Who Was John? JGB at GWU, April 3, 1976 (early show)

 LN jg1976-04-03.jgb.early.aud-CC.xxxxxx.flac2448

OK, maybe the last post of my hiatus hiatus.

4/3/76a. This is probably the same source tape as shnid-82761. A nice show.

Jerry Garcia Band
Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University
730 21st and H Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
April 3, 1976 (Saturday) - Early show, 7 PM
80 min CC aud-1 flac2448 [upgraded version as shnid-138204]

(7 tracks, 80:10)
t01. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:00] [0:12] %
t02. Catfish John [10:00] [0:08]
t03. That's What Love Will Make You Do [10:40] [0:05] % dead air
t04. Who Was John [12:20] [0:08] %
t05. After Midnight [11:48] [0:05] %
t06. I'll Take A Melody [16:50] [0:05]
t07. Russian Lullaby [9:33] [0:04]
[MISSING: The Harder They Come]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #3
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Ron Tutt - drums;
! lineup: Keith Godchaux - keyboards;
! lineup: Donna Jean Godchaux - vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [m:ss] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19760403-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/82761 (slipnut aud, probably related to this one in ways unfathomable); http://etreedb.org/shn/138204 (optimal version of this CC source tape).

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/05/lisner-auditorium-george-washington.html

! band: Jerry Garcia Band #3 (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html)

! R: at least four gens of hiss on this sucker before it gets to this point. It runs longer than shnid 82761, but this doesn't sound fast to my unreliable ears. Nearly every song clips in. There ain't nothing wrong with this tape, overall. It sounds fine and is worth being represented in the digital realm, in my not-too-picky opinion.

! historical: One of the best shows Garcia ever played started about four hours after this one. The Lisner Auditorium late show, 4/3/76b, is justly revered. It's a great show, with a top-3 version of "Don't Let Go", two amazing recordings (the attributed one, by Scott Jones, is breathtaking, as is the anonymous one), a great vibe. Top-shelf Jerry. One of the tapes that you should share with your friends who are Jerry-curious. The 4/1/76 show (Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT) is also a beaut, well-taped by Steve Rolfe ?and Jerry Moore?, with a monster "Lonesome And A Long Way From Home" to close things out. Generally speaking, though, there are tons of holes in our understanding of March-April 1976, because there are a lot of shows that were only very badly taped, and some for which no tapes circulate at all. That has pretty much been  the case for this show, which only late-in-the-day made the jump from slightly-raggamuffin cassettes to the digital realm. So, being able to report on this show is a pleasure.

! P: This show is has a few stumbles, but it is overwhelmingly in the pocket. Home churned butter, a nice stone dish and a silver knife, and a hunk of fresh crusty bread. Everything is well- (though not flawlessly-) played. Garcia's voice is sweet and his singing expressive. Not rushed. He's not embarassed by his voice or trying to figure out how to sing stuff - he can hit it just as he wants. The white Travis Bean is liquid electricity, the fingers' voice. It is smooth and round when he wants it to be, by turns bouncy, swampy, threadbare, and a little jagged. Tempos are toward the fast end of 1976, which I take to be a good thing. More like 4/3/76b (the same night, of course) than 2/14/7 .... zzzzzzz ..... 2/14/76. All in all, a totally pleasurable listen. A good palate cleanser for the late show.

! P: t01 HSII Jerry sounds wonderful, lively, totally into it. Like young love, it is.

! P: t03 TWLWMYD nice scream of appreciation. Everyone is feeling the groove that the band has laid down from 'go'. Tutt is such a rock. Keith does a sharp piano run right around the 9-minute mark that just shows him totally engaged. They lose the handle a little bit in the 9-minute mark.

! R: t04 Who Was John fades in, not much missing.

! song: "Who Was John": t04: "Who Was John" is one of those songs that existed in its time (25 appearances, throughout calendar year 1976), with no real hint of it before or since. It really spoke to its period very well. It ties in with the story of Keith and Donna's entry into the JGB, which is known in bits and pieces, but needs to be told at length. (Maybe Corry has already done it!) The upshot is that, at least from late 1975, Jerry was spending a lot of time at Keith and Donna's, listening to old gospel records, hanging out playing and singing. I know that as of the end of the year, Garcia and Mountain Girl split up, leaving Stinson, potentially kicking around a few weeks over the holiday (Rakow's?), and showing up at Deborah's Victorian in tony Belvedere in January '76. With Nicky flaming out phosphorescently in a three-month stint at the keys, Jerry and John and Ron Tutt had tried out a bunch of keyboardists: Larry Knechtel (I believe), the mysterious "Tim Hensley" (i.e., Tim Henson), and the Bayou Maharajah himself, James Booker. None of these guys seemed to work out, for whatever reason. So Keith became the keyboard player, with the added virtue of Donna's gorgeous harmony vocals, with the added virtue that they had been practicing singing and playing some numbers that could be played live, as well as a bunch of Jerry and John's old favorites. Anyway, that's what happened, and "Who Was John" was a piece of that puzzle. It's in the same space as "A Strange Man", the Dorothee Love Coats biblical sometimes known as "Sumerian Woman".

! P: t04 WWJ Garcia's playing in the 9:30 mark is scorching. He is totally in The Zone. This version of WWJ is played a little faster than it would be at other times in 1976.

! P: t05 After Midnight is quite hot. A slow, but not too-slow boil. Who can resist Donna's little "What it is all about" line? I am in love with her everytime she sings it. Hot as hell. Listen to his soloing in the late- 6-minute mark, continuing into 7-min mark. WOW, absolutely incendiary.

! P: t06 ITAM Jerry does some beautiful scaling late 13-minute mark into 14. Fluid and gorgeous. Then @ 14:55 he does some angry tearing and scratching, just a little burst, then drops back into the chorus. Nice.

! P: t07 not clear why crowd member felt compelled to sing the chorus of Grand Funk Railroad's "We're an American band!" at the start of Russian Lullaby, but there you go. Perhaps he just came to realize that JGB was an American band, and that he was part of it.

! R: t07 Some inaudible taper talk, mic movement, in the first minute.

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

LN jg1975-04-05.lom.early.aud-CC.xxxxxx.flac2448

So, this show has not really circulated complete, unless it does and I missed it. Nice to hear the John Scher introduction intact. The first 60 minutes have never made the digital jump, as far as I know. There's a "Creepin'" here, which is conceptually interesting but practically, to my ears, not so much. We see some of the strengths and limitations of LOM on any given night here.

Legion of Mary
Capitol Theatre
426 Monroe Street
Passaic, NJ 07055
April 5, 1975 (Saturday), Early Show - 8 PM
91 min Closet Call aud (flac2448)

--Early Show (9 tracks, 91:10)--
t01. John Scher Introduction (1)
t02. Tore Up Over You [8:27] [0:02] %
t03. Creepin' [14:00] [0:02] %
t04. I Feel Like Dynamite [11:25] [0:04] %
t05. Mystery // Train [13:#25] %
t06. Every Word You Say [6:59] [0:03] %
t07. Mississippi Moon [8:23] [0:03] %
t08. I Second That Emotion [18:43] [0:05] %
t09. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:52] [0:08] %

! ACT1: Legion of Mary
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards, vocals;
! Lineup: Martin Fierro - saxophone, flute;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Ron Tutt - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19750405-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/10977 (40 minute Betty Cantor-Jackson master sbd cassettes, interleaf material, shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/138217 (fixed version of this raw fileset)

! map: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=326+Monroe+Street,+Passaic,+NJ&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&hnear=326+Monroe+St,+Passaic,+New+Jersey+07055&gl=us&t=h&z=16

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/capitol-theater-monroe-st-and-central.html. The Cap, John Scher's homebase, and hence the anchor for Jerry's east coast tours (and, for awhile, the Dead's).

! seealso JGMF, "All By Myself: Legion of Mary, April 5, 1975 late show at the Cap, Passaic, NJ"

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

! R: There are several cassette gens here, at least one of which (possibly including the master) gave us some reasonably serious distortion. Use the cheap speakers. There's hiss. I suspect that this runs sharp, perhaps substantially so. Warble. Wow and flutter. And the like.

! historical: lots of screaming "Jerry" audible throughout this recording. Just a sense of Jerry's -err, LOM's-- life on the east coast at this point in time.

! t01 (1) John Scher: "OK. On drums, Ron Tutt; on horns, Martin Fierro. On bass, the inspirational John Kahn. On the organ, Merl Saunders. On guitar, Jerry Garcia. The Legion of Mary."

! R: t02 Significant PA problems at the start of Tore Up.

! P: t02 Tore Up Jerry takes his first solo with some real gusto. What he's doing around 7:45 is also pretty insane. I need to be careful about over-interpreting, since when tapes are running fast, like this one, it makes the performance seem higher energy than perhaps it actually was. Ears are funny.

! P: t04 IFLD Garcia's solo about ten minutes in is absolutely fantastic. This is a great version of this song, totally cookin'.

! P: t05 Mystery Train is fantastic. JG's solo about eight minutes in is positively crackling. Nine minutes in Martin plays a little flute lick? Very nice and tasty.

! R: t05 MT splice @ 12:21

! R: picking up the organ nicely.

! P: t06 Every Word You Say Tutt is singing harmony vocals.

! P: t07 NB Martin plays flute on Mississippi Moon

! P: t07 MM they seem a little lost, not quite sure where to take it. Jerry does some nice glassy stuff around 5 minutes in. But the natives are getting restless, lots of chatter. Earlier, someone had kicked a bottle down the floor. They settle down a little bit, though, and the crowd gives a nice round of applause after quiet attention to the finale.

! R: t08 getting some serious tape warble now, in ISTE. Splice ca. 13:15, bad warble.

! P: t08 about 14:40 is Martin playing a clarinet? Or a different sax, an alto? at 17-min it sounds like his normal sax. So he's just doing something with it to make it play higher. Unusual for him, to my ears.

! P: t09 TNTDODD Merl's harmony vocals are horrific. Jerry hits some sweet notes right around 8-min mark, just some very loud nice stuff, at end as well.

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

http://jgmf.blogspot.com/

Hartbeats as Tempo Études

LN jg1968-10-30.hartbeats.163mins.sbd-gadsden.xxxxxx.flac1644

Well, we probably won't ever be able to identify everything about the various Matrix Tapes (dates, personnel, etc.), with 100% certainty. But there's no particular reason to doubt that this is something like Mickey and the Hartbeats (here, as Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, with guest Elvin Bishop on a few tunes) from around Wednesday, October 30, 1968.

Many people find this too noodly, but I appreciate them in all kinds of ways, among them that the middle section (t08-t16) is a like a long tempo Étude. I can appreciate this material as such.

I have listened closely to the bass playing and other context clues in the last fragment. I hear Phil repeatedly speaking and have to conclude that it's Phil-souding-like-Jack, rather than Jack-sounding-like-Phil.

Mickey and the Hartbeats
The Matrix
3138 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
October 30, 1968 (Wednesday)
163 minute sbd via Bill Gadsden 2008 reel transfer flac1644 JGMF

(23 tracks, 163:04)

t01. noodling [0:53] ->
t02. Dark Star [17:09] ->
t03. Death Letter Blues [8:57]
t04. talk (1) and tuning [2:19]
t05. The Other One // [15:57#] %

t06. talk and tuning [0:30] %

t07. // Turn On Your Lovelight [#9:30] [0:09] %

t08. talk (2) and tuning [0:40]
t09. noodling (New Potato Caboose theme) [1:10] ->
t10. talk (3, 4) and noodling [3:48]
t11. Clementine [3:57] ->
t12. The Seven [9:30] ->
t13. Elevens, Sevens and Sixes [2:04] ->
t14. The Eleven [7:35] ->
t15. Death Don't Have //% No Mercy [8:#32] (5)
t16. talk (6) and tuning [1:18]
-enter Elvin Bishop-
t17. untitled 19681030a [14:53] ->
t18. untitled 19681030b [6:20] (7) [0:10]
t19. talk (8) and tuning [0:33]
t20. Prisoner Blues [10:49] (9) [0:05] % [0:09]
-exit Elvin Bishop-

t21. ... The Seven [9:29] (10) [0:35]
t22. tuning and talk (11) [6:39]
t23. Dark Star ... [19:10#]

! Band: Hartbeats
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Phil Lesh - el-bass;
! lineup: Mickey Hart - percussion;
! guest: Elvin Bishop - el-g (t17-t20), vocals (t20).

JGMF:

! R: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19681030-01

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/1205 (Gadsden/Wise/Sacks, presumed same source tapes, but older transfer than the present fileset); http://etreedb.org/shn/112737 (PNW flac2496 presumed lineage MSR (Abrams) > R (Kafer) > R @ 7.5ips (Will Boswell) > digital, leading me to believe that 112737 has an extra reel gen, since IIRC Gadsden in 2008 transfered the Kafer "1st copy" reel, which is represented in this fileset; 112737 is also mono); http://etreedb.org/shn/116833 (Berger flac2496 from Moore unlineaged stereo reel, TT 89 minutes (so "incomplete).

! Deadlists Comments [abridged]: The 'On The Town" column in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, by Ralph J. Gleason, which which gave listings of what bands were playing locally, says that "Jerry Garcia & Friends" are playing at The Matrix" on these dates (see the San Francisco Chronicle for Monday October 28, 1968 p. 45). Bobby and Pigpen were absent. On page 26 of issue #34 (Summer 1996) of Dupree's Diamond News, Dick Latvala stated in an interview 'What I know exists in our Vault are the shows, and they are on four-track 15 i.p.s." and 'There are two dates, 10/28 and 10/29, both of which have four reels. On 10/30 there's a Dark Star Jam into a Jerry vocal, could be Death Letter Blues'. He also stated 'That's what's written on the box. I haven't listened to it.'"

! Historical/dating: Note that Dick's statement contradicts itself in saying that there are two days (28 and 29) but then describing what's on the tape of the 30th. I do not know whether the GD Vault copies are masters, copies from Abrams's house tapes, or something else. I suspect they're copies from Abrams's house tapes, but I do not know for sure. Regarding how this relates ... [edit: not sure where I was going to go with that]

! R: Tape Provenance: Peter Abram's 7" 1/4 track SBD reels @ 7.5ips > Peter Kafer/Bill Gadsden's 7" 1/4 track Maxell reels @ 7.5ips > Revox B77 playback > Alesis Masterlink (sampling @ 24 bit, 96kHz) > CD > EAC > CDWave > TLH (FLAC level 8) > foobar2000 (tagging).

! R: the sound quality is what you'd expect for a Matrix Tape. This is a stereo recording.

! historical: on shnid 116833 Berger speculates that only the first 90 minutes is from this date, while the rest is from 10/8/68. I don't think so. I have listened to and noted both, and I can confirm that the talk around the various pieces of music is different. I haven't A-B'd them directly, which would seal the deal, I think.

! P: t02 Dark Star: Phil Lesh is a monster right from the get-go. He is fiercely melodic right from the start. This really is an attempt to have two lead instruments simultaneously, because Lesh and Garcia are on the same plane. Jerry seems to quote Tighten Up @ 1:49, and he's still dancing with some of that feeling around 2:15. Very sweet stuff. . Back to Star at 2:30. @ 6:24 Garcia quotes Born-Cross-Eyed for a a little bit. At 11 min mark things take a darker, slower turn. While JG is signalling the return of Dark Star @ ca. 13:00, Mickey makes a little statement on the toms. Jerry considers but re-asserts Dark Star. Mickey and Phil assent, Mickey picking the scrapy-turny things again and Philip doing his Dark Star melodic statement. That rough breadcrumb framework established, Garcia wanders around again, but with Dark Star now providing a tighter backbone.

! setlist t03 Death Letter Blues is the Leadbelly song (see Jackson 1987); @ 6:24 Jerry early engagement with a little bit of what would become the And We Bid You Goodnight/Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad theme. This is just about a one-off version.

! t04 (1) JG: "Thank you. Uhh, I might explain, uh, that we're ...we're really here just playin' ... just goofin'. I mean, we really don't have anything in mind or anything. Yeah. (laughs) We're just thrown together by fate ... and so we're uh playin' Fate Music. Also called Luck Music." Someone else: [inaudible]. JG: "Good one, good one. ... fateful."

! P: t05 TOO @ 7:20 Jerry starts a crazy hot, pretty fast 12-beat up-down pattern -- very unique. Phil hears the promise and jumps on it right away. @ 8:17, a little Latin feel. Jerry picks up that earlier progression @ 8:31. It's real nice, very power-tro-ish. Not quite Latin (though there were some Spanish inflections between the two groups of 12-note runs), but hot as hell. @ 8:52-9:02 Phil lands on some pretty deep two-beat march space, then a little Spanish 4-beat, then they are back on the Other One by 9:15.

! R: t05 TOO cuts out.

! R: t07 Lovelight cuts in.

! t07 Lovelight is insrumental.

! R: t08 there are various tape splices and some static during this long tuning

! t08 (2) can hear Elvin Bishop say something like "Let's play, man." @ 0:35 JG: "I don't think we have any straps. ... I'll sit down [?if we need?]." Maybe they are looking for a guitar strap for Elvin.

! t10 @ 1:49 (3) Mickey Hart: "Hey Ram?" Ramrod: "Yeah." MH: "Did you get the hammer? Did you get the [inaudible]?" More inaudible talk.

! t10 at end (4) Phil Lesh: "Wanna try the six?" JG: "Yep. Sure."

! setlist: t11 Clementine: This is an instrumental version. See LIA's post for an analysis of the song and how this version fits into its short, uneven history.

! t12 The Seven: I track "The Seven" where I track it, but the whole 3-minute range of "Clementine" is really the gradual transmogrification of The Six into The Seven. I put it here because I take Mickey's hard assertion of the tempo at this point to signify the change. Since this is a series of tempo Études, well, the tempo *constitutes the "song".

! P: t12 This version of "The Seven" , notes from a musical person, MJ: "3/4 time jazz waltz, but technically not because and it swung of course because it was a jazz waltz. If it is a 6/8 it's slow. The fact that it's swung means that if it was a normal 6/8 it would ... usually if it's in 6/8 at a normal speed ... so the combo of 6/8 with swing beat makes it unusual. A slow 6/8. Sounds more like a 3/4" to MJ.

! P: t12 Note the sequence: "The Six" -> "The Seven" -> "The Eleven" ... this is a tempo Étude. Insofar as we like attributions from The Horse's Mouth, we might even consecrate (by officializing, naturally) this track as "The Six", per Phil's identification (see note 4, above).

! t13 @ ca. 0:13ff Jerry is playing The Eleven while Phil is back to Clementine/The Six! @1339 hear someone say something. Now Phil is playing The Seven while Garcia is playing The Eleven. That's really what Hartbeats is all about. Mixing tempos. Garcia is mostly staying on 11/8, while Phil plays around with sixes (Clementine) and sevens. So I am just coining a term for this: Elevens, Sevens and Sixes.

! t14 The Eleven is instrumental.

! R: t15 DDHNM a little static @ 0:53, 1:14; hiss seems to come up during this track.

! R: t15 DDHNM splice @ 5:08, unknown amount missing.

! t15 (5): JG: "Thank you."

! t16 (6) JG: "Well, where's Elvin? Where'd he go? Where'd that skunk go? Where'd he go?"

! personnel: t17 Elvin Bishop is present from this point forward (from 94 minutes in). As far as I can hear, he is only present until the end of t20 (about 33 minutes).

! t17 untitled 19681030a is a nice mournful theme. It has a name, I think (hence me calling it untitled 19681030a-I think this can be substituted with an actual name ... if it were just a theme, I might have called it "mournful theme" or something like that). Before the track mark, you can hear Jerry asking something like "what's that tune?" I want to say that it's probably an Elvin Bishop melody, but I have no idea. It's really pretty. Damnit, what is the name of this? It surely has a name. @ 6:38ff Elvin is doing a theme that sounds almost related to New Potato Caboose thing. It sounds a little bit like Donovan's First There Is A Mountain, as well. @ 7:40 quotes The Seven a little bit. He, especially, is focused on these tempo Études. In the 11-12 minute marks it has more NPC feel. Around 12 minutes in, someone yells a change to someone else, but I can't hear what it is. Things slow down. By 14-min mark Phil is referencing The Seven again. @ 14:18 Garcia takes up a four note repeating thing, and then by 14:30 he is doing a slowed-down version of his ending riff from Born Cross-Eyed! His work here is very much more reminiscent of early 1968 than of, say, the Fillmore West shows four months later.

! t18 untitled 19681030b is a blues instrumental. It sounds very similar to Prisoner Blues. It cooks pretty well. In the late 3-min mark it has a little Death Letter Blues vibe. In the 4-minute mark Jerry and Elvin have some very nice call-and-response going ... Jerry is being the gunslinger here, for sure.

! t18 (7) JG seems to say "That's right" at the end. Then he says, obviously in answer to a query about what to play (presumably from Elvin): "Anything you like. Just start it."

! t19 (8) JG: "JG: "Hey, you got a vocal mic for over at that end? Elvin's gonna sing one." He's smiling behind his (?non-? beard) as he mentions Elvin singing.

! setlist: t20 Prisoner Blues: This is presumably just a way of being conventional about this. It's not a song so much as a theme around a slow blues.

! t20 (9) Elvin Bishop: "Thanks."

! setlist: We can't know for sure if the stuff from this last piece (t21-23, 35+ minutes) is from the same night as the other material. For that matter, it's really impossible to know whether anything on opposite sides of any tape discontinuity is from the same night. This could be snippets. I have separated out what I view as the different pieces with an extra line in the tracklist. I don't know that it is from one night or several, and I am not trying to sow obscurity or confusion. We might as well assume that this is from the same night and that that night is approximately correctly dated as October 30, 1968. I mention this only to get in front of the question that might arise from the presence of "repeat" engagements with The Seven and Dark Star. Given the exploratory nature of these Hartbeats dates, it's entirely possible that they took repeated, separate passes at these tunes. But it's also possible, given the nature of Matrix Tapes, that this material is a separate snippet from a separate night or set.

! personnel: There is no second guitar on the last piece.

! R: t21 The Seven cuts in.

! t21 @ 1:36 JG is yelling something. Sounds like he says "It all falls in, man", mentions Phil and the bass.

! t21 (10) JG: "That's not necessary. You don't really have to do that. We're ... uhhh ... We're here primarily to screw around. And, uh .. so don't expect anything that isn't screwing around. Because everything we're doing is screwing around unless otherwise stated in advance." JGMF NB this makes me think this piece is from early in a set/show/date.

! R: t22 tick @ 1:16.

! t22 (11) Phil Looney Tunes goof @ 2:45. They are talking about drinks, I think. Phil asks "Ohhh, 7-Up this time?" @ 4:11 Mickey says "Hey Ramrod?" Around 6-minutes in Mickey's gear is ready and he says "OK, now let's play." So this long interlude sounds like it was to do with gear. Indeed, the drums seem to be audible in the right at the start of the track, then move middle/left. Phil: "A little bossa nova, huh?" JG: "Bossa nova?"

! t23 compare this Dark Star with the "November 1968" version. This one starts off with the bass and guitar together, jumping right into the guiro -- a classic start to primal Dark Star. I think that one is different.

! R: t23 hard for me to tell if it's a tape fade (I think it is) or if they just soften to a close with Dark Star.

REFERENCE:
Jackson, Blair. 1987b. Roots, part 14. Golden Road no. 14 (Summer): 44.

Jack and Jorma - Matrix - July 22, 1969 (Tuesday)

Sometimes to contemplate a piece of data requires going at least one degree of separation back. Here's a case in point: I was listening to Garcia play the "3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds Jam" [a.k.a. "Turnaround, per the 6/28/69 official release] with Jack Casady. And I want to know how this version relates in the big picture, but it's hard to place. So I hook into a piece about which I know a tiny bit, the tune itself, and I work back out. So I arrive at the Jack and Jorma 7/22/69 tape, which I briefly note below.

Jack and Jorma
The Matrix
3138 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
July 22, 1969 (Tuesday)
96 min PNW sbd flac24

(8 tracks, 96:12)
t01. jam [21:22] [0:15] % [0:37]
t02. Jam [11:00] [0:04] % [0:11]
t03. Uncle Sam Blues [8:02] [0:07]
t04. Turnaround [14:58] [0:07]
t05. [0:16] Come Back Baby [7:45] [0:08] %
t06. (1) [0:09] Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning [9:04] [0:05] %
t07. New Song (instrumental jam) [6:27] %
t08. Turnaround [15:34] %

! Band: Jack and Jorma
! personnel: Jorma Kaukonen - guitar, vox;
! personnel: Jack Casady - bass;
! personnel: Joey Covington - drums;
! guest: Peter Kaukonen - guitar (t01 only).

JGMF:

! R: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! tunabase: http://www.tunabase.com/setlists/1969/19690722.html.

! db: http://db.etree.org/shn/97837 (Mike Lai / Wayne Gucwa sbd); http://db.etree.org/shn/107240 (unk). Those filesets both have highly questionable lineage. I believe the lineage on the current fileset.

! R: MSR (PA) > R (EP) > R (DC) > R (Pat Lee) @ 3.75 ips > Akai GX636 > Apogee Mini Me (24/96) > Mini Dac > Lynx One soundcard > Wavelab 5.0 > FLAC24. Transfer by Matt Smith (PNW).

! historical:  So the lineage is presumed to go Peter Abrams > Ed Perlstein > DC > Pat Lee. It's a nice tape, bright-to-hissy relative to some of the muddy Matrix Tapes out there. This has been edited down pretty tightly, with splices between every track. It's really hard to say if this is the show they played, or a show they played on another date, or pieces of various shows, or what. This material has long also circulated dated "4/22/69", but I presume that's a slip-of-the-pen somewhere along the line. Tunabase lists it as 7/22/69 without comment, and shows no mention of "4/22/69". Same goes for the Chicken (http://www.chickenonaunicycle.com/Matrix%20Shows.htm). I'd like to know whether there was any hard evidence for the dating, but I don't have any particular reason to question Jack and Jorma at the Matrix on Tuesday, July 22nd.

! band: As I understand it, the name Hot Tuna would not come into usage until October 1969. There are lots of ways to characterize a "band" name. I will just say "Jack and Jorma" because that's how I think of it. Happy to use a formulation more preferred by Hot Tuna types.

! P: I think these guys are quite amazing, but I am nearly at a loss as to how to describe them. Amazing musicianship, individually and collaboratively. I don't normally have much to say about drumming, but Joey Covington is stellar here. It's no wonder Jack & Jorma grabbed him up. Dude can hang. Jack & Jorma are Jack and Jorma, virtuosi in their prime. They are just playing for hours. The jams are all excellent, though I am partial to the "3/5 of a Mile Jam". I find myself less compelled to listen closely enough and to note this stuff, but a minute-by-minute musical breakdown could probably be instructive. That's for someone else to do.

! personnel: I only hear a second guitarist (Peter Kaukonen) in t01. I have designated him as a guest.

! P: t01 starts off a slow jam. Goes lots of places, as these Jack & Jorma jams tended to.

! P: t02 this might be one of the named jams known to Airplane cognoscenti.

! R: t03-t04 I can't hear whether there's a tape splice in there. I presume so.

! R: t04 fade to splice @ 7:02, repeated section?

! t06 (1) Jorma: "This next song is a Revered Gary Davis tune. It's called "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning'."

! P: t08 "3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds Jam", called "Turnaround" on the official 6/28/69 release, is outrageous. Jack leading the way in the late 3-minute mark. In the 5-minute range, Jack is cutting trail where no rock bassist had ever ventured. Jorma's solo in the 6-minute mark is harsh and potent. In a kind of Pooneil space for a bit. @ 7:44 tempo change, slow it down.

Hiatus Hiatus LNjg1978-03-17.jgb.late.aud-CC.noshnid.flac2448

jg1978-03-17.jgb.late.aud-CC.noshnid.flac2448

Late show has never entered circulation, AFAIK. Some pretty spare notes.

Jerry Garcia Band
Capitol Theatre
326 Monroe Street
Passaic, NJ 07055
March 17, 1978 (Friday)
Late Show - 11 PM
81 minute CC aud flac2448

--late show main set + encore (9 tracks, 80:47)--
--main set (8 tracks, 72:57)--
t01. John Scher Introduction [0:25]
t02. Harder They Come [11:00]
t03. //Mission In The Rain [#10:34] [0:04]
t04. //Russian Lullaby [#13:50] [0:38]
t05. Tore Up Over You [8:45] [0:11]
t06. //Love In The Afternoon [#10:14]
t07. //I'll Be With Thee [#5:05]
t08. //The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [#9:50] [2:16]
--encore (1 track, 7:50)--
t09. Rhapsody In Red [7:12] [0:38]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #4a
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia: el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: John Kahn: el-b;
! Lineup: Buzz Buchanan: drums;
! Lineup: Keith Godchaux: keyboards;
! Lineup: Donna Jean Godchaux: backing vocals;
! Lineup: Maria Muldaur: backing vocals.

JGMF:

! R: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [m:ss] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19780317-06

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/123184 (soundboard from video, missing HTC); https://etreedb.org/shn/138358 this fileset).

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/capitol-theater-monroe-st-and-central.html
 
! map: http://goo.gl/maps/nwnV8
 
! R: Specs: xx gen audience cassette (Maxell XLII90, No Dolby) > Nakamichi BX-300 playback > Pyle Pro cables > WaveTerminal 2496 > Samplitude 10.1 Download Version (record @ 24 bits/48kHz) > CDWave 1.9.8 (tracking) > Wavelab 5.0.1a (cross-fades, etc.) > shntool (stripped non-canonical headers) > Traders Little Helper 2.4.1 (FLAC encoding, level 8) > Foobar (tagging).

! historical: allegedly FM broadcast WNEW-FM, but no FM tape has surfaced. This is the only aud I have seen in circulation, though I believe Jim Anderson may have taped. This is the end of a very long day for Garcia. He did an interview with Scott Muni at WNEW in the afternoon/early evening, at which the St. Patrick's Day libations were being passed around. Then an early show, then a late show. Ray Riescher, who provided me with audio copy of the interview, said that Jerry was noticeably drunk at this late show. Note added 12/24/2012: a soundboard tape has now emerged.

! R: Not a great tape. Just about every song clips or cuts in. A number of harsh transitions remain even after cleaning up the worst ones. There is some swirly hiss.The sbd tape is better!

! P: The show is quite hot, IMO. MITR ends in a manic flurry. Tore Up, my notes tell me, is "ridiculous". Jerry is *really* into this Dixie Down. RIR is absolutely fantastic, with some interesting (if cheesy) vocal work by the ladies over the first guitar break and Jerry going absolutely nuts after 5:45 or so. The scratchy blow-vibe of his voice is the only mitigating factor here, IMO.

! song: Russian Lullaby t03 includes bass solo. I am trying to figure out when this came in.

! historical: t08 @ 6:50 Some classic taper talk.

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

One of the Great Interviews of the Garciaverse

jg1978-03-11.interview.45mins.fm-gefen-goodbear.retracked.shn2flac

Remember, I am on hiatus until at least March 2013. Having taken this opportunity to remind you of this, as a PSA, let me also leave you something to read.

This is truly one of the great, hilarious interviews in the Garciaverse, chock full of great stuff.

Jerry Garcia Band Interview (by Andy Gefen)
WBRU-FM Studios
75 Waterman Street
Providence, RI 02912
March 11, 1978 (Saturday)
45 minute FM via Gefen-Goodbear shnid 76444 JGMF shn2flac

So, this interview has been circulating forever, but I don't recall seeing a transcription anywhere. So, I did it. It ain't 100% transcribed, but it has the stuff that interests me.

Lots of good direct quotes from Jerry about Cats, Garcia Band per se (and vs. GD, and vs. Weir's side projects), etc. Some snorting and such. Good times.


--(41tracks, 44:34)--
t01. Reuben And Cherise (album version) [5:08]
t02. Andy Gefen Introduction [1:38]
t03. Buzz Buchanan Introduction [1:01]
t04. Ten Grand And A Year in Jail [0:21]
t05. Cats Under The Stars Release Date [0:55]
t06. Is Keith Around? [0:16]
t07. Maria Muldaur [0:44]
t08. Jerry's Day Job and Trouble With Flooding [0:46]
t09. GD Plans [1:01]
t10. GD Movie, TV  [1:10]
t11. GD Tour [0:13]
t12. Let's Talk About The Record [0:23]
t13. We Built The Studio [1:50]
t14. I'm Happiest With This Record [0:44]
t15. Jerry Garcia BAND [0:27]
t16. Rhapsody In Red (album version) (fragment) [0:#50]
t17. Mistakes [0:42]
t18. Tour So Far [0:31]
t19. Album Personnel [1:53]
t20. French Horn [0:35]
t21. Scaly And Weird [1:36]
t22. Being Great Is Your Own Thing [1:30]
t23. Stop Looking At That Thing, If It Gives You The Creeps [0:33]
t24. Rain (album version) (fragment) % [0:14]
t25. SNORT [0:45]
t26. Not Too Hard [1:42]
t27. Playing Together Purely Randomly [1:07]
t28. Garcia V. Weir [1:29]
t29. Keith Olsen [1:32]
t30. Station ID [0:54]
t31. Doing Interviews [1:24]
t32. Another GD Question Goes Nowhere [0:32]
t33. It's That Important To Me [1:27]
t34. What Career? [0:12]
t35. JGB Concrescence [3:04]
t36. You Want It To Move You [0:40]
t37. The Taoism And The Path, Featuring Buzzy Buchanan
t38. Amenhotep's Wine [1:35]
t39. The Invisible Landscape [1:33]
t40. Goodbyes [0:28]
t41. The News [0:08]

! Interview: people present:
! personnel: Andy Gefen
! personnel: Donna Jean Godchaux
! personnel: Jerry Garcia
! personnel: John Kahn
! personnel: Buzz Buchanan

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! TJS: none.

! db: part of shnid 76444 (Gefen > Goodbear).

! R: PREFM-SBD > ? > Gefen Master ? > GoodBear CD (late 1990s) > shn, part of shnid 76444.

! R: shn2flac via TLH, tracking via CDWave, tagging in foobar2000 by JGMF, 8/6/2012.

! t02 Jerry interrupts him Jerry Garcia Band. JG "Under the stars. Not undah." They are wasted. For those of you who don't enjoy the show tonight, I'd like to apologize on behalf of myself and the members of the band. John Kahn. Let's apologize for Buzzy, too. And Buzzy.

! t03 Ron Tutt's been playing with us. Ron isn't playing with us anymore. The new kid in the band is Buzz Buchanan credit to his race, as far as drummers go. From Los Angeles. What happened to Ron Tutt? Kahn: He went back to Los Angeles unfortunately. Buzz who did you play with before? Studio stuff in LA. The Smothers Brothers, played back east with them at the Great Gorge Playboy Club.

! t04 Someone mutters "shit",  and the DJ sounds worried about the ramifications of broadcasting a swear word. "I need ten grand and a year in jail." Garcia, pulling up from an audible snort: "I do. I could use a year in jail. I really think it would straighten me right out. And the $10 grand [fine] would be helpful, too."

! t05 on CUTS release date: That's a good question. If Arista really cooks, they might get it out as soon as the next couple of weeks ... next week or so. Our last really important deadline which we were almost totally convinced we would make was September 10th ... of last year. Unfortunately, we ... slipped up a little right there." JK: "Well, we made the deadline, in a way." DJ: "In a way?" JK: "Yeah. We were mostly dead by then." DJ: "Gratefully ... dead?" JK: "Well, I wasn't all that happy about it, myself."

! t06 Keith Godchaux: This is really harsh. He asks if Keith is around, and they all start snickering. JG: "Not all of us can move, see [laughter] ... sometimes it just doesn't work out right. [hilarity]

! t07 re Maria Muldaur: DJG: "There's somebody else who isn't here. Maria Muldaur is not here. Call John Mr. Maria. JG: "She is now an official member [inaudible]." JK : "The original mistake was "mr." JG: "She is a permanent member of this band insofar as this band is a permanent organization." DJ: "And it's workin' out great." JG: "yeah. Real great." Maria has her own date.

! t08 JG: "We all have to work around each other, know what I mean? Otherwise, y'know, I work at a gas station during the day." John will come back and play with Maria when she comes back to town.

! t09 Q about GD plans. JG: "Yeah, we're gonna be workin' ourselves silly this year. But I don't have a rap to tell you.  I don't have any information that's gonna do you any good on the Grateful Dead right now. Right now this is what we're doin, and this is the most important thing that's happening as far as we're concerned." Bob Weir album recording. JF: "We're looking at recording in the May-June-July area, if things go right we'll have an album out in August." Kahn: Just like our album out in September". Jerry: "Well, yeah, right, we're all hippies. Crazed beatniks. Strange people. Foreigners." JK: "I have a junior beatnik card."

! t10 clips of the GD Movie on TV on "Rock Concert" TV people have been pulling on our legs for many years to go on television. William F. Buckley wanted me to go on Firing Line.
! t11 GD tour maybe early spring starting in Florida. JG doesn't really know about it. Garcia cuts this question off.

! t12 Most like to talk about the record. Record has been a great trip for us. "We started working on it last July. Because we're all doing all this other stuff."

! t13 DJG: "And we built the studio that we recorded it in." JG: "Yeah, we built the studio to do it. What was happening was, we were rehearsing, and all of a sudden ... and it's Tutt that plays on these tracks, not Buzz, unfortunately. [Buzz, wake up!] So we were playing in there and we were making cassettes for practice purposes as we were working on the material. And, uh, Tutt ... was he attracted to ... he liked the drum sound in the room. We hadn't really thought about it before. So we whipped the place into a recording studio, took about a month to do it, two months, maybe. This whole record is, fundamentally, on a technical level it's totally homemade. I mean everything that was done, it was done ... right ... it was all done in the same room." JK: "I remember when we were all splicing wires, we actually, literally, ourselves, put it together [inaudible]." JG: "We were cutting wires, and cutting lines and making cables and doing everything ... we actually built the place--" DJ: "From scratch." JG: "Yeah, from scratch."

! t13 @0102 DJ: "Do you intend to use this studio for future Garcia and Dead endeavors?" JG: "Whether the Dead decide to use it or not is a matter of ... that decisionmaking process ... you know, we don't decide like *that* ... for me, it's a thing that's been a long, slow progression of accumulation of equipment, and the desire to have a really good facility for recording. The neat thing about it is that the room we're workin' in, it just sounds beautiful. It sounds better than any studio I've ever worked in, in terms of the room sound. So, the vocal quality, the instrumental quality, the drum sound, all the sounds that are recorded in the room ...; there's horns and strings and things like that there as well ... and everything  just has a very articulate and nice sound."

! t14 JG: "I'm happiest with this record, of all the ones we've done. It's neat because it's all original material, all the material is our own stuff." DJ: "Can I who produced this album?" JG: "We all" [crosstalk] DJ question about Keith Olsen and production. JK: "I don't know that we have such a specific plan on that level. Things are changeable, always." JG: "Yeah, right, that's the thing, is that no decision is final, and that no operating ... no way of operating is ever completely always gonna be the thing." Jerry really doesn't want to go onto GD terrain, while Gefen really does.

t15 RIR introduction. DJ: "Give us a chance to relax a little bit, with microphones off." JG, laconically: "That'd be swell." DJ introduces song as by "Jerry Garcia", and Garcia insists "Jerry Garcia BAND".

! R: t16 spliced

! t17 silliness

! t18 tour so far, only two gigs. DJ: "How long have you been rehearsing for the tour?" JK "None". JG: "About twenty minutes." JK, laughing: "That's right, it was twenty minutes." JG: "We try to approach this stuff professionally." JK: "Yeah, right. I do remember that twenty minutes, now that I think about it."

! t19 CUTS album personnel: Kahn mentions harmonica player Dave Burgin on "Palm Sunday". Steve Schuster horn player on "Rain". Two string players one was named Brian (Brian Godchaux and Candy Godchaux, Keith's brother and sister-in-law). Then there was that guy whatshisname from the ... [Kahn: "Musicians' union?" [general mirth]. French horn player his name was whatever it says. Stewart somebody from the Oakland Symphony. JG: "Wonderful player. French horn is a really difficult instrument, this guy ..."

t20 John Kahn writing instrumentation wrote the out about five minutes, on the floor, with manuscript paper, scribble scribble scribble for this french horn player ... and he just played it immediately. He's a remarkable player, remarkable." JG, sound a little grumpy: "Uhh, yeah, we have. We've been movin' each other along and I think an awful lot of what's happening in music is just dull as dishwater, man." DJ: "You're not into any disco or New Wave or anything?" JG: "Of those things, of those choices, the New Wave... the whole punk rock trip, I like it best. I like it best, I think. I like it because it has some energy, it has some spirit." JK: "There's the thing of, new music, people are tyring to play [crosstalk] there's thing, in San Francisco, 'cause that's where I was then, when everybody was just learning to play, there was a thing that was missing --" JG: "The thing of people tryin' real hard. JK: "Tryin' to figure out how to make it work." JG: "Yeah, yeah. It's got the spirit, y'know, that's the thing. The nature of the spirit, if you had to describe the spirit, you could describe the spirit as being a little bit edgy, y'know, maybe sort of a Violent spirit, y'know, sort of scaly and weird, maybe, but it's a spirit, and almost anything else lacks spirit of any sort."

! t21 DJ: "I just want to ask a question about your musical influences. Anybody been moving you along lately?"

! t22 JG: "Who is there around to say what being really, really good on an instrument is. There are guys who don't play ... who can't play many notes, that can move you tremendously with what they do play. Then there are guys who can play gazillions of notes, and nobody can even dig it." JK, sounding very strange: "There isn't any best in the world anymore." JG: "No, it's not like that anymore." JK: "There can't be a best guitar player in the world anymore. There's twenty now. JG: "Say, eighty." [cross-talk] DJG: "Being the greatest is no longer the incentive." JG: "Being great is your own trip." More from JK.

! t23 general weirdness, then DJG asks DJ "Do you want us to stop talking?" He says "No, no", and Garica replies "Well then stop looking at that thing, then, if it gives you the creeps." Too funny! "Play something so *you* can relax." General mirth. "Rain" intro by JG

! t25 DJ mistakenly identifie the song as "Gomorrah", not sure. JG, dismissive: "Uh, it's called 'Rain'. It's the one that Donna wrote?" DJ: "I am getting confused in between--" [--SNIFF-- chuckles] "--John Kahn just noticed his own name on Jerry Garcia's Reflections album." JG: "He's into his name because it rhymes." DJ: "With what?" JG: "With itself. John Kahn. John Kahn." He sounds a littel patronizing.

! t26 question about how the decision was made to have Donna and Keith tour with this band and with the Dead. Gets no response, says "OK ... they don't like that question." Then they affirm him a little bit. Donna: "No, no, I just don't understand it." JK "These things happen more than a decision [inaudible]." JG: "See, here's the thing, I mean, I think it best ... in terms of clarity, I think it's easiest not to confuse the Grateful Dead with *this* band . This band really has its own identity, its own evolution." DJ: "I'm only making the comment because there are three members of the Dead in it, as opposed to one [garbled]." JG: "That is an interesting ..." JK: "Well," [cross-talk DJ, something about Bob Weir] "it's coincidental, that's all." JG: "It's coincidental, almost, yeah." JK "We didn't have a piano player, and Keith was the best guy we could find, and Donna's a fabulous singer." JG: "Yeah, actually, this started quite awhile ago. I mean, Keith and Donna have been with us for two years." DJG: "And they needed a piano player, and another singer would be nice. Keith and I live together. It'd be cheap." [laughter] JG: "Not too hard ... and we're all freaks." [crosstalk] DJG: "--just fell into it really naturally." DJ: "May I ask how you originally got involved with the Dead?" JK: "They probably needed a piano player, too." DJG: "They did. That was exactly what was happening."

! t27 JG: "It's a matter of timing, really." JK: "Those things happen. It's not heavy decisions or anything. That kind of stuff just happens ... somebody shows up, and it's right, and everybody knows it's right." DJ question about Bobby and Kingfish. JG: "I guess, so, that's the way it worked out with him. But for me it's always been the thing of, that, decisionmaking is always, always ... I don't dig it, I'm ... It's more a matter of luck. Like, John and I really were thrown together in a gig. We started playing together purely randomly. And we played together for a looong time before we started even talking very much. But we got along musically." JK: "I had known you for about three years--" [crosstalk] "--the first time I ever really talked to you is when you gave me a ride home from the airport once from somewhere." JG: "Yeah. It's just one of those things. Something happens in your life."

! t28 DJ spoke with Weir the day before (3/10/78), asking about parallels. JG: "He was in a situation where he had a created band. He'd done a record, and the record had a certain musical personality ... and he was really in the position, since Weir, Bobby doesn't spend a lot of time playin' around with other musicians, except when he was working with Kingfish and stuff like that, y'know. So, he went down there [LA] and for him it was a good experience because he was exposed to a lot of good players, met a lot of people, and put himself into that situation of, 'OK, now I have to have a band.'."  JK: "He has to cover his album." JG and Donna affirm. JG: "This is a little different." DJ: "What do you think of that album?" JG: "Weir's album?" DJ: "Yeah." JG: "Slick as can be.  Weir has always been a very interesting writer to me. He writes the kinds of things that I would never, ever think of writing, musically I mean. And his development as a composer is gettin' to be more interesting and more resolved as the years go by. He's always been an interesting composer. His ideas are ... they're unique. Whether other people are gonna like it or not, I really haven't the slightest idea, but it really sounds smooth, and it sounds nice and finished. Keith Olsen is a very careful and meticulous producer."

! t29 Keith Olsen: "He showed up and didn't freak out." "he's a good cat. He really doesn't belong in LA. He's a good guy to work with. He's the pick of the litter."  , Dead with outside producer everybody has their own opinion so firmly, it's like imprinted on yourselves. Very hard for us to all. .. it's helpful to have an objective ear. Dealing with ourselves we can hang ourselves up for months and months and months and months and months. "It's not that we don't dig it, but that's what it is."

! t31 random chatter. Running out of things to say. Now, general mayhem. All talking about things. "Being on the radio beats lying around in the gutter, in the snow. ... It also beats things like taking a shower."

! t32 Jerry directing. JG: "Hey, I know, why don't you play nother cut. ... In that case, do what you want." DJ prods him again about asking about the Dead. Jerry sounding a little grouchy "I am just not into it that much right now." GD we're workin'.

! t33 DJ: Are there plans for another Jerry Band album, this is a permanent entity? JG: "Yeah. This is. It's been going on for some time. It's an idea we have been pursuing for some time. John and I have been involved in developing this thing over this long period of time in a kind of crazy way. It's serious. As a personal, as an individual apart from my relationship with the Grateful Dead, which is an important thing to me, this record, this music and this band is the same thing to me. It's that important to me. I care that much about it. I'm that serious about it. I think that this record is the best record that any of our various scenes --if you want to be thinking in those terms, y'know, sub-groups and all the rest of that stuff, if you want to be thinking in those terms, this record is, I think, the best of any of them so far. I mean, in terms of us feeling really good about it. The material is really good. The lyrics are beautiful, the musical ideas, the performances, the sound ... everything is the way we would want for people to hear it."
t34 DJ: "How do you feel everything is at this point in your career." JG: "what career? I don't care about a career."

t35 Kahn: "I'll tell you, of significant importance [sic] is that we've really become a band. It's not like something that Jerry does in his spare time, or that I do in my spare time, or anything like that. It started out that way." JG, to John: "Gimme that drink." JK: "Oh, no." JG: "Go ahead."  [pause all around] JK: "What was I saying? We're a *band*, that's really what's  important to know." @0:32 JG: "But that's like a real thing. It's like a marriage, or something. Not only is it a band, but it's a band that has that ... it has thing of of, ummm, consonance. [That's] the best way I can describe it. In other words, we all think similarly musically." DJG: "The hippest folks out there will know what we man by concrescence .. but only the hippest, y'know." JG: "Probably only the hippest, that's right. All you lame people [crosstalk]." DJ: gives him choices. John Kahn wants to do the news, presumably to take another "break". Jerry says they'll go until Robbie freaks out. !1:35 DJ: "Where were we?" JG: "Where, indeed?" JK: We're into something new." JG: "We're into the music having a personality and a life of its own that is something which we all recognize we're a part of.  It's like you imagine a music in your head, and you don't even imagine it perfectly, it's not even something ... it escapes your imagination ... it's provocative. And then you run into somebody and you see that what they're doing has some part of that vision. And you recognize it. Y'know what I mean? It's not like you invent it, you recognize it. 'Yeah, that, that, that's it, that's it!" JK: "Right. There's there's the possibility of that dream. And you go further." JG: "Yeah. And then you go further, you go further." [crosstalk: DJG: --that has the same dream."] JG: "That's right, that has the same --[crosstalk]. Dynamically, the interesting difference in this thing is that this band represents a kind of amazing agremement, where, by contrast, the Grateful Dead represents this amazing disagreement, in terms of, that everybody has tremendously different ideas about music, just a ... but that's interesting for other reasons. That's interesting for completely other reasons. This is ... this gets us all off in the same way. The Grateful Dead, when the Grateful Dead gets off, everybody gets off differently. But we all get off."

! t36 Kahn's idea about music: "I don't have any idea about music. What to me it means 'good' which is, it has an effect on people. That's what good means to me." JG: "Yeah, me too." JK: "And, other than that, I don't have any idea. We could play bluegrass music, or jazz, or--" [JG: "Yeah, style doesn't have anything to do with it."] --"it doesn't matter. It's all music. It's just music." JG: "And as long as it has an effect on you. When you hear music, you want it to move you. You want it to ... communicate." DJG: "And this band has expanded on that level." JG: "Yeah. We've been hittin' some ..."

! personnel: Buzz Buchanan: t37 Donna brings up Buzzy how John Kahn found Buzzy Buchanan. "He's allowed us to go into spaces in music that we've never gone to before. He's great." Discussion about how John found Buzzy through a Kmart thing, John says it was the 'Best Hits of the Chinese Fifth Dynasty Greatest Hits'. And the particular track I heard was "The Taoism and the Path, featuring Buzzy Buchanan, and because of that I decided that I thought he'd really work well with us. And, oddly enough, it turned out that he was still alive."

! t38 Kahn: wine bottles in Amenhotep's grave ... 1400 BC ... they are drinking ... DJG: "We found this bottle uncorked it and there was Buzzy." ... SNORT ... DJ: herbicides on dope in Mexico ... JG: "What about that clone story?"

! t39 DJ: "What kind of stuff have you been into, as far as--" JG: "Ideas? There's a fantastic book called The Invisible Landscape, that anybody that wants to have their brain turned inside out should read, that is by the McKenna Brothers, who are ... Terrence and Dennis McKenna, who are a pair of scientists ... and in the book they propose a theory ... a holographic theory of mind and the Universe. They talk about the mechanical and electromagnetic way that psychedelics affect the mind, and the DNA and RNA specifically ... [crosstalk] Then they talk about the I-Ching ..."

! t40 even Buzz says goodbye ... network news.

! t41 the news about a Ku Klux Klan rally

even though I am on hiatus until ca. March 2013, I

thought I'd leave a breadcrumb here for the return. Lotsa new info on the Third Betty Batch, or info new-to-the-record, anyway.

Paumgarten, Nick. 2012. Deadhead: The afterlife. New Yorker, November 26, 2012, URL http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_paumgarten, consulted 11/20/2012.

Also, I never knew that Betty and Brent were an item. But then again, there's an awful lot of stuff that's known that I've forgotten.

On hiatus until ca. March 2013

But, in the meantime ...

Some years ago, I posted about the Grateful Dead gig on Friday, May 16, 1969 in the gymnasium of Campolindo High School, 300 Moraga Rd., Moraga, CA, 94556. I posted a wild-sounding story about the gig which may contain some actual truth. There were comments and such. At some point I'll do a whole new post on the gig.

Here's some eye candy from the Campolindo High School yearbook, Compañero, for the 1968-1969 school year.

I have labeled numbered the eleven live shots, which I presume to include very rare shots of Frumious Bandersnatch and the Velvet Hammer. These were on pp. 12-13 of the spring supplement to the yearbook. Here's what I think I see.

1. dancing youth
2. GD live onstage, L-R: Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir
3. Frumious Bandersnatch live onstage, L-R: Jack Notestein - bass; Jack King - drums.
4. GD live onstage, L-R: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart
5. ?Velvet Hammer? unknown guitar player
6. ?Velvet Hammer? guitar, drums, bass, keyboard
7. kid dancing. Right on, kid.
8.  Frumious Bandersnatch live onstage, L-R: Jack Notestein - bass; Jack King - drums, vocals; Bobby Winkelman - guitar, vocals; David Denny - guitar, vocals. (Thanks to David Denny for confirmation!)
9. light show projectionists
10. hanging out under the light show projection tables
11. ?? two young women singing and playing acoustic guitar

Still on hiatus, till maybe March 2013

In the meantime, check out the etree list that I put together, as a way to date-index my posts. It's not the most efficient way, but there it is.

GSCBF16: Program Images

More eye candy below the fold.

Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival: Index Post (GSCBF15)

Mostly for my own purposes, but a little index of my series on the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival, held at the Marin County Veterans' Auditorium (building and grounds) in San Rafael, CA (94903) from the evening of Friday, April 26, 1974 through late on Sunday, April 28, 1974.

I have tons more to get to, but we'll just have to see when that can happen. For now, just an index.

GSCBF1: just a mention

GSCBF2: a plea for a release of the film and tapes!

GSCBF3: Sunday 4/28/74 afternoon schedule

GSCBF4: Greenbriar Boys (a.k.a. "Frank Wakefield"): Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 15:00 

GSCBF5: Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 16:15

GSCBF6: Doc and Merle Watson: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 1700 

GSCBF7: Steve Martin and John McEuen: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 1900 

GSCBF8: Skunk Cabbage: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 19:05 

GSCBF9: Great American String Band: Saturday, April 27, 1974, ca. 23:15 ("Where's Jerry?") 

GSCBF10: Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 19:30 

GSCBF11: John Hartford (& Friends): Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 20:15 

GSCBF12: Ralph Stanley & His Clinch Mountain Boys: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 21:15 

GSCBF13: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 22:00 

GSCBF14: Old And In The Way: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 23:15
GSCBF15: Index post
GSCBF16: Program Images
GSCBF17: an aside on David Nichtern and the Nocturnes
GSCBF18: Whole Weekend Schedule

Gonna Be Slow For Awhile

Not sure how long. Very hard to predict. There may be periods (e.g., Thanksgiving, the New Year) during which I can post. But my strong suspicion is that posting is going to be exceedingly sparing until, perhaps, spring of 2013. Certainly nothing elaborate.

I expect second half of 2013, by contrast, to yield quite a bounty. But, again, we'll see.

In the meantime, go read some articles on deadsources.blogspot.com, read around the other blogs linked to your right, and take in some of the bounty!

Garcia's Penultimate Sonoma County Gig, and a Great 'Don't Let Go'

LN jg1988-02-05.jgb.all.aud-CC.121594.flac2448

My favorite year of the canonical Jerry Garcia Band, i.e., what I mean when I say The Jerry Garcia Band, i.e., Garcia-Kahn-Seals-Kemper-Jones-LaBranch.

Jerry's penultimate show in Sonoma County.

Top-three version of "Don't Let Go", along with the next night (2/6/88) and 5/19/89 in Irvine. some of my favorite Garcia music of all time.

Anyone know who has the master tape, or who taped it?

Jerry Garcia Band
Veterans Memorial Auditorium
1351 Maple Avenue
Santa Rosa, CA 95404
February 5, 1988 (Friday)
123 min Closet Call aud (complete) (flac2448) shnid-121594

--set I (9 tracks, 57:07)--
s1t01. ambience [0:30]
s1t02. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [6:43] [0:04]
s1t03. They Love Each Other [7:55] [0:20]
s1t04. Forever Young [8:13] [0:22]
s1t05. Get Out Of My Life Woman [8:00] [0:23]
s1t06. /Like A Road Leading Home [7:20]
s1t07. Evangeline [3:32] [0:01]
s1t08. //My Sisters And Brothers [5:12] ->
s1t09. Deal [8:22] [0:07]

--set II (8 tracks, 66:26)--
s2t01. //Harder They Come [8:48] [0:15]
s2t02. Stop That Train [7:07]
s2t03. //Don't Let Go [12:22]
s2t04. //Think [6:12]
s2t05. //Mississippi Moon [8:37]
s2t06. //Run For The Roses [4:52]
s2t07. //That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day) [8:32]
s2t08. //Tangled Up In Blue [9:36] [0:02]

! Band: Jerry Garcia Band
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! Lineup: David Kemper - drums;
! Lineup: Gloria Jones - vocals;
! Lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - 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/19880205-01

! db: none as of 9/6/2009. https://etreedb.org/shn/121594 (this fileset); https://etreedb.org/shn/125717 (remaster of this fileset).

! map: http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=1351+Maple+Ave.,+Santa+Rosa,+CA&ie=UTF8&om=1&ll=38.435203,-122.699862&spn=0.014052,0.029182&t=h&z=15&iwloc=addr

! venue: Its official site gives venue as Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Hall.  Handbill from TJS bills gives "Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Auditorium". The Auditorium is a room in the Hall, holds 1200 for assembly and 1000 seated. Since the TJS ticket shows General Admission, I'll use the "assembly" number to estimate capacity in 1988 at 1,200, and I'll use "Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Auditorium" as my canonical venue name. The GD had played here in the 1960s (6/17-18/66, 6/27-28/69). This would be the fifth and last time Garcia would play the hall.

! band: Handbill from TJS bills "Jerry Garcia Band Electric".

! R: specs: xx gen audience cassette (Maxell XLII90 no Dolby) > Nakamichi BX-300 playback (no Dolby) > Pyle Pro cables >WaveTerminal 2496 > Samplitude 10.1 Download Version (record @ 24 bits/48kHz) > CDWave 1.9.8 (tracking) > Wavelab 5.0.1a (cross-fades, etc.) > shntool (stripped non-canonical headers) > Traders Little Helper 2.4.1 (FLAC encoding, level 8) > Foobar (tagging), September 6, 2009, by JGMF.

! R: This recording is not going to win any field recording prizes, but it's totally decent and unterrible. The only real problem is that every song in set II clips or cuts in. But who am I to criticize? The overall SQ of set II is inferior to set I. Things are probably running fast, perhaps considerably so. Mississippi Moon would be one to check.

! historical: I consider 1988 to be the very best year of the canonical Jerry Garcia Band of Garcia-Kahn-Seals-Kemper-Jones-LaBranch. The next night (2/6/88) is one of my all-time favorite Jerry Band shows, and this one, while perhaps not quite its equal, had provided a really high-level warmup. I also have big love for the July '88 shows (e.g., 7/10), and this period really holds up well to repeated auditions. While the Halloween (10/31/88) and Tahoe shows (11/4-5/88) disappoint me, the Wiltern (11/25-27/88) and Orpheum shows (12/2-3/88) are top-shelf (update: actually, 12/3 is pretty weak, 12/2 only marginally better), as is everything through May of 1989.

! historical: The geography of this show is fascinating. In earlier times, even into the early 1980s, Jerry would start off a new year, as he'd start off a new band, a little bit off the beaten path. In the 70s, this would have meant playing the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati or the River Theater in Gurneville (both Sonoma County), the Lion's Share in San Anselmo (Marin), etc. From the early 80s it seems like he mostly warmed up in Santa Cruz (The Catalyst) or Keystone Palo Alto in the South Bay. Garcia's previous Sonoma gig had been 1/21/83 at the Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma. This would be his penultimate appearance in Sonoma County, in which he spent a lot of his childhood, before the 7/7/88 JGAB gigs at the Cabaret in Cotati.

! P: I haven't spent enough time with the rest of the show to have a strong opinion, but my sense is that it is an appropriate start to  The real stuff is deep without dragging (see s1t06 Like A Road, s2t05 Miss Moon, s2t07 Lucky Old Sun). The latter, especially, is a song that I don't usually dig, but it's just really nice here, as are the others. I always love Like A Road, always, in every period. Period. The peppy/bouncy stuff is peppy and bouncy (s1t02 How Sweet, s1t03 TLEO, s1t08 My Sisters And Brothers, s2t02 Stop That Train, s2t06 Run For The Roses). The songs that are supposed to rock rock. Good stuff all around, but you'll remember it for the "Don't Let Go" -- see below.

! R: s1t06 Like a Road clips in

! R: s1t08 Sisters and Brothers cuts in

! R: s2t01-02 mic adjustments at end of HTC and start of STT

! P: s2t04 Think is also outstanding. Jerry's first solo is blistering hot. He was higher and feedbackier in the first go-round, then as he turns the second minute he drops down lower. Later in 2-min mark he's right in the middle range, drops some fanning @ 2:54, twist in some edge and feedback, drop to Melvin @ 3:20 or so. Late 4, he's fanning again, shredding pretty well. This is not early 1981 shredding, or mid-1983, but it's good. Enthusiastic on the vocals, rocking and swaying in whatever nondescript comfyshoes he's wearing.

! P: s2t05 Miss Moon Jerry starts with a little vocal flub, and I think he is too high up in the vocal register, though he seems to pulling it off.

! P: s2t03 Don't Let Go: I have been waiting years for this show, ever since the next night knocked my socks off. I was especially waiting for the Don't Let Go, which represents the return of the song after a 3.5 year absence (12/7/84). And it doesn't disappoint me. Listen to Jerry belt in the four-minute mark and tell me he isn't psyched. Like the next night and the other '88 versions, this one is very upbeat, but doesn't feel truncated. Jerry is already screaming and growling his singing in the 3:30ff mark and tearing ragged edges with his guitar, then drops down into some plucky lower-register stuff. Up high. Jerry explores lots of cool spaces with it. At the same time, it's punchy enough not to wander. From 10:30 ish Garcia is playing some super fast chords that remind me of the summer 1974 GD jams into U.S. Blues. The return to the song around the 11-min mark is super fast-paced, almost double-time ... yeah!! It may even be just a little too fast, but I gotta say everyone is locked in. It's structured just about perfectly, IMO. FANTASTIC @@ This is in my top three versions of "Don't Let Go", along with the next night (2/6/88) and the 5/19/89 monster.

! P: I haven't spent enough time with the rest of the show to have a strong opinion, but my sense is that it doesn't quite equal the next night in overall strength. Still, sixteen songs is a solid indicator that Our Man felt like playing on this night.

! R: s2t07-08 L channel very out from 2:09-3:24 of LOS, out again LOS 5:28- then low until 1:35 of TUIB.

! R: s2t08 TUIB some discontinuities (skips) at start, sound analog.

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

http://jgmf.blogspot.com

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

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

Just a few quick notes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

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

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

! ACT2: Paul Pena

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

! R: s1t01 VITC zipper @ 1:22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

! R: s2t03 SB reel splice @ 6:25

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

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

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

New Releases

Not surprisingly, we saw a flurry of Garcia-related releases on August 1, 2012, which would have been Jerry's 70th birthday.


Garcia Grisman - Orignal Hi-Def Master 
Garcia Grisman Alternate - Orignal Hi-Def Master

http://acousticoasis.com/rooms/study/garcia-grisman-alt/garcia-grisman-alt.html


Acoustic Oasis has released a "high def master" cut of the original Garcia Grisman album, and a new Garcia Grisman Alternate, comprised of second takes from the same sessions.

This is great news. Acoustic Oasis is doing it right here. There are mp3, flac1644, and flac2496 download options. I couldn't get the dowload manager to work (they may be asking too much of some poor old machines and operating systems), but doing it manually was quick and relatively painless. Things sound great.

My only nudge: do it like jazz and give us the session details. Who, what, when, where, how recorded, etc. etc. etc. The whole enchilada. Why not make more information available? It's getting time for some serious scholarship on Grisman and lots of other, so, please, make future researchers' and biographers' lives easier, and give us data! Be the jazz.

Oh yeah, one more point: all filesets require checksum files that can be verified upon completion of the download in order to confirm file intregrity. Essential.

Garcia Live Volume 1: Live at the Capitol Theatre

http://jerrygarcia.shop.musictoday.com/Dept.aspx?cp=640_57727

Another fuck yeah! The Jerry Garcia Band (Garcia, Kahn, Ozzie Ahlers on keys, and John D'Fonseca on drums) in some filthy fonky stuff at John Scher's (and east coast JGB's) home hall on March 1, 1980. Looks like it won't be out until November. Looks like whatever this new ©2012 Jerry Garcia Family, LLC is, they have also done it right. We have mp3, flac1644 and flac2496 download options. Nice!

These, in addition to the Fantasy release of the Complete July 10-11, 1973 Keystone shows!

Whatever legal logjams were in the way seem to have been busted through. Happy listening!

JGMS July 10-11, 1973 complete

So, Fantasy is going to release the complete July 10-11, 1973 Keystone shows. Hooray!

I'll be able to check my work on these shows. As a reminder:

• 7/10/73: what's on which release
• 7/11/73: what's on which release
• JGMS: Live at Keystone, vol. 1 datings
• JGMS: Live at Keystone, vol. 2 datings
• JGMS: Live at Keystone, vol. 3 (encores) datings