The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game

My first working title for Fate Music was The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game. The THGCBTG framing, as I lovingly acronymized it, reflected a slightly darker view of Garcia’s side trips than I presently hold, one in which his damned Midas Touch tainted even his silly bar band, which eventually had to play boomy Madison Square Garden in front of 15,000 whippeted, “Jerrrrrryyyyy!!!!!!”-screaming fans.

As of now, I hold a less tragic view of the whole arc. Yes, even the JGB came to carry Jerry’s Burden, but to such a lesser extent that, relative to the GD, it formed a relative oasis where our hero could drink of some cool American (and other) musical water without too much hassle. He probably even took some pride in bringing Melvin, David and the ladies to the Garden, staying at the Ritz and playing the rest of the east coast gigs via day trips on private jets out of Teterboro, nothing but the best under the expert management of John Scher, all under his own name.

It’s still a good theme, though. And what a song!

If you aren’t in love with Wanda Young after hearing this, you aren’t paying attention. So, for me, the song speaks both to Garcia’s love life and his musical life. Let’s take a closer look.

THGCBTG first entered the observable Garciaverse in 1974, appearing on Jerry’s second eponymous album, which we know as Compliments (Round Records RX 102). I don’t know when/where the track was laid down, though, regarding the when, March 4, 1974 seems possible. The following are credited:

• Jerry Garcia – guitar, vocals
• Larry Carlton – guitar
• Michael Omartian – piano
• Merl Saunders – organ
• John Kahn – bass
• Ron Tutt – drums
• Bobbye Hall – congas 

John Kahn selected the material for Compliments, and his love of Motown, and not least the Funk Brothers‘ instrumentation, knew few bounds, so choosing this Smokey Robinson tune (one of many) made perfect sense. Compliments first brought Ronnie Tutt into Jerry’s orbit, as he has recently noted, and they’d gig steadily together from December 6, 1974 through August 12, 1977. Among these hundreds of gigs, two from the winter of 1975 are known to have included THGCBTG:

Table xxx. Known live Jerry Garcia performances of “The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game”

The song is one of those handful of songs that Jerry seems
to have picked up at occasionally long intervals. I have always
interpreted songs with this pattern, such as Tough Mama, Like A Road,
Let’s Spend The Night Together, some others, as songs that he really
liked. I don’t have any basis for that, in particular, except that,
especially from the turn of 1976 and the predominance of comfort over challenge in his side bands (Reconstruction being a notable exception),
there just weren’t that many setlist variations, not least because
there wasn’t always a lot of rehearsing. For a song to keep coming back,
especially with different bands and their different players (and their
different repertoires) suggests to me that they exercised a certain pull
on our hero (and his musical director, John Kahn).

One of Jerry’s sweeties told me she called this out at Keystone one time in the mid-70s to let him know she was in the room, and of course it’s a song not about the pursuit of music without bullshit, but of a lover. The 2/27/75 version doesn’t circulate and, AFAIK, is unheard outside the Garcia Vault. The 3/7 version does, and I am listening to it now. It’s very, very nice, with a lot more development than the later versions.

Of these, I have also just revisited 4/23/93 (officially released on Shining Star), and raggedy old Jerry gives it a shopworn world weariness which suits it well. The 4/23/93 date, and the inclusion of this version on Shining Star, are both redolent of Deborah Koons, who would “officially” have become Jerry’s main squeeze around this time, for the second time, apparently after some years of chasing. Shining Star, with its execrable cover art done by a friend of hers, was a DK joint all the way, so maybe she found special resonance with this tune, the flipside of her rumored aversion to “Reuben And Cherise”.

So if the early and late versions may speak to romantic pursuits, for me the Reconstruction versions speak more to the theme of Jerry’s Burden. He wanted to hide in Reconstruction, way back in the shadows just playing whatever weird stuff that band was putting out. It seems that he really didn’t want to front that band, as evidenced by insisting on being listed as a “special guest” in the publicity. While I doubt it’s true, and certainly doubt that it represented a conscious choice, for him to sing THGCBTG with Reconstruction expresses the impossibility of truly hiding; he’s after a good time, playing music with good players and for an audience, with a minimum of hassle, but he finds himself straining for those high notes. “It seems like I got caught”, indeed.

update: turns out this is my second post under this title.