite nice. Jerry is playing this very nicely, yet I don't find this version entirely satisfiying. The arrangement is not totally together, and Jerry doesn't stretch it out enough. He wants to get out of Dodge, mountin' good ol' Midnight Moonlight for the home stretch.

! P: s2t04 MM over 4 Jerry's truncating his chords, which he didn't always do on this number. Melvin leads a turn 4 min mark while Jerry chords.

! s2t04 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot, we'll see you later."

A Pigless Monster at the Fillmore East: July 12, 1970

LN jg1970-07-12.nrps-gd.aud-cooper.122707.flac1644

More old listening notes.

The "Not Fade Away" and "Good Lovin'" from the electric Dead set feature absolutely top shelf rock and roll playing. Look at how I go off on this stuff wow wow wow wow wow and all that. If this tape sounded better, this'd be in the canon with 5/2/70.

Note that Pigpen never makes himself heard - Weir sings "Good Lovin'".

Don't ask me about the metadata - I will not be the one to figure out what was played on what dates (and what we mean by "dates" for these midnight shows) during the four-night July 1970 run of Fillmore East Dead shows.

The AGD set looks great on paper, but it doesn't set me on fire. The NRPS set is a wreck, and probably incomplete on this fileset. Get drawn in by the rarities, but stay for the quintet scalping.


An Evening With The Grateful Dead
Fillmore East
105 2nd Avenue
New York NY 10003
July 12, 1970 (Sunday)
Jim Cooper aud shnid-122707

--set I: Acoustic Grateful Dead (8 tracks, 29:56, presumed incomplete)--
s1-AGD-t01. //El Paso [#2:23] [0:04] % [0:02]
s1-AGD-t02. Friend Of The Devil [3:53] [0:02] %
s1-AGD-t03. /New Speedway Boogie [10:17] [0:02] %
s1-AGD-t04. /So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad) [2:36]

-enter David Nelson-
s1-AGD-t05. (1) [0:03] Rosa Lee McFall [2:51] % [0:04]
s1-AGD-t06. A Voice From On High [2:37] % [0:04]
s1-AGD-t07. Jordan [2:08] % [0:04]
s1-AGD-t08. Swing Low Sweet Chariot [2:48] %

--set II: New Riders of the Purple Sage (6 tracks, 29:42, presumed incomplete)--
s2-NRPS-t09. Six Days On The Road [3:44] %
s2-NRPS-t10. Whatcha Gonna Do [4:23] %
s2-NRPS-t11. Truck Drivin' Man [3:52] % [0:03
s2-NRPS-t12. Dirty Business [6:30] %
s2-NRPS-t13. Lodi [5:03] %
s2-NRPS-t14. Last Lonely Eagle// [6:07#]

--set III: Electric Grateful Dead (16 tracks [11 songs], 82:35, presumed approximately complete)--
s3-GD-t15. Morning Dew [0:43] %
s3-GD-t16. Morning Dew [con't] [1:48] %
s3-GD-t17. Morning Dew [con't] [0:54]
s3-GD-t18. Morning Dew [con't] [1:00] %
s3-GD-t19. Morning Dew [6:08] % [0:02]
s3-GD-t20. /Sitting On Top Of The World [#3:15]
s3-GD-t21. /Me And My Uncle [3:18] [0:02] %
s3-GD-t22. Not Fade Away [15:02] % [0:04]
s3-GD-t23. Casey Jones [5:00 % [0:05]
s3-GD-t24. Mama Tried [2:40] [0:03] %
s3-GD-t25. [0:03] % Good Lovin' [9:55] %
s3-GD-t26. Good Lovin' [con't [9:00] % [0:03]
s3-GD-t27. High Time (2) [7:32] [0:02] % [0:02]
s3-GD-t28. ... Cumberland Blues/ [#4:40#]
s3-GD-t29. China Cat Sunflower [6:45] [-1:13] % [->]
s3-GD-t30. [+1:13] I Know You Rider [3:06] [0:02] % [0:04] % dead air [0:06]

! ACT1: Acoustic Grateful Dead
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - ac-g, vocals;
! lineup: Bob Weir - ac-g, vocals;
! lineup: Phil Lesh - el-b, ?vocals?;
! lineup: ?Bill Kreutzmann? - drums;
! guest: David Nelson - mandolin, vocals.

! ACT2: New Riders Of The Purple Sage
! lineup: John Dawson - ?ac?-g, vocals;
! lineup: David Nelson - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - pedal steel guitar;
! lineup: Dave Torbert - el-b;
! lineup: Mickey Hart - drums.

! ACT3: Grateful Dead
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Bob Weir - ael-g, vocals;
! lineup: Phil Lesh - el-b, vocals;
! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums and percussion;
! lineup: Mickey Hart - drums and percussion;
! absent: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.

JGMF:

! R: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: it's complicated. What this Cooper tape identifies as 7/12/70 

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/122707 (this fileset).

! archive: https://archive.org/details/gd1970-07-12.aud.cooper.122707.flac16

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/75Kk8

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/11/fillmore-east-105-second-avenue-new.html

! R: field recordist: Jim Cooper

! R: field recording equipment: 2x Hitachi mics > Hitachi TRQ-222 Cassette recorder.

! R: field recording location: Row H, about the 30th row, center.

! R: "This is an incomplete recording and there is an electronic noise intermittently on the left channel. Talking and crowd noise is present as well."

! R: taper note: "This was a great concert and one of the best nights (mornings) of my life."

! R: this is definitely not a high-fidelity recording, and the L-channel static is quite present. Massive overload. But what are you gonna do? It's an amazing historical document. Thank you Jim Cooper and Rob Berger and all the tapers and sharers!

! metadata: I don't have time to get into the metadata now. I need to listen to all of the other tapes and read what's already known about the actual assignation of the various music to the various "July xx 1970 Fillmore East" recordings. Try to sort out calendar dates and times, so confused because of the ca. midnight starting time of these shows.

! P: This contains a pretty amazing EGD performance. For my money, The "Good Lovin'" is among the best they did. The AGD and NRPS sets are, respectively, just OK and pretty bad, at least based on this tape.

! P: t01 one of the great pleasures of the GD acoustic sets is hearing Jerry sing harmonies. Like on this El Paso.

! t04 is Jerry playing electric?

! song: "So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)" (t04): Everly Brothers' 1960 release, maybe a singleton in the recorded GD canon. Indeed, as of now (12/6/2013) I understand this to be a singleton. I have listened to it twice, don't get much out of it.

! s1-AGD-t05 (1) "IRIT & LAURIE LOVE": "I love you, Jimmy."

! s1-AGD-t05 RLM has mandolin accompaniment, presumably Nelson.

! s1-AGD-t06 AVFOH mandolin (Nelson?), Nelson definitely on harmony vocals

! P: t01-t08: the acoustic material underwhelms me. It looks great on paper. Maybe it's the tape quality. But I just can't get into it.

! P: t12 This "Dirty Business" has a weird feel. Torbert is walking it a little too much early on, and it never attains that deep, burning, grungy groove that the best versions do. This is *way* uptempo for this song. Interesting. Not totally successful. Weird. Interesting.

! P: t13 Lodi is kind of a mess, Dawson off, Nelson not keeping right tempo (check around 1-1:29). He has to keep trying to tell people to get off because no-one quite knows what to do. Train wreck.

! P t09-t13 The NRPS material is below average, I'd say. I hear lots of tempo weirdness. Of course, the tape isn't doing anyone any favors.

! P: t14 LLE again it just doesn't sound together. While Dirty Business is much too brisk, this is just a little bit too brisk.

! R: NRPS-t14 LLE cuts out, probably less than a minute missing.

! R: t15-t19 MD splices @ track markers and t17 @ 0:33.

! R: t20 SOTOTW clips in

! P: t21 MAMU This is done "electric GD" style, as opposed to "NRPS" style, which the Acoustic GD would on occasion do (e.g., 4/18/70 Family Dog). It's a shame, because I really like the high harmonies in the NRPS arrangement, but whatever. My sense is that GD just wasn't willing to let go of the song and let NRPS have it, and they seemed to prefer to play it electric to acoustic. (I also miss the NRPS harmonies on "Mama Tried", FWIW.)

! P: t22 NFA this is a MASSIVE rendition of an American classic. Jerry has the wah cranked up already in the setup to his first solo in the second minute. It's less pronounced in the solo itself, but for a second he hit wah to rival 8/27/72's "Greatest Story Ever Told". Yeah, I said it. @ 3:45 they start really cooking, Bob turns himself up a little, Jerry digging a little groove. Taper's girl getting a little chatty. 4:18 Bob starts a great little descending thing, they are a little bit in the AWBYG/GDTRFB outro theme for awhile, they could easily drop it right down into that, but they are not in a rush. Garcia quotes "First There Is A Mountain" @ 5:36 for a few seconds, and he's a little bit in that tempo, back to a chunky NFA line @  6-minute mark, egging the crowd to keep that beat so he can wander back out. Crowd starts some very nice rhythm, and Jerry goes to about 60 degrees from his previous course, just the place he was looking for. Nice though over 7-min mark, stepping in a little more wah. Jerrys' in an "Other One" space late in the 8-minute mark, but Bob has something of his own going, and he doesn't take the bait, so Jerry comes back out and returns to the AWBYG/GDTRFB space. Here at 10:14 they could very easily turn it any of a number of directions, building some suspense 10:35, Phil and Jerry both pregnantly fluttering strings, Jerry hits a nice theme late in the 10-minute mark ... Bob strums some stuff, a little darker, and 11:23 Bob is almost playing Eyes Of The World! We'll hear these same chords in 1974. A few times it sounded to me like they could have pivoted to IKYR. In short, like a lot of 1970 NFAs, this one opens up very nicely and is highly thematic. @ 12:57 Bob forces them right back to NFA ... it was a little hasty ... they all get there, but I just don't think everyone was quite ready. So they set their feet under them, go once 'round the bases, at get to the verse @ 13:32ish. Jerry is having to do more harmony vocals, with Pig laying out somewhere. A few times I thought I heard Pig, but I don't think so.

! P: t25-t26 GL: Weir sings! Drum interlude 2:35-9:58. @ 4:35 a crowd member yells "Hey [or Yay] Pigpen!", or I thought he did. But Pig never makes himself heard. This drum session is hot as hell, and the crowd shows its appreciation early in the 9-min mark. The reprise is drummed up and drops in perfectly. Yeah! Nice rhythm led by Phil, 6- of t26 ... then a big bass solo 6:15 wow! This is a great jam. The second cut track of GL lays bare the band's raw power ... Wow. In the 2-min range of this track, Phil sounds like fucking Beethoven, and everyone is jamming alone and together, totally locked in but each carving his own groove, birds darting and ducking through and around the others, a supertight, colorful weave. Outstanding. Jerry hits a peak at 3:20 and the crowd yips a little bit, unbelieving. At 6 minutes into this track ... wow wow wow 6:15 Phil is doing his best Jack Casady. Ballin ... WOW. Jerry starts to get some waahhh, and he could be Jorma back there a little bit. Listen to what Phil runs over at 6:58 WOW WOW WOW 7:13 drops into Good Lovin' with the rest of the crew. Weir takes the vocals @ 7:29. @@

t27. (2) @ ca. 3ish High Time during tune, woman asks near taper “Want the cat? Text file note: "DELI BOVI DEBUT".

! R: t28 CB enters in progress and barely clips out, not much missing.

! P: t30 CCS transition from CCS to IKYR is Nice. Gets immediate liftoff at 3:28ish, Bob doing a really nice lead turn, he has some a long way from the spacy androgynous teenager of the Warlocks! Jerry's playing it real chonky behind him, and the whole band locks around Bob as he shreds. His transformation as a guitar player is mostly credit to Bob himself, of course, but I am sure the band around him had something to do with it! So Jerry starts expressing interest in taking a turn of his own in the 5:20 mark, by 5:43 we have IKYR theme. But the band is laying back, almost waiting for something, and Phil around 6:15 says "Hey, how about it?" The crowd cheers and starts clapping up IKYR, and I think Phil was basically taking a tip o' the hat, or soliciting one, but also offering one up to everyone in the room. "Hey, how about it, you having fun, or what?!?" They ought to be, because they have been grooving to a great American rock and roll band channeling a million cosmic megawatts. It's a nice moment all around. I can see why the taper, Jim Cooper, said "This was a great concert and one of the best nights (mornings) of my life."

! R: t29-t30 obviously I'd track the transition differently, but it's all good. There are some tape splices in this region, into the first minute ot the IKYR track (t30). Again @ 2:20.

Garcia and Kahn Sell Out: Orpheum Theatre, Boston, November 17, 1984

LN jg1984-11-17.jgjk.all.aud-drew-seaweed.110537.flac1644

Regular readers will know I have been exploring Garcia's putative Rock Bottom period by listenings to tapes and more or less noting what I hear. Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

I harbor considerable ex ante animus toward this tour - I have heard some first hand reports of its deep, dark, junky feeling, recoil at the pictures of the greasy, sweaty, strung out Garcia from this tour, and have never been lit up by what I heard when I listened to the shows. This is the classic "Garcia's side projects were all about Jerry and John making drug money" tour, which is a line which my devotion to the side stuff already indicates I don't altogether buy, and which makes me feel icky inside. But here it is.

These listening notes are mostly from some unknown number of months ago. As I was finishing them up with links and stuff, I decided to listen to "Goodnight Irene" [Allan | deaddisc], which is a favorite of mine and which I have always thought must have resonated emotionally with Jerry - "I want to jump overboard in a river and drown" could not have failed to bring his father to mind, could it?

And I guess I hear that it's not as bad as I feared it might be, and is not bad at all if this is Rock Bottom. He cannot sing very well, to be sure. But he is giving it his all. It's flawed, but he's trying. Yeah, the first set is about 38 continuous minutes, not a ton. But, I dunno, it's not horrible. I am looking forward to hearing more from this tour, all of a sudden (though I feel like detouring to some other material, cleansing my palate of Rock Bottom for awhile).

Billboard (December 1, 1984, p. 37) reports this as a sellout, just a hair under $37k gross on 2,800 tickets, and the fans sound happy enough being treated to Jerry Garcia playing "Ripple". Not a bad night's work, all in all.

Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
Orpheum Theatre
1 Hamilton Place
Boston, MA 02108
November 17, 1984 (Saturday)
Seaweed 1st gen cassette shnid-110537

--set I (6 tracks, 37:53)--
s1t01. crowd and tuning [0:47]
s1t02. Deep Elem Blues [8:52] [0:07]
s1t03. When I Paint My Masterpiece [7:50] [0:06]
s1t04. Little Sadie [4:02] [0:06]
s1t05. Simple Twist Of Fate [11:11] ->
s1t06. Run For The Roses [4:37] [0:15]

--set II + encore (8 tracks, 53:10)--
--set II (7 tracks, 48:38)--
s2t01. crowd and tuning [0:58]
s2t02. Friend Of The Devil [7:56] [0:10]
s2t03. I've Been All Around This World [6:50] ->
s2t04. Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie [6:50] ->
s2t05. Gomorrah [6:16] [0:05]
s2t06. Birdsong [11:39] [0:02]
s2t07. Goodnight //Irene [8:#00] (2) [0:26]
--encore (1 track, 4:32)--
s2t08. Ripple [4:13] [0:19]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - ac-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - ac-b.

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.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19841117-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/30874 (Mark flac, deprecated); http://etreedb.org/shn/31343 (speed correction of shnid-30874); http://etreedb.org/shn/110537 (this fileset); http://etreedb.org/shn/113549 (aud flac)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/6MLna

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/09/orpheum-theatre-1-hamilton-place-boston.html

! ref: Billboard, December 1, 1984, p. 37;

! review: [positive] Daykin 1984: Reviewer Daykin notes JG started off shaky, head on chest and no engagement with audience. He says things improved, and really liked Bird Song (except for one bad note). Overall positive review.

! review: [negative] Gewertz 1984: This review in the Boston Herald ran under the headline "Garcia gives a dreadful concert". "Garcia delivered perhaps the worst single performance this writer has ever witnessed in a major concert". Yet the crowd went wild. His voice "ravaged and ruined". Deadheads were "dancing to some stereo in their own heads, not the plodding guitar and bass duets that wheezed from the stage." Garcia was "a listless troll lost in some inner world".

! R: field recordist: unknown

! R: field recording gear: unknown mics > Sony TC-D5

! R: source tape: 1st gen cassette provided by Drew and Seaweed1010 (Maxell XLII)

! R: transfer: Nakamichi CR-5A playback > Edirol FA-66 > Wavelab > R8Brain > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644 tagged. Transfer by Andrew F.

! R: seeder notes: Decent audience recording, an upgrade to shnid-31343, and also includes the two songs that were missing from that source. The levels in 2nd Set are a bit over-driven, not too bad.
! R: I think this is a perfectly good tape.

! R: s1t02 Deep Elem the sound is muffled 0:05 > 0:32, and mic-bumps at 7:11 and 7:14.

! P: s1t05 STOF Not a terrible performance. The line about the sailors coming in and all that is given with some sensitivity. Then the end of the song has a pretty nice guitar buildup. JG even says "Thank you" as he takes it from STOF into RFTR.

! The timing of set I is basically continuous. So, in real time, that really was about a 38-minute set. And I doubt they were back "in a few minutes" after the "short break" announced by JG after RFTR.

! s2t05 JG says "Thank you" again between OBIANL and Gomorrah.

! R: s2t07 Goodnight Irene @ 6:29 tape flip, mended by Drew

! P: s2t07 GI is played totally respectably. He can't sing at this point, but we knew that. This is not bad. John is even playing late 5. Jerry bringing some energy right at the splice 6:29, too bad. Long version. Might check one of the other tapes of this night. I love this song (songs-G). Weird finish about "see you in my dreams". A for effort.

! s2t07 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. See y'all later." There must be a tape splice in here somewhere.

It's not that bad, given how much Persian he was doing

LN jg1984-08-24.jgb.s1.aud-GEMS.124940.flac1644

There are lots of ways to interpret this performance. One reasonable way would be to say that this is just about the nadir of Garcia's performing career (perhaps 8/26/84), a professional embarrassment shocking only because playing at least competently for a paying audience formed perhaps the only real commitment in his life, a tangle of opiate gauze. But one could just as reasonably say "it's not that bad, given how much Persian he was doing."

[update/aside: I titled a subsequent post on this show "I stand corrected - it *is* that bad"]

I feel comfortable with two evaluative statements. First, the vocals are horrifically bad. Second, the guitar work is much better than the vocal work, and is occasionally great. With more room, I'd elaborate each in turn. I'd also entertain a "compensation hypothesis", whereby when is vocals are really spectacularly, obviously, let's-just-get-this-out-in-the-open horrible, he tries to give the patrons their money's worth by tearing it up, in magnesium bursts, on the git-tar.

Jerry Garcia Band
The Stone
412 Broadway
San Francisco, CA 94133
August 24, 1984 (Friday)
45 min s1 aud GEMS shnid-124940

--set I (5 tracks, 45:03)--
s1t01. Cats Under The Stars [7:53] [0:05] %
s1t02. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [12:03]
s1t03. [0:08] Get Out Of My Life Woman [10:14] %
s1t04. ... Let It Rock [#6:41] ->
s1t05. Deal [7:50] (1) [0:08]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-b;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;
! lineup: David Kemper - drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones - vocals.
         
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.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19840824-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/124940 (this tape)

! map: http://goo.gl/maps/L0BBt

! venue:http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/07/stone-mothers-412-broadway-san.html

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html.  #21b: THE Jerry Garcia Band.

! P: There are lots of ways to interpret this performance. One reasonable way would be to say that this is just about the nadir of Garcia's performing career (perhaps 8/26/84), a professional embarrassment shocking only because playing at least competently for a paying audience formed perhaps the only real commitment in his life, a tangle of opiate gauze. But one could just as reasonably say "it's not that bad, given how much Persian he was doing." Croz comparison. I feel comfortable with two evaluative statements. First, the vocals are horrifically bad. Second, the guitar work is much better than the vocal work, and is occasionally great. With more room, I'd elaborate each in turn.

! R: audience tape > ? > CD x > Harry Angus CD > jjoops CD > GEMS flac1644.

! R: "a Project **GEMS** Jamie Waddell

! R: "from the Jjoops Tupperware"

! R: "exact lineage unconfirmed"

! R: 1st source in circulation for this date

! R: taper pauses very abruptly at start and end of tunes, crossfades applied after tracks 1, 2 and 3

! R: seeder: "hope to see these and other masters surface for this show"

! R: seeder: "seeded on July 4, 2013 to Lossless Legs"

! R: first part of set II exists from this source, but it is garbled and not really worth hearing. Per the seeder: "Partial battery/deck failure/bad tape storage/smitten by audio gods: Harder They Come, Sugaree > Don't Let Go/".

! P: s1t01 CUTS: Jerry is a wreck. This is very near the bottom. But his very down and dirty instrumentation about 5-min mark suggests that he can still play a little bit of guitar, even if he can't sing. Vocal chords and lots and lots and lots of blow are not a good mix.

! P: s1t02 KOHD: again, Jerry is wrecked, but this tempo is not bad, may even lean a little peppy. I anticipate a short set where he runs out of gas at the end, but maybe I am being too cynical. So far so good. Over the 9-minute mark, Jerry evinces true world-weariness, the kind that makes you think he's chosen the song for its truth. His voice is brutal, he is struggling to finish his sentences, but, on the other hand, he's giving it his all, including a little yell at 10:40 that the crowd enjoys, followed by some nice reggae runs.

! P: s1t03 GOOMLW the vox are, again, very bad. @ 6:41 some good raunchy guitar work. But I think the whole thing kind of runs out of gas.

! song: GOOMLW (s1t03): first played 7/28/84, played pretty much every show from then until 8/24. See https://jerrybase.com/songs/799

! P: s1t04 LIR Garcia sounds horrific. Great fanning @ 3:40 ff, some very aggressive and articulate playing. Leaning in, sweating like a pig, I am sure. Listen to the little thing @ 4:35, just a quick little circle, a third time around from 4:50, very silvery-hairy tonality.

! R: s1t05 Deal some little clip around 1:20.

! P: s1t05 Deal Jerry sounds absolutely terrible. Terrible. And I don't find that the guitar work compensates.

! s1t05 (1) "We're gonna take a break for a little while, we'll be back in a little bit."

LN jg1983-05-25.jgb.all-1.aud-CC.xxxxxx.flac2448

Nothin' really jumps out at me.

Jerry Garcia Band
Shea's Theatre
646 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14202
May 25, 1983 (Wednesday), 8 PM
all-1 85 min CC aud

--Set I (5 tracks, 38:13)--
s1t01. ... How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [#7:49] [0:34] %
s1t02. They Love Each Other [8:08] [0:24] % [0:18]
s1t03. That's What Love Will Make You Do [8:52] [0:07] %
s1t04. Mississippi// Moon [7:#21] ->
s1t05. Run For The Roses [4:41]

--Set II (5 tracks, 46:43)--
s2t01. crowd [0:05]
s2t02. The Harder They Come [13:06] ->
s2t03. Dear Prudence [12:38] [0:03] %
s2t04. Russian Lullaby// [13:48#]
s2t05. /Tangled Up In Blue// [#7:03#]
[MISSING --encore-- Midnight Moonlight]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #15c
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards (Hammond B-3 organ);
! Lineup: Greg Errico - drums;
! Lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals;
! Lineup: DeeDee Dickerson - vocals.

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.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19830525-01

! db: none as of 12/21/2012; https://etreedb.org/shn/130353 (this closet call source); https://etreedb.org/shn/154646 (Closet Call, AF [better] transfer)

! map: http://goo.gl/maps/iuVT7

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/01/sheas-buffalo-theater-646-main-street.html

! band: JGB #15c (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html).

! R: 3rd gen aud (Maxell XLII90, no Dolby) > Nakamichi BX-300 playback (no Dolby) > Pyle Pro cables > WaveTerminal 2496 > Samplitude 10.1 Download Version (record @ 24 bits/48kHz) > CDWave 1.9.8 (tracking) > Adobe Audition 3.0 (cross-fades, etc.) > Traders Little Helper 2.4.1 (FLAC encoding, level 8) (flac2448).

! R: This is not a terrible tape, but it's also not surprising that it never made the jump to digital. It's hacked up.

! P: Not sure there's anything noteworthy here, beyond the almost-true segue from HTC to Dear Prudence to start the second set.

! R: s1t01 HSII fades in, very little missing

! R: s1t01 HSII around 7:10 track R channel goes out for the rest of the song. --patch L channel?

! R: s1t01 taper talk after HSII

! R: s1t02 TLEO about 42 seconds in, R channel returns --end patch?

! song: "That's What Love Will Make You Do" (s1t03): It strikes me here how much TWLWYD reminds me of the JGB version of "Get Out Of My Life, Woman". They'd start playing that song July 28, 1984.

! Venue: The ticket stub says "Shea's Theatre" over "Buffalo, New York". Since that's contemporary, I prefer that to Shea's Buffalo Theatre from http://www.sheas.org/. Address is 646 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14202.

! R: s1t04 Mississippi Moon cut @ ca. 5:12

! R: s2t01 HTC clips in, missing very little, a few beats of the drum intro.

! P: s2t01-s2t02 true segue from HTC to Dear Prudence, very uncommon.

! venue: "Those who take the tour will view the elegant theatre with its elaborate architecture and interior decor as well as its on-going restoration. Designed by architects C.W. and George L. Rapp, this building boasts interior designed by Tiffany Studios featuring a Neo-Spanish Baroque design and is modeled after a European opera house. It originally opened in 1926 as a movie house under the direction of Mr. Michael Shea. Since then, the theatre continues to be maintained and restored to its original grandeur. 'Shea’s is one of the architectural treasures of the region,' said Director of Marketing & Public Relations Lisa Grisanti. “We want our community to learn and experience more about this beautiful structure, its rich history, and its on-going restoration efforts.” The theatre was built by the Rapp Brothers of Chicago and is one of only several theatres still existing that was built by these theatre architects." -- http://www.sheas.org/

! disclaimer:  This is part of a "Closet Call" project aimed at making missing Garcia dates available for study. These are "warts and all" ... straight transfers of the source cassettes with editing only of the most offensive tape transitions and such. If you don't like hiss, possible speed problems, etc., etc., then move along. And, to anticipate a FAQ: no, I don't plan on doing 16/44s of these. Thanks to wk for supplying these tapes!

! URL: http://jgmf.blogspot.com

Grandma said, 'Boy, go and follow your heart': JGMS at Keystone Berkeley, November 27, 1974

LN jg1974-11-27.jgms.106mins.sbd-GEMS.91343.flac1644

Just a few quick notes.

1) Paul Humphrey drumming. The drummer is fast and great. He is noted in Rex's handwriting on the box for reel #3.

2) Some of this material is just amazing. "Valdez In The Country" and "Freedom Jazz Dance" should make us very Grateful that Merl was there to challenge Garcia with some serious jazz instrumentals. "Going, Going, Gone" is also just such a wonderful tune. If I had more time, I'd write up song notes on these three tunes.

• One subpoint. There are those who suggest that the demise of the Garcia-Saunders relationship (and of the band LOM) in 1975) primarily reflected musical issues. Hypothesis 1: Garcia just couldn't hang with the deep jazz and funk that Merl and, e.g., Aunt Monk (could play); Hypothesis 2: "musical differences", in the sense that Jerry wanted to move to more white standards (boogie-woogie stuff with Nicky, southern white gospel stuff [really black, of course] with Keith, Donna and Tutt). Either way, what the jazz instrumental here recall for me is the extent to which Garcia really was challenged to play out with some of the this JGMS (and, to a lesser extent, LOM) material.

• OK, a second subpoint: "Going, Going, Gone"

Grandma said, “Boy, go and follow your heart
And you’ll be fine at the end of the line
All that’s gold isn’t meant to shine
Don’t you and your one true love ever part”

3) The performance is top-shelf. I can see why these guys thought this was a band with a future (as they head toward the apparently greater intended permanence of Legion of Mary, a band with a name). Everybody is great here. Merl is great. Martin is great. Garcia is great. John Kahn is great. Humphrey is great. I don't know why things started getting so sluggish in 1975 --well, I have some ideas-- but this tape reveals a band full of pros who are drinking deeply from the well of American music.

4) I have corrected my understanding of the Betty tapes. There are three bunches. This is from "Bunch 1".

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone
2119 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
November 27, 1974 (Wednesday)
106 min "Bunch One" Betty Cantor-Jackson soundboard

--set I (4 tracks, 52:52, probably incomplete)
s1t01. //Valdez In The Country [#15:05] [0:24] %
s1t02. //You Can Leave Your Hat On [#13:35] [0:18] %
s1t03. //Going, Going, Gone// [#12:56#] %
s1t04. //Mystery Train [#10:18] (1) [0:16]

--Set II (4 tracks, 53:23)--
s2t01. [0:04] He Ain't Give You None [12:56] [0:09] % [0:33]
s2t02. Freedom Jazz Dance [14:05] % [1:10]
s2t03. Someday // Baby [9:#24] [1:09]
s2t04. I Second That Emotion [13:41] [0:12] (2)

! Band: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards, vocals;
! Lineup: Martin Fierro - saxophone, flute;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Paul Humphrey - drums.

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.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19741127-02

! db: shnid-89216 (less complete, deprecated); shnid-91343 (more complete, this fileset).

! ACT2: Paul Pena

! setlist: There may have been a song before Valdez In The Country (which would have been a strange opener).

! personnel: this is right on the cusp of the transition between Paul Humphrey and Ronnie Tutt. Paul is really active, light on the kick pedal but snappy on the snare.

! R: I will take the liberty of reconstructing the GEMS notes for my own purposes. So this is a compilation of two CD sources which had some common ancestors but diverged somewhere along the way. The primary source came to GEMS via Zack Tucker, with lineage MSR > P > D > CD. Source 1 provides all except first 1:30 of Valdez and last two songs, and was previously circulated as shnid 89216. Source 2 has precisely the same lineage, but came to GEMS via jjoops and the Tupperware of Treasures. Both sets of CDs were extracted and processed by Jamie Waddell on the **GEMS** Edit Station (primary software Wavelab 6.0) and circulated as a **GEMS** Production at Lossless Legs, ca. April 11, 2008.

! R: Genealogy: The common ancestry of the source CDs here is MSR > P > D > CD. These are "Bunch One" Betty Boards. For background, here's WBOTB co-conspirator Blake Gilpin's post to DNC on 7/28/98: "As far as I know, there were three bunches of "Betty Boards" that left The auction. Bunch One was the largest, purchased by a guy named Don, who knew the Sale was about to happen because his wife worked in the mortgage industry and saw the paperwork. Bunch One was the largest, purchased by a guy named Don, who knew the Sale was about to happen because his wife worked in the mortgage industry and saw the paperwork. This is the most commonly known and cataloged set of which the *reels only* were spun to PCM / Beta and most were circulated. The cassettes were not spun to digital. Some of the PCM-0 betas, specifically the Garcia Saunders material and others have not been circulated beyond Menke or possibly Dougal. ... The list of uncirculated material from Bunch One is below. (I fell into Don's and apparently Dougal's disfavor by letting a neighbor, who was an employee of the band, know what tapes we had. I had not been asked to keep these secret and I still maintain that it was the proper thing to do, if only as a courtesy. Probably just bad timing.)" These Bunch One Betties were later merged with Bunch Two (mostly comprised of Fall 1977 GD tapes, apparently), and I have traditionally (and perhaps mistakenly, or at least misleadingly) referred to these as "Second Batch" Betty tapes. I'll try to go back to original and standard usage, and to be more careful. (In my defense, Rob Eaton himself initially called these "the fourth box" until he concluded that these, which he restored in ca. 1995-1996, a.k.a. the water-damaged tapes, were one and the same.)

! setlist: seeder notes "The compilation of these two sources completes this show, minus a few missing moments in Bossa Martin [sic: Valdez In The Country], which started in late, and Someday Baby, which had a reel flip, and no patch source exists yet." I am not so sure. I think there's probably a song or two before VITC.

! R: s1t01 Valdez In The Country cuts in on a Martin solo. Things are cookin'! Unknown amount missing.

! P: s1t01 VITC is incredible. Martin is on fire, working with some great weird reverb. Merl's long electric-piano feature in the 6-7 minute mark is light and groovy and hot. @ 7:49 Garcia starts doing some syncopated off-key chordings, and then early in the 8-minute he alights with flowing fingers, so measured and controlled and so many things to say as we approach the 9-minute mark. Late in the 11-minute mark they start spacing out, really fantastic lunar-orbiter sounds from Merl, Jerry moaning around behind, the drums just gorgeous, and Martin maybe playing a little percussion, but very tastefully (cf. 11/2/74). Merl is having one of his finest performances here, as he and Jerry collaboratively pour some honey down the ol' rabbit hole. It's keeping a real nice beat, keeping the Brazilian rhythms, Martin, satisfied, picks up his horn early in the 14-minute mark, Jerry starts lettin' it roll down that same ol' rabbit hole (he's decided to follow it down, naturally), Martin takes the cue

! R: s1t01 VITC zipper @ 1:22

! R: s1t02 YCLYHO cuts in on "//take off your dress."

! P: s1t02 YCLYHO JG is doing some nice long pulling in the 6-7 minute mark, then quickens the pace with a solo that has some of the feel of what the GD would do in those long, pre-"Fire On The Mountain" versions of "Scarlet Begonias", ca. 1976. In late 8 and into 9-minute mark, Kahn starts really asserting himself with some beautiful, hefty descending blues bass lines. Descending from already down in the bottom, that is. Merl plays more electric piano over the 10-minute mark, while John is still really playing beefy, Jerry comping behind, Merl groaning as he floats over the keys, just a righty for awhile, drops some heavier and double-time left-hand around 11:00. The drop really, really cleanly into the melody again just at the 12-minute mark. Fixing up the tempo a little bit, readjusting the ass in the drummer's chair, and Merl returns to his lament about suspicious minds a' talkin' round the neighborhood.

! R: this is clearly a Betty Board. Listen to that drum tone! She has got it locked in.

! P: s1t03 GGG this is some of the straight-churchiest organ playing you will ever hear from Merl Saunders. The B-3's lament to God, and while silent prayers seem sometimes to fall on deaf ears, how could He not hear this call? Martin's flute is real gentle behind. "Grandma said 'Boy, go and follow your heart'," what a gorgeous line. Dylan. Man oh man.

! R: s1t03 Merl's organ comes into R-speaker around 0:22.

! P: s1t04 Mystery Train is not one that usually moves me, but this is just good, hot music. The drummer is locked right the fuck in, the rhythm is in a Brink's truck. Jerry's vocals are energetic. Kahn strands bass lines together like a pretzel maker right across the 9-minute mark, feels like he must have had both hands (and the bass, of course) up under his chin, wiggling his fingers across those thick strings. Nice.

! s1t04 (1) JG: "Thanks. We're gonna take a break for a little while. We'll be back a little bit later."

! P: s2t01 HAGYN listen to how distinctive the drummer sounds as he comes in!  Jerry blowing some glass 4:30ish, goes 'round again over the 5-min mark.

! personnel: again, when I listen to the start of Freedom Jazz Dance, Humphrey sounds totally distinctive, and is hot as hell, by the way.

! R: s2t03 SB reel splice @ 6:25

! R: there's a high-pitched whine in the "source 2" material, beginning @ end s2t02 and continuing.

! R: s2t04 drops @ 0:14-0:26, 0:40-0:44, 1:22, 1:33, 1:44, 6:44, 8:35-8:36.

! s2t04 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. Looks like they're tryin' to close the bar. See you all later on."