Lawn Guy Land, and especially SUNY Stony Brook, stands in the pantheon as one of the ground zero sites of the birth and development of the East Coast Deadhead and, by derivation, of the East Coast Garcia Freak. The Dead played Pritchard Gym on campus very early on, and, as so often happened, the Garcia Band followed, playing it in ’77, ’80, and, finally, on December 4, 1983.
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| Garcia’s Bands in Pritchard Gym, SUNY Stony Brook. Source: Jerrybase. |
The fall ’83 JGB tour, undertaken largely by bus, bears all the hallmarks of this year in Our Hero’s life, a little grungy, previewing the troubles that would become even more marked over the next few years –shorter sets, vocal limitations– but playing LOUD, raging guitar and generally making up in enthusiasm what it lacked in precision.
His Stony Brook swan song illustrates all of this. Here’s the lede from a show review in the campus paper, The Statesman:
In today’s world of molded plastic superstars Jerry Garcia is a breath of fresh air. Rick Springfield fans wouldn’t appreciate Garcia; he is old, fat and looks like he’s just a step away from burning out. A person not familiar with Garcia would be more likely to ask when his last hot meal was, and not for an autograph (Reiss 1983).
The reviewer, who probably didn’t stand close to Jerry (where the air was presumably rather unfresh), extols his authenticity, offering very good perspective on this Garcia era: not a picture of health, but making good music.
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| SUNY Stony Brook Statesman, v27 n37 (December 7, 1983), Alternatives section, p. 1A. |
He makes mistakes, but he recovers and even makes up for them with a little extra added something. He hits some vocal clams, but he blasts so loudly on guitar that maybe the fans –buying up all of the 2,200+ tickets, moving over $22k Jerry and Co.’s way, and *very* knowledgeable– might not hear the next hiccups through their ringing ears. The band works with and around him, but mostly just gets shoved aside by Garcia’s overflowing ideas, limitless playing vocabulary, and sheer decibels. The show is very good, and the closing medley, rare (for JGB) true segues of “Don’t Let Go” -> “Deal” -> “Tangled Up In Blue”, is absolutely outstanding. Every DLG is at least good, most are very good, and a great many are great. It was very well-played in this period, and the crowd, which recognizes it out of the gate, gets treated to a great one this night, which merits a “holy camoley” from me, earns the “monster” designation, and very neatly drops into Deal after a 20 minute journey which feels efficient, packing huge punch every step of the way. The medley is worth the 45 minutes of your ear time, and provides a fitting end to Garcia’s illustrious Stony Brook career.
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| It ain’t broken, but it’s badly bent. |
So good that he earned a rare-for-the-tour night in a hotel bed, at what I am sure is the lovely Holiday Inn in Hauppage.
Listening notes after the jump.
Jerry Garcia Band
Pritchard Gymnasium, State University of New York
1 Center Drive
Stony Brook, NY 11794
December 4, 1983 (Sunday)
“Da Weez” MAC shnid-112308
–set I (5 tracks, 49:37)–
s1t01. I’ll Take A Melody [13:47] [0:16] % [0:08]
s1t02. The Way You Do The Things You Do [7:53] [0:02] % – [0:10]
s1t03. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door [13:16] [0:06] % [0:03]
s1t04. Run For The Roses [5:12] [0:03] %
s1t05. /Cats Under The Stars [#8:41] (1) [0:11]
–set II (5 tracks, 67:22)–
s2t01. [0:03] Mission In The Rain [11:25] [0:06]
s2t02. Rhapsody In Red [12:25] [0:10] % [0:12]
s2t03. Don’t Let Go [20:53] ->
s2t04. Deal [9:04] ->
s2t05. Tangled Up In Blue [12:52] (2) [0:11]
! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #21a
! lineup: Jerry Garcia – guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Melvin Seals – organ;
! lineup: John Kahn – bass;
! lineup: David Kemper – drums;
! lineup: DeeDee Dickerson – vocals;
! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch – vocals.
JGMF:
! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; … = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [mm:ss] = 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/19831204-03
! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/9717 (Grabski MAC shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/12253 (Grabski MAC sbefix); https://etreedb.org/shn/16479 (abgd Beyer MAC shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/20735 (s1 sbd + shnid-12253 set II); https://etreedb.org/shn/112308 (this fileset); https://etreedb.org/shn/141676 (s1 sbd GEMS via ANON).
! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/10/pritchard-gym-suny-100-nicholls-road.html
! venue: As of 12/15/2020 we have duplicate entries, at different addresses, for this venue.
! review: [positive] Reiss 1983. Great lede: “In today’s world of molded plastic superstars Jerry Garcia is a breath of fresh air. Rick Springfield fans wouldn’t appreciate Garcia; he is old, fat and looks like he’s just a step away from burning out. A person not familiar with Garcia would be more likely to ask when his last hot meal was, and not for an autograph.” Reiss, who goes on to extol Jerry’s authenticity, may not have stood especially close to Our Hero, where the air was most unfresh. But he offers very good perspective on this Garcia era: not a picture of health, but making good music.
! ref: Billboard, December 24, 1983, p. 67. Grossed $22,715 on 2,235 sold (sellout).
! R: field recordist: The Weasel (a.k.a. “Da Weez”).
! R: field recording equipment: 2x Sennheiser 421 microphones > Sony TC-D5M (analog master cassettes, undetermined stock).
! R: Transfer: Sony TC-D5M (original record deck) playback > Pre Sonus Inspire GT > Sound Forge > .wav files > Trader’s Little Helper > flac files. Transferred and mastered to .wav files by D5scott.
! R: Seeder note: “”DaWeez” got tossed out during Run For The Roses, then came back in and recorded the second set.”
! R: Seeder dedication: “R.I.P. Sandy aka “Bigfoot”
! JGMF: I listened to the first two tracks in 2011, pick up s1t03 11/29/2015. Pick up s1t03 12/6/2020. Tightly edited.
! R s1t01 @ 2:00 mic-strike/static
! P: Vocally, this is where things start to get bad. They’re not as bad as they’d get, say, the next month (and the month after that, and the month after that, and so on and so forth, monotonically, until sometime in 1985), but they’re getting there. He’s not to Elmer Fudd territory here, but he’s scratchy and nasally and has got a lot less to work with than he had earlier.
! R: A really nice audience recording.
! P s1t02 [ca. 2011] TWYDTTYD is a lyrical trainwreck at the start. They (Jerry and the backing vocalists) just aren’t on the same page about the order of the phrases and verses. (I suspect the ladies are right, but it’s hard to say without analyzing it more closely, which I choose not to do.) Even at the second verse in the 2-minute mark, Jerry has to take charge of which verse it’s going to be, and the ladies have to mumble into it. The second, rhyming stanza is good. Around 3-min mark, JG seems to be trying to make up for the flubs by scatting over the ladies’ repeated chorus. This is pretty creative vocal work. I need to check if it was common during this period. Then @ 3:49 he launches into some energetic, inventive, very lyrical guitar work. This is one of those examples of Garcia rising to the challenge of a fuck-up. On an “off” night, the fuckup would just hang out there, or even spiral downward. Here, he brings some energy to get in front of it.
! P: s1t03 KOHD (notes from ca. 2015) I don’t love the order in which he’s doing the lyrics. Come take these guns comes too early. Getting too dark to see is a repeat, and he really clams at like 2:05. This is the difference of late 1983-1985 … the worst moments are much worse than before. He is trying here, 12/4/83 at whatever time of night in the Stony Brook gym, kids really should be studying on a Sunday night, maybe close to finals, faculty with Monday morning class might ask, “is this *really* a good idea?”, but anyway, the night before, Garcia hits a warbly vocal clam, for those paying attention, a half hour into the night’s proceedings, that stand as “exhibit A” to Garcia’s newfound vocal limitations of late 1983.
! R: s1t04 and s1t05 patched in from Beyer M160 mics (1st gen) source, due to taper of this master being kicked out during Run For The Roses.
! R: s1t05 CUTS clips in
! P: s1t05 CUTS crowd gives it a nice loud welcome. Lyrics are a little bungled here and there.
! s1t05 (1) JG, talking a mile a minute: “Thanks a lot. We’re gonna take take a break for a few minutes. We’ll be right back.”
! P: s2t01 MITR Jerry sounds cogent. Young lady screams a few times @ 1:39.
! P: s2t02 RIR late 9 the guitar playing gets YOOOGE. Garcia the bricklayer just building a wall of sound and getting Mexico to pay for it. Jeez – LOUD! The crowd goes pretty crazy at the end.
! P: s2t03 DLG knowledgeable Long Islanders jump when they hear the opening strains of DLG. Great fans. John is pulling some fat stuff early 10. Ten minutes in, this version has been pretty awesome. Goodness, yes, this is a monster DLG. Big stuff. Huge chords 20:05 banging punctuation to the meltdown that’s also happening. Holy camoley, what a Don’t Let Go. Still huge chords 20:30, here he is saying he wants to take it somewhere else, and at 20:53 he drops it quite cleanly into Deal. Holy shit.
! P: s2t04 Deal he doesn’t get the lyrics straight throughout. Interestingly, both he and one or both of the singers do a little more “don’t you let that deal go down”-ing at 3:50, where it didn’t belong, and then Garcia just steps up and starts blasting. I should note that Kemper sounds great.
! P: s2t05 TUIB another segue into TUIB – this second set is pretty bonkers. LOUD LOUD LOUD.
! s2t05 (2) JG: “Thanks a lot. We’ll see ya later.”
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