Category: 1980
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How about the Mouth on that Beast? JGB at the Stone, February 2, 1980, as recorded by Bad Bob Menke
LN jg1980-02-02.jgb.all.aud-menke-motb-0038.105635.flac1644 I recently revisited an old favorite, 2/17/80, and surprised myself by not noting anything about the “After Midnight -> Eleanor Rigby -> After Midnight” medley, to say nothing of an old favorite of another kind, “Positively 4th Street”. I have vowed to revisit these. Someone was also extolling old favorite 3/8/80 on its recent…
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Soft, Gentle and Round vs. Burning, Fiery and Huge: JGB at Laker Hall, SUNY Oswego, February 17, 1980
LN jg1980-02-17.jgb.all.aud-gatto.9017.sh2flac The adjectives in the subject allude to the contrasts that really defined Garcia’s guitar playing in 1980. Some tunes, like “I’ll Take A Melody” featured both modes, the contemplative and the rockin’. “Friend Of The Devil”, here in one of its last electric GOTS performances, features long, gentle, lovely progressions, as does “It Takes…
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Warmup for Four: JGB at the Stone, July 19, 1980
LN jg1980-07-19.jgb.all.aud-moore-berger.122980.flac1644 These notes were orphaned – I listened to this sometime back, never posted them. Last of three warmups for the short-lived JGB #11b quartet. We used to think that this band happened because the 11a drummer, John d’Fonseca, died in Spring 1980. But we now know that’s not true, so it’s not clear why…
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Jerry Garcia and John Lennon, summarized by Dennis McNally
On December 8, Garcia was at Front Street working on Dead Set when get got a call that told him of the assassination of John Lennon. Work was impossible. He sat down at Keith Godchaux‘s old Steinway (more pain: Keith had died in a car accident that summer) and noodled for many hours, lost in…
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Concert Vault
My goodness, I don’t really follow what all comes online –or maybe it’s new, so effectively I do– but there is some 1980 and 1982 JGB (and snippets of 4/10/82 Garcia solo acoustic) online at concertvault.com. I need to investigate some of this more. Here’s “Let It Rock” from 6/24/82: http://www.concertvault.com/jerry-garcia-band/video/let-it-rock_2147002982.html And “Deal” from 7/26/80,…
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“The Little Cash Cow” – JGB, Early 1980
Last weekend’s post “On the Bus with the Garcia Band” looked at the November-December 1983 JGB tour’s extensive ground travel – everything was by bus, 3,000 miles on the road in a few weeks in the eastern time zone. Commenter Nick asked a great question comparing that tour with earlier ones, pointing out Ozzie Ahlers’s…
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Heresy Alert
Avert your eyes if you are sensitive to this sort of thing. Great tapes, but 2/2/80 set I does nothing for me. Discuss. Further hypothesis: it exhibits the “Cornell Effect”, whereby great sounding tape produces systematic and massive overestimation of performance quality. UPDATE: In March 2021 I revisited this show, and found it to be…
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So He Goes Nowhere
https://archive.org/details/gd1980-06-08.SonyECM250.walker-scotton.miller.88452.sbeok.flac16 This fileset is great – awesome tape by Joani Walker. It also includes a few great tracks from the Warren Zevon set and a post-show interview with Bob Weir. Here’s an interesting little exchange, 24 minutes into the interview, or thereabouts. Bob: “Garcia, who’s really visible for miles … he can’t go anywhere. He…
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UMass ‘Master of the Fretboard’: JGB, February 20, 1980 (late show)
LN jg1980-02-20.jgb.late.aud-Sony_23F-Nak_550.131018.flac2448 The Jerry Garcia Band (JGB #11a) played 22 shows in the 29 days of February 1980, warming up locally and then touring college and off-campus theaters, reportedly to help pay for the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Sirens of Titan”. I have all kinds of information about John and Jerry’s quest for those…
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new snow on top of freezing rain and fog and really poor visibility, just a disaster of a night for travelin’, but we didn’t wanna miss the show
This ticket stub is an awesome piece of memorabilia – attendee wrote the names of all of his show-going companions. Here are his recollections, posted from Lossless Legs (12/16/2013): I vaguely recall the weather bein’ a combination of new snow on top of freezing rain and fog and really poor visibility, just a disaster of…