Fate Music

Category: JGB

  • Jerry Band at the Pismo Theatre

    On Friday-Saturday, November 19-20, 1976, the Jerry Garcia Band played four improbable gigs at the stunning Pismo Theatre in foggy, salty, sandy, lovely little Pismo Beach, California. If you only know it from Bugs Bunny, I urge you to pass through it some time (though I have not done so in more than twenty years).…

  • Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner, December 19-21, 1976 (UNCERTAIN)

    I am a stickler for accuracy with things like band names, and yet, given what we know, you would think that the words in my title, “Jerry Garcia Band at Keystone Korner“, could not be strictly accurate. Garcia stopped playing Keystone Korner in 1972, three years before the Jerry Garcia Band existed, the stickler would…

  • The vocals are as bad as Garcia ever inflicted on a paying audience: August 26, 1984

    LN jg1984-08-26.jgb.all.aud-dearth.84568.flac1644 OK, turns out I was most of the way through a listen to this, so I finished it. On the one hand, that wasn’t so bad. I don’t feel too unclean. On the other hand, as Jimmy Fallon’s teenaged character Sara might say — “Ew”. First, tip o’ the cap to Mr. Don…

  • Lost Your Voice? Play a Monster “Don’t Let Go” (8/27/84)

    LN jg1984-08-27.jgb.all.aud-corley.15029.shn2flac I have sometimes joked, half-seriously, that 8/26/84 may be Garcia’s most wasted performance, but I just do that to embody a feeling about the period as a whole. At some point I’ll bring myself to revisit it. I like listening around such things, as much as listening directly to them. Hence the JGB…

  • Spork: Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins- Let It Rock

    Spork: Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins- Let It Rock: With the possible exception of his work with David Grisman , this first iteration of The Jerry Garcia Band was totally unique because it i…

  • How Sweet It Is

  • Risk and Challenge in the 1970s

    Here’s a back-of-the-napkin sketch, my subjective assessment, of the musical risks and challenges associated with Garcia’s 1970s bands (qua personnel and repertoire) playing black and race-fusion music. So, this includes Wales-Garcia, all of the Jerry and Merl outfits, and all of the JGBs. It excludes NRPS, OAITW, GAMB/GASB (playing mostly white roots music), and the…

  • 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…

  • Jerry’s New Year’s Eve – LN jg1975-12-31.jgb.all.aud-Falanga-Menke-8664-retrack.noshnid.shn2flac

    GarciaLive 5 GarciaLive, volume 5, December 31st 1975 Keystone Berkeley (2014) is out, available via jerrygarcia.com. Let me start by expressing gratitude for these GarciaLive releases. Having been a massive outlier in my interest in Garcia on the side, having often expressed frustration at the paucity of Jerry shows released under the old regime, I…

  • JGB at Vassar: it was not meant to be

    It’s tough being Jerry. He won a poll at Vassar about who students would most like to see, but “Garcia … was only available in the middle of the week. It was also rumored that Grateful Dead fans were notorious for destroying concert halls and that the chapel would suffer the same fate. Since the…