JGJK: Eisenhower Auditorium, Penn State University, November 16, 1984
Archives of the Penn State Daily Collegian are available online at http://digitalnewspapers.libraries.psu.edu/, which might prove useful for others (I have found lots of Jerry-related stuff).
Just for giggles, I thought I'd post this little snippet from the police blotter over the weekend of the Jerry Garcia/John Kahn show (Robert Hunter opening) at Eisenhower Auditorium on 11/16/84:
Tee hee.
Good scheme, too bad it didn't work. Also funny to me because it's so east coast. Hard to imagine anyone at, say, CU-Boulder thinking a university blazer would draw attention away from them. :)
Lost Live Dead and related have inspired me. Sorry to steal your schtick! I don't get into depth (nor turn a phrase) the way LLD does, but it sure is fun, anyway.
So the SF Chronicle is almost certainly loaded with stuff of interest. Unfortunately, unless I am missing something it does not seem to be available electronically prior to 1985. The San Francisco Public Library has paper indexes back into the 70s, and fiche indexes from before then. These latter seem unreliable at best. The former (paper indexes) are fine, but obviously don't pick up things like ads or concert listings. So it's really a needle-in-a-haystack resource, involving the dizzying and eye-drying work of scanning microfilm, the quality of which ranges from OK to illegible.
Anyway, one of the really good articles I found, based on a lead (though I think it had a mistake in it) from David Dodd's quite amazing annotated bibliography (1), is the Ellwood one referenced below (2). There is so little known about these early Garcia gigs that every little piece of information is golden.
correction: I had this listed as the Chronicle, but of course Elwood was the music guy at the San Francisco Examiner. Same situation applies, a fortiori.
The article references a Jerry Garcia - Merl Saunders gig "last night" (i.e., 2/11/72) at "a far out club, Bo Jangles, at 709 Larkin" (San Francisco, CA 94109). It notes that Armanda [sic] Peraza was present on congas and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. There is no information about tunes played.
This article interests me for a few reasons.
First, until now there has not been a show for this date at the Jerry Site (TJS). I have remedied this.
Second, there is a show dated 2/12/72 at TJS, with location given as Bojangles Club, Sacramento. This listing seems to derive from the list of uncirculated Betty Boards, and gives Roger "Jellyroll" Troy as one of the guests. A few thoughts on this.
2a. Although TJS goes so far as to say that "The venue is known today as Beau's Bojangles", I certainly wonder whether this show was actually played in SF. It always seemed odd to see that Sacramento show in the mix this early - this band at this time was pretty exclusively a Bay Area (and largely a San Francisco) phenomenon. Given that they played at a Bo Jangles in SF on 2/11, I suppose its possible that the "Iranian combine" that ran the place also had one in Sacto ... stranger things could have happened.
2b. We are also left to wonder whether the "2/12" show is actually the 2/11 show discussed by Elwood. A listen to the tape, to check for the presence of Peraza, might shed some light, but at this point that's not one of my options. So this remains an open question.
As an upshot on this point #2, I'll just work under the assumption that JGMS played a Friday (11) and Saturday (12) engagement for Bo Jangles. I'll list the Friday show as SF and will leave the Saturday listing as Sacramento unless more evidence emerges. Perhaps I'll put a note on TJS listing to mention the uncertainty around the Sacramento location.
Third, in a case of Serendipity, Corry had asked in comments on the NRPS ca. 11/1/70 post whether the Both/And club was still open as late as late 1970. While it could well have opened and shut and taken on various permutations, I simply note that Elwood's article also mentions a gig "at the relatively sedate and traditional Both-And jazz club". So something by that name was running in early 1972, FWIW.
References
(1) 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.
(2) Elwood, Philip. 1972. Distinctive Variety of Musical Styles. San Francisco Examiner, February 12, 1972, p. 8
--> -->
The San Francisco section of the "From the Music Capitals of the World" Feature in the November 21, 1970 issue of Billboard (p. 25, available via Google Books), written by Mary Turner, indicates that the New Riders of the Purple Sage performed at an event called "Marathon 70," put on by Both/And Productions, over the Halloween Weekend of 1970. The image is below. We know that GD and NRPS were at SUNY Stony Brook on Halloween night (Saturday). We also know that the GD were in Port Chester from Thursday, November 5th.
Did the NRPS (and Jerry) come back to the Bay Area rather than just hanging around the east coast? Hard to say for sure, but there seems to be enough evidence (fragmentary, but independent) suggesting that they did, and thus that this gig might well have happened.
First, the Jerry Site lists a Monday, November 2nd "Jerry Garcia and Friends" show at the Harding Theater, SF, based on information contributed by Joey Newlander from a listing in the Berkeley Barb. TJS further speculates that the gig did not happen, what with the GD out east. OK.
Second, the PERRO tapes (in this case, sessions for David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name) include at least one cut ("Cowboy Movie") said to have been laid down at Heider's in SF on Tuesday, November 3rd. (This has always been important to me, since that was the date of my birth and I *love* the idea that that's what Jerry was doing on that day!)
Third, Good Times (v.3 n.43, 10/30/70, p. 16) ran a listing for a Garcia/Saunders show at the Matrix on this same night, Tuesday, November 3rd.
Fourth, though not independent of #2, I also have a PERRO session listed for Wednesday, November 4th, though I have no notes on where that information might have come from.
Now we have a fifth piece of evidence in the indication that NRPS might have been back in the Bay Area in between Stony Brook and Port Chester.
I am going to go ahead and speculate that the "Halloween Weekend" notion plus the gigs seemingly booked for every other night during this short window, both militate in favor of a Sunday, November 1, 1970 listing.
I'd like to hear from anyone who knows more about this event ("Marathon 70") and/or the Both/And. Thoughts?
In an earlier post I had asked about a show scheduled for Folsom Field at CU-Boulder on August 28, 1977. Turns out it was for a festival known as "Sun Day" (this being Sun Day 3), with the following on the bill: Willie Nelson; Emmylou Harris; Dave Mason; Jerry Jeff Walker; Stillwater; Jerry Garcia. This was going to be co-organized by Feyline and the CU Program Council. I originally became aware of this through a Calendar listing in Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, August 27, 1977, p. 22D.
The Boulder Daily Camera had one earlier mention that I found, regarding a hassle about the provision of emergency medical services (Linda Cornett, "Ambulance Debate Rises in Plans for CU Concert," Boulder Daily Camera, August 14, 1977, p. ??)
This didn't sink the gig, though, at least not according to published reports. It turns out that an illness in the Willie Nelson group and "personnel issues" in the JGB led to the cancellation. The notice speculates that these latter are in connection with Tutt and Elvis, the latter of whom died a bit before the scheduled gig. It also notes, however, that ticket sales had been slow. May have been win-win-win all around to cancel it. For the skinny, see "Big Concert Canceled; Borrow Some Records," Boulder Daily Camera, August 19, 1977, p. 17.
I plan on poking through the Program Council archives to see if there's more to the story, just for giggles.
A mention in the "From the Music Capitals of the World" feature in Billboard, September 11, 1971, p. 22 says that "Columbia's New Riders of the Purple Sage play the Manhattan Center Ballroom, Wednesday (15) at 34th St. & 8th Ave."
Hard to know what to make of this. That particular week was a blank slate until recently, when in my searching around I discovered listings and such for the following gigs:
Friday 9/10/71, JGMS @ Harding Theater, SF (1)
Thursday 9/16/71, JGMS @ Keystone Korner, SF (2)
Friday 9/17/71 and Saturday 9/18/71, NRPS @ Friends and Relations Hall, SF (2, 3)
So while it's not impossible that JG could have gone east to play with the NRPS on 9/15/71, it seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it? I'd be grateful for thoughts and/or leads about how to figure out whether this happened. Who would have been promoting Manhattan Center gigs at that time?
References:
(1) listing in Hayward Daily Review, September 16, 1971, p. 25.
(2) Oakland Tribune, September 15, 1971, p. 25
(3) there is also a poster IIRC.
I love El Dorado Canyon. Driving there today, the Flatirons just seemed to be stretching and reaching for the sky under the brilliant autumn sun. Never particularly noticed how their angling back from town gives them that "reaching" feel.
Driving back, just basked in the golden glow. Man it's nice up there.
Pretty nice water. From Boulder, 93 to 6 to the second bridge. Caught some pretty good-sized (for me) rainbows. Used a little rainbow something-or-other nymph on top and did OK with big green beadheads on the bottom. Needed some split-shot but couldn't find it, so had to rely on the big fellas just sinking.
Was told that it would be good where the river curves around the mountain, since the road goes through a tunnel and few venture out that far. Good-looking water, but I didn't do great that far over. I was getting tired, could partly be it.
May try this again if weather is still good over the next month, because flows seemed ample enough to hold up for a bit yet.
There has been a lot of confusion over the years about the Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders shows played at the Ash Grove (8162 Melrose Avenue, Santa Monica, CA) in May of 1973. The Jerry Site has listed a pair of shows (early/late) on 5/23 and a pair of shows (early/late) on 5/30.
I believe there were two shows on 5/29, two shows on 5/30, and none on 5/23. I’ll make the case in this post.
Evidence for 5/23: questionable
What evidence is there for a 5/23 dating? As far as I can tell, there is only the Jerry Site’s listing and a 69-minute audience recording with the following:
MAR (Taped by Night Crew, Sony ECM-22Ps > Sony 770) > 2R >playback on Akai GX-4000D > ART DI/O > Egosys Waverterminal 2496 > HHb 800 master CD > one or two CD gens > HP 9350i extraction using EAC (v0.9 beta 4) > tracking using CD Wave (v1.6) > sector boundary verification using shntool (v1.01) > .shn encoding using mkwACT (v0.97 beta 1). A > D by David Minches, CD > SHN by jjoops.
Single Disc (6 tracks, 69:12)
1. //It Takes a Lot to Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry [7:30#] [1:07]
2. Expressway [11:33] [1:45]
3. Money Honey [6:21] [2:18]
4. Little Bit// of Righteousness [18:39#] [1:52]
5. Like a Road [10:33] [0:15]
6. That's Alright Mama [6:53] [0:23]
Notes:
d1t01 Train to Cry cuts in, not much missing
d1t04 LBOR brief cut/splice @ 17:29
So, what about this tape? Harvey Kaslow (one of the “Night Crew” tapers, with Craig Todd, Rob Bertrando, and others) says that he did not tape this. In email correspondence, Rob Bertrando says “I would guess Bruce Harvey taped it, and I thought the date was 5/30/73.”
I have found no other evidence for a 5/23 show except this tape, around the date of which there is lots of doubt. By contrast, there is strong evidence that there were two nights of two shows each, *and* that these took place on 5/29 and 5/30/73. I’ll make that case now.
Evidence for 5/29 and 5/30
First, Hillburn (1973) makes this mention:
-->“on the way [at the Ash Grove]: Merl Saunders (with Jerry Garcia, May 29-30)”.
Second, Davis (1973), writing in the first week of June 1973, writes the following: "
-->Merle [sic] Saunders, Jerry Garcia, John Kahn and Bill Vitt flew down from San Francisco last week and played two mid-week nights at the Ash Grove to full houses." The "last week" obviously implies the last week of May, and the language can also be read to imply back-to-back nights. (May 29th-30th were Tuesday-Wednesday, by the way.)
Third, most importantly, Merl Saunders, Jr. supplied me with a handbill for the gigs, show dates of 5/29 and 5/30. (Note, too, that George Tickner, later to play with Journey, is listed here.)
Perhaps not QED, but pretty darn close, IMO. I consider the case for 5/29 and 5/30 shows, with no show on 5/23, very near to closed.
There are two remaining issues to clear up, having to do with early/late shows and with the songs played.
Evidence for early and late shows
Bill Greenspan, who was actively seeing Garcia-related shows in the LA-Santa Barbara area around this time, has said that on 5/30 there were not two shows, but a single show with intermission. The evidence does not support this, suggesting instead that there were separately ticketed early and late shows on both nights.
First, McGuinn (1973) alludes to "two evenings of four completely sold-out performances". This implies separately ticketed early and late shows.
Second, Davis (1973) notes that a
-->fter playing a set, “the informal band without a name sat around waiting for one crowd to file out and another to get seated”.
In short, there is pretty strong evidence for early/late shows on two nights (four shows total).
Songs Played
Regarding the songs played, unless more tape turns up it's unlikely that we'll learn much more than what we know. Davis (1973) mentions Train to Cry, Expressway, Money Honey, and “That’s Allright”, all of which are on the tape (assuming the latter is That’s Alright Mama). He also mentions After Midnight. McGuinn (1973) mentions After Midnight, Money Honey, That’s Alright Mama, and Dixie Down.
-->
The only new information here, relative to what we know based on the tape, is that they played "After Midnight". We should probably enter this at the Jerry Site, along with the other tunes represented on the tape that are currently listed as the 5/23/73 late show. I am uncertain whether to change this to 5/29 or 5/30, though ...
Regarding track 4 of the circulating recording, Alan Bershaw had identified it as a jam on Blind Willie Johnson's "I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes", which is how we knew it for some years. But I have verified that it is Merl's "Little Bit of Righteousness."
One other thought about setlist. It's either just dumb luck that the tape we have is of the show that these authors caught and wrote about, or Jerry and Merl were playing more or less the same set (or least sets with the same standards what would be recognizable to the reviewers). I don't have much to add.
REFERENCES
-->Davis, Randall. 1973. Musical Notes.Arcadia Tribune, June 7, 1973, p. 13.
-->Hilburn, Robert. 1973. Rock ‘$’ Rollers … to Coin a Phrase. New York Times, May 19, 1973, p. B7.
-->McGuinn, Jim. 1973. Garcia and Saunders. door 5, 1 (June 14-19), p. 14.
A calendar listing in Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, August 27, 1977, p. 22D, indicates a show on Sunday, August 28, 1977 at Folsom Field in Boulder featuring Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Dave Mason, Jerry Jeff Walker, Stillwater and Jerry Garcia.
I am going to check the Denver/Boulder papers for this. Stay tuned.
In the Canyon, about 10.5 mi. from the Canyon/Broadway intersection. Maybe two hours. Elk Hair Caddis on top with various nymphs down below.
Started slow in some likely-looking water. Thought it was gonna be a dead day. Then started pulling out lots of fishing. Mostly tiny-to-small cutthroats, like this fella:
They fight pretty nicely. Deep salmon/red coloring inside the gills and along the bottom.
Anyway, probably ended up with ten fish in 2 hours, and had a pretty nice time. Still having a hard time finding water that rivals my home water. And still (and increasingly) pondering what skill differences drive catching the little ones vs. the big ones.
So last year I did the South Fork of the Stanislaus from the bridge in Strawberry. This year I wanted to hit some more remote terrain and so was asking around about access points to the Middle Fork. There was a campground (can't remember name ... bad blogger!) about 8 mi. down from Pinecrest that was recommended, but I figured that being near a campground it'd get fair pressure. Unhelpful Old Forest Service Guy wasn't very helpful. Younger Forest Service Guy recommended Beardsley Reservoir. Fellow camper said he had gotten advice to try the Clark Fork, so that's where I went.
Feh. Nice scenerey, water was quite low and pleasant. Caught about 10 "fish" in 2.5 hours, but they were absolutely tiny. Not so much joy in it when they're so little. Not to mention I had the stomach bug that ravaged our tent circle and just wasn't feeling enthused.
Next year I am either trying Beardsley or maybe some of the obscure forest service roads revealed by the map.
Merl Jr. said that the tape to find would be Garcia/Saunders at the Great American Music Hall on a day that Crosby, Stills and Nash had played a Day on the Green. He says that Jack Casady and Stephen Stills came over after the CSN gig and jammed with Jerry and Merl and that it was amazing. 7/14/74 fits the bill - JGMS were at GAMH, and CSN were playing a Day on the Green.
Interestingly, I found an ad from the San Francisco Phoenix which lists two shows for the date, starting at 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. Very unusual. I wonder if it was planned ahead of time that Casady and Stills would come by?
Had a great Father's Day outing here. Flyshop in Silverthorne, Cutthroat Anglers, made it seem like it'd be a tough day. Probably was, but I had some decent action and caught two fish. Was using a 14 or 16 golden stonefly nymph (caught one on that) with a big (probably 10) hot pink San Juan worm about 10" below. Used 5x leader and tippet.
Nabokov's Lolita. Voltaire's Candide. Adam Fawer's Improbable. Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. Stephen King's The Stand. Shelley's Frankenstein (1818 text). Stephenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (can't believe I never read this before -- incredible!) Several short stories by Joseph Conrad. Escohotado's A Brief History of Drugs.
Re-reading Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, which I had read when I was 15 or so. I wanted to see if I enjoyed the philosophical bent more now than I did then.
Eh ... it's OK. Neat premise (all 36 billion humans who ever lived resurrected on the banks of a 10-million mile long river, with their material needs cared for and the possibility of permanent death initially gone). Allows him to really look at social/cultural interactions and evolution in a little laboratory, with the material side more or less controlled (though of course people still pursue more and more material stuff, especially at first). But the prose is rather stilted and the whole thing is a little sophomoric. Oh well, I guess that's why it's science fiction, not usually my preferred genre.
Read Jose Saramago's Blindness a month or so ago. It was recommended by a Barnes & Noble guy when I asked for something "dystopic, preferably post-apocalyptic," and he did a pretty good job for me. Right on, B&N guy! The writing style is haunting and beautiful, the story and characters fascinating.
Seemingly new-to-circ OAITW show via Matt Smith and the Pacific Northwest crew running at Lossless Legs. Fun stuff. Richard Greene is there, which puts it to April-May '73, in all likelihood. It's also in a goodish sized hall, not the Keystone or Boarding House or whatever. My own guess is either Santa Barbara 4/12/73 or one of the Oregon shows in May (5/8 or 5/9), but that's just base speculation.
Pat Lee suggests that the fact that the reels were on BASF tape stock is consistent with the Santa Barbara soundman stuff (cf. 4/20/74, 4/24/74 GASB shows that Will Boswell also had on reel from that source). Funny thing is that the 4/12/73 wasn't even listed on TJS until it was added based on info from Richard Greene, and now this tape cames along that might well be it.
