Jerry Garcia’s Name-Claiming Journey Beyond the Grateful Dead

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  • JGB19900302: Saturday, March 2, 1990, Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, CA

    update: this was originally posted some years ago. I accidentally reposted it today. It looks like it is not perfectly together – you get what you pay for. I wanted to try a little experiment by just unpacking a single show. I am not a very effective “prosopographer”, so I can’t do what Corry does,…

  • Cities Burn and The Show Goes On: JGB at the Warfield, April 30, 1992

    jg1992-04-30.jgb.all.aud-vasseur.141475.flac1644 On April 30, 1992, as on other Thursdays before, at least a couple American cities were in flames as protests over racial injustice turned violent and disorderly in the aftermath of a Simi Valley jury’s acquittal of four LAPD officers accused in the March 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King. The Garcia Band…

  • Which Side Are You On?

    I got a few hours at the San Francisco State University Labor Archives and Research Center to see if the haystack would yield any needles about ol’ Joe Garcia, recalling that Jerry had said his pops had had some hassle with the musicians’ union. What we think we know Blair narrates that in April 1937…

  • The Reedman vs. The Gunslinger: JGB with David Murray, Madison Square Garden, November 12, 1993

    LN jg1993-11-12.jgb.all.aud-brennecke-litzenburger-GEMS.91812.flac1644 LN jg1993-11-12.jgb.s2.aud-gastwirt.139507.flac1648 The man had conceived the band bearing his name as a way to scratch some musical itches, play some mostly consonant music with mostly-simpatico (or at least deferential) people, and make a little bit of walking around money. The Jerry Garcia Band provided its namesake with a comfortable and, eventually, highly…

  • Santa Cruz Blues

    LN jg1985-10-16.jgjk.all.sbd-Miller.139756.flac1644 One of the most widely bootlegged Garcia performances, alongside the ’82 Oregon State Penitentiary gig, is another Garcia-Kahn acoustic duet performance from the Catalyst in Santa Cruz on October 16, 1985. As with other beautiful recordings from this venue, an enterprising insider made a 4-channel tape combining stereo sbd feed and stereo ambient…

  • Shades of Joy

    Anyone know if Martin Fierro would have been performing with the band Shades of Joy in May of 1973?

  • Twenty-Four Performances in Twenty-Four Days: April 6-30, 1973

    update: commenter RoG has brought two more gigs to my attention, Wed-Thurs April 25-26 with JGMS at Keystone, so the title has changed from “Twenty-Two” to “Twenty-Four”. All the more remarkable. update2: oh yeah, I forget to mention another little detail from this period: on April 19th, the Dead decided to start up their own…

  • Let’s Spend the (Wednesday) Night Together

    November 21, 1990, a Wednesday night, Garcia played a killer “Let’s Spend The Night Together,” featuring what the seeder notes as “relentless, furious” guitar work. Indeed. “Tears Of Rage” and “Tore Up Over You” also stand out. Pack of Wolves opened, for the record. Jerry Garcia Band The Warfield 982 Market Street San Francisco, CA…

  • June 1990 at the Warfield

    The post-coma Garcia Band was getting hotter and hotter from 1987-1989, in my view, and somewhere along the line two kinds of business/money decisions were made. First, it’d start regularly playing the Warfield, which I think had been recently renovated, for Wolfgang.  JGB played fifteen gigs at 982 Market in 1990 –February 2-4, March 1-2,…

  • Certainly One of the Best and Most Interesting Shows of the 90s: JGB, March 1, 1991, Warfield

    I have a “P: Overall:” note below which sums up my assessment. Very good, ol’ Jer. Jerry Garcia Band The Warfield 982 Market Street San Francisco, CA 94102 March 1, 1991 (Friday) B&K 4011s MAD flac1648 shnid-141449 –set I (8 tracks, 7 tunes, 64:44)– s1t01. crowd and tuning [2:54] s1t02. Cats Under The Stars [9:15]…