Category: Reviews

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

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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

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec Vol. 1

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Over the last few months, I’ve been trying to up my review game over at Cinema Sentries. I seem to not be writing as much strictly for the blog, so this seems like a good way to keep me in the game. As part of that, I’ve been dipping my toes into other media. CS has a relationship with Fantagraphics, a comics company that puts out a lot of independent stuff. That mostly means books by folks I’ve never heard of, and lots of kind of weird stuff.

I’m not opposed to any of that, but in the past, I’ve been a little reluctant to dive right in because I don’t write a lot of book reviews, and writing about comics is a little bit different. I actually was aware of this one, as my wife is a French nerd and she knows a lot about French books, movies, and culture. They actually made a movie about Adèle Blanc-Sec a few years ago, and I’ve seen it. So grabbing this comic was a no-brainer.

And I quite liked it, and now you can read my review.

A Man Named Rocca (1961) / La Scoumoune (1972)

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If you spend any time at all watching French cinema, then you will no doubt know the name Jean-Paul Belmondo. He was one of the great actors of the French New Wave and remained a popular favorite for decades.

In what seems like a very strange turn of events, he wound up starring as the same character in two different adaptations of the same book, some eleven years apart. Kino Lorber has just released them, and I watched them back to back. It is a fascinating glimpse into the adaptation process. I reviewed them both over at Cinema Sentries.

Waves of Lust (1975)

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I don’t know why I still watch exploitation movies. I know why I used to watch them – they are filled with exciting action, violence, and naked flesh, but I can get that anywhere now. Certainly in ways that are far better produced and more interesting than what appears in most exploitation flicks.  But when an offer for a film called Waves of Lust appears to me, I immediately say “yes.” 

I guess I’ll always be a sucker for this stuff. You can read my review of the film (which isn’t bad, actually) over at Cinema Sentries.

Solo (1970)

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One day I may stop singing the praises of Radiance Films, but today is not that day. I love, love, love the way they keep bringing to my attention films that I’d otherwise never hear of in nice sets, loaded with extras.

Solo is a terrific little French thriller about a couple of young revolutionaries in over their heads and how a jewel thief winds up lending them a hand.  You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

Birds of Prey (1968)

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Lino Ventura has become one of those actors I keep finding myself watching, almost by accident. He just keeps showing up in the films that I’m watching.  I don’t know why.  But he’s so good I never mind.

In Birds of Prey, he plays a killer hired to assassinate the president of some backwater South American country. Before he can do that, he is forced to wait in a tiny little village for several days, accompanied by a true revolutionary. A kid who will probably replace the president. The kid is idealistic while the killer is old and cynical. Their interactions make up most of the movie, and they are wonderfully played.  The whole movie is great.  You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

Aesthetics of a Bullet (1973)

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I’ve talked about Radiance Films many times in these pages, mostly because I review a lot of their films. They put out international arthouse films that I’ve never heard of, but I always appreciate. Well, mostly. I had a hard time with this one. It is a punk rock film about a pretty horrible person. I appreciated some of the filmmaking but struggled to find anything else to enjoy about it. You can read my full review here.

We Bury the Dead (2025)

we bury the dead bluray

I love me a good zombie movie. We Bury the Dead is a very good, if not particularly original, zombie movie. Daisy Ridley stars as a woman who goes to Australia, where some kind of massive bioweapon was released, killing almost everyone but leaving a few in a zombie-like state. She’s there to help with the cleanup but also to find her husband, who she hopes is still alive (even if he is a zombie). It is a pretty slow-moving film, but I dug it. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.