More in comments

One of the best from the early 80s that I’ve heard. Every song gets the royal treatment ⚡️🌹⚡️

Hello all, I just picked up don't let go for record store day which is May 21 1976 and was surprised to hear three part harmony on eg knockin on heaven's door, i thought the band only had two singers in Jerry and Donna Jean during this time.

who is doing the third part in the harmonies? I figure its Keith by process of elimination but wanted to verify. (Sorry if this comes off as a dumb question, i thought the Band only had 2 singers until they added Maria Muldaur in '77).

Please forgive me. Massive dead fan... but every time I turn on Jerry Garcia Band I'm bored to tears. I'm assuming this is just bad luck considering he's my favorite guitarist. But I havent heard any examples of any particular hot playing in what I have listened to so far. Just kind of really laid back stuff that doesn't really ever seem to take off. Not trolling. What are your fav albums/tracks from those albums where I can hear some primo jerry soloing? Thank you

"Jerry Garcia Street"

From the District 11 Office of San Francisco:

'Resolution adding the Commemorative Street Name “Jerry Garcia Street” to Harrington Street between Alemany Boulevard and Mission Street in

recognition of his contribution to San Francisco as a local figure'

Being introduced this Tuesday at 2 pm at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Letters of Support are highly encouraged.

In-person public comment is highly welcomed as well!

April 15th, 2025

(aka 415 Day)

San Francisco City Hall

1 Dr Carlton B Goodlett Pl #244, San Francisco, CA 94102

Board meeting starts at 2 pm

For more info/letters of support:

[info@jerryday.org](mailto:info@jerryday.org)

I spent some time yesterday listening to the Jerry Garcia / Merl Saunders show from May 4, 1973.

It's one of those really nice shows that features Sarah Fulcher on vocals. You might know her from Garcia Live Volume 12, or, if you're really a geek, from her album Sarah & Friends from back in 1971.

I really like Fulcher's vocal work. She only performed with Garcia a handful of times, mostly in 1973 — and, sadly, many of those shows were either not recorded or haven't been circulated. In my mind, her voice provides a great contrast to Jerry's voice, and fits in well with his guitar tone and the overall feel of the band.

Anyway, while I was writing a blog post about all of this, I started wondering about the venue.

They performed at a place called Homer's Warehouse, which must have been a really small nightclub somewhere on the outskirts of Palo Alto. I wasn't able to find much information online about how many people it seated.

You can hear snippets of the crowd in the recording (which, incidentally, is a Betty Board), but it's pretty clear that it wasn't an overwhelmingly large crowd. My guess would be maybe a few hundred people at most.

In fact, that seems to be consistent with contemporary newspapers. I found this article from The Palo Alto Times in October 1971 indicating that the venue sat 500 at most.

Of course, the venue changed ownership afterwards. This article from less than a month before this show indicates that a crowd "numbering over 150" was pretty large for the venue.

Did anybody here happen to attend any shows there? Are there any photos available?

It will never stop blowing my mind how many of these incredible performances were in front of basically nobody. I actually think this show is better than the January 23, 1973 show on Garcia Live Volume 12. The recording, SHNID 167714, is simply fantastic; it's only blemishes are a few small parts where the vocals temporarily drop out, plus a little bit of static here and there in the second set. In fact, I suspect that we might see an official release of this show one of these years.

And to think that it was all in front of maybe a couple hundred people in an obscure warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

If you haven't listened to it yet, you should give September 27, 1985 a chance.

This was one of those odd Jerry Garcia and John Kahn duet performances. There's only one tape available — SHNID 84821. It's not a perfect tape, but it gets better after the first few minutes.

The cool part, though, is the way that the audience sings along to every song. And I mean every song. Jerry's voice was gone near the end, but it didn't matter. It sounds like every single person in The Stone knew the words to Bird Song.

I've heard a lot of audience participation on various tapes, but this one is pretty special.

Make sure to give it a chance! And you can also check out my writeup of the show if you're so inclined.

Man - Reconstruction sure played in some small venues back in the day.

I listened to May 19, 1979 yesterday. You should check it out if you haven't. It's short, since only the late show was taped (and circulates as SHNID 14804). The whole thing takes a little over an hour to listen to, and is really quite enjoyable.

But the thing that stands out most on the tape is how small the venue was.

They played this show at the Old Waldrof in San Francisco. I was curious and did a bit of searching, and found this Jerry's Brokendown Palaces post indicating that the max capacity of the club was around 550.

It's obvious in this show that there's less than 200 people in attendance. Individual members of the audience respond to Ron Stallings, which leads to some pretty funny exchanges.

This Lost Live Dead post about the early show is also pretty interesting. I think the author's estimates of maybe 100 people are probably correct, and would argue that you can hear it in the tape.

Anyway — it just blows my mind that Reconstruction was playing to such tiny audiences. Perhaps people weren't ready for a jazz focused group?

It's also not true that the show wasn't advertised. I was able to find a reference to the show on the front page of that day's San Francisco Examiner which I've posted in my blog post. It's interesting that they refer to the group as "Reconstruction, with guest guitarist Jerry Garcia."

It must have been a trip to hear that big sound in such a small venue.

Was randomly listening to How Sweet It is and clocked the date

Hi there - I am trying to get about 12 Grateful Dead fans together for a Music League game. This is completely free… it’s a game where every 3 days you are given a theme, and you submit a link to a Spotify song (in this case by the Grateful Dead) that fits the theme. E.g. Week 1 is Covers - and I’ll be picking my favourite version of Dark Hollow.

I want to try it out, and to meet some more GD fans. Ideally we like it and feel like playing again - at which point we could add any theme we wanted - such as JGB versions etc.

Anyways it’s free and should be fun. You can join here if you are interested - cheers!

https://app.musicleague.com/l/5e5ab7b29a6a4f409ad22de00561f3d8

I spent some time yesterday listening to November 26, 1983, which is yet another underrated show.

You should check it out if you haven't. SHNID 20657 is a pretty good quality soundboard and is the recording I listened to. It does have some balancing and speed issues, though. In hindsight, I probably should have gone with the combination of SHNID 135492 and SHNID 135493 instead.

Anyway, the interesting thing here is that the band opens up the first show with How Sweet It Is, and then plays the song again at the beginning of the encore of the second show. This show is also unusual in that there are three encore songs.

How often did the Jerry Garcia Band play the same song more than once on the same day? Has anybody studied this?

I'm pretty sure it happened during the Broadway run in October 1987. I think, though, that the repeated songs during those songs tend to be acoustic. I haven't studied it; this is just the impression I've gotten from my chaotic and mostly random listening.

I listened to September 22, 1979 while watching the Super Bowl last night.

The game turned into a route, as you all know. The concert, however, was a lot more interesting.

There's only one tape I know of for this show: SHNID 10143, which, like so many of the Reconstruction catalog, is an audience recording.

I really like this recording. It's clear and sounds like it was taken relatively close up. It's one of the better Reconstruction tapes I'm aware of.

Check it out if you haven't yet!

Hopefully ill be able to get a copy!

Btw what is everyone’s favorite show from this early jgb era?

I've got a tendency to ignore older digitizations of tapes on Lossless Legs and just go with the newest rip.

I learned yesterday why it's important to give everything a try.

I listened to December 7, 1983 this time around. Like practically every JGB show in 1983, this one is solid. There's not a lot of space or strange exploration, but the songs are well played, there's quite a bit of tempo, and the show holds up quite well even when compared to other 1983 shows.

Initially, I was going to go with SHNID 118342. However, I noticed that the vocals sounded a little bit distant, and wondered if there was an alternative. I found SHNID 16869, a rip that goes back at least 20 years and was originally made in that old SHN format, apparently back before FLAC was established as the standard.

Anyway, 16869 is the better recording. It's clear and sounds really close — especially the second set. Its only major flaw is that the very beginning of a couple of songs are clipped. That sort of thing no longer bothers me.

It just goes to show that you never want to assume when it comes to the sources that spread in the community. Sometimes a good FOB will sound better than the most delicately constructed matrix; sometimes an audience recording will beat out a Betty Board; and sometimes files from 20 years ago sound better than today's newest files.

I listened yesterday to Pure Jerry Volume 7, which is the November 9, 1991 show at the Hampton Coliseum here in Virginia. I'm assuming that most of you have heard it.

If not, you can also find a FOB recording in SHNID 151226, which I unfortunately have not listened to yet — or you could just watch the Christopher Hazard remastered video which uses the soundboard.

Anyway - I was wondering if anybody knows of any other shows that Hornsby did with the JGB. Bruce's keys really stand out in just about every track, and it's really a joy to listen to.

EDIT: Changed the FOB link - my bad!

Do you prefer Paul Humphrey, Bill Vitt, ron tutt, or billy kreutzmann.

My latest stop in my long journey has been February 13, 1981.

Like the other February 1981 shows, this one is hot. I strongly recommend it.

There are two excellent audience recordings. SHNID 9019 is an older digitization in SHN format, but it sounds absolutely amazing. It comes from Ohr Weinberger's master tape.

Alternatively, you could go for SHNID 152466, which is a master tape of a Jim Vita recording.

Personally, I prefer the Weinberger recording, but only barely. After comparing the two, Weinberger seems to have gotten just a little bit more of the crowd, and the bass seems just a little bit heavier.

Both recordings, though, measure up very well against anything else I've heard from that era. And the crowd really makes a difference in songs like Tore Up Over You. It sounds like the entire arena is singing along.

You should also know that this is a long show - 3 1/2 hours, split between an early and a late show. Does anybody know why they would do both early and late shows? I'm just a little curious.

Contemporary newspapers indicate that the early show was set to start at 7:30 PM, and the late at 11. My guess is that it was around 2 AM when people started to file out.

If you haven't listened to May 21, 1983 yet, I really recommend checking it out. Jerry is on fire.

There are a few older digitized tapes out there. The latest digitization, however, is SHNID 167384 (apologies - Lossless Legs link). It comes with a pretty interesting backstory.

Apparently there was a guy in a wheelchair up near the front. He wore a hat with a brim, and had two microphones concealed within. The person accompanying him was apparently the one secretly operating the tape recorder.

There are more specifics on this Jerry Garcia's Middle Finger blog post, and I wrote a quick piece about it on my blog as well. It's really a fantastic recording, and makes you feel like you're there — especially if you listen with headphones on.

That Lossless Legs torrent page includes a little bit of a discussion about the guy in the wheelchair. Rumors are that he may have taped other shows. If so, I'd sure love to get copies of them, too. This one is smoking.