Category: CA

  • JGMS Marx Meadows video

    Wow. That is a four-minute black and white video, with sound, of JGMS playing “Sitting In Limbo” at Marx Meadows, Golden Gate Park, September 2, 1974. There’s an equipment malfunction and the snippet ends on Big Steve coming out to fix some things. Beyond the fact that this video exists, what amazes me most is…

  • Ron Polte on the Demise of the Carousel

    Bottom line: A bunch of hippies, a bunch of good people, got together and refused to run a business. And, I’m sorry, you’ve got to live in that world if you’re gonna run a business. On Rakow, in particular: What Ron Rakow did to those people, he chained them to a machine that couldn’t make…

  • Zabriskie Point in Sausalito

    Zabriskie Point (IMDB) played at the Marin Theatre in Sausalito, let’s say around Thursday, April 2, 1970. It had debuted nationally on February 9 (less than three weeks after Garcia recorded his contribution to the soundtrack, the stunning “Love Scene Improvisation”). Maybe it had been playing for awhile already. I want to note that there’s…

  • NRPS (formerly The Murdering Punks) – August 7, 1969

    There has long been a tape identified as New Riders Of The Purple Sage (NRPS), Thursday, August 7, 1969 at the Matrix in San Francisco. Corry has found corroborating evidence for the dating, though of course the tape cannot be tied to the Ralph Gleason “On The Town” listing he found, which bills the band…

  • The Common: September 5-6-7 ish, 1969

    Berkeley Tribe, August 8-14, 1969, p. 3. Regular readers will know that I have been chasing the idea of “Jerry and the Jeffersons” in my head for a good long while. It narrates the arc of Garcia’s life as a process of gradual privatization. I started it years ago, have picked it up and put…

  • Say Hey

    Dennis McNally recalls, April 12, 1993 at Candlestick Park, before Garcia, Bob Weir and Vince Welnick sing the National Anthem for the Giants’ home opener: I turn to Willie Mays, who is legendary for being cranky, and I said, “Mr. Mays, can I introduce you to Jerry Garcia? He’s going to be singing the National…

  • Grr ah. Grr ah. Grrr rrrr rrrr ah.

    Introduction The Stanford Daily is archived and searchable back to 1892. This has been up for a little while, but a recent dip of the toe suggests that either the optical character recognition (OCR) process by which scanned images become letters has been improved, or the searching has been improved, or something – because I…

  • Documenting the Dead

    Nicholas Meriwether’s Documenting the Dead is an amazing resource for all of us. Check it out, and make a donation to support the building of a great and true-blue American Archive at UC Santa Cruz. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here “Documenting the JGB” (also in Santa Cruz)!

  • Just Play

    Going through some scratched up old CDs, I found a copy of the Crosby, Stills and Nash release Carry On (Atlantic 7567804872, 2006). Entering some dates to trace Croz’s whereabouts in the various periods in which he frequented the Garciaverse (most intensely, fall 1969-fall 1971 and again March-September 1975), I am reminded that Crosby, Stills,…

  • Simon and Garfunkel meet Anthem of the Sun

    “Grateful Dead Records,” Rolling Stone, November 23, 1967, p. 4. The Grateful Dead hopes to have some new records out soon, particularly a single in late November and an LP in January. If the group obtains the approval of Warner Brothers, the January release will be a two-record set chock full o’ goodies. Some of…