Positively Killer: JGB at Keystone Palo Alto, December 21, 1979

I was recently surprised when I listened to JGB 12/17/79 and found the show totally lackluster. Jerry sounds listless, indifferent, tired, and he and Johnny D, the 21 year old Marin kid drumming live with Jerry for only the seventh time, seemed badly out of sync. So, I listened to the next show, 12/20, and found it to represent a considerable improvement. Deciding to carry on, I spun 12/21/79 here on its 41st anniversary. This was a relatively rare soundboard tape in early circulation back in the day, was widely traded (insofar as Garcia Band tapes were), and has long been a fan favorite for the arc'ing, soaring "Sugaree" and, especially, for the long version of a relative rarity, Dylan's "Positively 4th Street".

I am here to say that 40 years of crowds have been wise to revere this show. It kills. Let me just mark a few points, but urge you to check it out yourself, perhaps especially from shnid-138677, which sparkles.

First, I guess Johnny D and Jerry just needed a little work together --they hadn't played since 11/18, and I doubt they had practiced between time. Yes, I'm talkin' 'bout practice. So we see monotonic improvement in how these two are sync'd, and that makes everything else work. By 12/21, I do not notice any problems at all - not a one. And I hear Johnny D doing some killer stuff, e.g., in Sugaree, that validates why Garcia wanted him in the band. He's really, really good.

Second, Ozzie Ahlers plays masterfully here, going toe to toe with Garcia with tremendous confidence. This would be less and less the case over the years of Garcia's side bands - Melvin Seals was wonderful, a perfect complementary player who could take sparkling features when it was his turn, but was certainly very submissive vis a vis Garcia. Here, Ozzie occasionally steps forward over Jerry, Jerry keeps playing loudly, and, rather than backing down, Ozzie ups his attack and amplitude. They really feed off each other wonderfully this night. Nick pointed out to me that there is no synth here, just electric piano, so maybe that gives his playing a little more oomph or something, I dunno. Or, like Johnny D, having played a few gigs has him feeling warmed up. Or, it's just a great night. Whatever the case, a great night for Ozzie Ahlers, the best I can recall having heard.

Third, Garcia plays very mathematically throughout, and alternates between loud, grungy rock and roll lead guitar on the one hand and some much more gentle, patient plucking on the other. I can't explain why it feels mathematical except that it's both arithmetic (like an expanding cycle) and geometric (lots of loop and circles). He also comps as well this night for Ozzie as he ever did. See especially "After Midnight", which rocks hard.

Fourth this "Positively 4th Street" more than earns its reputation as the BOAT version. Checking in at 17 minutes, it starts with some beautiful instrumental work, as Jerry patiently sets everything up. I wasn't following along with the lyrics or anything, but I think he gets all of the verses almost entirely right, and sometimes he just barely remembers a line in time but offers it up off the beat and a little faster, providing some really nice syncopated texture. I think he even has the verse order mostly right. His guitar tone works throughout, and he comps aggressively for Ozzie, including some fanning that would normally just be him but here serves the whole unit. By the end I just wrote "I am actually pretty speechless at this point. WOW." Check it out.

Fifth, I seriously doubt that HTC was really an encore. In this period, a 35 minute second set would only have happened if they were running up on closing time. But then they would not have been able to play an encore. So I suspect it's just a four-song, 50-minute second set.

Sixth, I also seriously doubt that this comes from master reels. Maybe I shouldn't - the tape sounds absolutely fabulous, and it sounds even better, on a quick comparison, via shnid-138677, than the "Bertha" version I got with. It sounds light years better than the cassette master of the next night, which doesn't circulate but which I have heard. But all of that said, I am just not aware of anyone running reels at this point. The last Garcia Band reels I know about date from summer 1978. Betty ran reels for Reconstruction at least into July 1979, but the Garcia Band tapes from after that were limited to cassette. I dunno. It seems pretty certain there is a cassette gen here, based on cuts in After Midnight and Harder They Come. Older circulating versions have also tended to be a little bit hissy. But, I dunno. Happy to be proven wrong!

So let me just close this fun little exploration that I do think 12/17/79 was quite weak, but the band gets better each night of the three I have engaged over the last few days. The 12/21/79 show is absolutely outstanding, holding its own next to anything JGB did plus or minus a few years. I have seen folks say that they use it to introduce novices to the Garcia Band, and I can see why - the tape sounds great and the performance is outstanding. True, I can hear the limitations creeping in to Jerry's voice, which is still sweetly high but which is starting to bump into tighter range and volume constraints. It ain't perfect, but it is excellent.

Listening notes below the fold.

Palm Sunday

I know today is Easter, but JGBP tipped me off to a reddit AMA with Donna Jean the other day, and she provided this great memory from the Cats Under the Stars sessions:

It was about 4 o'clock in the morning, and Jerry and I were singing the duet on Palm Sunday, and we had the microphone on omni, so we were facing one another singing this song. It was probably the most soulful singing experience I ever had. It was a beautiful thing. I cannot say enough about how soulful that was, singing four inches from one another and singing that song. It's something I'll never forget.

Cool.

! ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/gratefuldead/comments/88dm78/hey_yall_its_donna_jean_ill_be_over_here_at_600/dwk2i0h/

Il lui manque du souffle

LN jg1995-04-15.jgb.all.aud-vasseur.94692.flac1644

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
April 15, 1995 (Saturday)
Vasseur flac1644 shnid-94692

--set I (5 tracks, 47:32)--
s1t01. Cats Under The Stars
s1t02. And It Stoned Me
s1t03. He Ain't Give You None
s1t04. Dear Prudence
s1t05. My Sisters And Brothers

--set II (7 tracks, 68:03)--
s2t01. The Way You Do The Things You Do
s2t02. You Never Can Tell (C'est La Vie)
s2t03. [0:09] Rubin And Cherise [:10-
s2t04. What A Wonderful World
s2t05. Don't Let Go
s2t06. Positively 4th Street [7:59] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight

! 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; [x:xx] = 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/19950415-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1995-04-15

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

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

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/21825 (same source tape, shnf, deprecated); http://etreedb.org/shn/94692 (this fileset).

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

! R: field recordists: Chuck Vasseur and Janet Vasseur

! R: field recording gear: 2x Neumann KM54 > Casio DA-7?

! R: lineage: DAT MASTER > DAT; Sony DTC-A7 > Sony TCD-D10PROII, Tascam DA-30MKII > Sound Devices 702 > Soundforge 9 (Fades, Sample Rate Conversion) > CDWAV > FLAC.

! P: s1t01 CUTS muffs first verse, confused all throughout the start, solidifies after a bit.

! P: s2t03 RAC everyone but Deborah Koons loves this tune, but it's striking out of the gate how slow this is. Never heard it like this. Vocals are *brutal*, he can't get anything out. Croaking "painted mandolin" isn't working. Croaking. Extremely repetitive, over long without much new happening.

! P: s2t05 DLG lyrics are a little nonsensical, but he just goes with it.

! P: s2t06 4th St flubs first verse. He just has no oomph to his singing. Here in a long central piece he is doing very well with the lyrics, making up in relative clarity what he lacks in aspiration. Whatever verses he meant to deliver late 5 early 6 didn't come through. "Stand inside my shoes" is well delivered ... "and for just that one moment, I could be you" ... sounds wistful. Nice energy, warts and all.

People Make The World Go Round

LN jg1995-01-13.jgb.s2.aud-sisler-goodbear.79638.flac1648

update 5/17: I have revisited this date, with rather contrasting perceptions.

Needless to say, I don't get out to 1995 very much. I enjoyed this, overall. It was not a ripoff.

Jerry's guitar play is fine, if mixed very low. The arrangements are pretty interesting, but the execution suffers without David Kemper in the chair. Garcia is flubbing like 50% of the lyrics, and there are a few moments where he seems completely to lose himself.

"Positively 4th Street" is a tune Jerry loved, played here for the first time since 4/24/93.

Jerry Garcia Band
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
January 13, 1995 (Friday) - set II
s2 Schoeps MK4 via Goodbear flac1648 shnid-79638

--set II (7 tracks, 64:00)--
s2t01. crowd and tuning [0:17], The Harder They Come [10:21] [0:15]
s2t02. And It Stoned Me [8:48] [0:24]
s2t03. [0:41] Evangeline [5:44] [0:07]
s2t04. Don't Let Go [14:09] [0:12]
s2t05. Lazy Bones [8:38] ->
s2t06. Positively 4th Street [8:04] ->
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [6:03] (1)

! 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:

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19950113-01

! historical: First shows of 1995, let's see how ol' Jer sounds.

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1995-01-13-the-warfield-san-francisco-ca/
! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/warfield-982-market-street-san.html

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

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/21484 (Vasseur, shnf); http://etreedb.org/shn/79638 (this fileset)

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

! R: field recordist: unknown

! R: field recording gear: 2x Schoeps CMC-MK4 > Reutelheuber power supply ("Billbox") > Denon DTR80p > Sony D7 [patch deck]

! R: transfer: Sony D7 master > ? > 48k wav > CDWave > FLAC. Dan Sisler supplied the DATs in 10/2006 to Teddy Goodbear, seeded 11/2006.

! R: seeder notes: "Thanks go out to Dan Sisler for sending me the DATs in 10/2006!"

! R: seeder notes: "Seeded 11/2006 by Teddy "GoodBear" Selby [http://www.goodbear.com :wave:"

! R: who knows which DAT Brat :) recorded this? I assume this is from the drink rail, though it's pretty spacious. What makes it hard for me to tell is that Garcia's guitar stays pretty muffled.

! R: s2t02 AISM overload @ 0:49

! P: s2t02 This ancient, dying Jerry picks his material so nicely. Of course, he'd been doing the Van classic for nine years, tackling it night after night with the Garcia Band in that whole period between near-death  (the 1986 coma) and the thing itself.

! P: s2t01. HTC Baldwin has to really hit hard to keep the band on pace, because Jerry is a little hesitant, and quite lost on the lyrics. DB is no David Kemper, and I actually don't love how he's playing the verse parts, but ahe seems to be giving it his all. Melvin and the ladies are pure pros on it. I haven't heard a note of John Kahn yet is he even here? ;-) Now I heard him 3:45. There could clearly be PA issues here vocals are mixed low --there's John again with a scale @ 4:10, so PA issues-- drums are nice, keyboards forward, vocals real low so far. Tempo is quite peppy, and now the mix is settling in 5:35 Melvin swirly while Jerry comps, now Jerry a nice descending, much more wah pedal on this, almost Shakedown-era. 6:08 Jerry steps up for a turn a register up his guitar playing sounds fine. 6:56 his lyrics fumble, he starts with the response and just the call entirely. The GD were using teleprompters at this time, he could sure use one here!

! personnel: this is Donny Baldwin drumming. HTC he has to dig in real hard to set the song's whole tempo, and we see how important time is going to be to play these songs when the singer can't remember any of the words.

! P: s2t03 Evangeline

! R: s2t03 more bass overload when JK audibilizes himself.

! R: s2t04 more static. Bass still overloading.

! P: s2t04 DLG Jerry sounds peppy. Let me embed a general comment about song tempo and set pacing - they are nice. I can see that this set will end up not super-long. Each song is done on the fast side of its historical tempo, and that's all to the good. We get a nice, peppy 64 minute set - nothing wrong with that. 2:57 Jerry digs down for a growl on "hold me tight". Does he hang a vocal there about 3:10? This is so interesting. Garcia is missing this next verse, but he's making up for it with some vocal improv, more or less. He's not even playing his guitar at periods. He or someone hangs another something 4:05 - is that John? 4:15 goes on down to a deep and careful "don't let go". 4:25 he starts trying on the a few measure of vocal-guitar, vocal-guitar call and response, now late 4 he's got the wah pedal working a little. Things are not entirely together with Baldwin and Jerry. I miss Kemper, no offense. John tickles some spacy stuff 5:39, Melvin starts rounding out the fill, John a few picks late 5 as Jerry. Late 6 Jerry gives a nice cranky washboard, now 7:18 steps up the register to play some Jerry Garcia guitar, totally unmistakeable (for better and for worse), stepping up the pace 7:49, quotes DLG a touch. I don't want to be critical, but I feel like Baldwin is not with it. 8:15 Jerry. Garcia some very inventive lines. 8:30ff I love what Jerry is going here. He is still full of ideas, still able to draw from a lifetime of sitting around with a guitar in his hand, cigarettes and coffee and picking and strumming. He's got a big triumphal thing playing mid 9, states a bluesy tone, the band doing almost a little marshal thing, Jerry has picked up his tempo and is playing super energetically, a little clunky second half of 10, 10:54, first nod back to DLG, now 11:05 he's back in tone, digging in for it, Baldwin on it by 11:20, they are understanding each other, 11:42 Jerry steps up to "hound dog barking upside the hill", which will lead him back to "I'd be barkin' and hollerin' too," which we already heard. Anyway. The song was nicely played, but it just didn't deliver that much punch. Maybe the guitar is just too far back in the mix.

! P: s2t05 LB 5:25 Jerry sounds lost, and this is not good. Something that almost never happened with Kemper - the band sounded lost, too. 

! R: s2t06 overloading - dreadful!

! P: s2t06 Jerry can't sing 4th Street if he can't remember the lyrics.

! song: Positively 4th Street (s2t06): 2/23/80, then 3/1/91, 4/18/93, 4/24/93, 1/13/95. Jerry had to reach up to the top shelf to grab Dylan's snide and splenetic rant - I hadn't been aware when it started that it had become such a rarity. He'd try it again on March 4 and April 15, 1995 - I'd like to check those out (update: done! 3/4, 4/15). Positively 4th Street is one of those that Garcia loved and never gave up on - Tough Mama being a 70s Dylan analog.

! s2t07 (1) JG: "See y'all later, thank you." Almost sounds a little slurry, certainly his voice a little weak, il manque d'haleine.

"Bloody Hell"

A while back I posted some listening notes from the Jim Cooper audience tape of the Jerry Garcia Band (JGB) show at Colden Auditorium, Queens College, Queens, NY on Thursday, October 30, 1975.

When called to summarize the show in a headline for my etree list, which is a date index for the site, I said "a pretty good night for Nicky Hopkins." And I do think that this is a strong performance by Nicky Hopkins and the whole JGB. Everyone plays well, every song is played well, and some of this, such as "Catfish John" and "Edward" is outstanding, top-shelf stuff. If you wonder what Garcia had in mind in bringing the especially troubled Nicky Hopkins on board as a business partner (Garcia-Kahn-Tutt-Hopkins dba "Jerry Garcia Band") in fall 1975, check out the show-opening "Let It Rock" from this night, a revelation, channeling melody and time, spirit moving bone. Garcia had never played with a guy like this on piano.

I mean no disrespect to Keith Godchaux in saying this. Keith was a piano maestro in his own right. Garcia on Godchaux (5/12/80, Rowland 1980):

Keith is one of those guys who is sort of an idiot savant of the piano. He’s an excellent pianist, but he didn’t really have a concept of music, of how the piano fit in with the rest of the band. We were constantly playing records for him and so forth, but that wasn’t his gift. His gift was the keyboard, the piano itself.

I am willing to accept Garcia's judgment and framing around this - what the hell do I know? It's a very interesting way of expressing a pianist's strengths and limitations, in any case: the fingers and the keys were as one. The piano provides some beautiful terrain for the realization and display (and thence, third-party appreciation) of human possibility. Listen to Keith's playing in October-November 1971, when he first started with the Grateful Dead, and be witness to instinctive brilliance. He's like a trail-runner, meticulously picking spots while running downhill full-bore with nary a tweak of the ankle. Mistake-free at full speed. If you read fast, or you type fast, or if you speak fluently, or knit or darn or dream - unconscious fluency --what pschologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls "flow"-- is a joy to experience and behold.

But, Hopkins! Instinct and musicality, melody and percussion, note and time … This is human accomplishment, between terra firmaand cosmos.Nicky's playing, at its best, orchestrates my mind. It's agile and powerful and instinctive, totally terrestrial, mathematically precise and impossibly, celestially, colorful. In this show, as in Nicky's whole tenure, there are flashes of all of that.

Now, any empirical scientist will tell you that triangulation is good (for me, the locus classicus is Campbell and Fisk 1959, but there are probably others, and earlier). So after listening to the Cooper tape I decided to check the show out from another point of view, an audience recording by Gerry Moskal (shnid-92780). This particular tape has some banter that the Cooper aud lacks, and it reveals a little of the rabbit's-eye view of my little Tuscan idyll, a good close look at the creepy, crawly underbelly of the natural condition, and a sense of the yin-yang co-constitution of the dark and the light.

After a sprightly version of "Catfish John", Nicky talks to the Queens audience.

·         Nicky Hopkins: "How you all doin', a'right? Hold on a minute? One of the things I would like to say is that outside, when I was in the bathroom, just before we went on, I heard some glass smashing against one of the outside doors, because the place has been booked solid for quite awhile. So there are about twenty people outside …

o   [interrupted by crowd members yelling stuff]

·         ... hold on a minute, please, shut up please ... and I mean that politely."

o   70s Queens dude, very near taper: "You shut up!"

·         Nicky: "There are about twenty people waiting to get in."

o   Crowd guy, possibly same: "Let 'em in!" [other hollering from crowd]

·         Nicky continues "Now wait a minute, please, we'll save time, and we'll get more numbers done that way. In particular, a blond-headed guy was throwing bottles or glasses or whatever at the door ... and then, I just blew it. Because of that. Because ... I had a weird trip that went down, many years ago ... I had a pet cat that chewed on some broken glass that some *bastard* had smashed."

o   [the crowd is laughing at Nicky. And I swear in here someone hiccups very close to the mic. It might be snickering.] [crowd dude yells something at Nicky]

·         "And every time I hear glass smashed, that really just triggers me off. I mean, normally I'm pretty cool, man."

o   [This comes off as desperate, and audience bully guy smells weakness. Guys in crowd are laughing at him. More hollering.]

·         "I mean, let me ask you ... hold on ... please ... just a few seconds silence, before we continue ..."

o   Crowd guy, real loud: "What is this, church?" The crowd is cat-calling Nicky, mocking him, shouting him down, while he begs for silence.

·         "Hold on. Hold on! [sounding like a frustrated parent] Please? Quiet ..."

o   Crowd is just mocking him, viciously.

·         Sounds like Nicky says "OK" or "Oh fine" ... [something inaudible off-mic] Nicky: "Listen. To continue ... before we continue ... bloody hell ... fuck it!"

o   Garcia is strumming "the center cannot hold" chords, smirking a little bit behind his beard, but hopefully not cruelly.

o   Crowd guy, laughing: "We gotcha! So that's your attitude, huh?!?" Crowd just taunting poor Nicky.

And the recording cuts out.

Julian Dawson's excellent 2011 biography talks about how Nicky's personality was just about perfectly ill-suited to spotlight stardom, and his painfully awkward emcee'ing and crowd engagements through his short three months in the Garcia Band illustrate the point in spades. If I ever stop polishing (or pushing) the rock of my 10/17/75 notes, I'll present more evidence and analysis.

In the meantime, what do you do if you are a brilliant pianist who has just had a painful, awkward, embarrassing moment? You play.

"Pig's Boogie" is a great song choice. Yeah, Nicky, you are cool, baby! Fuck yeah you are. If you've ever heard "Gimme Shelter", and you'd better have, Queens guy, you need to STFU. This is Nicky fucking Hopkins, Edward, the Session Man. So, hell yeah, take a feature, tear it up! Jerry's solo in the mid-1 minute mark is real upbeat, too. He knows that was just a weird moment, and he knows, or by this time it's perfectly clear to him, that no good comes from talking too much. Just play. And they do. Around the 4-minute mark, vocal crowd dude correctly identifies and calls out "Pipeline!" Yeah, dude, you are right, there is a little Pipeline break in Pig's Boogie. @ 4:30 John Kahn takes some bass lead that is very rare to hear this late in the game, another descending run for him late 4-minute mark, over 5. He puts a little skip in it, now climbing back up, hits a local bottom at 5:18, Jerry starts picking it up behind him, 5:30 Nicky sharp glissade, now barrel-rolling over the six-minute mark. Jerry is tearing it up to 6:30, now with some double-time chords, calling a too-quick end to it at 6:40, but everyone catches it, and they land clean at 7:00. Wow. Totally different context of hearing it after the "bloody hell" encounter. One last great Nicky fuck you here: "Pig", of course, was his cat, though not, I think, the one who died from the glass. What a great private joke for Nicky and the band. And I think it comes out in the spirited performance. Way to go, Nicky. And by the time he has scalped the room with "Edward" to finish the set, he has the crowd at his fingertips, so to speak, right there where there's control, and comfort, and brilliance. Even as they pose their own challenges, flesh and bone don't talk back.

Incomplete listening notes from the Moskal tape and references below the fold.

LN jg1974-08-24.jgms.all.sbd.10162.shn2flac

On Saturday, August 24, 1974, the Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders played the Great American Music Hall at 859 O’ Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA, 94109. I have written about this show once before, just to lay out a few contradictions around the date/venue combination, which I basically dismiss. I am of the view that this show happened as we have it in The Garcia List despite lots of other weirdness around the August 1974 record of shows (about both of which – The Garcia List, and August 1974 confusion—I will post before too long).

Here I report on what I hear through shnid-10612, a very nice soundboard recording from the First Betty Batch, taped by the incredible Betty Cantor-Jackson.

Tape Provenance and Quality

The etree copy is identified as 10" MSR > C > DAT > CD > EAC > SHN. It entered the lossless realm in around July 2002 via jjoops, who had received CD copies from Katy Miller. For reference, Eaton lists this date as follows: "08/24/74 Great American Music Hall, San Francisco Ca - complete; 4.6, 135min, Sbd, A1D0, Reel Master > Cass 1 > Dat 0, 48k; 7inch Master Reel @ 7.5 ips 1/2trk > Tascam 122mkIII 1st Gen Cass > 3800 x0."

The first question I have is whether these are different reel sources, one of them 10” and another 7”. It is possible. As I note, these recordings almost have the feel as if they were intended for a live release. I have seen hints and allegations of various 1^st gen mixdowns involving this date, 8/28/74, and other dates, perhaps around the release of the “9/1/74” Keystone show (which is not from a single show, but from several). That said, it’s probably safest to assume that these came from the same 1^st gen cassettes that Eaton has on DAT, and possibly from Rob’s DAT itself.

Either way, these look to be part of the First Betty Batch. Recall that the First Betty Batch and the Second Betty Batch were tapes that were bought in the storage locker auction ca. 1986 and digitized by a large crew of people, many of whom had the idea that they should be freely and widely circulated. As reported in Dwork et al. (2000), Harvey (2009) and various other sources, the daisy chain involved in transferring these tapes (7” and 10” reels) was as follows: 1x Technics 1506 reel to reel playback deck (Bob Menke's) > 1x Sony PCM-501ES (Dougal Donaldson's) > 1x Panasonic VHS hi-fi VCR deck > 3x Beta hi-fi VCR decks > 1 other VHS hifi VCR deck > 2 cassette decks. I don’t know to whom the various other decks belong, nor the extent to which their Garcia tapes have circulated. I know that some of Dougal’s Garcia PCMs emerged (e.g., 7/21/74, maybe 7/22/74, maybe 6/4/74), and that there other tapes that are identified as MSR > cassette (such as the Sacks version of 7/21/74 [shnid 10127] and this 8/24/74 tape). That may imply that whoever got cassette copies also circulated them independently, that Dougal himself had cassette copies, or some other arrangement.

The tapes are beautiful. Even with the limits imposed by the (various) A>D steps (e.g., wasn’t the Sony PCM 501ES doing A>D at 14bit/44.056kHz?) and an assigned cassette gen, underneath it (and, don’t get me wrong, it’s not far underneath) lies a gorgeous, full, rich, balanced, crisp Betty Cantor-Jackson recording. She has amazing ears.

Personnel

This is Garcia, Saunders, Fierro, Kahn and a drummer. I believe the drummer is Paul Humphrey. Argument against is that Bill Kreutzmann is known to have played the day before (8/23/74) at the Berkeley Community Theater for the Ethiopian Famine Relief Benefit. Argument for is that this sounds like Humphrey to me. I don’t trust my ears, but this is my thinking. update 20181211: drummer is probably BK. As I note below, I think this is the period in which Martin really starts to step forward. I like that, but others find it less appealing. Kahn is really good here, and Garcia is right, if a little be restrained.

Song Notes

Some notes on some of the songs, straight from my listening notes.

“La-La” [Allan | Scofield | JB] is understood as a Martin Fierro composition and features him on flute. I know little about the song, beyond that it was released on Keepers (1997). As I have conjectured, August 1974 is where Martin Fierro really starts to step in front of this band. He leads the first five minutes here with his flute. In the 4-min mark he uses some really nicely controlled echo and reverb. I suspect if we go back and compare we'll find that he only really started using this sort of thing from July 1974. Folks who object to Martin's playing (I am not generally among them) will probably like his playing less and less from July 1974 to the end of the year. (I haven't revisited true 1975 LOM shows with this hypothesis in mind, so let me not comment on his playing there yet.) During this time, Garcia is very subtly strumming a vaguely Brazilian rhythm behind. Really tasteful, "back" stuff. Betty's recording really does La-La justice, too. Everything is mic'd just perfectly. the 9-minute mark, after some really nice gentle Merl solos, John Kahn steps forward a little, even more prominently in the 10-minute mark. Everyone is really tight here. @ 11:15 La-La I think Merl is the one who signals a decay of the song structure, which really interests me. Garcia is always ready to go to space, so it's probably part of their playing together that Jerry restrained himself and put Merl in front of it (at least in this case). I need to revisit, but he does something right around this time that decays the notes, I can't describe it. By mid-to-late 11-minute mark, Garcia has heard him and he signals that he's ready to get spacy. John is there, too. Late 12-minute mark, there is some spacy knobbing going on. I have typically associated this sound with Martin's saxophone, but here it is. I wonder if it's a synthesizer that Merl has that can either be keyed to the saxophone or switched over to a knob or pedal or key that Merl has? Late 12-minute mark, just some nice decayed jazzy spacing it. Martin has picked the flute back up (he had laid out for a few minutes, or maybe was just doing that funky space sound I just described) Garcia speeds up 14:12, tries a little fretting, Martin is doing the reverb and echo on his flute again. Early 15-minute mark the drummer digs in and tries to set a faster pace, getting underneath John who's going that speed as well and scaling around, a little fast wiggle @ 15:47ish. Jungle echo'ing, gotta be wired up through Martin's flute? Yep, listen @ 16:50, where it's coming out as hybrid flute and jungle echo. Garcia leads a more urgent decay @ early 17-min mark. I find this material engaging. I think some would critique it, but I find it to be pretty productive jamming for this whole time. The song clocks in around 18 and a half minutes, but it doesn't sound to me like it meanders. The transition to PMTWGR is flawed but interesting. Martin quite explicitly blows the “La-La” theme on the flute, while Kahn quite explicitly (and rather more definitively) asserts the “People Make The World Go Round” intro. Bass v. flute, so to PMTWGR we go!

“People Make The World Go Round” [Allan | JB] is absolutely fantastic. It starts with the bass-led intro, beautifully accompanied by the flute, Merl running some nice gentle organ keys, Garcia just strumming, nice tight-string rhythm happening. A little palate cleanser after the space out. It's interesting to me that this is indeed how this band used PMTWGR, a warmdown and not a jam vehicle. In the one Aunt Monk version in circulation (2/14/75), it was a 20+ minute echofest (and really good). I have always assumed that these guys got the song from Milt Jackson's 1973 album Sunflower (my CD version of which is part of a "CTI Catalogue Re-Launch Series", produced by Didier C. Deutsch, ZK 65131, 1997), since on that album the song precedes Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower” [Allan | Scofield | JB] (called just “Sunflower” on the Milt Jackson album), which this group also played (9 times between 5/9/75 and 7/4/75 in various personnel/band configurations). (Blair Jackson has said this latter tune was brought in by Martin, FYI.) But beyond their propinquity on the Milt Jackson album, there’s no particular reason to imagine that PMTWGR came from there. Composed by the Stylistics’ writing team of Thom Bell (music) and Linda Creed (lyrics), and released on that band’s eponymous 1971 album, it was covered by inter alia Michael Jackson and Ramon Morris (on Sweet Sister Funk). These guys could have gotten it from anywhere, and listening around a little bit I don’t hear a distinct arrangement that jumps out as the source for Merl/Martin/Jerry and the rest of these guys.

“(I’m A) Road Runner” [Allan | Scofield | JB] was written by the Holland/Dozier/Holland team at Motown and first released by Junior Walker & The All Stars on the 1965 record Shotgun. JGMS had started playing it around the start of 1974, and IMO it got better by August 1974 than it had been earlier. The song lives right at the top of Garcia's vocal range in this period, in fact probably just a bit beyond it. When he first started singing it, to get to these notes he sort of parodied them, which is just not a good emotional register for Garcia. It doesn't make me as uncomfortable as Marmaduke's {RIP} treatment of Honky Tonk Women, which had a worse to-be-taken-seriously-ratio for a more parodiable song, but I don't like those early Roadrunners (see 2/5/74, 2/9/74 for reference). Look it ain't a Dylan song, but it's a good piece of Americana and it deserves some respect, dammit!

Jimmy Cliff’s “Sitting In Limbo” [Allan | Scofield |JB] is an early version for this band (third time), performed with extreme care to good effect. It almost sounds like Garcia thinks he's on the radio, that's how careful he's being. Almost like he thinks he's being recorded for release. The vocals are as perspicacious as Garcia vocals could get. Despite that this song lives in a really tight spot for his vocal range, he doesn't crack or clam up, not once. He doesn't sound too thin (though a critique might say it is, indeed thin). He doesn't stumble once on the lyrics. His guitar playing is reasonably safe, but pretty well flawless. I think he really likes and respects this song. And, again, Betty's tape does this quiet song great justice. Now, this sort of thing doesn't light me up (I like the rough as much as the diamond), but if you want to hear Jerry paying attention, this is as good an example as any.

Overall

Great recording, pretty good show. La-La -> PMTWGR are the highlights, for me.

Listening Notes after the jump.

The 1974 Garcia/Saunders instrumental previously listed as "Bags' Groove"

UPDATE 1/24/2015: Commenter Nick has determined that this is actually "Darben The Redd Foxx".

For fans of Jerry Garcia's pre-1975 excursions beyond the Grateful Dead, one of the great fun things is to hear Jerry trying on really unusual material, seemingly without much preparation. I think of the instrumental versions of "Day By Day" (from Godspell--previously misidentified as Jesus Christ, Superstar-- thanks to anonymous for the correction), the Motown "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and "Cucumber Slumber" as examples, but there are many others (and presumably more than we know based on circulating tapes).

Even more tantalizing is when there's a tune that "we" --i.e., the community of people who chronicle this stuff-- don't know. Sleuthing around and discovering the name and provenance of a mysterious jazz instrumental is a real challenge for someone as illiterate as me, but is also a lot of fun and is very rewarding when a previous unknown gets a designation.

I think we have a case of that here, though this is not 100% and should be further discussed.

The tune in question is the instrumental that appears on circulating recordings of Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders from the Lion's Share in San Anselmo on June 4, 1974, and the Keystone in Berkeley on June 6, 1974. I know of no other versions. The song has forever been listed at TJS as "Bags' Groove," but that is not what it is. I'd like to get more ears on the alternatives, so below I post (1) links to the Garcia/Saunders tunes; (2) hypothesized song titles, with links; (3) some existing analysis provided by folks more expert than me; and (4) a tentative conclusion.

(1) Here are links to the Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders versions:

June 4, 1974: [sorry, these are dead]

June 6, 1974: [sorry, these are dead]

(2) Here are the hypotheses we have in terms of what song this is:

H1: "Bag's Groove" (Milt Jackson)
http://www.last.fm/music/Milt+Jackson/_/Bag%27s+Groove (listening link at top right)

H2: "The Crossing (Oubour)" (Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band)
http://www.rushhour.nl/store_detailed.php?item=38588, then down to the playlist for the track in question.

H3: "Ptah the El Daoud" (Alice Coltrane)
http://www.last.fm/music/Alice+Coltrane/_/Ptah,+the+El+Daoud (listening link at top right). This was first identified by nick in an email to the Jerry Site.

(3) analyses

Santos L. Halper from DNC first proposed H2. When I suggested I didn't think that was it, he replied thusly:

after a few more listens, I agree with your assessment. The Crossing and the theme from 6.4/6.6 jam aren't exactly the same, though the middle phrase is so similar that I was thinking that the G/S version could be a simplified arrangement. But the G/S version certainly lacks the second half of the head from The Crossing.

And actually, having finally tracked down a copy of Ptah last night, it also sounds very similar to the 6.4/6.6 jam, though once again, the G/S verions lack the second half of the head where the melody is resolved into deep held notes. But something by Alice Coltrane seems more likely to have been in one of their record collections at the time.

Making things even more complicated, the two Garcia/Saunders versions also take different approaches compared to each other, with the 6.4 version played as straight ahead jazz with a walking bassline and the 6.6 version played more as a march with a simpler thumping bassline.

DNCer Blacula weighed in with this:

In listening to the two sound clips you provided against 6/4/74, it is my opinion that this is the head of Ptah, The El Daoud that has been stuck on a standard I-IV-V progression. It is also in a different key.

The middle (solo) section is different, but that is like comparing two versions of Dark Star (or Don't Let Go). They both have an identifiable theme which then progresses to the solo (jam) section. The theme is typically restated at some point near the end.

The track by Salah Regab is surprisingly similar at the head, but is not the theme from 6/4/74.

Then we had a little Q&A, Qs by me and As by Blac:

Q: What does "the head" mean? I assume it's just the start, but does it have a more precise meaning than that?

A: Basically it is the theme. It is performed at the "head" of the tune, and is a basis to launch off from. There may be a more specific definition, but this is how I've always understood it.

Q: Explain for a musical ignoramous?

A: The "I" is the root, usually the key of the song. The "IV" is a musical fourth which describes the interval between the root and this note. The "V" being the fifth.

Basically in layman's terms, this means a blues progression.

Q: So, would it be most accurate to call this "Ptah, the El Daoud"? How would you refer to this?

A: That was/is a tough call. If the head is the same, but the underlying chord progression is not, can it still be called Ptah?

I say yes, if you consider that it is likely derived from Ptah and extrapolated from there.

It could be called a Ptah jam, but to my ears there is a stating of the theme, a jam/solo section, and the theme is stated again before the end of the song. My contention is that this is a complete performance of Ptah, even though it has been slightly adapted. You'll notice that the Alice Coltrane version does not restate the theme before the end of the song.

(4) tentative conclusion

I tentatively conclude that we should be calling this tune "Ptah, the El Daoud" in our Garcia setlists. Thoughts/reactions/etc. most welcomed!

update: It is "Darben The Redd Foxx"