I was just revisiting a little item in Todd Tolces's early 1970s column in the Picking a very nicely at at banjo all weekend was Jerry Garcia with his new bluegrass group, Old and in Way. The acoustic quintet played through two nights at the Keystone to a very crowded house each time. The word got out. Either that or everybody beard them on KSAN's 'live'' weekend where Old and in the Way did a smashing one-hour set from the Record Plant in Sausalito. Also on hand that day and the Friday and Saturday nights at the Keystone was Richard Greene, Seatrain's former fiddler. Greene's presence makes t ..read more

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO. Threatening midsummer Rocky Mountain rain clouds and all the rest; beautiful people everywhere. (jimwise), a.k.a. aoxoa, a.k.a. tapersfriend, legendary East Coast taper, good friend of (JD), who would go on to become sound engineer for Jose Feliciano and many other greats JD to DITM: I know. He can move over, too. JD to jimwise: What are you doin' to my levels, man? [jimwise mumble] Don't put 'em up. Put it - dammit, Wise, I'm gonna fuckin' butcher -- [jim inaudible, crosstalk] Whaddya mean?!? You just put my fuckin' levels up! I'm gonna scream in the mics ..read more

The critical source of error in my listening notes, for sure ..read more

Perfect soundboard audio of the debut of the Garcia-Grisman band (JGDG) at Sweetwater in Mill Valley came into the light a few weeks back. It has now been sync'd to video and Christopher Hazard has worked his 4k wizardry on it. Thanks to all involved in doing this work. We have an absolute gem of a copy of pivotal addition to Jerry's late life ..read more

Spudfactor is the number it takes to get from Jerry to another musician, using ties defined as making music together, in person. Anyone who played with him, live or live in studio, even picking in someone's living room, has SF1. Then everyone they ever played with --same definition-- now has SF 2 (at most). And so forth. The universe of SF1, when we draw all of the ties between all of the other players, defines the Side Trips Social Network. Anyway, we were playing around with links out from Jerry to Coltrane, and my amazing commenters have determined that Jerry 0 > Ornette 1 > Colt ..read more

The great Charlie Miller has gathered and shared many thousands of tapes. One that he got hands on somewhere along the line and then forgot about has just come into the light. ca. 1975-1976 JGB rehearsals, outs: I hypothesize that this tape captures material from trying out / playing around with various keyboardists in January 1976 . I think the need to summarize the ca. January 1976 keyboardist/repertoire options is what begat this tape --an artifact, emerging out of a distinct set of historical processes-- in the first place. It's a work tape. I could be completely wrong about that. If you d ..read more

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 ..read more

I was just revisiting a little item in Todd Tolces's early 1970s column in the Picking a very nicely at at banjo all weekend was Jerry Garcia with his new bluegrass group, Old and in Way. The acoustic quintet played through two nights at the Keystone to a very crowded house each time. The word got out. Either that or everybody beard them on KSAN's 'live'' weekend where Old and in the Way did a smashing one-hour set from the Record Plant in Sausalito. Also on hand that day and the Friday and Saturday nights at the Keystone was Richard Greene, Seatrain's former fiddler. Greene's presence makes t ..read more

There is lots of other really nice stuff in these shows, as my notes below narrate. The "Don't Let Go"s are too brief for my taste. But even tunes I don't generally love --I am looking at you, "Dixie Down"-- have a little extra something, again more on the 18th than the 17th and more on either of those than the first night. The Garcia Band at this point was running like a pretty well-oiled machine, putting plenty of bread in the breadbox --around $225,000 for these three nights!-- punching in solid 60-minute sets, and delivering good stuff to the faithful. They hold up well after 30 years, and ..read more

I >>FF to LL -> Supplication (JD), who would go on to become sound engineer for Jose Feliciano and many other greats ..read more