Grateful Dead Co-Billings

Based on a discussion at Lossless Legs, I generated my own list of openers for the GD. This isn't really openers, so much as acts that were co-billed. In many cases, GD was opening for someone else. But given my Garciacentrism, and various technical limitations, this was the easiest way for me to generate a rough-and-ready list.

Additions, corrections, etc. welcomed!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16_atDKQStYhseTEFUZldfJx2gM5dh0qC-iK7czKG4W8/edit?usp=sharing

Red Rocks

Saw something in some ca. '84 GD band meeting minutes where Weir says they should move heaven and earth to play Red Rocks. Spent some time with one of the '83 gigs, and now running 9/7/85, and boy oh boy are they good. I hadn't recalled 9/7/85 being this good. Jerry sounds very together, his voice much better than I recall from just a few days before on the last Cryptical attempt (9/3/85).

And this, my friends, is a stellar recording: https://archive.org/details/gd1985-09-07.mtx.seamons.fix.92521.sbeok.flac16

Garcia's Early '82 Tax Tour (Counterfactual)

More counterfactual history from a document in the GD Archives (ms332, ser2, box5), though I have seen it through another means as well.

This is a central piece of evidence, along with the Return of Ronnie Tutt tour in late '81 and a few other things, showing that this period marks a real effort to take care of old business. This especially involved disentangling Jerry/JGB and Grateful Dead finances. Though Marin County documents didn't yield any tax liens and such in this period that I could find (unlike 1978), Jerry was definitely having tax and more general money issues around this time, and this tour-that-wasn't, forecast from ca. February 1982, figured centrally in the various planning. (The fact that it didn't happen this way only speaks to the difficulties of taking care of business!)

Altamont Dreams

I have so little time for this hobby these days. I have fallen way behind on my reading, but I really look forward to reading Joel Selvin's Altamont, among other things.

With that in mind, I did want to put down this little tidbit I found in the Grateful Dead Archive at UCSC concerning the December 4-7, 1969 Dead shows at Fillmore West (1). I can't remember if there are additional pages of this in the folder, but there's a handwritten page which looks basically to be a handwritten (not sure by whom - Lenny? Rock?) contract addendum, probably drafted early December sometime.

Condition. In the event of a free concert, it is agreed that the members of the Grateful Dead and the members of Fillmore West families will participate in said concert and hereby forego the Saturday evening [12/6] performance at the Fillmore West. The Grateful Dead will forego $2,000 - and no comps for Saturday nite.

Condition. Because of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding this coming weekend and the presence of the Rolling Stones, Terry Reid parties -- also the homecoming of the Jeff Plane -- it is hereby requested that the promoter provide the Grateful Dead 75 more comps.

Request. That in the event of a free concert, the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones hereby request permission to use the premises of Fillmore West Saturday nite for a private, by invite only party -- the most memorable evening in San Francisco ballroom history!!

Ahhhh, what might have been!

REFERENCE:
(1) Grateful Dead Archive, Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz, ms 332 Series 2: Business, Box 2, Folder "Contracts - Fillmore West, December 4-7, 1969 - Production".

The Things You Learn ...

... while pawing through stuff at the GD Archives. Case in point: the original Mars Hotel artwork was run over by a UPS truck.

Now you know.

nothing wrong with this 8/21/83 tape

https://archive.org/details/gd1983-08-21.fob.sonyECM220t.kirschner.miller.95687.flac24

Source (FOB) Sony ECM-220T -> Cassette Master (Sony TC-D5M/FujiMetal Tape/Dolby B)
Lineage Cassette Master (Nakamichi DR-1/Dolby B) -> Sound Devices 744T (24bit/96k) -> Samplitude Professional v10.1 -> FLAC/24
Taped by Michael Kirschner
Transferred by Charlie Miller

There is not a freaking thing wrong with this tape. If you ever saw a show at the Frost, you know the sound and feel of it. It's the sam mics Rango used in October '82, I see.

Band is hot as shit and sloppy as hell. Two thumbs up for an August day.

In Praise of Editorial Judgment

So, every year around August 9th I bust out the original So Many Roads boxset and listen to some of my ol' favorites, such as "Whiskey In The Jar" and, of course, the final-show "So Many Roads". I am reminded how pleased I am with the curation that Gans, Jackson and Silberman did on the whole set, but especially the tasteful editing-out of the Garcia's first, flubby guitar pass. I *love* watching it on the video, because the man signals to the rest of the band that he wants another stab at it, always reaching for the gold ring. But I don't need to hear it, and the edited version is so achingly evocative of perfection that I wouldn't have it any other way.

Oh yeah, right where the tape rolls in on the "Beautiful Jam" in the 2/18/71 Port Chester "Dark Star" just absolutely takes my breath away, over and over and over again. A minute or two of heart-rending magic, with Mickey on board but going away, Ned, man oh man.

Dating the Legion’s Demise: A Revisionist Account

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

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

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

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

Conventional Datings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... July 30, 1975 at the GAMH

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

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

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

... August 5, 1975?

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

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

Keystone Berkeley August 1975 calendar, scan courtesy of Ed Perlstein

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

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

Conclusion

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

Rockygrass 2016

http://www.afterfm.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/rocky.grass

From the Picky Deadhead Department

Nice to see people reading around some old posts. My writing is so tortured, but I do still love some of the ground we have covered together. Thanks for your support.


From the Picky Deadhead Department

I happily bought 7/5/73 (Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, GarciaLive 6: July 5th 1973, Lion's Share [Round Records, JGFRR1009, 2016]), knowing more or less exactly what I was getting. I love the aesthetics, I will give the much-appreciated liner notes a good, close read, and the music is well-chosen and sounds nice.

Two complaints.

First, the CDs fit too snugly on the plastic center rings - 2 of 3 cracked when I lifted out the discs. Yes, I am hard on things, but they're too tight.

Second, more delicate, but said with love and admiration for the social compact that has always bound the Dead and its fans, and in the hope that the Garcias might honor it, too. Here's a little "open letter" for your consideration.

Thanks for the music, Round Records. Now, let's talk about your promise that "every effort was made to prepare this performance for release in a manner that honors the spirit of its creation."

GarciaLive 6 is lovely in many ways, but let's recognize that you have repackaged and sold to your customers what we already had - copies of Rob Eaton's 1996 DAT transcriptions of Betty's master reels. Yet, as the Dead have shown with the smash hit July 1978 box set, arrangements truer to the spirit of things were available, and we might have heard fresh transcriptions from those beautiful master reels.

Please consider, in the future, that your fans support you carrying forward Jerry's musical legacy - which, let's face it, is really the heart of the matter. I will buy the musical product that you put on sale, conditional only on not being ripped off.

I don't think Round has crossed the line -- this isn't Steal Your Face, after all, heh heh --  but it's actually pretty close. When Fantasy resold me the same July 10-11, 1973 Keystone material for the fourth time -- vinyl, cassette, CDs, CD boxset -- I confess to having felt a little burned, a case where the Saunders folks advertised wrinkles as creases [Barlow]. I have only myself to blame, I guess I knew, but it was still pretty unfortunate.

I know you aren't getting rich on any of this. I am happy to pay a fair price for a fair product. If that means I pay a little more because the miraculous market demands a little price for those original reels, from my perspective, so be it. I am no audiophile, but I appreciate the beautiful sound of beautiful music, well -recorded and optimally-preserved and -presented.


Thanks, overall, for good product. Again, I love the look, feel, sound, substantiveness of the Round Records releases. I remain a loyal customer. Let's take it to the next level of openness and respect. Use the jazz model for dating - I want every information on every fragment. Don't use a picture of 11/26/77 in a release of 3/22/78 without making a note of it. Tell us about the tape diameter (e.g., 10"), stock (e.g., Scotch ?207?), the speed at which it was recorded (e.g., 15 ips), the record deck (e.g., Betty's Nagra, serial number SL11183), etc. Include it all, make it correct, please & thank you.

Looking forward to 11/8/76, and to more to come.

Sincerely Yours,

JGMF

UCSB '78

Corry has a post on the GD / Warren Zevon / Elvin Bishop / Wahkoo gig at UCSB on July 4, 1978.

I have two followups, a tape beg and a tangential piece of metadata.

First, does anyone have a copy of the Elvin Bishop set, with Jerry sitting in? Apparently there is an aud tape of it.

Second, at http://www.dead.net/show/june-4-1978 commenter jacksondownunder writes

I caught the soundcheck the day before [i.e., 6/3/78]. As I wandered up to the side gate the band was jamming a long instrumental "Dancin'" riff. They eventually stopped and Bobby & Jerry started playing the melody of an old Harry Belafonte song called "Yellow Bird" on twin slide guitars. (I recognized the tune, having heard it on my parent's records hundreds of times.) Then the band started jamming a riff that at the time I presumed was an instrumental vamp of Feat's "Dixie Chicken" (plausible), which is listed above as Iko (possible), but as it followed another Harry Belafonte song it coulda been "Women Smarter" (probable). The half dozen of us kindred strangers made the mistake of applauding and were chased off.

The writer thinks "Women Smarter" more likely, but I am going to go with Iko Iko, which had entered the Dead's rotation in 1977. That's speculative, caveat emptor.


I don't recall that info being in Deadlists, or if that entered the Deadbase 50 updates, but it should be a bit more firmly on the record than I recall it being.

A list of known soundchecks would be fun to see.

Desolation Row

Man, at like 9:30 of this incredible, late-Mydland era Dead version of Dylan's "Desolation Row"(track 4) Garcia thrusts into a scuba-evoking scream of

Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow

harmonizing behind Weir, who delivers a BOAT-contending version. Outstanding!
Thanks to Joani Walker, Paul Scotton, Charlie Miller for the tunes.

! song: "Desolation Row" http://www.whitegum.com/~acsa/songfile/DESOLATI.HTM

GarciaLive 7: JGB from Sophie's, 11/8/76

Fresh tape.

Tracklist, via Nick: http://www.jambase.com/article/donna-jean-godchaux-find-leads-garcialive-volume-seven
Sneak preview of one track via David Browne: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/premieres/hear-jerry-garcia-bands-jubliant-live-mighty-high-from-1976-w431440.

At dead.net. a commenter says

In today's Relix magazine they interview Donna Jean who found some more tapes in a box in one of the Godchaux houses. It's a Betty board. This is November 8th 1976 at Sophie's in Palo Alto. Band was Jerry, Keith & Donna, John Kahn and Ron Tutt. Comes out August 19th. Not seeing it on www.jerrygarcia.com or amazon as advertised. Songs include 'Ride Mighty High' and 'Mission In The Rain'

http://www.dead.net/store/1970s/daves-picks-volume-19#comment-851376

Very cool - looking forward to it.

Full concerts from the Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, 1973-87

RIP, Harvey Lubar

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pressdemocrat/obituary.aspx?n=harvey-sheldon-lubar&pid=180700019

Harvey Lubar was a true Mensch. Farewell.

San Francisco Sessions, 1971

I have been processing information from contracts filed at the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Local No. 6 in San Francisco.

• San Francisco Sessions, 1967-1968
• San Francisco Sessions, 1969
• San Francisco Sessions, 1970
• San Francisco Sessions, 1971
• San Francisco Sessions, 1972

There is nothing representative about these – I have information on stuff that is a degree or two from Garcia, and a few other random tidbits of idiosyncratic interest to me.

A few points of note, for me.

• Danny Cox using the Saunders-Kahn-Vitt (and Garcia!) band in July
• 9/30/71 Garcia and Santana together on a contract
• More busy Jeffersons
• Rowan Brothers getting busy second half of ‘71
• Etc.

List after the jump.

Reaching for the Gold Ring

Uncle Bobo comes on about three minutes in, introduces the band, and they drop into a sublime "Crazy Fingers", one of my favorite songs.

The Final "After Midnight": JGB, March 7, 1983, The Stone

Garcia played J.J. Cale's "After Midnight" a bunch --by my count, 96 times starting 6/30/72-- with a number of different personnel configurations, for about ten years. But then, after Monday March 7, 1983, he just dropped it.

A new fileset of 3/7/83 shows me some killer guitar work in "After Midnight", "Catfish John", and "Tore Up Over You".

Listening notes follow:

Jerry Garcia Band
The Stone
412 Broadway
San Francisco, CA 94133
March 7, 1983 (Monday)
MSC tuppeware CD shnid-135946

--set I (4 tracks, 36:34)--
s1t01. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:30] [0:49]
s1t02. Catfish John [11:48] %
s1t03. [0:10] After Midnight [10:19] [0:03] %
s1t04. Run For The Roses [4:46] (1) [0:08] %

--set II (5 tracks, 59:24)--
s2t01. Mission In The Rain [10:50] [0:31]
s2t02. Tore Up Over You [10:09] [0:25] %
s2t03. Simple Twist Of Fate [15:10] ->
s2t04. Dear Prudence [14:10] ->
s2t05. Midnight Moonlight [8:06] (2) [0:04]

! ACT1: JERRY GARCIA BAND #15c
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: DeeDee Dickerson - vocals;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals;
! lineup: Greg Errico - 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/19830307-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1983-03-07-the-stone-san-francisco-ca/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/102491 (unknown low-gen aud via Brad Tenner); http://etreedb.org/shn/135946 (this fileset).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/Vr6EBXU6KvA2

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/07/stone-mothers-412-broadway-san.html

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html. Note that Corry has not updated this band post in some years, and what he calls JGB #15b reflects an incorrect understanding of when Jacklyn and DeeDee arrived, which was at the start of 1983. So I have dubbed this aggregation JGB #15c.

! personnel: because of the mix, this tape provides a great opportunity to hear Gregg Errico with the JGB. He brings some serious thud to the proceedings. He also just about never misses a beat. The other weird thing I didn't quite pin down is the backing vocals - they were only in on a few numbers, that I could hear.

! historical: Big Saturday night at the Santa Cruz Civic was followed by Sunday and Monday night at the Stone - this is Monday. We'd expect him to sound a little ragged, but he actually sounds quite good ("for the period", he thinks). The guitar work in the first set is exceptionally good - now I want to hear more from this period. The vocals are mostly pretty good for the period, not too much mumbling around lost lyrics. The first set is short and hot - 36 minutes is about as short as a JGB set ever got. It sounds considerably amped up - I wonder if they were late driving over the Golden Gate and picked themselves up with a little too much gusto? The second set actually stretches out to a good length, but it compelled me less. CJ and After Midnight both burn very hotly with some outstanding guitar work. I'd even give them a @@. Tempos a little squirrely, as they can be on a horse scampering to barn, on "Midnight Moonlight". All told, a good night's music for your Monday night $xx.

! R: Source: SBD > ? > CDR > WAV, via the jjoops tupperware collection.

! R: Transfer: Wavelab > CD-Wave > TLH > FLAC 1644 tagged. June 2016.

! R: Seeder Note: "Mostly mono monitor mix (mmmm!) heavy on snare & bass drum. ID-102491 patches as follows; How Sweet 0:00 > 0:49, Run for the Roses entire track, Mission 0:00 > 0:07, Tore Up 2:45 > 3:44, and Simple Twist 0:00 > 3:05. Thanks to Gems and jjoops... enjoy!"

! P: s2t01 CJ is awesome 6 min range, Garcia's fluid lines give John a rubber wall to bounce off of. @ 10 good climax to the "born a slave" verse. Very good. The singing is very forward in the mix, and we can hear Jer sounding all right.

! song: "After Midnight" (s1t03): last known Garcia performance of the JJ Cale classic. JB shows 93 performances as of 3/14/2021.

! P: s1t03 AM I don't like this tempo on the song. I am not hugely fan of the singing here, which is pretty perfunctory. On the other hand, by 4:45 the guitar is *wailing* - this would have left some ears ringing in the club. Long expressive phrases continue through 5:15, he works that really molten sound and is just doing the whole guitar god thing. Whoa. I stopped pricking my ears up after 6 something, but even on the basis of the first six minutes I'd call this very hot.

! s1t04 (1) setbreak announcement mostly inaudible, sounds like "We're gonna take a break for a little while, we'll be back in a little bit".

! P: s1t04 RFTR the ladies don't back him on "chicken to die", as they later would. They aren't even woo-ing during the verses. An interesting arrangement. It's possible that they are just completely absent from the mix, because I am not sure I heard them, but thought I might have, chorus late 1.

! P: s2t01 MITR was good, no major flubs.

! R: s2t02 TUOY in the 4:30ff range Garcia's guitar work shines. The bass is totally inaudible on this recording, drums way forward, organ audible but not loud. There's an argument to be made that TUOY was about as hip-thrusting as guitar got - Hank Ballard -- never hit a note like the one right at 6 in his life -- anyway. Man, very incendiary tone 6:15, glass shredding 6:23. 6:40ff Melvin doing some lead, while guitar comp is still dominant in this monitor tape. Over 7 Melvin is swinging too, taking a good turn -- good piece 7:24ff, classic B3 sound. Man could play some R&B. @ 7:46 Garcia just stomps all over him to the front of the stage for another run - you had your minute, big guy, now step aside. A bit rude. Nice strong finish.

! R: s2t03 STOF when he does another verse, vocals are way loud in the mix. Bass feature 7:06. Having just listened to a 1979 Reconstruction show and then listening to this, four years later, the man's playing has fallen off the face of the earth, his power has dissipated. Garcia re-enters 9:55. That bass feature was lame.

! P: s2t04 DP harmony vocals are back. They have been inaudible most of the tape, need to double check where and not.

! P: s2t05 Mid Moon this is a long version of the song ("for the period", my brain is saying). They could have ended it late 6, but Jerry does the "if you ever feel sorrow" verse again - I feel like he is smiling over to one of the singers, who hit a lyric one extra time that last time 'round - redemption.

! s2t05 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. See ya later on."

in lieu of new content

Let me point you to the JGMF date index at http://db.etree.org/jgmf.

Any show that I have addressed explicitly at any length is indexed there, more or less.

Anyway, take a spin and leave a comment!

Half a mil

Somewhere along the line JGMF crossed over half a million pageviews. Thank you!