Playing on the radio builds an audience, part the millionth: OAITW April 1973

I was just revisiting a little item in Todd Tolces's early 1970s column in the Berkeley Daily Gazette. From May 3, 1973:

Picking a very nicely at at banjo all weekend was Jerry Garcia with his new bluegrass group, Old and in Way.

The acoustic quintet played through two nights at the Keystone to a very crowded house each time. The word got out. Either that or everybody beard them on KSAN's 'live'' weekend where Old and in the Way did a smashing one-hour set from the Record Plant in Sausalito.

Also on hand that day and the Friday and Saturday nights at the Keystone was Richard Greene, Seatrain's former fiddler. Greene's presence makes two refugees from Seatrain. The other is Peter Rowan, their lead singer and guitarist.

Greene's presence may finally fill Garcia's desire to ''find a fiddle player and play the bluegrass festivals this summer." However because of the Greatful Dead's heavy work schedule he may not be able to. Let's wait and see.

So, a few things.

First, Tolces somehow got the idea that Greene was there to stay. But as far as I know he'd play the Pacific Northwest shows May 8 in Eugene and May 9 in Portland, and that would be all she wrote.

Second, Corry gets some nice capillary-level confirmation. He had said in re the 4/21/73 KSAN broadcast "Any doubts about Old And In The Way's strategy to popularize themselves like the Stanley Brothers are erased by this broadcast." And here we are the next weekend, packed house through buzz from the broadcast.

Third, I think my putative 4/28/73 Record Plant KSAN Broadcast *must* be a phantom, right? I think Richard Greene had himself at the Plant this date, and remembered doing a KSAN broadcast from there, and he and I conjured this event in the recollecting. Instead, I think RG was at the Plant doing some session work (I don't know for whom) on 4/28, and we both just mixed it with 4/21.

Can I get a collective ruling on that question?

Fourth, Tolces hearkens back to what Jerry had told him on March 13th, very early in the band's run, that he wanted a fiddle player.

Fifth, Tolces is also being communicated some doubts about how much time he'll really have for Old And In The Way. I can imagine three pathways to that. 1) It was just sort of "known". 2) GD sources (e.g., Cutler) planted that, as a shot across the bow to Jerry and his little buddies that they ate last. 3) Jerry planting it to start setting expectations among his bluegrass buddies. He wouldn't want to disappoint them, and he was averse to directly communicating anything even vaguely unpleasant. So maybe Tolces proved a useful conduit to soften the reality.

Sixth, whatever all that is, the whole thing nicely illustrates the burden of being Jerry Garcia (Gans).

Pearl's Wake

Around November 3, 1970 the Associate Press (AP) had an item in lots of papers noting that Janis Joplin had left $2,500 in her will for a big ol' celebration of her life after her passing. Invitations went out reading "The drinks are on Pearl", and it happened at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. The AP story (e.g., in the Red Bluff Daily News, November 3, 1970, p. 8) says that the GD and other rock groups entertained.

Mastropolo 2015 puts the date of this event as 10/26/70. I don't know how he knows that, but there it is. (update: as usual, Corry was on it before I was --in this case, a decade!!-- and the date comes from his post.) He references the memoir of Janis's road manager John Byrne Cooke in saying that members of the Quick, Big Brother, and the GD formed various playing combinations, which is a little different than a GD gig per se.

As of now, I am listing this as a GD gig. I am also coding the Wales-Garcia Matrix gig advertised for this date --the latest with Howard's name on it, as far as I can recall-- as canceled. Any thoughts on that?

I also note that LIA hipped me to a canceled GD gig in Columbus, OH, between 10/24 and 10/29. Janis's wake may well account for the cancellation.

Where Was Garcia on May 29, 1987?

As I have noted, Garcia's final Keystone Family gigs before jumping ship to Wolfgang as his permanent and exclusive hometown promoter took place at the end of May 1987, as In the Dark was getting huge. The big fella would play very few club gigs after the Wednesday (27th)-Thursday (28th) and Saturday (30th)-Sunday (31st) Stone shows.

The Friday gap night always just struck me as a day of rest. But, well, was it?

The Hermes Project, based in Malibu, was promoting a world premiere showing of "The Hero's Journey", a film about mythologist Joseph Campbell, featuring the man himself, plus special guests on a panel, plus a reception. Music composed by Mickey Hart and Rand Wetherwax --presumably "The African Queen Meets The Holy Ghost"-- "with special performance by Jerry Garcia" [itals original], all scheduled for Friday, May 29, 1987, 8 PM, at the Director's Guild, 7950 Sunset in LA (map).

The event got other line announcements in the LA Weekly and the LA Times, but I found no ex post accounts, nor have I ever heard of this thing before. Of course, the November 1, 1986 "Ritual and Rapture" event at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco is well known, and it included a performance of the Hart-Wetherwax composition, with Garcia playing a headless Steinberger. Blair Jackson wrote it up in Golden Road (no. 13, Winter 1987, p. 6).

But did this encore event happen on May 29, 1987? I sure would like to know.

Emerge and See: Hunter Hosting Garcia at the Cellar Door - May 15, 1978 (DISCONFIRMED)

update 20210526: this seems not to have happened. David Kramer-Smythe reached out to David Morgenstern, who was with Comfort at this time. He remembered this gig for other reasons, but said Garcia definitely did not join, and that, in fact, Garcia never sat in with Comfort. So this is one of those cases of .... hmmm ... how does such a specific (if uncertain) memory form? What do we do with such a memory? In the absence of other advice. I will just keep this here for posterity.

Courtesy of slip at JGBP, this:

May 15, 1978 Robert Hunter and Comfort 

This was a three night run, the 14, 15, 16th at the Cellar Door in Washington DC.  

(The 14th  we saw the Dead play in Providence, RI. We were just finishing a post  spring semester  Vermont > Springfield > Providence run, so my memory of this event is extremely fuzzy, but it happened.) 

Anyway – towards the end of the Hunter show, Steve Parrish..what was he doing there?... helped roll a doorway sort-of-thing out on stage. It was like a big stage prop with a man-size keyhole shape cut-out. What…A giant keyhole? 

Then, I remember smoke machine and a siren howling like an ambulance. Lights flashed. The Cellar Door was a pretty small and dark venue as I recall, so this was kind of jarring. 

And then the PA screamed “Emergency…Emergency…Emergency” and gradually slowed to say “Emergggge an Seeeeee,” “Emergggge and See,” “Emerge and See,” Emerge and See!!!” 

And a fellow in a bozo mask walked through the keyhole. The fellow was Garcia. 

This is where it gets fuzzy....I forget what he played, maybe Boys in the Ballroom [sic]? Promontory Rider? Goodnight Irene? It wasn’t a standard Dead tune. 

Who’s got the tape?

Who, indeed? Can anyone confirm or deny?

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

What a strange thing this is.

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

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

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

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

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

Big Gigs, Little Ex Post Trace

Garcia and Saunders mostly played Bay Area clubs. But every now and then, usually in connection with multiact benefit concerts, they played larger theaters, auditoriums and arenas. Examples include BCT for the United Farmworkers on 9/22/72, Winterland for unspecified Hells Angels on 10/2/73, and BCT again for Ethiopian famine relief (8/23/74) and, on 10/12/74, for Padma Jong, a performing arts center on the Eel River.

Two that seem likely to have happened, but which have yielded zero expost trace took place on June 2, 1973 at the Marin Civic and on June 15, 1975 at the SF Civic. The first, especially, has always drawn me, because JGMS shared the bill with the brand-new Pointer Sisters and a Herbie Hancock aggregation transitioning from its Mwandishi to its Headhunter periods. Given the chance, I'd be awfully tempted to set my time machine back to this night to check out the action.

Let me just briefly drop some breadcrumbs on each.

June 2, 1973: Marin Civic Auditorium

An organization called Sausalito Is Spring organized three shows June 1-3, landing some major talent. The Saturday, June 2 gig was a benefit for the autistic classroom of the Henry C. Hall Elementary School in Larkspur, with the killer bill identified above. I have gathered up the following ex ante materials:

! preview: "Concerts Will Aid Autistic Children Class," Independent-Journal [San Rafael, CA], May 29, 1973, p. 11;
! ad: San Francisco Examiner, May 31, 1973, p. 25;
! listing: "Scenedrome," Berkeley Barb, June 1-7, 1973, p. 22;
! listing: San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 1973, p. 48;
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, June 2, 1973, p. 10;
! ref: handbill.

 The 5/31 ad in the Examiners bills "Jerry Garcia & Merle [sic] Saunders," with Pamela Polland following in the same font, and then the Pointers and Herbie Hancock in smaller print.

Did this gig happen? Was anybody there? Was Gaylord Birch drumming for the Pointer Sisters? Did the Headhunters do what I imagine they must have, which would be drop down some deep, thick, funky fusion?

June 15, 1975: SF Civic Auditorium

This was a marathon, all-day boogie billing the following: JGMS / Country Joe McDonald and The Energy Crisis / Van Morrison / Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show / Larry Coryell / Chi Coltrane / Barefoot Jerry / Brother Mouse Band / Hoodoo Rhythm Devils / Soundhole / Brotherly Love / Pegasus / Caesar's Band / Lyons & Clark.

! ad: SFSECDB19750525p11;
! preview: "Marathon of Boogie," San Francisco Examiner, May 27, 1975, p. 30;
! preview: "The All-Day Boogie," San Francisco Examiner, June 13, 1975, p. 25;
! listing: SFSECDB19750615p07;
! ref: Wasserman 19750817.

It was a benefit for the Community Fairs Broadcast Foundation. Wasserman 19750817 doesn't mention JGMS, leading with CJ, and says the whole event was put on by amateurs and was an unmitigated disaster - BASS sold only 227 tickets. Since JLW didn't mention JGMS, I have some doubt as to whether they played. update: Selvin 19750622 gives a similar ex post analysis: 800-1200 "customers rambled about in the 7,000-plus seat hall" and the charitable beneficiary lost a ton of money. He doesn't exactly say he saw Garcia and Saunders playing, but if they hadn't shown I think he or JLW would have said so.

I reproduce my extremely low-res scan of a flier below.

New-to-The-List from the Examiner, 1973-end

This is a followup to New-to-The-List from the Examiner, 1970-1972. I include new-to-The-List dates, some that were advertised and seem to have been canceled, a few other weird things I uncovered. The Examiner was quite a task. If the Chronicle were digitized, that'd be the last frontier for me. At this point, returns are diminishing, so if it comes online after 2018 I might skim it, but will certainly be less thorough in entering stuff into my spreadsheet than I have been with the Examiner. There's only so much time.

New to The List

It's possible that some of these didn't happen, of course. But I found these and couldn't find disconfirming evidence of them.

1/30/73 (Tuesday): JGMS at Keystone
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 30, 1973, p. 21.

8/12/73 (Sunday): JGMS at the end of Magellan Road, El Granada. "Jazz-rock concert featuring Merl Saunders and friends (including Jerry Garcia) at the end of Magellan Road" in El Granada, presented by Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society.
! listing: SFSECDB19730812p07.

1/3/74 (Thursday): JGMS at Keystone
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, January 3, 1974, p. 29.

3/30/74 (Saturday): JGMS at Keystone Stockton. Of course they played Freddie's shortlived venture out in the sticks!

Jerry Garcia and Merle [sic] Saunders, plus Paul Pena, at the Keystone Stockton, Saturday, March 30, 1974. Ad in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, March 24, 1974, p. 27.

! listing: SFSECDB19740324p04;
! ad: SFSECDB19740324p27.

6/3/74 (Monday): JGMS at Keystone. One can wonder if, like the rest of the shows this week, this gig featured Tony Saunders on bass.
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, June 3, 1974, p. 32.

6/15/77 (Wednesday): JGB at Keystone Palo Alto
! ad: SFSECDB19770529p39.

4/13/79 (Friday): Reconstruction at the Rio Theatre. I had already concluded that Reconstruction did not play the Denver Rainbow on this date, despite tape labels to the contrary. Here's more evidence against a Denver gig.
! listing: SFSECDB19790401p14.

7/16/80 (Wednesday): JGB at Keystone
! ad: SFSECDB19800713p10.

6/10/82 (Thurday): JGB at the Stone. Ad says "note new SF date". Earlier ads had JGB at Stone on 6/13. So I suspect that show was canceled and this one replaced it.
! ad: SFSECDB-19820606p28.

7/10-11/84 (Tuesday-Wednesday): JGB at Keystone Palo Alto. Hard to imagine a show this late not having imprinted itself, but it was a midweek down south, before the internet.
! listing: SFSECDB-19840708p14.

CXL

6/10/75 (Tuesday): JGMS at Keystone. I wonder if this cancellation had to do with Jerry being occupied by the United Artists deal, which I date to the next day?
! ad: SFSECDB19750525p29;
! ad: [contra] SFSECDB19750608p29.

12/16/79 (Sunday): JGB at Keystone. This was rescheduled for the next night.
! ad: SFSECDB19791209p24.

12/20/81 (Sunday): JGB at Keystone
! ad: SFSECDB19811206p14;
! ad: [contra] SFSECDB19811213p10.

6/13/82 (Sunday): JGB at Stone. This in earlier ads, then later ads show late addition on 6/10 at Stone, and this show gone. So I suspect this was cxl and replaced by that one. See entry for 6/10/82 above.
! ad: SFSECDB-19820530p22.

10/29/82 (Friday): JGB at Keystone. This is a weird one, listed as late as the day of the show. But Garcia left LA on PSA #348 dep 2:55 PM arr 4 PM in Arizona, and was supposed to check into the Fiesta Inn in Tempe for the next night's gig in Mesa, AZ. He might have flown home instead, gigged, and then gone from home back down to the southwest, I guess. But for now I will list this as canceled.
! ad: SFSECDB19821003p19;
! ad: SFSECDB19821010p24;
! listing: SFE19821028pE2.

2/25/83 (Friday): JGB at Keystone. I have this as canceled and re-scheduled for the 28th.
! ad: SFSECDB19830213p19.

Confusing

8/6/73 (Monday): Keystone. The same set of listings show both Herbie Hancock and Steve Head, on the one hand, and JGMS, on the other, playing for Freddie in Berkeley.
! listing: San Francisco Examiner, August 6, 1973, p. 28.

1/21/83 (Friday): JGB at KPA, or Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma? Contradictory info out there. On the one hand, there's an announcement of the Petaluma show in a Norcal paper the day of the show, and Jerry gave an interview to a Norcal radio station that day. He is known to have played Petaluma the next day. On the other hand, an earlier listing in the Examiner had him at Keystone Palo Alto.
! listing: [contra] San Francisco Examiner, January 20, 1983, p. E2;
! preview: "Jerry Garcia performs tonight at the Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma", Ukiah Daily Journal, January 21, 1983, p. 8.

Jam Session Celebrating Dick Clark

Joel Selvin's "Lively Arts" column in the Chronicle/Examiner pink section on September 6, 1981 contained this little oddity:

Evergreen TV host Dick Clark celebrates his 30th anniversary on live television Thursday [9/10/81] with a program that will include a jam session featuring Duane Eddy, Gregg Allman, Stanley Clarke, Bo Diddley, Nigel Olsson, Dickey Betts, Charlie Daniels, Billy Preston, Mick Fleetwood, Lee Ritenour, Larry Graham, Junior Walker, Ray Parker, Jr., Tom Scott, George Thorogood, and Jerry Garcia.

File this one under "Hm."

While I am at it, I also learned from a pink section earlier in the year that George Thorogood was in the house for the JGB show at the Stone on 2/23/81, and the band and the crowd sang him happy birthday.

Hm again.

Merl Saunders and the Rainforest Band, featuring Jerry Garcia

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

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

Several possibilities.

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

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

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

Thoughts?

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

Dating the Legion’s Demise: A Revisionist Account

The demise of the Legion of Mary, Garcia’s principal side band from Ronnie Tutt’s arrival on December 6, 1974 until mid-1975, remains one of the enduring mysteries of the Garciaverse.

The “why” is the biggest mystery of all. After almost five years of steady gigging and recording Garcia is said to have walked away. I don’t have time to go to Sources, but there is verbiage from Martin Fierro about a “star trip” and a sense of hurt from Merl Saunders, implying that shadowy forces were at work to short-circuit the magical Jerry-and-Merl trip in favor of the Grateful Dead. A big part of the conventional psychology of Garcia, ascribing to him personal cowardice in saying hard things to loved ones, derives from the Saunders account of what went down with the Legion in 1975 and Reconstruction in 1979.

In this post, I want to say less about the “why” and more about the “when”, though I think a revised understanding of the temporal piece may raise new questions about the causal one. I will conclude that we should extend the known Legion timeline to the end, rather than the beginning, of July 1975. My best guess is that there were additional gigs at least on July 23-24, 1975 at the Lion’s Share and July 30, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall. Sometime between late July and early August, Jerry and Merl went their separate ways.

update: I am probably conflating two separate things here. First is the end of the actual Legion, and second is the Merl-Jerry 1975 parting-of-ways. /update

Conventional Datings

The canonical List is clear: according to Dennis McNally’s research, preserved and extended by Corry Arnold, Independence Day 1975 tolled the bell for the Legion of Mary. It’s all pretty symbolic, of course. The Great American Music Hall, site of Jerry and Merl’s final 4^th of July engagement, was a favorite of Garcia’s since they had first played it July 19, 1973. That gig, in turn, was not only with Merl, but was something of a Fantasy party to celebrate the canning of the July ’73 Keystone tapes, which would become the GSKV Live at Keystone, the fullest commercial expression of the Garcia-Saunders collaboration. Garcia suggested the Music Hall for the Dead’s highest-stakes gig of 1975, for FM radio executives on 8/13/75, in collaboration with new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss (since 6/11/75) United Artists (Selvin 197508xx). Oh yeah, one more thing – 7/19/73 was also Martin’s first known gig (update: since 1971) with these guys, and when Legion ended in the same room he’d wait 13 years to play again with Garcia (with Zero, 7/16/88 in Golden Gate Park). It all makes for a great story.

However poetic, the notion of a sudden rupture after the Fourth of July is incorrect. We now know of both a July 5^th Saturday night at the Music Hall (listed in the Oakland Tribune and the Marin Independent-Journal) and an anticlimactic Sunday night show at Jerry and Merl’s chasse gardée, the Keystone Berkeley, now documented by the house calendar, listings in the Chronicle and the Datebook, and, even better, tape by the ever-timely Robert Castelli (shnid-108018). The show has always struck me as a little lethargic, and I imagined in my mind not a sudden rupture but a cartoonish putt-putt-putt and plonk, out-of-gas kind of finish for the band.

So, as of now, I have considered that Legion of Mary ran from December 6, 1974, through July 6, 1975. But I want to suggest the addition of at least three new dates to the end of the band’s run.

Closing of the Lion’s Share: July 24-25, 1975

With the release of the Garcia-Saunders 7/5/73 Lion’s Share show as GarciaLive 6, the venue looms large in our immediate imaginations. And why not? It was a legendary little Marin room. But lost to history has been an apparent Saunders-Garcia gig (or two) two years later, as the Share was ending its run on the Miracle Mile in San Anselmo. In comments to a post which I’ll mention more below, JGBP quotes a public posting by ‘cabdriver’ at Deadnetcentral recounting such gigs:

This Lion's Share gig (their closing week) was the first week of July, 1975 [sic: incorrect – see below]. The Garcia-Saunders Band played two consecutive nights during closing week … There were not very many people there, that's the funny part. And I can't find any reference to them doing those gigs anywhere. But it did really happen!

Cabdriver expressed uncertainty about the week the Share went dark. The Lion’s Share’s closing week was July 23-29, 1975, and the schedule ran as follows:

• Wednesday 7/23 Commander Cody
• Thursday 7/24 Merl Saunders and Friends / Aunt Monk / Sweetmeat
• Friday 7/25 Merl Saunders and Friends / Sweetmeat
• Saturday 7/26 ???
• Sunday 7/27 Kathi McDonald
• Monday 7/28 Michael Bloomfield, Mark Naftalin, Roger “Jellyroll” Troy, Nick Gravenites / Allair and Mitchell
• Tuesday 7/29 Sons of Champlin / Michael Hunt

(Sources: Selvin 19750720 has the whole schedule. Listing in SFC19750723p47 supplies 7/23 and 7/24. Listing in Fremont Argus, July 25, 1975, p. 38 and “Lion’s Share Out With Flair,” Independent-Journal (San Rafael, CA), July 25, 1975, p. 20, both provide 7/25 and following.)

Those Thursday and Friday “Merl Saunders and Friends” gigs, which I took in my own notes to be Merl playing out quickly post-Jerry, certainly fit cabdriver’s description of back to back gigs during closing week at the Share. Somehow the fact that 7/24 bills Aunt Monk separately seems to make it more likely that Jerry was one of Merl’s Friends in a different configuration.

Summing here, we seem to have an eyewitness account of Jerry and Merl playing during the closing week at the Share, and this lines up with independent evidence from newspaper listings. I think those gigs happened and would propose adding them to the List.

update: To be clear, those gigs don't necessarily extend the LOM timeline. They only would if the band that played were Garcia-Saunders-Fierro-Kahn-Tutt. It doesn't sound necessarily like that's what these were. But ...

... July 30, 1975 at the GAMH

Remember when I found the “Latest Legion Listing”, for July 30, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall? I treated it as spurious because it didn’t fit my preconceived narrative. I even found a way to suggest that the very real professionalism of the GAMH made it more likely to find such a spurious listing. But beyond the idea that gigs to shut down the Share might extend the known timeline, I have found an additional piece of information that leads me to revise my earlier view. My first encounter with this possible gig came through the July 25 I-J, and I surmised that a lot could have changed in five days. But I have found a second listing for the gig, and this one is in the July 30^th Chronicle.

This makes the first-discovered listing feel less spurious, because the Datebook listings would be very up-to-date, I think, based on information not more than a few days old. The fact that the GAMH was professionally run only reinforces the idea that there really was, as of approximately the day before, a planned Legion of Mary gig at the Music Hall on Wednesday, July 30, 1975.

Did it really happen? I don’t know. It’s less certain than the Share shows. But this last piece makes it feel a bit more likely …

... August 5, 1975?

The McNally-Arnold list historically gave this as the Jerry Garcia Band’s first show. This is almost certainly incorrect, as gigs only got going with Nicky Hopkins and JGB #1 from September 18, to the best of our current reckoning. Corry now considers this a Keith and Donna show with Jerry, which is how I currently list it. But, check out this series:

Keystone Berkeley ad from the pink section, 7/27/75, billing Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders 8/5/75

Keystone Berkeley August 1975 calendar, scan courtesy of Ed Perlstein

See that big blank spot over Merl’s name in the 8/5/75 box? “Jerry Garcia and” would fit perfectly in that spot. I raise this for two reasons. First, *this* looks to be where the rupture between Jerry and Merl could have happened, insofar as that’s the right conception of things. Gigs were advertised, nothing unusual about that, but then something changes. I think Corry’s reasoning that this was Keith and Donna is pretty sound, but that would mean Merl would have been bumped for it, potentially part of the story of Merl having the rug pulled out from under him. Second, whatever the deal with 8/5, the fact that there had been a JGMS billing this late in the game lends more credence to the idea of late-July gigs.

So, in summing up on this one, I am not prepared to say there was a JGMS/Legion gig on August 5, 1975. I am prepared to say that it was planned as JGMS, and then morphed into something else (either Merl without Jerry, or Keith and Donna). In that sense, it arguably sets the new outer limit to our understanding of the tenure of the Jerry-Merl and Legion of Mary aggregations.

Conclusion

Putting this all together might merely push the end of Legion back to the end of July, rather than to the beginning. In that sense, it’s a purely quantitative addition to our understanding. But, I don’t know, somehow the boys jamming together at the Share (as they did so well on 7/5/73, GarciaLive 6), casts a whole new light on the demise of the Legion, making it feel less like an opiated Sunday-night anticlimax and more like a couple of good gigs to wrap things up. It may still be the case that Jerry ducked out after 7/30 with just as much cowardice as we have always thought, but this is softened in my mental palette just a little bit if there was good, joyful gigging for a little longer than has previously been recognized.

Where Were the GD on December 24, 1970?

My list of canceled Grateful Dead gigs shows Thursday, December 24, 1970 at City Center, New York, NY. Deadbase listed as canceled, with note "Not possible with Winterland the night before".

Two things.

First, I think we are learning that they'd fly for a gig, so I am not 100% sure this is a safe assumption that they would not have played NYC on 12/24 having played SF on 12/23 - especially for a special occasion.

Second, I just came across a piece from Hit Parader, attributed to June 1971, which includes the following: The Dead are anti "new politics", but "do help when they find an individual whose ideas impress them. For instance, on a recent plane trip across the country, the band met Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panthers. He told them his philosophy. They were impressed by what he said, as well as his personality. As a result, they agreed to do a benefit for the Panthers that was held in New York on Christmas Eve".[i]

Hmmm, she uses the past tense. Now, normally I'd poo-poo Hit Parader, but these things can surprise us. Any thoughts as to whether the GD actually played a Panthers benefit in NYC on Christmas Eve. 1970?

! ref: Ross, Penelope. 1971. Grateful Dead. Hit Parader, June: 10-12, 59, 64. 

p.s. "Where Were the Grateful Dead" does better than "Where Was The Grateful Dead", grammar be damned.

---

[i] Ross 1971, 12.

Grateful Dead at New Monk, Berkeley, ca. June-July 1971

One night I went to hear Jerry play a gig with Merle [sic] Saunders at a small place in Berkeley and one by one, for 'no reason', the rest of the Dead showed up too, and eventually they got on the stage and started playing -- Charles Reich, Spring 1972 (Reich 2003 [1972], xv).

Assuming that it wasn't all a dream that Charles Reich dreamed, is this --Grateful Dead at New Monk, Berkeley-- a thing that we might locate more precisely in time? We have the socio and the geo, how about the chrono?

Below, I'll speculate, with a bit more justification (but properly still a romanticized view) that it was

I have dated, as best as I can, the Rolling Stone Interview (SSI) and the Stoned Sunday Rap (SSR), which puts us in the June-October timeframe for the former and either March 5, 12 or 19, 1972 for the latter. We are looking for a JGMS gig in a "small place in Berkeley" during each. It doesn't have to be one of the interview dates, per se. Reich was living at the Co-Op in Berkeley at this time, so he might have moseyed down to see Jerry and Merl on any random night.

Let me start by saying that if the Jerry-Merl gig was not billed, I can only guess at when it might have happened. This would have left no trace for me to find. I identify my favorite possibilities below.

If this substituted for a billed gig, I might have more to say. Let's go to the data.

RSI: June-October 1971


I provide below a list of Garcia playing small Berkeley places from June to October, 1971 - the first window. I have included New Riders gigs on the off-chance that Reich, writing in spring 1972 and probably still high from the Stoned Sunday Rap (SSR), crossed some wires. The Longbranch Saloon was a small place in Berkeley, but it was New Riders territory, and while Reich could have confused two of Jerry's very active side-gigs (NRPS and JGMS still working hard), I doubt it.

Figure xxx. Jerry Garcia at "a small place in Berkeley", late June - October 1971

That leaves  2119 University. Recall that Freddie Herrera first booked Garcia on Thanksgiving Eve, 1970 at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, with the New Riders. They'd work together there another forty times into the summer of 1972. I don't know when Herrera took over 2119 University –there are booking patterns that would be detectable, I think, but I haven't quite parsed them—but in mid-1971 he was ramping the club up as the New Monk, which Garcia played eight times in two months (all pictured above). In early 1972 Freddie would rename it, simply, Keystone, transitioning it to his main club, and for the next dozen years (March 8, 1972 - March 22, 1984) Garcia could play the room, on current count, 216 times, his home away from home and the lifeblood of the Keystone business model.

JGMS at New Monk during this period runs June 4-5, June 26-27, or July 3-4. June 26 is known to have happened as Jerry and Merl, from an expost in the illustrious Hayward Daily Review (see here). July 3-4 would be right on the closing weekend of the Fillmore West - were members of the GD at these shows? If not, maybe a nice little gig in Berkeley would be fun, no spotlight on that side of the Bay, all eyes turned to the West.

Accordingly, assuming we are talking about the Dead playing what was billed as JGMS gig at the New Monk during the time that Charles Reich was around for the RSI, I can conclude "ca. June-July, 1971".

SSR: March 1972

If it was during the time of the SSR, things are a little easier: Sunday in March 1972 with Jerry in town could only be March 5, 12 or 19. Assuming Reich was in town for more than just a Stoned Sunday, the following JGMS Keystone gigs are all live candidates:

Wed March 8
Thurs March 9
Wed March 15
Thurs March 16

Like the New Monk dates, there is no tape of any of this, alas. All other things being equal, I'd say I favor a Wednesday night over a Thursday.

In Sum

Well, this is about the end of the line for this little mystery. When did the Dead play at "a small place" in Berkeley, in lieu of Garcia - Saunders, for Charlies Reich to witness, either during the RSI or the SSR periods?

If JGMS unbillbed:

• anytime ca. June-October 1971 or March 1-20, 1972.

If JGMS billed:

• June 3-4, 1971. This feels least likely to me.
• June 27, 1971. Possible, but it's a Saturday and no-one remembers?
• July 3-4, 1971. If they weren't at Fillmore West, totally possible.
• March 8-9, 1972.
• March 15-16, 1972.

Narrative Favorites:

Of all of these possibilities, here are my favorites, for narrative reasons:

• Sunday, 7/4/71: This would be fitting for our young Americans, who seemed to like playing on Independence Day, celebrate Jerry's independence as he heads to Heider's (with Bill Kreutzmann) to lay down Garcia.
• Sunday, 8/1/71: I like the idea of Sunday, August 1, 1971, four weeks after the 4th of July, a birthday party for the boy who just got his solo record in the can, followup to the prior year's party at the Lion's Share, at which the New Riders appear to have "headlined" over the acoustic Dead.
• Wednesday, 3/8/72: an otherwise quiet Wednesday, so few eyewitnesses, plus first time for Garcia at Keystone (per se).
• Wednesday, 3/15/72: Wednesday, plus celebrate Phil's birthday.

 Thoughts? Rare for something so big and out in the open to stay so penumbral.