Hartbeats to New Riders: from spacesuits to OshKosh

Somewhere I have Mickey Hart saying basically what's in the title, but I cannot for the life of me find where I got this, and the Google is not helping me.

Anyone know where Mickey might have said this?

TIA!

Rolling Thunder Data

Rumor has long had it that Mickey has a massive trove of tape and information related to recordings made at his barn studio, a.k.a. Rolling Thunder, at 2495 Novato Blvd. between about 1971 and sometime in the early 1980s. As usual, Corry has done outstanding work pinning some of this down, but there's probably oodles more to learn.

If anyone here knows or is in touch with Mickey's people -- I saw yesterday they were sharing on social media the SF Chronicle preview I posted of the July 30 - August 1, 1970 New Riders (headlining) and acoustic GD shows at the Lion's Share -- please let him/them know I will help organize their data pro bono, so long as I can use them. I will create a giant database of times, people, tunes, etc. etc. As Mickey's amateur musicology involves him in collecting sounds, instruments, and stories from musicmakers in far-flung locales, so my amateur musicology would have me poring over Rolling Thunder data.

In the meantime, I have just spent some time in the Grateful Dead Archive on the beautiful campus of UC Santa Cruz, and I came across some Warner Brothers' interoffice memos supplying information about some of the dates on which the material appearing on Mickey's Rolling Thunder album (Warner Brothers BS 2635, September 1972) was recorded. The earlier document, dated 9/7, is full of handwritten notes, while the latter, from a week later, is cleanly typed. I should not that one scribble on the earlier document says these are dates on which recording began.

Me being me, I tabulate the existing credit information from deaddisc (linked above) with the new information on dates. (Click to enlarge.)

Table xxx. Recording credits and information for Rolling Thunder from Warner Brothers interoffice memos. Source: "Business: Rolling Thunder Productions, 1972-1973," Grateful Dead Archive, Special Collections, UC Santa Cruz, MS.332.ser. 2, box 20, folder 11.

Where the dates align, I obviously pin those. Where they conflict, I make a judgment: that recording was centered in 1972 and not 1971, except for The Chase, which was NOT recorded two months after the memo was written.

Me still being me, of course, the Garcia information draws my eye. (Jerry) Garcia is credited on four tracks: "The Chase" (begun 11/6/71), "Deep, Wide and Frequent" (begun 4/14/72), "Pump Song" (4/6/72) and "Gran'ma's Cookies" (7/20/72). While we can't be entirely sure he attended the initial sessions for any song, it makes sense to pin down the ones we can, and I will do so at Jerrybase with the confidence parameter set to "Uncertain Date" for the ones that don't conflict. Alas, two of the four *do* conflict, dated to when Garcia was manifestly in Europe and thus not, in body at least, at Hart's Barn. So those will just have to float, for now - unless and until Mickey et al. make it possible for me, or someone, to commune with more Rolling Thunder data.

BONUS EYE CANDY: Warner Brothers' Circular (its "weekly news device") pimping Rolling Thunder:

The Bard on WLIR (Long Island), March 1978

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/asxcards/RobertHunter1978-03WLIRInterviewRoslynNY.html

Robert Hunter
1978-03-xx* Roslyn, New York unknown hotel (Hunter's room)
Interview by Denis McNamara for 92.7 WLIR-FM Garden City, New York (M?-FM)
"Sunday At 9:00" radio program -expanded edition- (3 shows/parts)
"A Conversation With Robert Hunter"

Not sure how close in time this was to the 3/12/78 Long Island show with JGB, NRPS, and Comfort (w/ Hunter). He says some interesting things about particular songs. I will just post annotations for the stuff that interests me.

2826 how about working for JG as a solo performer? Does that affect your writing?

2840 Sometimes. The best that can happen is that I'm just being prolific. some discussion

2915 first Garcia solo album related to the American Beauty and Workingmans field of material

3040 Deal is a reflection of what it's like to be in the rock and roll business

3815ff Bob Weir album

3916 CUTS a tune that I had been working on for years. I started working on it in London. ... a subterranean march of cats

4000 then there's a song which is my Orpheus it's called Reuben And Cérise which is one that I wrote several years ago for his second album Reflections but it just didn't around to gettin done until now. It's an Orpheic epic set in New Orleans ... he narrates this tune beautifully he recites it "her hair hung gently down" - "when Garcia sings this thing, it just brings goosebumps up my arm. It shivers up my spine - the full tragedy. I think we got Orpheus.

4213 record company stuff RH denies that it was economics. "I'll tell ya - I didn't give 'em the material. Here we were, all set up, ready to go, ready to rip, and if I had written albums like I've been writing ... it's just one of those situations where you get this nice snazzy Cadillac and the battery doesn't work for some reason. My streak ended. I don't know what it was. But ... WOTF I think has some excellent songs on it ... didn't grab [inaudible] exceedingly laid back, for one thing ... one of the problems was the choice of tempos on songs like Row Jimmy Row ... Stella Blue ... 1/2 Step ...

4418 first RH album Rum Runners I love the songs my singing is a little short of pathetic 4525

4610ff Blues for Allah 4646 people didn't take to it

4719 Crazy Fingers is his favorite from BFA

5320 JG wanted to do Tiger Rose!

5445 Tiger Rose

5515 "with Rum Runners, I didn't know [it would be released], and I don't think I could have sold that album if I didn't have my own record company, because it doesn't meet professional standards for recordings. It's quite dirty, in some respects."

5536 "Tiger Rose was produced by Garcia. ... I am afraid that the tracks sound more like Garcia music than mine, which may be good or bad. It has that mellowed out sound that he's into, whereas Rum Runners has this real rough-and-ready, which is my own style. ...Cruel White Water / Wild Bill

5652 excuse for TR vocals

5715 Mickey as anti-producer. Mickey Hart is the most wired cat you've ever met in your life. He has so many ideas, we had to like put em in a bag and tie it up and put em in the corner..... 5757 unsupressable ...

Link: David & the Dorks: 1970 SBDs

http://sweetblahg.tumblr.com/post/75940158763/david-the-dorks-1970-sbds

adding: "fwiw it sounds like Mick on both recordings to these ears".

h/t Silberman

"Once in a while, ..."

.. you know the rest. Was just processing a 1975 article from Hit Parader, of all things. Yet a few things catch my eye:

• Gives working title for The Movie, soon-to-be released film There is Nothing Like A Grateful Dead Show. 
• Maybe this was out there, but I don't remember seeing this in print like this.
• More recently, they built a recording studio on a piece of land in Marin County called Dead Patch. 
• Again, I don't recall that particular appellation being made public at the time.
• "Garcia is now playing banjo [sic] with Merle [sic] Saunders in a band called Legion of Mary, and it wouldn't be surprising if he turned up with the New Riders of the Purple Sage … Bob Weir is working with a new band on a new album called 'Kingfish'. Phil Lesh is experimenting with bio-feedback (doing research with his bass and computers), and Kreutzmann is drumming with Commander Cody (for fun)".[i] 
• Obviously a little wire crossing on Jerry. When did it become public that Kingfish was doing an album? The BK thing is interesting because he didn't mention it in Deal and this is narrated as a very bad time for him.
• names names: Mickey Hart "left after it was discovered his father had put the band into over $100,000 worth of debts".[i]
• Again, I don't recall all that much that was said so publicly and directly making this connection. Since I just read BK's book, in which he's rather blunt about his feelings toward Mickey at this time, this again jumped out at me.

I guess the pattern I observe is that the author had some very inside information here. Surely he called the office and Rock or someone was being voluble. Am I mis-reading this, or do these kinds of details just seem anachronistically well-informed for Hit Parader. (This very article includes the line "Their records are excellent companions for LSD trips" (p. 39).

Anyway ..

Cohen, Scott. 1975. How to Live the Grateful Dead. Hit Parader (September), 38-40.

 

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[i] Cohen 1975, 40.

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[i] Cohen 1975, 40.

Circular on Mickey Hart and Rolling Thunder

"Mickey Hart: Off the Road and Into His Head," Circular 4, 36 (September 11, 1972), 2 pp.

Warner Brothers pimped Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder (BS 2635) in its "weekly news device" Circular for its September 1972 release. As I found with an earlier edition of Circular ("Keith. And, Modernity"), this one holds various pieces of interest to me.

First, the admen twice characterize the record as "finally done", in high "LA Passive Aggressive" style. Just gave me a chuckle.

Second, some early bio:

I was born in Brooklyn and went to Lawrence High School ... I had this groovy music teacher, Mr. Jones ... I pleaded with him to let me in the band, it was a turning point ... (He sat up, suddenly remembering the intensity.) I would have given up if I hadn't gotten in the band that day. But there weren't any openings in the band, so he let me pull the bass drum. Yeah, I had a harness and the drum sat on little wheels, see ... (he jumped up). I'd strap up in this ricksha thing and pull the drum while some other cat played it. I was the mule. (He ran around in circles pulling the invisible drum.) I did that for half a year, but I practiced and started actually playing. (He sat down, serious again.) My school had the best drummers in the state. I looked over a list of state champion drummers once (he held an imaginary list)-hey, they're all from my school. (Shrugged.) I don't know why, but Lawrence was the school to go to if you wanted to play drums.

Not sure I knew that story, but I don't really pay much attention to Mickey.

Third, more bio, especially interesting in view of the recent discovery of some Spanish Joe and the Jaguars records, featuring a sharp-looking Mickey Hart on drums, we find discussion of his time "in the Air Force Band" (see Corry's "Pre August 1967 Mickey Hart"). "It was called the Airmen of Note," Hart said, "but it was really the old Glenn Miller band." Mickey spent 3 1/2 years in Europe, also traveling to Africa: "I was just cruisin'. I loved it. No war, it was friendly, not like the Marines or the Army. I was a judo instructor, combative measures they called it, but (slyly) my cover was the band". So, "by day in Europe Mickey taught combative measures, but by night in places like Paris he'd hang out and play with Gerry Mulligan and Count Basie and whoever else was in whatever city." 

I don't claim to know Hart's bio, so I am mostly just putting this out there. Did he really play in the Air Force Band, was that really basically the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and did he really play with Count Basie? I fear this latter might be a garbling of the Count Basie connection in the "when-Mickey-joined-the-Dead" story.

Anyway, Circular is fun. I think I have another Dead-related one around here somewhere, I'll try to check it out.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2009. Pre August 1967-Mickey Hart. Lost Live Dead, July 22, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2009/07/pre-august-1967-mickey-hart.html, consulted 5/24/2015.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2011. Grateful Dead Solo Album Contracts, 1970-73. Lost Live Dead, January 15, 2011, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/01/grateful-dead-solo-album-contracts-1970.html, consulted 1/24/2014.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2012. Album Projects Recorded at Mickey Hart's Barn, Novato, CA 1971-76. Hooterollin' Around, August 24, 2012, URL http://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2012/08/album-projects-recorded-at-mickey-harts.html, consulted 1/24/2014.

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 am glad to see the music coming out and happy to buy these releases, not least because they are generally very, very well done.

The overall packaging is nice. I appreciate that the booklet picture of the Keystone is correctly placed from ca. 1981 - accuracy is important, and is very much appreciated by those of us who take our metadata like we take our coffee -- seriously. This is an improvement over the inclusion of a photo from 11/26/77, without identification, in a release of the show dated 3/22/78 (GarciaLive 4). I read David Gans's liner notes once quickly, and they look spot-on (more on that below), well-written, well-edited (I had complained about the editing on the killer 12/14-15/74 release), and informative. Good job, David. I haven't listened to it yet, but I have heard that it sounds nice and I fully expect the fat, full, Betty Cantor-Jackson sound. (I hope she is getting paid for these releases!)

Priors on this performance

But I have always disliked 12/31/75 as a Jerry Garcia Band performance and as a Jerry Garcia life event. The main billing for the show is that it's Jerry Band's only NYE show. That's true, but it doesn't go very far if the music isn't good.

I have known the performance from the tapes. I would have been listening to the very early shns of the soundboard (like this badboy) and, especially, the Louis Falanga-Bob Menke upfront (possibly onstage) ambient recording (shnid-8664), since these were fresh on the etree FTP sites. All told I probably listened to the Falanga-Menke tape a good 3 or 4 times through, the board once or twice. That's a lot for any single show.

People generally consider this a great one, but insofar as you'll indulge me in arguing about taste, I'll tell you that I think that's just flat wrong. My hypothesis here is that this is something like the "Cornell Effect" from Deaddom, in which great sounding tapes find mass-circulation relatively early, Patient Zero of the Betty Board contagion, and the show becomes legend. (Cornell is actually a great Dead show, but that doesn't preclude it being overrated.) JGB 12/31/75 at the Keystone has the added Dead appeal of guest shots by Bob Weir (very rare with JGB, only other times it happened were in June '82 and once on Broadway in '87, off the top of my head) and Mickey Hart. Nicky Hopkins draws lots of attention, it's New Year's Eve at the Keystone, and why shouldn't it be great?

But it isn't. As a musical performance, it has some OK moments, and it's rarely downright awful, but mostly it's just boring. That has always been my view.

Listening Preparation

But being a loyal customer, wanting to give the show a fair hearing, I decided to get the release, and to prepare my listen by revisiting the Falanga-Menke tape. Pin down the metadata if I could, just prepare the ground. Like a dog circling around a patch of lawn, if you know what I mean. And of course it became a rabbit hole, but I'll try to cover some ground and walk away from all the things that must be walked away from, conditional on the finity of our time here together. Anyway, I have some listening notes below the fold, but here are a few takeaways.

Players

Confusion bedeviled the sociometrics of this gig from the beginning. Les Kippel wrote in Dead Relix (1976) that

Contrary to advance rumors, the Grateful Dead did not play this past New Year’s Eve. However, Bob Weir and Chris Herold from Kingfish did show up to play at the Garcia Band’s show at the Berkeley Keystone that evening. Bob played rhythm guitar and sang backup vocals, and sang lead on “C.C. Rider.” Other material played at the show included “Catfish John,” “Road Runner,” and so forth. Rumor has it that that might have been the Garcia Band’s last performance.

A few issues later, attendee Jim Wasserman (1976) wrote a letter to the editor, correcting Kippel that the drummer was not Chris Herold, but, he thought, Bill Vitt. This is a great letter, which I reproduce in whole so Corry can read about Grayson Street (see Arnold 2009).

I was at the show, and some of the info you said about it was incorrect. Chris Herold of Kingfish was not there. Weir was there as you said, but I believe the drummer was Bill Vitt, sitting in for Ron Tut [sic]. Also, Mickey Hart showed with Weir for the second set - - and played a very primitive drumset used by the warm-up band (whom I didn't know).

The first band consisted of the drummer, (a bass, snare, tom tom, and two cymbals in the total set) and a slow blues slide guitarist who was pretty good, but generally a let-down for the opening of a New Year's show.

The Garcia Band was also joined by Matthew Kelly of Kingfish from very early in the show. The overall performance was quite good, once the boys got it underway, however. There was what seemed like hours of tuning up and the band took two very long breaks. The show was like a fine old' party, and I think that's just what Garcia was into -- partying on New Year's Eve.

So witness one says the non-Hart drummer was Chris Herold, witness two says it was Bill Vitt, and Corry (Arnold 2009) comes along and has it as Greg Errico. I become confused. (I knew it wasn't Tutt, who as drumming for  the Rainfall-besuited Elvis in the Pontiac Silverdome.)

But that's all over now, because now we have Official Documents, and it's Mr. Errico on the skins. (On the Falanga-Menke tape one can hear Nicky slurring "Thanks Greg" at note 3). Otherwise, it's as we have understood things: Matt Kelly on harmonica (throughout the show, as I hear it, should pin it all down), Bob Weir on guitar and Mickey Hart on drums (sets II and III).

Setlist

In putting together what I have around this show, I found a 5-minute fragment of tape that I remember some guy sending me some years ago, labeled 12/31/75 Nicky solo "Maple Leaf Rag", a tuneup from the start of the show. I had always vowed to give it some attention, and I did on this occasion. It is five minutes of tape from an alternative audience recording (i.e., not the Falanga-Menke tape). It's nowhere near as good as theirs, and it is degraded, but it is nevertheless revealing. First, the smaller point, I can hear taper talk where guy says "that looks like the guy from Kingfish". I wonder if Les Kippel was recording this, or if in some other way the taper's guess became Dead Relix's error?

Second, the tuning is not just Nicky, it's the whole band, as far as I can tell. And, it's not Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag", as advertised. It's Joplin's "The Entertainer". I can't tell you how much I love this little snippet. In terms of the American musical mosaic, it occupies the same part of the canon, just replacing one singleton, now a never-played (Maple Leaf Rag), with another (Entertainer). But I also love it because it's Nicky Hopkins playing "The Entertainer". He is so brilliant, and he can make even the most well-worn classic sound fresh as daylight; this is about as pure a piano tune as you can find, being played by about as pure a piano player as ever graced a bench.

Very cool. But also, tinged. Dawson's Hopkins biography (2011) shows clearly that Nicky was the ultimate sideman, lacking in any of the discernible talents and inclinations that might make one a successful front man, except his musical wizardry. He was shy and quiet and ill-suited to the role (see my "Bloody Hell"), and yet this seems to have been the role that the JGB (Garcia, Kahn and Tutt) and/or Nicky himself allowed to operate. There's just something desperately sad about Nicky playing "The Entertainer", with all of his (and its) beer hall authenticity, warming up for the big show. Later, sweetly optimistic about 1976: "It might even be good for me; you never know" (note 7). To your health, Nicky.

"Mother Nature's Son" is a Garcia singleton, part of the small, compact, tastefully curated set of Beatles material he played publicly.

Performance

You can see the listening notes, and I have already given my bottom line summary. It's OK in parts, it's bad in parts, but mostly it's just boring. It's a mehfest.

Other Context

Here is a little bit of color around this gig, which was contracted for the standard $500 JGB-at-Keystone rate (this would rise to $750 a night in 1977), but probably saw considerably more than that moving around.

1. Nicky is wasted. You knew this, but he's really, really wasted. He's at that horrible place (note 7), where he's both "pissed as a rat's nightmare" and "dry as a fuckin' boneyard". I believe him.
2. This is the last JGB #1 gig, as Nicky exits stage left. The conventional wisdom is that he was just too wasted and he had to go. I will argue in the book that he was never planned to last beyond the New Year. Either way, a few days later he'd be gigging a little with ol' pal John Cipollina, he never played with Garcia again, and he entered, from this night, perhaps the darkest period of a life too full of them.
3. Jerry and Mountain Girl are breaking up (Jackson 1999, 266-268). Right around this time Jerry deeds the Stinson house to MG and moves in with Deborah Koons in Belvedere.
4. Late 1975 has always been my guess for when the opiates become regularized. I don't know if the following refers to 1975 (it could be any year through 1975, really), but I have always thought it could have: "one Christmastime, on a whim, [Ron Rakow] took it upon himself to score some [China White] for himself and Garcia" (Jackson 1999, 289).
5. Money is tight, the Dead are going to have to start touring again, the Grateful Dead Movie is already an albatross that would hang around Garcia's neck until mid-1977, etc. etc.

I guess my point is that this is a pretty dark time in the Garciaverse. I would hate to extrapolate from that to this particular performance (the Winterland shows from a week and a half prior are actually quite good). And it's possible I am letting that darkness shade my listening, though I don't think so.

The Show as a Release

So, I find this release a little problematic insofar as it's not a great performance, and it's got all kinds of darkness around it. I understand the marketing appeal of the Dead guys' presence and the fact that it's Garcia's only New Year's Eve with the JGB. I also understand that quality tape is probably in sparer supply than one might wish. I am not going to be too hard on The Powers That Be, but would certainly argue for "great performance" as the first criterion of interest to this particular paying customer.

Anyway, references below, then listening notes below the fold.

REFERENCES

Arnold, Corry. 2009. December 31, 1975 Keystone Berkeley Jerry Garcia Band. Lost Live Dead, December 13, 2009, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2009/12/december-31-1975-keystone-berkeley.html, consulted 12/31/2013.

Arnold, Corry. 2010. 2119 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA: The Keystone Berkeley. Lost Live Dead, December 31, 2010, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/12/2119-university-avenue-berkeley-ca.html, consulted 4/22/2012.

Arnold, Corry. 2011. Jerry Garcia and Keystone Shows Overview. Lost Live Dead, January 2, 2011, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/01/jerry-garcia-and-keystone-shows.html, accessed 7/23/2012.

Dawson, Julian. 2011. And On Piano ... Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock's Greatest Session Man. Foreword by Klaus Voormann. San Francisco: Backstage Press.

Jackson, Blair. 1999. Garcia: An American Life. New York: Penguin Books.

JGMF. 2010. JGB: December 31, 1975, Keystone, Berkeley: who was drumming?.

JGMF. 2014. "Bloody Hell".

JGMF. 2014. Nicky after JGB.

JGMF. 2014. Grateful Dead Three Ways: December 20, 1975.

Kippel, Les. 1976. Bits. Dead Relix 3, 2 (March-April), p. 19.

Wasserman, Jim. 1976. [Letter to the editor.] Dead Relix 3, 4 (July-August), p. 2.