JGMS: "July 21-22," 1974, Keystone, Berkeley, CA

**updated 20111216 2057 GMT**
Tony Saunders is the bassist on these two tapes.

The Jerry Site has listings for Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders at Keystone, Berkeley, on July 21 and July 22, 1974. I doubt both date/venue combinations, for reasons I'll lay out below.

A) "JGMS 7/21/74, Keystone, Berkeley"

This first date is so obviously spurious that it barely bears laying out, but in the interests of completeness I'll do it anyway.

1) The GD played the Hollywood Bowl this date. Depending on show times both would be possible, but this seems extremely unlikely on its face.
2) Keystone billed Moby Grape and Earthquake on Sunday, 7/21, as evidenced by a Scenedrome listing in the Berkeley Barb:

 3) The recording, which is high (Betty-Board) quality but only in light circulation, contains two versions of "When I Die".


Regarding "7/21/74", I therefore conclude that this date was attached to some Betty Board snippets merely as an anchor (i.e., for ease of identification). When/where the material is actually from is anybody's guess (and I'll take a flyer below).

B) "JGMS 7/22/74, Keystone, Berkeley"

This may be the tougher case, since there is a quite delicious Betty Board (e.g., shnid 86198) in long circulation. (If you don't have it, get thee to the to your favorite Bit Torrent site forthwith!) The tape is notable for an as-yet untitled standard that starts things off, as well as the only-known (to me) JGMS version of Cucumber Slumber.

However, there is some reason to doubt this date/venue combination.

1) Saunders and Fierro appear to have been billed at the Sand Dunes bar on this Monday night:

I have posted about the Sand Dunes and the fact that Merl and Martin were playing there on Monday nights, with Jerry's at-least occasional participation. It seems likely that all three of them were at the edge of the Western World (i.e., the far western Sunset District of SF) on 7/22.

2) The bassist on these tapes is confirmed to be Tony Saunders. Tony Saunders played in his father Merl's bands at the Sand Dunes and The Generosity.

3) Keystone Berkeley's listing in the Hayward Daily Review, July 19, 1974, p. 36, bills Nite Shift and audition bands. Now, this could easily be moved for a Garcia appearance, I am sure, but it's just another strike against a JGMS show at Keystone Berkeley on this night.

4) As the Jerry Site notes, in remarks added by slip and seemingly attributed to 'strumminsix,' the recording features "Boogie On Reggae Woman" from Stevie Wonder's Fullfillingness' First Finale, which was apparently released on July 22, 1974. Now, it wouldn't shock me that Merl and/or John might run down to the record store first thing and get the new Stevie Wonder album. But I'd be slightly more surprised if the band could have absorbed it enough to play it that night. This leads me to question whether the circulating material dated as 7/22 is actually from that date.

5) Finally, reinforcing these doubts just expressed, the newest iteration of this "7/22/74" material (again, shnid 86198), may not be all from one performance. This would have to be checked more carefully than I am able to do, i.e., in listening for source changes in the recording, but it's a possibility that joins with all the others to raise some doubts.

Based on all of this, I conclude that Garcia and Saunders were not at the Keystone, Berkeley on July 22, 1974. The material circulating as "JGMS 7/22/74, Keystone, Berkeley" is either from another date, or from another venue, or is a hodge podge of material from other dates/venues.

C) A Final Thought

Putting things together this way reveals a tantalizing possibility: maybe all of this material is actually from the Sand Dunes from around this time (e.g., 7/21/74)? Everything we have, including a tape label the dating of which coincides with a brief flurry of Martin-related items in the Oakland Tribune, and includes Tony Saunders, who played in the band at the Sand Dunes.

Alternatively, maybe it's from The Generosity. The newly polished/circulated Castelli tapes from 2/14/75 (shnid 108896) and 5/9/75 (May 9th) (shnid 107829) reveal some things in common with these "1974" tapes, the appearances of "When I Die" and other seemingly-very-rare instrumentals (Cucumber Slumber, What's Going On, and the unidentified tunes) being most prominent. [Note added 20111216:  These song selections are only unusual if this is actually JGMS, which it almost certainly isn't. This may have been the standard Monday night set for the Merl Saunders/Martin Fierro outfit at the Sand Dunes, or Aunt Monk at The Generosity! Tony Saunders played bass in both outfits, and he is present here.] The possibility identified in point B4 above, that BORW might need to be from later than 7/22/74, could be seen as reinforcing this possibility.

If forced to bet I'd say that both of these tapes are approximately-correctly-dated performances of the Merl Saunders-Martin Fierro group --Saunders, Fierro, Garcia, Tony Saunders, and an undetermined drummer-- at the Sand Dunes, 3599 Taraval Street in the Sunset District of San Francisco, CA, 94116.

And, regardless of all of this, I highly recommend all of these recordings to you. They're awesome and show Jerry playing amazing, unfamiliar material when he is truly at the top of his game. Two snaps up.

Jerry Garcia and Round Records

(Parenthetically, the Grateful Dead Archives at UC Santa Cruz will eventually, hopefully, allow us to get a great close look at some of these hitherto opaque business/economic issues. Go, Nick, Go! But I pregress.)

I have just been eyeballing some articles that appeared in the amazing, incredible, Golden Road, edited by Blair Jackson and Regan McMahon. I think I just peeled the onion back to a really important issue to which I have, until now, paid too little attention, and that's the issue of Round Records (RR). I just want to make a brief comment here. Steve Brown had a great piece from the perspective of the GD Record company in the Summer 1986 issue (1) with the following tidbit.

Despite their reputation as a group of guys who liked to take risks, Rakow and the Dead decided that rather than jeopardize Grateful Dead Records, which was co-owned by all the voting members of the organization, they would create a second label to handle the more financially dubious solo projects members of the Dead were interested in pursuing. Thus was born Round Records, owned 50/50 by Garcia and Rakow.

IMO, Garcia owning RR 50/50 is very interesting, for at least three reasons.

First, I think it’s great evidence of the extent to which Garcia was the firmest (only?) supporter of Rakow in the group. As we know with hindsight, this was a devastatingly bad piece of character judgment on Jerry’s part. Neither his first nor his last, but certainly one of the most consequential.

Second, having his own finances tied directly to the fate of the record company might have given Jerry the incentive to put his own name on his band, eventually to professionalize it. As someone who has puzzled a lot over the question of why Garcia would put his name on his band, if he was after a bit of anonymous gigging –a premise almost certainly true of most of the early and some of the later GOTS stuff—this helps clarify the probable reason. No-one else’s records were going to make money, so he needed to make sure that at least his stuff did as well as possible, since that’s basically what would finance Round. Business drove the decision. How mundane, I know. But worth noting about a guy who tried and failed, as so many did, to live outside of all of that.

Third, it really speaks to how committed Jerry was to the other GD members, the Family, etc. He was not only subsidizing their solo projects (did anyone really think that Diga or Seastones or Keith and Donna would sell?), but also taking on disproportionate risk. While he had a tendency to leave women and side band members (except John Kahn) high and dry, Garcia jumped two feet in in committing to his GD bandmates (and, beyond the scope, John Kahn). True, they backed him with the Albatross of the Movie, but Jerry was pretty much carrying everyone and everything. We know this. Yet he is often condemned for irresponsibility (and often, to be sure, demonstrated it) in his personal relationships. Here's a thought: maybe carrying that many others is about as much as we might expect of anybody …

I know everyone knows all of this, but I thought I'd put it out there. And remind myself that I have a lot to learn about Round Records.

REFERENCE :
(1) Brown, Steve. 1986. If I Told You All That Went Down … A fond look back at Grateful Dead Records. Golden Road 11 (Summer): 21-27.

GASB/GAMB: mid-June 1974

update 20140907: June 12 was Lion's Share, June 13-14 was Keystone Berkeley. This post mostly deals with stuff that has been clarified by Elwood (1974), but there's still some good analysis of things other than date/venue in the old text /update

The Great American String/Music Band is one of my favorite Garcia-involved aggregations. It was short-lived by almost any measure, but especially insofar as Garcia’s involvement was concerned. By the latter yardstick, it lasted barely three months. It is still shrouded in some degree of mystery, even regarding fundamentals such as the precise name at various points in time. I have read and thought a lot about that issue, but it’s too convoluted (and still too unclear) for me to post about here – that’ll be a future post. It was a watershed group (along with closely-related Muleskinner) in terms of David Grisman’s musical development, representing, gross modo, the pivot that would turn him decisively toward “Dawg Music” over the next several years. In that sense, I think it’s important more generally in any account of the development of various American musical forms, especially bluegrass.

So, I’ll have a lot to say about GASB/GAMB at some point. For now, putting the cart before the horse, I just want to comment on the dating of two of the shows that circulate, going under the dates of June 12-13, 1974, from the Keystone in Berkeley.

We have three tapes that circulate with these two dates:

1. a Louis Falanga audience tape (shnid 83232) dated 6/12/74.
2. a sbd tape (shnid 7331) dated 6/12/74.
3. a sbd tape (shnid 13768) dated 6/13/74.

I believe that there were three shows in this time period: June 12th at the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo and June 13-14 at Keystone, Berkeley [ed: correct!]. I have no idea what the tapes actually portray. In an optimistic vein, I might conjecture that all three of these dates are represented on the tapes we have, but there's no evidence to that effect.

Let me start with the question of the tapes first.

The key to thinking we have three dates represented here, and not just two, resides in tape #2. I think this is actually two separate shows, based on the following:

1. "Swing ’42" appears twice, once in each “set” that is identified.
2. There is an emcee introduction before “set II” saying “Welcome back to the Great American String Band.” This sounds more like a separate show than a return from an intermission, but of course this is not entirely clear. (As an aside, Greene introduces the band as Great American *Music* Band before “set I” on this tape, while the emcee says *String*. But, again, the naming issue is too opaque to get into here.)

These could, of course, be early and late shows from the same date. However, I am not aware of any other early/late billings at either the Lion’s Share or the Keystone Berkeley around this time, so I am inclined to think these are two separate dates. Tapes #s 1 and 3 are the same show, but whatever its date this show is distinct from the two shows I think are present on tape #2. In brief, I think we have three distinct shows represented on these tapes: the one identified as set I of 6/12/74 on the sbd tape; the one identified as set II of 6/12/74 on the sbd tape; and the one that is available to us through both an aud copy and a sbd copy, respectively dated 6/12 and 6/13/74.

In my current state of thinking, I imagine that one of these sets is from the Lion’s Share on June 12, and one each is from the Keystone on June 13 and 14, respectively. I wouldn’t hazard which might be which, and this particular attribute goes way beyond what the evidence rightfully allows.

Why do I say that there was a Lion’s Share (not Keystone) show on 6/12, and a Keystone show on 6/14?

1) 6/12/74: Lion’s Share, San Anselmo

• I don’t know what the Keystone Berkeley’s Wednesday night booking policy was around this time, but I note that there is no KB item in the Berkeley Barb’s Scenedrome section (June 7-13, 1974, p. 24) for this date. Similarly, the Hayward Daily Review’s calendar from June 7th shows nothing, though I should note that it only seems to cover through June 9th. Insofar as these illuminate, they cut against a Keystone Berkeley gig for GASB on this date.
• The Hayward Daily Review calendar from June 7th covers the Share’s bookings from the 7th through the 16th, but the 12th and the 13th show no listing. This cuts against GASB being at the Lion’s Share on this date.
• However, Richard Greene’s 1974 datebook shows him at the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo on this night. While it’s not 100% clear that this was GASB, it seems very likely. Since most of the other evidence is of the dog that doesn’t bark variety, and since Greene’s datebooks strike me as very reliable, I am willing to go with this as the sovereign datum at this point in time.
• update: Elwood 1974 confirms 6/12/74 at the Share.

2) 6/13/74: Keystone, Berkeley

• There is an ad in the June 9th Oakland Tribune for Great American String Band shows on 6/13-14 (see right). Note that Garcia is featured and that Kahn is listed, though as far as I know Kahn didn’t play bass with the GASB. (That, in itself, is interesting, given the GASB’s genetic connection to Muleskinner and Maria Muldaur’s band, both of which would have cut toward Kahn being involved.)
• There is also an ad in the same Barb cited above, which showed nothing for 6/12, providing a listing for 6/13.
• Elwood 1974 confirms. He was in attendance. He also confirms the Good Old Boys and gives personnel.

3) 6/14/74: Keystone, Berkeley

• point 2, first bullet, also supports this date.
• There is a calendar item in the Fremont Argus (June 14, 1974, p. 9) for this date.

In sum, regarding the mid-June 1974 GASB/GAMB gigs:

• despite what appears to be lots of confused and conflicting information on the tapes, I think we have evidence for three separate shows’ worth of music;
• despite what’s on the tape labels, I think there were shows at the Lion’s Share on 6/12 and at Keystone Berkeley on 6/13-14.

update: yes, this last line is correct: "there were shows at the Lion’s Share on 6/12 and at Keystone Berkeley on 6/13-14."

JGMS: October 3, 1971, Frost Ampitheater, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

Garcia and Saunders played the Pamoja Jazz Concert on October 3, 1971 at Frost Ampitheater, sharing a bill with Big Black and the Bobby Hutcherson - Harold Land Quintet. Love that jazz billing.

Anyway, for a long time I have been aware of a show review by Paul Grushkin from the Stanford Daily a few days later (1). I think I learned of it in the wonderful (though in need of an update!) Dodd and Weiner bibliography (2). I have been after it, but Stanford doesn't seem to play nicely on interlibrary loan and the Daily doesn't seem to have been sent to many other university libraries. Anyway, with the help of Corry and another generous soul I have gotten a hold of it. [update: now available online - ain't progress grand?] I had been hoping for some setlist information, but alas there was none to be found.

Instead, there are a few other tidbits, both of which appear in the clipping below, which is discussing Garcia and Saunders.

From the back, I wonder who this Charlie Conn is? At first I thought it might be a rare case of Jerry playing with a bassist other than John Kahn, but the homonymy --five dollar word alert-- of "Conn" and "Kahn" makes me wonder if Charlie is John misunderstood or if some Pranksters were afoot or something.

Of greater interest is this: Garcia and Saunders "played a memorable week-long stand last April at the Matrix." Now, the meaning of "last" in this context in American English is a little fuzzy, so this could be April 1971 or April 1970. April of 1971 is booked with astonishing solidity by the Grateful Dead. April 1970 hardly seems more likely, based on the existing state of our knowledge. Not only is the month fully booked, but this seems still to have been the Wales period, with known Wales/Garcia billings happening and no Garcia/Saunders ones for another six months.

So whatever Grushkin is referring to here, it doesn't seem to be April 1970 or 1971. What could he be referring to instead?

I'd like to propose May 1971, so that when Grushkin said "last April" he meant "last May" in the sense of "the last May that passed [1971]" and not "May of the last calendar year [1970]". Why? Well, looking at my Garcia spreadsheet, May 1971 is among the most sparsely populated non-coma months, and yet we know that the man was a pickin' fool at this time.

After the GD Fillmore East run that ends 4/29, I have a JGMS listing on 5/11 at the Matrix, a three-night JGMS stand at Keystone Korner from 5/20-22, another JGMS at the Korner on 5/26, and then the seemingly pretty wacky Winterland shows at the end of the month. To reiterate, that's a suspiciously empty month for live gigs.

Not sure what else he was doing (e.g., working on Skullfuck?), but it's entirely possible that there were more Garcia/Saunders gigs during May 1971. There is certainly room in Jerry's calendar (as far as is known) for a weeklong stand at the Matrix. The alternative may perhaps be that Grushkin is referring to the multinight run at the Keystone Korner, which might transmogrify into a weeklong stand at the Matrix (the previous month) under the right ... conditions. So I'll keep my eyes open for more in May.

Update: I have researched the last few months of Matrix gigs in the SFC, and I don't find anything that fits the bill. I have to check the Examiner. But this still remains a little bit of a head-scratcher.

Caveats, criticisms, questions, codicils, cavils and other commentary most certainly welcomed.

REFERENCES:
- (1) Grushkin, Paul D. 1971. Garcia, Saunders Impressive at Frost. Stanford Daily, October 5, 1971,  5.
- (2) Dodd, David G., and Robert G. Weiner. 1997. The Grateful Dead and the Deadheads: An Annotated Bibliography. Music Reference Collection no. 60. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/12/frost-amphitheater-lasuen-street-palo.html

NRPS: January 19, 1970, Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley

My Blackberry takes the world's worst pictures (see below), and there was neither scanner nor photocopier handy as I was going through a handful of Berkeley Tribes from late 1969-early 1970 today. But I found a reference to a NRPS gig on January 19, 1970 at Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley.

Scan from Berkeley Tribe, January 16-23, 1970, p. 28.

Here's the translation:

DANCE CONCERT: Benefit for Center for Educ. Change. New Rider [sic] of Purple Sage, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, lights by Dr. [illegible]. Pauley Ballroom, UCB [then either price or time].

Kind of funny that I would stumble into this today, since Corry has just posted about Pauley Ballroom and since we are discussing (here, here and here) the paucity of NRPS gigs from December 1969 possibly into April 1970.

So here we have a possible gig in January 1970. The GD were in Portland, OR on 1/18/70 and Jerry would apparently go down to LA to record the "Love Scene Improvisations" for Antonioni's Zabriskie Point on 1/20/70. In the past I would have scoffed at the possibility of a Bay Area Garcia gig on 1/19. But the more I learn about this guy's workaholism, the more I come to believe in the possibility of such things.

We have no earthly idea if it actually happened, of course. But if it did, then
1) we have a new NRPS gig;
2) we have a NRPS gig in the middle of what is apparently, and otherwise, a very long performing hiatus between December 1969 and, maybe, April 1970; and
3) Garcia was a nut. What's three separate gigs, in three separate idioms, in cities a thousand miles apart, in 72 hours?

jug band note

Probably a reference to Mother McCree's, but this from a ca. late 1970 - early 1971 interview with Jerry by one Frank Fedele, who asks him about what he was doing before GD. Jerry says "We had a jug band together, me and Bob Weir and Pigpen and we worked once or twice a year. I mean, nobody fucking hires jug bands."

Seems obvious, if a bit hyperbolic, but I thought it was worth pointing out that there may not be that much MMUJC stuff out there in part because they may not have performed that much.

REFERENCE:
-->Fedele, Frank. 1971. Fuck No, We’re Just Musicians: An Interview With Jerry Garcia. Organ 1, 8 (June): 14-15, 22 (quote from p. 14).

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

**UPDATE: DISCONFIRMED. SEE COMMENTS**

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

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

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

TJS deletion: 7/5/71

slip added a listing for NRPS 7/5/71 at Fillmore West, based on this poster from Wolfgang's Vault. But the poster is clearly for the movie "Fillmore" and has been mis-interpreted and it has now been deleted.


I will be tagging this with "TJS-deletion." Since there's no other way to track what's been cut, I'll track them here in the hopes that TJS doesn't accidentally re-enter them.

Godawful Palo Alto Bluegrass Ensemble

Pete Wernick recounts spending some time in the Summer of 1963 out West, playing banjo with Jerry Garcia (mandolin!) and David Nelson in an outfit called The Godawful Palo Alto Bluegrass Ensemble.

I don't recall seeing this name in the historiography, though as I have noted before I am not particularly up on the pre-GD stuff. So I thought I'd put it down here for the (my!) record, as it were.

JGB: December 31, 1975, Keystone, Berkeley: who was drumming?

update: we know now it was Greg Errico, with Hart sitting in in the third set, so enjoy this post as a waystation in the growth of knowledge. Jerrybase exists now!

update: see also my "Jerry's New Year's Eve" post.
 
I am not the big fan of the 12/31/75 JGB show that most people seem to be. I think they are seduced by the date, the long-circulating and high quality recording, and the guests and unusual setlist. I find the show sloppy, with Nicky's drunkenness especially painful.

But that's not what this is about. I want to know who was drumming? Apparently Tutt had en Elvis obligation, but I have seen conflicting information on who it actually was.

• Corry's post on JGB 12/31/75 says that it was Greg Errico.
• I read something a few weeks ago (can't remember what, now) that it was Bill Vitt, but he told me in email that it was not him.
• The "Grateful Dead Book of Lists" feature in Golden Road no. 13 (Winter 1987), p. 33, compiled by some guy named Corry (must be a different guy! :)) indicated that it was Mickey Hart.
• The Jerry Site had diversified its risk: "Entire show with Mickey Hart. Greg Errico replaces Ron Tutt on drums, who was absent due to his touring as the drummer for Elvis Presley.

1966: Darby Slick et al. "Jammin' With Garcia"

Chapter 5 of Darby Slick's autobiography, I guess (1), is entitled "Jammin' With Garcia" and recounts a Friday evening jam session, ca. 1966, in the Mission District. These one-offs are inherently interesting, of course, but especially interesting to me is the question of how often they occurred. I had always bought into the mythology that the GD (and its personnel, especially Jerry) were playing around pretty much all the time in the Halcyon days before the Summer of Love (TM). Corry Arnold has asserted that this probably happened a lot less than the mythology would have us believe, for example calling notions about frequent free concerts in Golden Gate Park "sadly wishful". Slick's vignette doesn't get at the question of frequency, but it does provide a first-person account of one free-form gig in these very early days of the hippie scene. The jam was apparently some sort of party to raise funds for something, perhaps the Mime Troupe. The crowd was SRO and flowing outside, where as many as 50 people were trying to get in.

I will just make a few notes about this as extracted from Slick's account. I'll focus especially on personnel, what they played, location, and date.

Personnel:

• Jerry Garcia: electric guitar;
• Bill Kreutzmann: drums;
• ?Peter Albin?: bass;
• ... joined by ...
• Jerry Slick: drums;
• Darby Slick: guitar.

Performance:

• "we all started to jam the blues, almost the only music we could launch into with no more discussion than 'It's in "A".'"
• ca. 45 minutes

Location:

• Mission District
• in a loft
• Slick parked three blocks away, across the driveway of a cement company
• MJB coffee plant nearby

Date: I have no idea; a Friday night ca. 1966.

I don't know much about Slick, but he certainly writes glowingly of this night and of Jerry: "There was magic in the room that night, and though I have played in many jam sessions over the years, that is the one I remember with the most love, the most respect. ... I was left with a conviction that Jerry Garcia is a man of great spirit."

REFERENCE:
(1) Slick, Darby. 1991. Don't You Want Somebody to Love: Reflections on the San Francisco Sound. Berkeley: SLG Books. {pdf of chapter 5}

Where were the NRPS in late 1969 - early 1970?

Light Into Ashes notes the following about the April 17-18, 1970 NRPS billing:

these were the first known shows Garcia had played with NRPS since November '69

NRPS shows were advertised for March 12-14, and March 18, 1970 (see), while the NRPS concert history lists 2/7/70. The latter seems very unlikely (see comments to this post, below). 

Still, LIA's observation is one worth emphasizing: there is no known (to me!) NRPS activity during December 1969 or January 1970 (well, maybe 1/19/70), and at most sporadic activity through March 1970.

I find this puzzling, so I'll pose the question: where were those guys and what were they doing? Did the GD's studio work crowd out or swallow up everyone's efforts? Were the GD working on their acoustic sets, leaving less time for Jerry to work on pedal steel (which is a variant of the same question)? Were the New Riders gigging without Jerry, but I have just failed to note it (entirely possible)? Something else?

I'd love to hear thoughts or to get some info on the whereabouts of Marmaduke and Nelson during this timeframe.

GD at Mammoth Gardens, Denver CO, April 24-25, 1970

It seems that these shows have been shrouded in mystery and legend for a very long time. Maybe it's because April 1970 was such a hot month, because the tape circulating from this weekend reveals a characteristically hot show, because the next gig (4/26/70 at Poynette Wisconsin) is similarly enshrouded, because "Mammoth Gardens" just sounds so damn primal, and/or because Colorado is a special place. Maybe all of the above. At first there seemed to be some question as to whether two shows took place at all, or only one on Friday, April 24th. This has been pretty well resolved (there was a show on Saturday 25th), and I will bring additional evidence to bear on this question. Next, there has apparently been lots of confusion over the correct date of the circulating material. I believe I can resolve this question, as well. My primary aim in this post is to argue that the circulating tape belongs to Saturday, April 25th. I have a few other points to make as well, but that's the main one.

The value-added here is based on a second show review that I unearthed in the Chinook (1), which appears to have been a Denver/Boulder "underground" newspaper. A previously-known review from the Colorado Springs Sun (2) (supplied by Uli Teute and Hanno Bunjes and reproduced in the Deadlists forum), plus all of the other information wonderfully compiled at Deadlists, plus eyewitness information from Ken Condon, plus this new review can all be combined to generate a fuller picture than has heretofore been available of what seems to have been a pretty freaking remarkable pair of shows.

Preface

Let me preface this with a word on methodology. Ross Hannan sent me something to this effect, so I should tip my hat to him and apologize if I haven't rendered this accurately or as he would. But, in short, contemporary accounts (I would give special priority to published, ex post reviews) are the evidentiary gold standard when it comes to documenting events such as rock concerts. After this come other presumably "vetted" contemporary information by those with a business stake in the issue, such as posters, tickets and other ephemera, contracts, etc. I'd put ex ante calendar listings next. The informational quality of things such as tape labels and long-distant memories shows tremendous variance, in my experience. Some sources are good as gold, others ... not so much. Anyway, contemporary show reviews are my favorite sources, the ones in which I have greatest confidence. That's why I was so happy to find a second one for the GD at Mammoth Gardens.

The State of Our Knowledge:

Here is what Deadlists currently shows for 4/24/70. It mentions some confusion over the dating, but says that eyewitnesses place this set on the 24th and not the 25th.

One	[33:11 +]] [0:10] ; I Know You Rider [7:57] ; [1:22 Intro] ; Monkey And The Engineer [1:44] ; [0:56] ; Friend Of The Devil [3:42] ; [0:13] ; Me And My Uncle [3:26] ; [0:25] ; Candyman [5:40] ; [0:29] ; Uncle John's Band [6:34] ; [0:25]
Two	[1:07:09 +] [0:41] ; Easy Wind [8:55] ; [0:44] ; Cumberland Blues [4:44] ; [0:08] % Dire Wolf [3:56] ; [0:11 "broken string"] % Dark Star [24:39] > Saint Stephen [5:54] > The Eleven [13:55] > Drums [1:23] > Jam [2:02] % It's A Man's Man's Man's World [#5:22]

All we know about 4/25 is that the show happened. This is based on the scans below and on eyewitness accounts.

Why we should consider the circulating tape to be from 4/25/70 and not 4/24:

1. The DeLong article purports to review the Saturday show (4/25), and the setlist given for the electric set matches the tape.
2. We can infer that the Milt T. review covers the Friday show; he mentions seeing QMS in Boulder "two days later", which happened on Sunday, 4/26. (QMS historians, take note!) He only mentions three songs by name, and none of them is on the circulating tape: Wake Up Little Suzie (acoustic) and Not Fade Away -> Lovelight (2nd electric set, to end the show).When we couple this with DeLong's statement that the GD didn't play anything after the long St. Stephen medley, we have accounts for two distinct endings to two different shows which, indeed, claim to be from two distinct nights.
3. DeLong mentions "Good Lovin'" being played before "It's a Man's World," and Deadlists notes that though Good Lovin' is not present on the tape, it sounds like it's coming in the jam that cuts out before Man's World. Furthermore, attendee Ken Condon knew only this song, and he is 100% certain he attended the Saturday show. They could well have played it both nights, of course, but in conjunction with everything else I'll consider this another point in support of the view that the tape is from 4/25.

Open Issues

1. Did these shows follow the electric-acoustic-electric format? Milt T. is very clear that the 4/24 show did indeed follow this format. Attendee Ken Condon states that this is how the show he saw, which was the 25th, was structured. DeLong's review says that "the first part of [the GD's] set" was acoustic. Hopefully new eyewitness accounts can be gathered that might shed more light on this.
2. Were the NRPS present? There is no mention of them in either review, both of which are pretty clear that the acoustic set was guitars, bass, drums; no mention of pedal steel at all, or of different personnel. Deadlists cites audience member Spencer Wren as remembering a NRPS set, but I sure would like some other evidence before coming to any judgment about that. Update: attendee/commenter ehukai clearly recalls there was no steel guitar, which he would certainly have remembered.
3. The encore(s): Milt T. mentions that the encore involved John Hammond backed by Pigpen on harp and guitar. Deadlists cites Wren to precisely this effect as well. DeLong says that, having blown everyone's minds, the GD sagely decided not to come back for an encore: "after that devastating medley, anything else would have been painfully anticlimactic." So I propose that this encore happened on 4/24/70, and that there was no encore on 4/25. Aside: I can't think of any other known Pigpen live performances without the GD this late in the game.

Conclusions

1. There were two GD shows at Mammoth Gardens in Denver, CO on Friday April 24 and Saturday April 25, 1970. This much has already been well established.
2. The circulating tape is from 4/25 and not, as it currently circulates, from 4/24.
3. We can add Good Lovin' to the setlist of 4/25 (along with what circulates on the tape), and it should precede It's a Man's World, which is from the same show.
4. For 4/24/70 we can list a drum duet in electric 1, Wake Up Little Suzie in acoustic (set II), and Not Fade Away -> Lovelight to close electric 2 (Set III overall). We can also note that Pigpen's backing of Hammond took place on this date and not on 4/25/70.

References

1. Milt T., “San Francisco Sounds,” Chinook, April 30, 1970, pp. 4-5. Text available via URL http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2015/12/april-24-1970-mammoth-gardens-denver-co.html.
2. Mike DeLong, "Magic Exists ... Grateful Dead Stuns Crowd," Colorado Springs Sun, April 30, 1970, unknown page. Retrieved from Deadlists May 30, 2010. Text available via URL http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/april-25-1970-denver.html.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2009. Mammoth Gardens, Denver, CO Performance List April-October 1970. Rock Archaeology 101, November 8, URL http://rockarchaeology101.blogspot.com/2009/11/mammoth-gardens-denver-co-performance.html, consulted 11/26/2014.

GD at Eagles Auditorium, Seattle, WA, January 1968

 I am going to argue that the Quick and the Dead played Eagles Auditorium in Seattle, WA on Friday, January 26 and Saturday, January 27, 1968, and *not* on Monday 1/22 and Tuesday 1/23. This may well be widely accepted, but since the tapes still circulate with the latter dates, and Deadlists remains a bit noncommittal, I thought I'd lay it out.

Argument 1: The GD played Eagles Auditorium on Friday 1/26 and Saturday 1/27, 1968.

There is both ex ante and ex post evidence for this.

For ex ante evidence, to the left is an item in the Seattle Times dated 1/23/68.

Here is a calendar listing for 1/27/68, published on the day of the second (Saturday) show:

There were also articles written ex post in the Helix, as the following two. Note that I am not entirely sure about the volume/issue/date. I noted these as v2 n 13 (2/1/68), but according to the University of Washington's Special Collections Helix scans, this is v2 n10. The microfilm from which I was working made it exceptionally difficult to figure out this sort of thing, insofar as it was legibly identified at all.

What do we learn from this? The Quick and the Dead played late January 1968 Friday-Saturday shows at Eagles Auditorium. The GD, on 'jc''s account, opened the second show with Lovelight.

There is a poster in Art of Rock, plate 3.104, p. 287; see also p. 249.

By the way, the liner notes from the Golden Road boxset give the Seattle Eagles Auditorium dates as 1/26-27/68.

In sum: I believe the evidence establishes that the GD played Eagles Auditorium on January 26-27, 1968.

Argument 2: The Quick and the Dead did not play Eagles Auditorium in Seattle on January 22-23, 1968 (Monday-Tuesday).

As far as I can tell, the only evidence in support of this dating is the labeling of GD vault tapes. Now, I am aware that notwithstanding the chemicals that could have been involved, GD vault tape labels are incredibly reliable. So when I say "only" I don't mean to deprecate this empirical source; I merely mean to say that this is the unique evidence that is known to me. Material from "1/23/68 Seattle" has been issued on the official release Road Trips v2 n2, and of course material with both dates has circulated for some time in collecting circles.

Evidence against the 1/22 and 1/23/68 dating is entirely mostly of the "dog that didn't bark" sort. There are no known posters. There were no show announcements in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the University of Washington Daily, nor, most importantly, in that masterpiece of Seattle psychedelic underground journalism, the Helix.

Update: I have found a dog barking, albeit quietly, about 1/23/68. The Seattle Times, January 14, 1968, p. 85 (or is it B5?), has a little item entitled "Hanauer, David in 10-Rounder Here" about a World Wide Boxing Club event. Seems Jack Hanauer, a middleweight from Pasco, was going to meet Indian Joe David of Oakland. There were a few other fights on the card. Most importantly, the fight was scheduled for January 23rd in Eagles Auditorium. Indeed, the January 23rd opening date for the fight club was announced as early as 12/31/67 in the same paper.

Based on spending a little bit of time with these sources, I am 100% persuaded that any GD show at Eagles and/or otherwise in Seattle would have been advertised and/or otherwise covered in some of these sources, ex ante and/or ex post. The GD's first visit to Seattle, AFAIK, was in July 1967. That show was extensively advertised, including with a poster. The "Be-In" that afternoon at Golden Gardens Park, before the Eagles' show, was reported in the P-I. Similarly, the Eagles Shows on September 8-9, 1967, featured a nice ad in the Helix. The January 26-27 shows were advertised widely and much-discussed.

Finally, reading the above in particular, there is just zero intimation that the GD shows on Friday-Saturday are taking place after a set of Monday-Tuesday shows that same week. Does this make sense? There's no mention anywhere that they had just played the same venue a few days before. By contrast, there's lots of "sense" in the coverage that the Quick and the Dead came upon a Seattle that was barely ready for them. The rube Seattlites are made to seem like they have a lot to learn. Hard to imagine that'd be necessary if the GD had warmed them up just a few days before.

In sum, notwithstanding the apparent existence of taped in the GD vaults labeled with these dates, I argue that no GD shows took place at Eagles Auditorium in Seattle on January 22-23, 1968.

I have no idea what would explain the mislabeling of the tapes. Maybe 1/22-23 were originally scheduled, and maybe since the GD were recording for the album tapes were pre-labeled before they were rescheduled. Just one less thing to do on tour, and all that. I have no idea. But unless some other evidence turns up, I am compelled to conclude that 1/22-23/68 Quick and Dead shows are phantoms.

NRPS, January 1971

update: NRPS now confirmed for all three of these shows

I have had some uncertainty about whether NRPS played with the GD during the handful of January 1971 shows. The New Riders' official tour history from 1971 has listed these shows:

1/21/71, Freeborn Hall, UC Davis, Davis, CA
1/22/71, Lane Community College, Eugene, OR
"1/25/71", Seattle Center Coliseum, Seattle, WA (should be 1/24/71)

The problem, for me, is that I haven't been for some time I wasn't able to find any evidence that the NRPS were actually at these shows. update: 1/21/71 is now confirmed. I have seen a nearly illegible scan of a University of Oregon Daily Emerald piece dated 1/21/71 that, as far as I can make it out, makes no mention of the New Riders. A report on a gate-crashing incident from the same publication, date unknown but certainly right afterward, is simililarly silent. The Seattle Times mention to the left notes that Ian and Sylvia are on the bill --interesting in its own right for us NRPS-ologists, given that Buddy was probably still with them!-- but no NRPS.

Rob Bleetstein, the NRPS archivist, told me where the listings came from, and while I don't recall the specifics I think it was just assumed that the NRPS were at these shows. I have my doubts, for two main reasons.

First, the dog don't bark in any documentary evidence that I can find. I'll keep looking.

Second, NRPS were at Wally Heider's on 1/18-20/71, based on documents I have seen.  I wondered if they had to stay home and work on the album while Jerry and the boys took off for a few days, but the answer appears to be NO.

JGB: October 27, 1982, Rissmiller's Club, Reseda, CA

Photo credit: Karen Verity

Tapes have circulated dated October 27, 1982 from Rissmiller's Club in Reseda, CA. I seem to recall that at ont point such a date was listed at the Jerry Site and that I myself got the idea that it was bogus and deleted it. I can't remember why. Anyway, the image of the Rissmiller's marquee, above (I'd like to give photo credit, but I don't know where it came from), seems to suggest that there were indeed shows on the 27th and the 28th. Would love to get confirmation from someone who attended and/or knows the story ...

Update: I have posted listening notes from a "Closet Call" audience tape of the 10/27/82 show.

Update2: 100% certain that this gig happened, now having seen various papers around it. https://jerrybase.com/events/19821027-03

Jerry with Merl and/or Martin, ca. 1974, The Sand Dunes

We know that Jerry Garcia was playing around outside the GD to a varying, but always non-zero, extent throughout the career of his most famous band. We have a sense that this was happening more, and more loosely, in the early days (at least pre-1976) and less, and in a more routinized/institutionalized way after that. How much this was happening in the "early days" is probably impossible to fathom, because by definition the less institutionalized stuff leaves less of a footprint (tapes, advertisements, etc.) than the more so. Measurement is harder, and the data are biased against the real loose stuff. We are left with some stories, a vague sense, but little else.

I don't want to go into more detail about all that here, but I want to report on a few tantalizing tidbits I found in the Oakland Tribune in 1974. A first reads as follows (1):

The Merl Saunders Band, which featured Jerry Garcia on guitar and Martin Fierro on sax on alternating weeks at the Sand Dunes in San Francisco, has changed its name to Aunt Monk featuring Saunders and Fierro with equal billing. Mondays at the Sand Dunes.

A second article discussing the Sand Dunes (2) at slightly greater length also notes that "Merl Saunders and Martin Fierro play Monday nights when not with Jerry Garcia, and Garcia has shown up on some Mondays, too."

Gaaahhh.

It certainly sounds plausible. We know that 1974 was a busy year for Jerry playing around (TJS has 119 entries for the year). We know that Merl had regular non-Jerry gigs as the house performer around this time (as, apparently, at the Generosity in 1975), at which Jerry would sometimes drop in (as, apparently, at the Generosity on Feb. 14, 1975 and May 9, 1975). As the information below will show, Jerry had almost every Monday night in 1974 free as far as is known to me: 27 free and not known to be outside Bay Area, 12 booked and/or out of town. So what's to stop him?

Regarding the venue, based on another mention from earlier in the year (3), it seems that the Sand Dunes was at 46th and Taraval. Here is a regular Google map of the location:


View Larger Map

Here is a street view:

View Larger Map

Hard for me to tell on this basis where the bar might have been. I am intrigued by the idea that it might be 3639 Taraval, apparently a watering hole now called The Riptide ("On the edge of the Western world"). It's not the corner of 46th and Taraval, but it's less than a block away and may have been the obviously intended location at the time, who knows.

[update: in comments, Yellow Shark has confirmed the address as 3599 Taraval St, San Francisco, CA 94116]

Anyway, below is a list of the Mondays in 1974 up until the October 6th article. I have provided info where there seems to be a conflict. That leaves lots of open dates, about which we are of course very unlikely ever to know anything. BTW, the dates with (*) probably warrant some explanation (i.e., a further post), and I do think I'll get to the 7/22 one at some point, but not now.

19740107
19740114
19740121
19740128
19740204
19740211
19740218
19740225
19740304
19740311
19740318
19740325
19740401
19740408
19740415
19740422 - JG probably in LA*
19740429
19740506
19740513 - GD between Reno and Missoula
19740520 - GD between Portland and Seattle
19740527
19740603
19740610
19740617 - GD between Des Moines and Louisville
19740624 - GD between Miami and Providence
19740701 - JGMS in NYC
19740708
19740715
19740722
19740729 - GD in Landover
19740805 - GD in Philly
19740812
19740819
19740826 - Merl Saunders's Aunt Monk at Macarthur's in San Anselmo
19740902 - JGMS gig in Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park
19740909 - GD in London
19740916 - GD still in Europe
19740923
19740930

References:

- (1) "Rap-Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, August 25, 1974, p. 2-RAP.
- (2) Art George, "The State of the Small Club," Oakland Tribune, October 6, 1974, p. 4-RAP.
- (3) "Rap Up's Wrap Up," Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1974, p. 2-RAP.

1969 NRPS: new data

Just a tip of the hat to Lost Live Dead, which has been doing yeoman's work unearthing early New Riders gigs based on various sources, but especially on careful digging through late 1969 San Francisco Chronicle (and notably Gleason's column).

Because of their hard work, TJS has recently added inter alia the following dates:

Aug 6, 1969  The Matrix **including first known public usage of the NRPS moniker

Aug 8, 1969  The Matrix

Aug 9, 1969  The Matrix

Aug 13, 1969  Family Dog at The Great Highway

Oct 9, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

Oct 16, 1969  Mandrake's, Berkeley

Nov 3, 1969  The Matrix

Nov 4, 1969  The Matrix

Nov 6, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

Nov 13, 1969  The Poppycock, Palo Alto

Nov 18, 1969  Family Dog at The Great Highway

Nov 20, 1969  The Poppycock, Palo Alto

Nov 27, 1969  Family Dog at The Great Highway

Nov 28, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

Nov 29, 1969  Inn of the Beginning

This is just awesome stuff. It really helps to flesh out the heretofore relatively obscure early gig history of the New Riders. Thank you, gentlemen!

Eyjafjallajökull

JGMF is stuck in Paris. Anyone know anywhere in town where there might be some rock & roll memorabilia?

Teabonics

Awesome.

ht Sully.