Category: Jerry Garcia

Show Review: Jerry Garcia Band – San Francisco, CA (01/11/82)

Jerry Garcia Band
01-11-1982
Old Waldorf
San Francisco, CA

Set 1

How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
That’s What Love Will Make You Do
Simple Twist Of Fate
I Second That Emotion >
Deal

Set 2
The Way You Do The Things You Do
I’ll Take A Melody
Valerie
Harder They Come
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down >
Dear Prudence >
Tangled Up In Blue

Jerry Garcia – electric guitar, vocals
Bill Kreutzmann – drums
Jimmy Warren – keyboards
John Kahn – electric bass
Julie Stafford – vocals
Liz Stires – vocals
Melvin Seals – keyboards

The Midnight Cafe’s Review

A few weeks back, a friend of mine asked me if I had a copy of a Jerry Garcia Band show from 1982. I can’t remember the exact date, but I didn’t have it. I looked it up on bt.etree and found a copy. As that site often does for Jerry and Grateful Dead shows, they had bundled this particular show with several others. Being of the opinion that you can never have too much Jerry, I went ahead and downloaded all of them. Then I figured, in for a penny in for a pound, and I downloaded all of the sets of shows from 1982. I randomly listened to a few shows (or more like snippets from a few shows) and found that I really liked them. So, I thought it would be fun to listen to and review them all.

Starting in late 1981 and running through the Spring of 1982, Jerry was in and out of the studio recording what would become his last studio record as a solo artist, Run for the Roses. Some of those sessions exist on tape, but I’ll be skipping them for now, as well as all the shows he played with the Grateful Dead during this time.

He’d play quite a few of the songs that make it onto the record throughout the year. The album contains about half original songs and half covers.

Jerry gigged a lot in 1982. By my count, he played some 86 gigs as a solo artist, mostly with the Jerry Garcia Band, but some 23 times with only John Kahn on bass (and once with Bob Weir for the David Letterman show). In contrast, the Grateful Dead only played 63 times this year.

It is interesting to look at the Grateful Dead dates right next to Jerry’s solo gigs. He began the year in the studio, then played this gig at the Old Waldorf and again at the same venue two days later. Then he’s back in the studio for a bit and then spends the first half of February gigging around California. Then the Dead play some California shows then the Jerry Band does. There is a lot of that throughout the year where the Dead will do some gigs, and Jerry will fill in the holes.

The Dead do a proper tour in April and then a big one in July-August. And then they close out the year, as they usually did, with a New Year’s run in Oakland. The Jerry Garcia Band does a short East Coast tour in June, and then just him and John Kahn do several gigs in the Northwest to finish the month out. The Jerry Band is back at it for a big tour in October and November.

This is the kind of thing I normally don’t pay attention to. I didn’t follow Jerry while he was alive and have just listened to shows throughout my adulthood without much thought to where he was playing. This year might not be abnormal; I don’t know. But I do find it fascinating.

This show is a good one, but nothing spectacular. Etree lists two sources for this show – 84012 and 20687, both presumably coming from the same soundboard tape. 20687 was cleaned up a little bit by the misSHN in the rain people.

The opener, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” has the front half cut off; only 1:32 of it survives. “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door is very mellow. Jerry plays and sings with sincerity, but softly. The keys lightly tinkle.

“That’s What Love Will Make You Do” from this period has become one of my favorite songs. The rhythm section creates this wonderful, danceable beat; Jerry usually sings with passion, and his guitar typically soars. This version is good, but not quite amazing. The keys do this thing where they switch from a typical piano sound to something more synth-like, then to a more organ sound.

“Simple Twist of Fate” at first puts us back into mellow ballad territory. Then Kahn takes a long, noodling bass solo then Jerry goes at it with his guitar, wailing with a very high-pitched, screeching tone. Then it settles back down, and there are some really nice keyboard moments.

I can’t remember when I first heard Smokey Robinson’s “I Second That Emotion.” Since my mother was a big Motown fan, I assume I heard the original long before I even knew who Jerry Garcia was. What I do remember is that in the mid-1990s I discovered the newsgroup rec.music.gdead; with it I found my people. At the time, it was common for deadheads within that newsgroup to respond to a post that they agreed with by saying, “I Second That Emotion.” I loved that, and the saying entered my vocabulary for many years.

Somewhere around this time, I heard a live version of the song by the Jerry Band, and it quickly became a favorite. They do a great job with it here. Jerry’s voice sounds a little weak, maybe even a little hoarse, but he absolutely nails the first solo. The band follows right behind. At some point, Jerry seems to just say “screw it” to the vocals, and they just jam on the thing for a while. Eventually, he’ll return to the song and sing it with gusto.

When I first started listening to the Jerry Garcia Band, I loved it when they would play Grateful Dead songs. I think that was because I didn’t really know his solo stuff or the cover songs he tended to play. There was always some Motown song that I knew or a Dylan cover, but a lot of those songs were unfamiliar to me. I was also still new to the Dead, and these were the days when you couldn’t stream every show they ever played, so I liked hearing their songs in any version I could get.

But these days I find it a little annoying when the Jerry Band plays a Dead tune. If I wanted to hear those songs, I can listen to a Dead show. When Jerry is with his other band, I want to hear different songs. Which is to say, they play “Deal” in this set, and it is perfectly fine.

“I’ll Take a Melody” is not one of my favorite covers, but this is a very fine version. Garcia and keyboardist Melvin Seals do some wonderful interplay on it. Seals had just joined the band about a year before (and would wind up staying right up until Jerry died), but he was already perfectly integrated into the band.

“Valerie” is another song from Run for the Roses, and it is also a song I’ve never particularly liked.

“The Harder They Come” is a lot of fun. Somewhere in the middle, Seals starts playing really fast, and then Jerry just follows along. It is like speed rock for a moment. Then it slows down to a more standard tempo. I don’t know what keyboards Seals was playing, but it switches from a standard piano sound to something electric and out of a science fiction movie, to more of an organ sound. I dig it.

“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is perfectly fine. As is “Dear Prudence” and “Tangled Up In Blue.” Prudence has a lovely gentle jam in the middle.

And that’s the gig. As I said, it is a good show. Not mind-blowing, but good. I know we’ll hear some even better shows in the days to come. I can’t wait.

—

Long ago, I created a playlist called “Great Bootleg Songs.” That’s a pretty boring name for a playlist, but it is also pretty self-explanatory. When I listen to a show and discover an incredible performance on a song, I throw it into this playlist. Whenever I don’t know what to play, I can put that playlist on and dig some great live music. I thought I’d start doing a thing at the end of these things, telling you which songs, if any, from this review deserve to go into that playlist.

Show Highlights:

I Second that Emotion
I’ll Take a Melody

Source info:

Source 1: SHNID 84012

MSC > DAT > Panasonic SV-3700 playback > M-Audio Audiophile 2496 to Wavelab 5.0 mastering with iZotope Ozone 3 > CDWAV1.9 > FLAC (level 8).

Comments: Very clean SBD with several pauses between tunes crossfades were applied to cover.
Flaws:
d1t01 – most of beginning of track is missing
d1t04 – beginning clipped.
d1t06 – Deal is cut.
d2t04 – First two verses are missing.
d2t06 – Tangled Up In Blue is painfully cut.

Source 2: SHNID 20867

MSC>DAT >CDR>WAV>SHNv3. Multiple track cuts – see info file for details.

Comments: Very clean SBD with several minor cuts.
Flaws:
d1t01 – most of beginning of track is missing
d1t04 – beginning clipped.
d1t05 – pop @ 01:32, 01:34 removed using pencil tool, SF6,
d1t06 – Deal is cut.
d2t05 – First two verses are missing.
d2t07 – Tangled Up In Blue is painfully cut.

Thanks to J.Powell for CDR source. DAE(EAC0.9b4, offset corrected, secure mode, QPS QUE 2410)>removal of pop/silent gaps(SF6)>tracking(cdwav)>sector boundaries confirmed(shntool)>SHN(shorten3.4) via C.Ladner.

Another installment of the misSHN in the rain division of TMNSP, 11/03.

Links, Etc.

Jerry Base entry for this show.

Jerry Garcia’s Middle Finger has some nice info about it as well.

2cb38a77-f136-4f7a-b466-6459e8025a7c-510x979 a43716b2-fd55-4806-b1d0-b4425cca4f6a-517x276 588dcf21-5641-4f15-9261-e4ea3ea55d09-800x442

Jerry Garcia Band: GarciaLive, Volume One – Passaic, NJ (03/01/80)

image host

Since I’m attempting to review all of the Grateful Dead’s Dick’s Picks series, I thought it would be fun to review some of the Jerry Garcia solo releases as well. Ultimately, I’d like to do reviews of officially released live albums from all my favorite artists (plus some unofficially released ones). I’m still trying to figure out how best to do that. I originally thought I needed to give each performance a good listen three different times to properly review them, but that is taking too long. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t listen to music like I used to. It is mostly done in the car, and I don’t spend that much time in the car to be able to listen to a show three times before I review it. Not if I’m going to do more than one review a month anyhow.

These reviews won’t necessarily be proper ones then. More like impressions. I’ll just tell you what songs I enjoyed, and maybe a few that I didn’t.

I more or less randomly picked up After Midnight: Kean College, 2/28/80, a few weeks back, intending it to be the first Garcia review. I listened to it a couple of times – it is a great record – but then my sister came in from South Korea for a visit. I made her a playlist of songs I figured she’d enjoy because I knew I’d be driving her around a bit. To make things easier to play, I removed the Garcia album (and all other music) from my phone and added all her songs. When she left, I couldn’t remember which Garcia album I had been listening to. I wanted to give it one more listen before I wrote a review. I knew it was from a performance in 1980, saw that this GarciaLive disc was from that year, and I added it to my phone. Pretty quickly, I realized I had the wrong disc, but I just went for it.

Which is just another example of why I won’t be listening to these albums multiple times before I write my own thoughts.

I don’t know why the Garcia releases changed their name from Pure Jerry to GarciaLive (or why they are sometimes called something completely different). The first volume of the GarciaLive came after a four-year gap between official releases, one of the longest gaps since they started releasing them regularly.

Jerry Garcia’s main band, of course, was the Grateful Dead, but nearly from the beginning, he was doing side projects with lots of different people, under a variety of names. This more or less coalesced into the Jerry Garcia Band by the mid-1970s, though the band members regularly changed. 1980 is a really interesting period as it has Johnny d’Fonseca, who only lasted a few months on drums, and Ozzie Ahlers, who didn’t last much longer on keyboards.

One of the things I love about the Jerry Band shows is that they regularly played smaller venues than the Grateful Dead. While Jerry’s solo audiences did grow over time, they were routinely still smaller than what the Dead were playing to. In 1980, the Grateful Dead were playing coliseums and civic centers with capacities in the tens of thousands, while the Jerry Garcia Band was still gigging in small concert halls. On tour, he often played places with capacities of a couple of thousand, but in the San Francisco Bay area, he still often performed in places like The Stone or the Keystone in Berkeley that could only fit a few hundred. How amazing would it have been to see Jerry Garcia in a place like that?

I also love that the Jerry Band allowed Garcia to play lots of songs he wouldn’t necessarily be able to perform with the Dead. While they usually would play one or two Dead tunes in a set, and sometimes something from one of Garcia’s solo albums, they mostly did cover songs. They’d play old Motown tunes, reggae, jazz, early rock and roll, and so much more. Bassist John Kahn’s wife once noted that it was Kahn who often brought Garcia songs to play.

Which finally brings us to this show. This was the closing performance of a multi-week tour for the Jerry Garcia Band on the East Coast. It opens with an excellent version of the Grateful Dead classic “Sugaree.” Garcia takes a nice solo early on, then Ahlers gets his turn with some synth-heavy keys, and it closes out with another boisterous solo by Garcia.

That’s another thing I love about the Jerry Band – it is very much Garcia’s band. While Jerry was the biggest star of the Grateful Dead, the band was truly a cohesive whole. They played together. They listened to each other and had an uncanny ability to intertwine their individual notes into something singular. Garcia often soloed, but the band wasn’t just backing him up or playing behind him; they were making music together. From everything I’ve read, Garcia treated everyone in the JGB kindly – he paid them well and listened to their ideas – but there is no doubt this was his band. His name was on the marquee, and the audience was there to listen to him play. For the most part, the band is there to back him up. But Garcia also gives them time to shine. The keyboards often get a solo part, and sometimes even John Kahn will get a solo.

For the first few songs on the early show, Garcia’s guitar has a strange tone. I’m not a musician, I don’t have the technical knowledge to explain it, but it sounds a little high at times to me and screechy. By the time they are playing Bob Dylan’s “A Simple Twist of Fate,” it has gotten better, warmer somehow. The performance of that song is very emotional. You feel the sadness of the song in Garcia’s playing. He absolutely nails the final solo.

Ozzie Ahlers has a beautiful solo at the beginning of Jimmy Cliff’s “Sitting Here In Limbo,” and then the band really pulls together with a wonderful bit of cohesive jamming in the middle. When I was listening to After Midnight: Kean College, 2/28/80, I fell in love with that performance of “That’s What Love Will Make You Do.” It is a brilliant version. This one isn’t nearly as good, but it’s still pretty damn great. Kahn’s basslines really stand out. The keyboards get a little crazy with it. The cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” is super fun with some good funky riffs.

Robert Hunter was the opening act for this show. He opened most shows on this tour. Apparently, Rachel Sweet was scheduled to be the opening act for this tour. She did perform a couple of shows, but then disappeared, and Hunter replaced her. I wasn’t able to find any information on why she left. The Hunter set is not included in this release, but he did come out and play with Jerry on two songs, “Tiger Rose” and “Promontory Rider.” I love Robert Hunter. He wrote some of my favorite lyrics. But he is not a great singer or guitar player. I have some unofficially released recordings of his solo shows, and they aren’t great. I mean, they aren’t bad, and it is cool to hear him perform the songs that he wrote. Those shows are mostly him by himself on a guitar, and they do not blow my mind. But these two songs with the Jerry Band backing him are terrific.

It all concludes with a scorching cover of Peter Rowan’s “Midnight Moonlight’ and a soulful rendition of The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence.”

If I’m being honest, I think After Midnight: Kean College, 2/28/80 has the edge over this release. It has more fire in it. Maybe the band was just tired after a long tour. I don’t know. But this is a very good show. I’ve not spent a lot of time with the Jerry Garcia Band in the early 1980s, but these two releases are definitely going to change that.

Here’s the track listing

Jerry Garcia Band
Capitol Theatre
Passaic, NJ
03/01/90



Disc 1
Early show:

  1. “Sugaree” (Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter) – 14:33
  2. “Catfish John” (Bob McDill, Allen Reynolds) – 9:56
  3. “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” (Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, Eddie Holland) – 9:05
  4. “Simple Twist of Fate” (Bob Dylan) – 16:16

Disc 2
Early show continued:

  1. “Sitting in Limbo” (Jimmy Cliff, Guillermo Bright-Plummer) – 12:40
  2. “That’s All Right” (Arthur Crudup) – 8:09
  3. “Deal” (Garcia, Hunter) – 8:22

Late show:

  1. “Mission in the Rain” (Garcia, Hunter) – 12:50
  2. “That’s What Love Will Make You Do” (Henderson Thigpen, James Banks, Eddy Marion) – 8:56

Disc 3
Late show continued:

“Dear Prudence” (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) – 10:22
“Russian Lullaby” (Irving Berlin) – 15:39
“The Harder They Come” (Jimmy Cliff) – 11:47
“Tiger Rose” (Robert Hunter) – 4:10
“Promontory Rider” (Robert Hunter) – 6:10
“Midnight Moonlight” (Peter Rowan) – 8:39

Orenette Coleman – Oakland, CA (02/23/93)

Ornette Coleman and Prime Time
February 23, 1993
Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum
Oakland, California

This is a tagged version of shnid: 133737
Opened for the Grateful Dead, you can find the Dead show here.

Source: Aud > DATs
taper and gear unknown
Transfer: DAT 60ES > M-Audio Audiophile USB > WAV > Flac
transfer jbraveman@hotmail.com August 2005
seeded DaD August 2005

Disc 1
1.Song X/La Capella
2. P.P. (Piccolo Pesos)
3. Kathleen Gray
4. Bach Prelude
5. Dancing in Your Head
6. Spelling the Alphabet
7. Sleep Talk
8. 3 Wishes **

** with Jerry Garcia

Notes: Average sounding audience recording. Most likely from taper-section, which was behind the soundboard. I guessed at the tracking based on the audience applause. No obvious digital glitches noted. Any help with setlist is appreciated.

Grateful Dead set can be found here: http://www.archive.org/audio/etree-details-db.php?id=13713
Ornette sits in with the Dead for the second half of the second set.

Olatunji & His Drums of Passion – Petaluma, CA (02/15/87)

Olatunji & His Drums Of Passion
February 15, 1987
Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium
Petaluma, CA

**Benefit For World Music In Schools**

Oya
Fire On The Mountain
K’rae K’rae
Unknown Song
Akiwawa
Dance To The Beat Of My Drum
Loyim, Loyim
Ife Loya L’miye

Guests:
Jerry Garcia (guitar)
Mickey Hart (drums)
Carlos Santana (guitar)
Hamza El Din (tar)
Bobby Vega (bass)

This is a tagged version of shnid: 77836

Recording Info:
SBD -> Cassette Master (Maxell MX90)

Transfer Info:
Cassette Master (Sony TC-WE475) -> Sony R500 (Pass Through) ->
SEK’D Prodif Plus -> Samplitude Professional v8.01 -> FLAC
(2 Discs Audio / 2 Discs FLAC)

Transferred and Edited By Charlie Miller
charliemiller87@earthlink.net
January 3, 2006

Notes:
— Thanks to Paul Scotton and Joanni Walker for the tapes.

Setlist:
This is what is listed on the Thejerrysite.com, but it is incomplete
and doesn’t match the order of the Master Cassettes.

Tagging notes:
Show information is embedded within the header of each flac file.
It will display on any player capable of directly playing flac files.
If converted to wav during processing, all tags will be stripped,
however audio data will remain unaffected.
If you must transcode to a lossy format, do so directly Flac > Lossy.
Use ffp to validate audio integrity.
Md5 values will change if tagging is altered.
A Mills 8/29/17

Setlist:
Hamza El-Din

01 introduction
02 Angesigu
03 Shahadag Og
04 Unknown
05 Ollin Arrageed

Babatunde Olatunji

06 Unknown
07 Akiwowo
08 The Beat of My Drum
09 Loyin Loyin
10 Odun De! Odun De!
11 Ife L’oju L’aiye
12 Unknown
13 band introductions
14 Oya
15 Fire on the Mountain
16 Unknown
17 Se Ani A Fe L’amo Kere Kere
18 Ara Me Lo

Babatunde Olatunji set with Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Carlos Santana, and Bobby Vega

Jerry Garcia Band – Hampton, VA (11/09/91)

Jerry Garcia Band
Hampton Coliseum
Hampton, Virginia
November 9, 1991

This is a flac encoded & tagged version of shnid: 4368
Schoeps FOB Schoeps CMC3/mk4 (ortf handheld in “sweet spot”)>Oade Mic Pre>Sony D7 >Master DAT>CD(no intermediate DAE)>EAC>SHN

Disk 1:

Set I

1. How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You
2. He Ain’t Give You None
3. C’est La Vie (You Never Can Tell)
4. Run for the Roses
5. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
6. Second That Emotion
7. My Sisters And Brothers
8. Ain’t No Bread In The Breadbox

Disk 2:

Set II

1. Bright Side of the Road
2. Shining Star
3. Waiting For A Miracle
4. Band Intros, Think
5. I Shall Be Released
6. Don’t Let Go
7. Midnight Moonlight
8. Encore: Wonderful World

Jerry Garcia Band:

Jerry Garcia – guitar
John Kahn – bass
Melvin Seals – keyboards
David Kemper – drums
Gloria Jones – vocals
Jaclyn LaBranch – vocals

special guest
Bruce Hornsby – electric piano (entire show)