‘Jerry, is it really ovah?’ JGMS at the Bottom Line, November 6, 1974 (early show)

Garcia’s first
professional tour as a named headliner outside the Grateful Dead comprised
twenty-one performances over the thirteen days between Tuesday, November 5,
1974 and Sunday, November 17, 1974, inclusive. The first three nights of the
tour unfolded at the Bottom
Line, 15
West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012, two shows per night. So much to
process, I can only do the raw “listening notes” dump without much analysis.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

Bottom
Line

15
West 4th Street

New
York, NY 10012

November 6, 1974 (Wednesday), early show

flac2496 of Jerry Moore audience recording

–Complete Early Show (8 tracks, 97:01)–

t01. crowd and tuning [2:08]

t02. Think [9:04] (1) [2:33]

t03. Valdez In The Country [12:58] (2, 3) [2:38]

t04. (4) I Second That Emotion [16:45] [0:22] % [2:49]

t05. You Can Leave Your Hat On [13:12] (5) [1:50]

t06. Someday Baby [9:32] (6) [1:02]

t07. Mystery Train [13:00] [0:15] % (7) [1:16]

t08. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [6:55] (8) [0:39]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia – el-g, vocals;

! lineup: Merl Saunders – keyboards, vocals;

! lineup: Martin Fierro – saxophone;

! lineup: John Kahn – el-bass;

! lineup: Paul Humphrey – drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / =
clipped song; // = cut song; … = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] =
recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item
name is an attempt at getting the “real” time of the event. So, a
timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the
song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19741106-01

! db: shnid-6613
(uncertain provenance of same master tape); shnid-16807 (Moore’s Masters 2003 seed
of same master tape).

! R: “Recorded by Jerry Moore; 2x AKG D1000E > Sony
TC-152; Transfer and FLAC encoding by David Minches: Master played back on
Nakamichi Dragon > Korg MR-1000 (DSF [1-bit 5.6448 MHz Stereo]) Korg
AudioGate > WAV [24/96] > Adobe Audition 3.0 > FLAC encoding.
Speed/pitch Correction by Joe B. Jones. Thanks to Rob Berger for supplying the
master cassettes.”

! R: Provenance. Perfect provenance for a quite wonderfully
wonderful recording. Quite simply, Jerry Moore was doing it right out on the
East Coast. Garcia / GD fans owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Jerry and
everyone whose scene he shared. Thanks to all involved in getting this into my
ears. Sard Thee Well, JM.

! R: quality: This is quite an excellent audience recording.

! Historical: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders undertook their
first out-of-state tour in November 1974. Opened with three nights, six shows
at the Bottom Line in NYC. This is third show (second night, early show). NB
Paul Humphrey drumming.

! t02 (1) crowd requests for Positively 4th Street, Expressway. 4th Street would be well-known
in all kinds of ways to the crowd, not least Dylan and the fact that it
appeared on the Live at the Keystone
album (Fantasy F-79002, 1973). As the crowd member reminds Jerry @ 10:27,
“You’re playin’ on 4th Street.” Expressway
To Your Heart [Allan
| Scofield]
is a little less obvious, though of course it did appear on Merl Saunders’s Fire Up (Fantasy 9421,
1973). My point is that this is your typical smart (or at least knowledgeable),
engaged NYC audience.

! P: t03 VITC comes out at a breakneck pace, much faster
than it was played on other occasions. Merl’s lead in the 8-minute mark is very
nice. The high-hatting @ 8:26 is something that I think might distinguish
Humphrey from any other contemporary drummers, as we try to sort out who’s who
on any given night. All of these guys were good –they *always* had good
drummers– but I love Humphrey’s style.

! t03 @ 13:20-13:30 (2) taper talk: “turn ’em
over” “90” … Jerry and someone else (maybe Harvey Lubar?) are discussing
the tape flip.

! t03 R: maybe a tape flip @ 14:13?

! t03 @ 15:10 (3) crowd guy, loud: “Jerry, is it really
ovah?” @ 15:19 Jerry: “It’s always been over, man.”

! t04 (4) crowd member identifies “I Second That Emotion” right in time, and everyone gets a
little extra jolt, band included.

! P: t05 You Can
Leave Your Hat On: Garcia is playing powerfully and inventively in the 9-10
min range. This is some of the better deep jamming to have occurred in this
song by this band. I also like the relatively brisk pace at which they play the
song here. It took them awhile to figure tempos on the Merl lead vocals.

! t05 (5) notice the rambunctious crowd. Calling songs, all
that. I hear calls for “Bertha” and “Like A Road”, inter
alia. “Like A Road” request suggests to me that this guy has spent some time
with Garcia-Saunders-Kahn-Vitt Live at
the Keystone.

! t06 (6) crowd requests: The Harder They Come, Turn On The
Bright Lights (from the second Garcia
album, colloquially known as Compliments [Round RX
102, released June 1974]).

! business: They certainly weren’t “touring behind” any
particular record, except in Garcia’s rather circuitous way. But someone (not necessarily
excluding Garcia, but presumably including Ron Rakow), somewhere, at some
point, or several of each of these, conceived of this tour as a way to sell
records. Notes (5) and (6) above remind me note only that Garcia had a stake in
Round Records, but of Corry’s important recent work on the economics
of the Garcia-Saunders-Kahn relationship.

! P: t07 Mystery Train the drummer messes up the tempo at
the start, so Jerry has to play his ‘lectric guitar for a few measures to get
them set up for the verse, which comes in around 52 seconds in. It’s a nice
minute of playing as they try to get things together.

! t07 (7) tune requests: Like a Road.

! t08 (8) JG: “Thank you. See ya all later.”

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