The success of the Dead’s Touch of Grey didn’t only limit that band’s venue (and even city) options. It also impacted ol’ Midas’s bar band. Freddie Herrera’s last remaining club, the 700-seat Stone on Broadway, didn’t stand a chance, and a four-night Garcia Band run on May 27-28 and 30-31, 1987 brought the curtain down on Jerry and Freddie’s professional relationship. It’s hard to know how Jerry felt about moving up in the world and bringing his solo band’s gigs into Bill Graham’s orbit – maybe it was a mixture of pride at his success and chagrin at having to cut Freddie loose, or maybe it was one, the other, or neither.
Regardless, from 1987 to the end, Bill was Jerry’s local promoter, starting with the direct-from-Broadway acoustic-electric shows at the Warfield just after Thanksgiving of that year. And, again, from 1990 to the end Garcia Band services were held there, at 982 Market, 3,000 congregants at a time getting some rel’g’n in between Dead shows at the Coliseum and Shoreline. In between times, though, Bill undertook major renovations at homefield, and Jerry’s relatively infrequent local gigs in 1988 and 1989 happened in other spaces, most commonly the Orpheum Theatre a little ways down the street at 1192 Market. It was a great room, and the Orpheum gigs all have that nice, clean feel present throughout the period, with a healthy, happy Jerry doing his low-key R&B, Beatles, Dylan, and Garcia-Hunter material in tasty spaces with the super-consonant supporting cast of JGB #21b – THE Jerry Garcia Band. With all involved at least “tryin’ to have a reasonably good time”, as ol’ Jer put it, and mostly succeeding, it’s never a bad instinct to call up one of these Orpheum gigs and hit play.
The Friday, March 3, 1989 Garcia Band gig fits the bill just fine. There’s nothing bad here, and there’s plenty of good stuff, for me especially in Deal and Harder They Come. Clarence Clemons mostly bores me (when not annoying), and for the life of me I can’t figure out why Jerry liked having him along for most of the year. I just don’t love the Illinois Jacquet-established R&B sax style, I guess (blasphemy alert). Blair wrote up a short review in the Golden Road that raved, and you should certainly trust his judgment over mine, but on this listen (following partial listens at least in 2011 and 2014, according to my notes), the show didn’t absolutely slay me. It was good and solid and fun, and Taz Yamaguchi (like Bill Reutelhuber) pulled a great tape, but the show never achieved escape velocity, for me. YMMV.
Jerry Garcia Band
Orpheum Theatre
1192 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
March 3, 1989 (Friday) – 8 PM
Taz MAC shnid-94638
–set I (8 tracks, 56:36)–
s1t01. … Let’s Spend The Night Together [#6:19] (1) [0:32]
s1t02. Stop That Train [6:45] [0:18]
s1t03. Forever Young [8:35] [0:04]
s1t04. Run For The Roses [5:34] [0:16]
s1t05. Like A Road Leading Home [7:45] [0:05] % [0:08]
s1t06. (2) That’s What Love Will Make You Do [8:27] [0:08] % [0:05]
s1t07. I Hope It Won’t Be This Way Always [4:38] ->
s1t08. Deal [6:52] [0:06]
–set II (8 tracks, 75:39)–
s2t01. The Harder They Come [11:39] (3) [0:48]
s2t02. Waiting For A Miracle [5:44] [1:06]
s2t03. Someday Baby [[6:39] [1:12]
s2t04. And It Stoned Me [7:16] % [0:17]
s2t05. Evangeline [4:25] [0:04] %
s2t06. Don’t Let Go [15:01] [0:23]
s2t07. That Lucky Old Sun [9:52] ->
s2t08. Tangled Up In Blue [10:52] (4) [0:22]
! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21b
! lineup: Jerry Garcia – el-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn – el-bass;
! lineup: Melvin Seals – keyboards;
! lineup: David Kemper – drums;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch – vocals;
! lineup: Gloria Jones – vocals;
! guest: Clarence Clemons – saxophone.
JGMF:
! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; … = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [x:xx] = 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/19890303-01
! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/17554 (Schoeps CMC 34shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/21091 (Bill Reutelhuber shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/86325 (Schoeps CMC34 flac1644); https://etreedb.org/shn/94638 (this fileset).
! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/08/orpheum-theatre-1192-market-street.html
! review: [positive] Golden Road no. 19 (Spring 1989), p. 10. Blair loved the show, and said “Jerry looked like he was in heaven all night.” I don’t love it as much as Blair did.
! historical: $18.50. Garcia played the Orpheum for Wolfgang in ’88 and ’89, while the Warfield was in renovations. Specific dates: 5/7/88, 12/2-3/88, 1/27-28/89, and 3/3-4/89. He’d enter the Warfield in December ’89 and stay there until the end.
! seealso: JGMF, “Mahalo, Jer,” URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/05/ln-jg1989-01-27jgballsbd.html; JGMF: “‘We’re Having a Reasonably Good Time Here’ (LN jg1989-01-28.jgb.all.sbd-goetz-retracked.28352.shn2flac),” URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/06/ln-jg1989-01-28jgballsbd-goetz.html
! R: field recordist: Tazuo Yamaguchi
! R: field recording gear: 2x Nakamichi 700/CP701 (in hat) > Reutelhuber P/S -> dbx type II Encoder -> Sony TCD5M
! R: field recording location: FOB, Row L
! R: Transfer and FLAC encoding by David Minches: Master played back on Nak Dragon > Grace Lunatec V3 (24/96) > Digital Audio Labs Card Deluxe> Adobe Audition 2.0 > (dither/downsample) > FLAC encoding
! R: sounds pretty good to me.
! P: old notes: Set I is lackluster.
! R: s1t01 LSTNT first 2 minutes patched from SHNID-21091 (same recording equipment, processed by Bill Reutelhuber and Charlie Miller)
! P: s1t01 LSTNT guitar comes in @ 1:17, nicely. I can already tell that I am not a fan of CC’s work. JG steps back for some nice big guitar work late 3 over 4. They end it in lieu of something else.
! s1t01 (1) JG: “Thank you very much.”
! P: s1t05 LARLH CC’s entrance is not graceful. Lyric flub 3- mark. Very nice soaring guitar solo ca. over 4, soaring again 4:33, but I wish it were a little louder in the mix.
! P: s1t06 TWLWMYD (2) false start, sort of, first 0:12. CC lead turn 4:30ish ff, still going over 5 – this is good. Some big drum part 5:33ish. Melvin takes a lead 5:44ff. Outstanding guitar grab right after 7-min mark, singing enthusiastically. In 2011 I had said this didn’t light me up. Right now (6/6/2014), I am loving it.
! P: s1t08 Deal big guitar starts at 3:30. Old notes say “it is smokin’ hot – wow. 5:38 is just one reference.” And, again, 10 years later (!), I went to start typing when Jerry was shredding, and it was at 5:38. Not sure this whole version smokes, per se, but that peak is a good one. Pretty short version.
! P: s2t01 HTC outstanding. Garcia is growling 10 minute mark, really giving it a lot of oomph. Nice!
! s2t01 (3) JG: “I’d like to thank Clarence Clemons for sittin’ in with us tonight.”
! P: s2t06 DLG CC is very repetitive for awhile in 7. 8:13 JG breaks out of the rhythm. Clean return to song at 13:10.
! s2t08 (4) JG: “Thanks a lot. See ya later.”
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