Great American String Band: June 12-14, 1974 (update)

**update 20140823 – definitely Lion’s Share 6/12/74 and Keystone 6/13-14/74, per Elwood 1974. Thanks to Blair for providing the raw materials!**

So, awhile back I posted on the mid-June 1974 recordings of the Great American Music Band / Great American String Band. I have to leave the name issue alone for now, but for the purposes of this post let me refer to it as the Great American String Band (GASB). My purpose here is to come back to the conclusions I drew in that post, on the basis of new information reflected in Robert Castelli’s audience recordings of some of these shows.

Let me start by reiterating what I had previously concluded:

In sum, regarding the mid-June 1974 GASB/GAMB gigs:

1. despite what appears to be lots of confused and conflicting information on the tapes, I think we have evidence for three separate shows’ worth of music;
2. despite what’s on the tape labels, I think there were shows at the Lion’s Share on 6/12 and at Keystone Berkeley on 6/13-14.

As I now understand it, I was half-right.

#1 was, effectively, wrong. Until the last month or so, circulating tapes came from only two shows. Serendipitously, Robert Castelli’s recordings have recently come into the light thanks to him, Bob Menke and the crew at Mouth of the Beast. Thank you Robert, Bob and MOTB crew for bringing these forward! With these new recordings, there are indeed three distinct nights/pieces in circulation.

This gets me to point #2, which I believe to be correct. I am  99% now 100% sure there were GASB shows at the Keystone, Berkeley on Thursday June 13 and Friday, June 14, 1974. I am about 75% 

100% sure there was a gig on June 12, 1974 and that it was at the Lion’s Share.

This is what we now have in terms of recordings:

1. Low-gen soundboard of Wednesday, 6/12/74, “Keystone, Berkeley” [sic; actually Lion’s Share] (shnid-7331 | listening notes). I now believe that this is a single two-set show (I had previously thought it might be separately billed early and late shows, or different dates entirely).
2. “Louis Falanga master” audience tape from Jerry Moore’s 1st gen reels of “6/12/74, Keystone, Berkeley” (shnid-83232), transferred and shared by Rob Berger. This is a different performance from the identically-dated sbd one just-above;
3. Low-gen soundboard tape of Thursday, 6/13/74, Keystone, Berkeley (shnid-13768 | listening notes)
4. Robert Castelli master audience tape of Thursday, 6/13/74, Keystone, Berkeley (1644: shnid-110663 | 2496: shnid-110798 | listening notes)
5. Robert Castelli master audience tape of Friday, June 14, 1974, Keystone, Berkeley, set I (shnid-110664);

Points:

First, most narrowly, the “Louis Falanga” tape of “6/12/74” is actually a tape of 6/13/74. The material is the same material going under that date in both sbd and, now, from Robert Castelli’s master audience cassettes. Indeed, the Castelli is the same underlying recording as the “Falanga”; whether Louis was patched out of Castelli’s setup, or vice versa, or whether one or the other is a copy of the other or the one, remains a mystery to me. Anyway, this stuff is 6/13/74. The other two tapes of this material, from separate sources but with the same dates, trump whatever was written on tape labels at some point in history.

Second, we now see that there are three distinct pieces: 6/12/74 (two sets) from the soundboard, 6/13/74 (two sets) from soundboard and the Castelli/Falanga audience tape(2), and set I of 6/14/74 from the Castelli audience tape.

Third, there shouldn’t be much doubt about the Thursday-Friday, June 13-14 shows at Keystone. Here’s the ad I posted earlier:

Castelli’s tapes have pretty clear provenance and capture these shows, including the Good Old Boys sets. Not sure why he didn’t get set II of the Friday night (6/14) show. Anyway, there shouldn’t be any doubt about 6/13-14 at the Keystone, Berkeley.

Fourth point: there used to be questions about the 6/12/74 venue, but it is now confirmed to have been at the Share.