• TDIH: Wolfgang on Rack

    8/13/75 was just about perfection, but I still love Bill Graham’s burn on Rack’s financial acumen best of all.

  • Digitization Makes Me Happy

    Via https://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu, the UCSB Daily Nexus (and before it, the El Gaucho) has been digitized. Having sniffed around Santa Barbara a fair bit (UCSB being my alma mater), I am happy to see this, and found a few good things. First, I have found a preview and a review of OAITW 4/12/73 at the Granada,…

  • Reading Notes: Greenfield 1996

    I have read this book a few times, and it has clearly informed my thinking about a lot of issues without my really being aware of it. So I finally got around to transcribing some notes in the way that I do. I guess this book was controversial (and maybe still is), but to me…

  • Classical Music

    I am trying together instances of Garcia engaging classical music, which are few and far between. Alan Trist reports that ca. 1960-1961 one of their friends “John the Poet” had a great classical recording collection, and they listened to a lot of Bach. “Endless Bach,” Trist said. Jerry and Trist and a few others went…

  • Greenpeace ‘No Nukes’ Benefit at the Old Waldorf: Reconstruction, April 23, 1979

    I wanted to love this, but I found very little that moved me. Maybe I was tired. LN jg1979-04-23.reconstruction.all.aud-composite.126927.flac1644 Reconstruction Old Waldorf 444 Battery Street San Francisco, CA 94111 April 23, 1979 (Monday) – Early and Late shows composite auds flac1644 shnid-126927 –early show (10 tracks, 8 tunes, 92:26)– e-t01. announcement/crowd/tuning [0:52] e-t02. Get Up…

  • The Group Probably Will Be Short-Lived, Because Hopkins Has Other Contractual Obligations

    The titular line comes from an interview Garcia gave ca. November 22, 1975 to a Twin Cities journalist, Jon Bream, and references JGB #1. It could be that this was true all along, and the plan was just to monetize the Jerry Garcia name in the new Band, as well as Nicky’s name, for the…

  • No Sellout on Cape Cod: JGB, May 28, 1983

    LN jg1983-05-28.jgb.all.aud-huston.141978.flac2496 I have a bunch of listening notes to catch up on, but I have been holding back maybe because I don’t find myself with much to say. Saturday night, May 28, 1983 at the Cape Cod Coliseum, JGB #15c lays down a characteristically strong show. It doesn’t knock my socks off like 5/31/83…

  • True Confessions in Hartford

    In November 1977 and January 1978, Relix published a two-part interview with Garcia. I am looking for copies of these interviews. Anyone got ’em? Your list gets mine. Hall, John. 1977, 1978. Jerry Garcia: True Confessions in Hartford, parts 1 and 2. Relix vol 4, n.6 (November 1977), pp. 20-24 and January 1978. While I…

  • Fare Thee Well

    I just read Joel Selvin’s latest, Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead’s Long Strange Trip. I have seen many Deadheads bashing it, but I thought it was just fine. For better or for worse, but probably not surprisingly to readers of this blog, I haven’t paid much attention to the post-8/9/95…

  • Mother American Night

    Barlow, John Perry, with Robert Greenfield. 2018. Mother American Night: My Life in Crazy Times. New York: Crown Archetype. This was an awesome read. By “hanging around with intent” (p. 71), Barlow managed to play a role in many of the most seismic changes to shake the postwar West, Forrest Gump with brilliance, vision and…