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| Ben Upham‘s wonderful shot of Jerry Garcia at Washington State College, 10/27/78 |
Updates
Since I already have a post on this show specifically, let me accompany Upham’s beautiful pix with some less beautiful details about how this thing went down.
This, from a report the day before the show (Spanjer 1978):
The concert, featuring former members of the Grateful Dead, was originally scheduled as a ‘Dead’ concert and would have cost $25,000. But SARB learned in late September the artists could not appear under that name because of pending record company suits. It was too late to schedule another act, however, so SARB members decided to rename the headliners ‘The Jerry Garcia Band and The Bob Weir Band of the Grateful Dead’ and to pay $21,000 for the act. [NB this strictly violated the contractual terms of the JGB, at least.] Negotiations with Monarch, the agency representing the groups, reduced total band cost, including equipment and agent fees, to $17,000. But sparse ticket sales and other difficulties continued to plague the show.
As of Tuesday before the Friday show, only 600 tickets had been sold, whereas the break-even number was 3,000. The school would lose $8,646 if 2k tickets moved.
The students weren’t that thrilled about all of this. An earlier letter to the editor of the campus paper (“Music blues,” Easterner, October 12, 1978, p. 4) presented some different math, asserting that they’d need to sell 4,600 tickets to break even (70% of the full-time student population!) and lamenting that they could have had Chicago for much lower cost.
In the end, the school lost $15 grand on the show. Ouch.
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| Handill for JGB 10/27/78 at Washington State College, Cheney, WA. Image courtesy of Ben Upham |
Pretty colors on that handbill, though.
And oh, why the hell not – some listening notes follow. Crazy that I note nothing about my favorite tune, Reuben and Cherise, but here we are.
Jerry Garcia Band
Performing Arts Pavilion, Washington State College
1375 Swoop Lane
Cheney, WA 99004
October 27, 1978 (Friday)
unknown aud shnid-89723
–set I (6 tracks, 64:50)–
s1t01. dead air [0:03] //How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:39] [0:07] % (1) [0:50]
s1t02. Catfish John [11:34] [0:05] % [0:41]
s1t03. That’s What Love Will Make You Do [8:50] [0:02] % [0:09]
s1t04. Russian Lullaby [13:15] [0:06] %
s1t05. I Second That Emotion [11:51] ->
s1t06. Mystery Train [8:33] (2) [0:04]
–set II (7 tracks, 50:25)–
s2t01. crowd and tuning [0:29]
s2t02. Love In The Afternoon [8:53] [0:27]
s2t03. Tore Up Over You [8:54] [0:06]
s2t04. Reuben And Cherise [6:30] [0:22]
s2t05. Gomorrah [6:14] [0:06]
s2t06. I’ll Be With Thee [5:35] [0:03]
s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [12:42] (3) [0:02]
! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #4
! lineup: Jerry Garcia – guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Donna Godchaux – vocals;
! lineup: Maria Muldaur – vocals;
! lineup: Keith Godchaux – piano;
! lineup: John Kahn – bass;
! lineup: Buzz Buchanan – drums.
JGMF:
! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; … = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [x:xx] = 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/19781027-03
! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1978-10-27-reese-court-eastern-washington-state-university-cheney-wa/
! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/18291 (s1s2p aud shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/89723 (this fileset).
! historical: Like “Grateful Dead Three Ways” (Selvin 1975), this show presents an interesting wrinkle on cross-promotion between Jerry and his brothers, because here it’s just “big brother” Jerry and “little brother” Bob, the dyad that went deepest on the emotional and financial levels. Emotionally, yeah, brothers of the most loving kind, big teaching little all the tricks, little giving big his unadorned loyalty, to the point of keeping the big dog’s drugs, apportioning them out as needed. We might learn differently if Weir ever writes a book, but I can’t recall in the record any documented incident of Garcia and Weir fighting – perhaps the Dead’s late summer ’68 “Firing” of Weir and Pigpen comes closest. All of Weir’s side projects worked paydays with the Garcia Band – Kingfish in the second half of 1975, Bob Weir Band on the three-gig fall ’78 joint “tour” of the Pacific Northwest, and Bobby and the Midnights in June 1982. Now, the rest of the guys mostly didn’t run going concerns on the side, so it’s not necessarily about Jerry and Bob, but about whatever bands were gigging and recording (from ’78 on, for Clive Davis in both cases). It’s really the 1987 joint real estate venture that puts a point on it, for me.
! preview: “Weir, Garcia, Muldaur Here,” Spokesman-Review, October 26, 1978, p. ?;
! expost: Sowa 1978;
! JGMF: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/07/jgb-102778-pix.html;
! pix: URL https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/ben-upham?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=307624, photog Ben Upham.
! historical: Homecoming for EWU. Monarch Entertainment was running this tour for JGB, here co-promoting with the school for a $3,500 production fee (sound, lights, etc.). The wage had been typed in as $8,250 guaranteed, but that was lowered to $6,500, plus percentages above certain gross and on cost savings. Gross potential of $42,250-$48,750.
! exante: “Letter to the editor: Music blues,” Easterner, October 12, 1978, p. 4; asserts that Weir got $7k and JGB got $9,500, lamenting that the show would have to sell 4,600 tickets (70% of the student body) to break even, and further lamenting that they could have gotten Chicago for less than $10k.
! exante: Spanjer 1978, noting extremely low ticket sales just a few days before the show.
! preview: “Weir, Garcia, Muldaur Here,” Spokesman-Review, October 26, 1978, p. 17;
! recollex: Upham ND;
! expost: Sowa 1978; refers to it as the “Grateful Dead concert”, notes the event lost $15k for the school and blames the student activities group for late, scanty promotion.
! R: source: MAC > ? > CD > EAC > FLAC. jjoops notes: “I received this source from Stephen Maeder, who thought it might have been recorded by Pat Lee or Mark Severson. But it now seems that neither of them is responsible for this recording.” The taper remains a mystery.
! R: This is an aud with lots of room feel. Some collectors take that to be code for “it’s a boomy audience tape by some random, using God-knows-what gear from God-knows-where”. I don’t mean that. I love when a tape conveys the shapes of the notes in the space in, around and through which they are bouncing. This tape really captures the sound of this band in this gym. That there’s some up-close clapping between songs is a feature, not a bug. Nice job, mystery taper – thank you! There’s a little fuzziness, maybe overload, around the vocals. Seeder: “Set II levels are lower, especially prior to Midnight Moonlight. Someone more talented and so inclined may well wish to fiddle with this, but I left it as I received it, but for a few fades on tape transitions.”
! P: seeder notes: “The show is more on the mellow, groovy side than on the fiery side, but I think you’ll enjoy it.” Band is tight, contrast Buzzy in his one year with the Band. Jerry is a little bit hoarse, but so far, third song in, not too bad.
! R: s1t01 How Sweet It Is cuts in
! P: s1t01 HSII The band sounds great right out of the gate. There’s a kind of focus to these late Buzzy-Godchaux Garcia Band shows that astonishes. Keith Godchaux takes the first feature in How Sweet It Is, late 2 over 3, and the man is alert and firing.
! s1t01 (1) color: freak yells, in kind of a faux Spanish accent, with great enthusiasm, “García!”, as in, “he’s here!”, and the crowd energy spikes to about an 8 (out of 11).
! P: s1t04 RL Garcia’s first run set forth a large number of very long phrases, occasionally punctuated. Beautiful, mellow listening. Keith took second feature, then John took one (meh), then Jerry sort of fronting but almost like all three featuring together, Jerry doing some more running around.
! s1t06 (2) JG: “We’re gonna take a break for a little while. We’ll be back a little later.”
! s2t07 (3) JG: “Thanks a lot. We’ll see y’all later on.”
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