June 16, 1967: The Hullabaloo, Los Angeles, CA; Grateful Dead/Yellow Payges/The Power

The Hullabaloo, at 6230 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The Grateful Dead played here on June 16, 1967 (the photo is from Alison Martino's amazing 'Vintage Los Angeles' blog)

A few years ago, the very first post on this blog speculated about a lost Grateful Dead show held on Friday, June 16, 1967 somewhere in the Los Angeles area. Both Dennis McNally and Rock Scully mentioned the date in their books, as it was the Friday of the Monterey Pop Festival weekend. It was memorable because Phil Lesh's bass had gotten stolen, and the Dead had to fly up to Monterey Saturday morning, with the Festival well underway. Yet there was no trace of where the Dead had actually played that Friday night in Los Angeles. I made a soundly reasoned case for suggesting that the Grateful Dead played The Cheetah on Santa Monica pier. I am happy to report that I was wrong.

I am happy to report that I was wrong about the Cheetah because I now know where the Grateful Dead played on Friday, June 16, 1967: they headlined two shows at The Hullabaloo, on Sunset Boulevard, supported by The Yellow Payges and The Power. Intrepid Commentator Paul explains: 

The June 16th show was at The Hullabaloo in Hollywood. A radio ad for it is track 29 on "Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots Vol 6" that the yahoogroup U-SPACES assembled years ago. Here's the transcript:

"They're here, in a Hullabaloo after hours exclusive the mightiest of all San Francisco groups, the Grateful Dead. Yes the fantastic Grateful Dead in their exclusive Hullabaloo debut this Friday for both the early show and the after hours. Plus Hullabuloo stars The Yellow Payges and with their new smash recording of "Children Ask", The Power. (brief clip "Children ask if he is dead...") Be there for the one and only LA appearance of the mighty Grateful Dead plus Hullabaloo stars The Yellow Payges and The Power. That's the Grateful Dead this Friday only, two big shows, 8pm at the Hullabaloo and 1am for the outasight Hullabaloo after hours. That's the Hullabaloo, Sunset and Vine in Hollywood."

He sounds quite excited about it! As it was being advertised as "this Friday" I think we can be confident that there wasn't time for the venue to change.

This was the show where Phil's Guild Starfire bass was stolen meaning he had to switch to a Fender for Monterey.

Is the Internet a great place or what? This post will look at what I know about The Hullabaloo, and provide some insights into how Grateful Dead historiography skews away from venues like it.

The Hullabaloo, 6230 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles
The Hullabaloo was the mid-sixties incarnation of a building that opened in 1938, built by one Earl Carroll, and named the Earl Carroll Theater. The theater, at 6230 Sunset Boulevard (at Argyle near Vine) in Hollywood, featured two concentrically rotating stages at the center of the venue.  Right on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, its purpose was to display naked women: at the time, it was illegal to have naked women in motion, but not stationary women on a moving stage.

By the 1950s,  the venue was a TV studio (Queen For A Day was filmed here), and by the early 1960s it had become The Moulin Rouge, which apparently featured a kind of Vegas-style floor show. In December 1965 it became The Hullabaloo. The Hullabaloo was a 'teen' club, serving no alcohol (though I suspect plenty was consumed), and possibly with an upper age limit (although whether that was even enforced is unknown). The Hullabaloo acted as an industry showcase, so bands played every night.  Many of these bands probably played for free, or perhaps just union scale.  There was also an after hours set from 1-4:00 am, played by many aspiring bands (for some great photos of the incarnations of the Earl Carroll theater, see here).

The proprietor of The Hullabaloo was popular KRLA-am dj  Dave Hull, known as "The Hullabalooer." In the mid-sixties, rock was seen as a teenage phenomenon. KRLA was the biggest station in Los Angeles, and Hull was a prominent radio personality, so he ran a nightclub to create what would now be called 'brand synergy.' Most southern California teenagers had access to cars, so kids from the entire Los Angeles basin came to The Hullabalo. My own guess is that younger kids from more distant places came to the early shows, and older ones who lived nearer to Hollywood went to the 'after hours' shows. In California, bars were required to stop serving at 2am, but since The Hullabaloo wasn't a bar, they could have weekend shows that went on until 4am or later.

In June, 1967, the Grateful Dead had released their debut album, and there would have been some desire to make successful inroads into conventional "teen" markets. The Dead were already infamous, due to media coverage of San Francisco, but they had no real following in Los Angeles. Warner Brothers Records was probably instrumental in getting the Dead booked at a place like The Hullabaloo. While the Grateful Dead would have been a bit edgy for The Hullabaloo, it's important to remember that many of the aspiring LA bands were very good. For example, a group called The Hour Glass, featuring Duane and Gregg Allman, were apparently regulars at the Hullabaloo after hours shows, and there's no doubt about how good they were. Many other SoCal bands were terrific live acts, even if their only recorded output was some sort of poppy 45s.

West Hollywood and The Sunset Strip
Sunset Boulevard is one of the most famous streets in a city full of such roadways, and that's saying a lot. The stretch of Sunset between Hollywood and Beverly Hills (from Doheny Drive to Crescent Heights Boulevard) is known as "The Sunset Strip." For decades the famous, the legendary and the low-down of film, fashion and music have gravitated towards The Strip. This was no less true in the 60s. However, the most infamous 60s rock clubs on the Strip, like The Whisky Au Go Go (at 8901 Sunset), were actually just over the Los Angeles County line, in West Hollywood, safe from the Los Angeles Police. Thus the West Hollywood section of The Strip acted as a sort of Red Light district for the City of Los Angeles. The famous teen riots on November 12, 1966 (about which Stephen Stills wrote "For What It's Worth," even if Buffalo Springfield was playing the Avalon that night), took place in West Hollywood, not Hollywood proper.

The Hullabaloo's location in Hollywood itself, at 6230 Sunset, was more glamorous than West Hollywood but less adventurous. The city of Hollywood had merged with Los Angeles in 1910 to guarantee an adequate water supply, so the part of Hollywood inside the city limits was considerably less ribald. However, that probably made The Hullabaloo a more palatable destination for teenagers, since it was far from the notorious low-life of West Hollywood. Los Angeles parents would tolerate their sons and particularly their daughters going to Hollywood, but not so much the den of iniquity further to the West. The Whisky Au-Go-Go was hipper than hip, but it served liquor and was (nominally at least) forbidden to minors, symbolizing the cesspool of sin that was celebrated in West Hollywood. The Hullabaloo, meanwhile, would have just sold sodas and popcorn, and would have seemed considerably less threatening to teenagers' parents.

Limits Of Grateful Dead Historiography
The early chronology of the Grateful Dead has focused on shows where there were posters or flyers. Of course, the Grateful Dead's principal venues in 1966 and '67 were mostly underground venues, who had few other means of publicity besides ornately created psychedelic artworks tacked up on telephone poles. Indeed, it was sort of a code: young longhairs in every town grasped that a hard to read poster with strangely named bands would be a focal point of weed, loud music and free love, none of which could precisely be promised in a poster. Once rock started to become a source of profits in the entertainment industry as a whole, concerts were advertised through more conventional means, like newspapers, but very few daily papers carried information about rock concerts in 1966 and '67, and there were very few underground papers as well.

However, in 1966 and '67, working rock bands like the Grateful Dead played a fair number of shows that did not have posters, because they were more mainstream than the psychedelic underground of the Fillmore and its ilk. Paradoxically, however, more mainstream shows did not usually have posters. There were two main sources of such paying gigs for working bands: school dances and shows sponsored by AM radio stations, and these were not exclusive categories.

School budgets were very different in the 1960s, and high schools and junior colleges had built in finances for entertainment. High schools and colleges had dances every fall and spring, and individual student groups could sponsor events as well. If some hip kids got on the dance committee, all sorts of cool bands were happy to play the show. Indeed, the same night the Dead were playing the Hullabaloo, their friends Quicksilver Messenger Service were playing the graduation dance at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto.

Radio stations also promoted numerous shows and dances at High Schools, both at night and during the day. Throughout early 1967, for example, the Sons Of Champlin played numerous High Schools on Friday at lunch time, in events promoted by radio station KFRC. Up until mid-1967 (and later in many cities beyond San Francisco), AM radio was the only game in town for music, so all rock fans listened to the big AM stations. As a result, radio stations promoted their own events, effectively for no cost, but as a result their was very little residual printed evidence of these shows.

The Grateful Dead probably played a fair number of shows in 1966-67 that are outside the scope of our usual historical artifacts. Its a fortunate thing that the determined U-Space group rescued and circulated the Hullabaloo ad, probably as much for the other bands as the Grateful Dead. We do know a little about the weekend of June 16, since it encompassed the Monterey Pop Festival. On Thursday, June 15, the Grateful Dead and The Wildflower played at a private party at the Straight Theater, celebrating the forthcoming public opening of that venue. The band was not scheduled until Sunday night, June 18, at the Monterey Pop Festival, so manager Rock Scully squeezed in the show at The Hullabaloo. Air travel was very cheap in California in the 60s, so the band probably flew down to Los Angeles on Pacific Southwest Airlines for $20 apiece, carrying their guitars as carryon luggage, and simply played all night and flew back the next morning.

The 1967 MGM 45 "Children Ask" by The Power

The Grateful Dead At The Hullabaloo
Of course, almost nothing is known of the Grateful Dead's performance at The Hullabaloo. Interestingly, the only fragmentary memory comes from Yellow Payges lead singer Dan Horter, who recalled that they had opened for the Dead, but that he couldn't remember where. This newly discovered date seems to confirm that. The Yellow Payges were sort of a house band at the Hullabaloo throughout 1967, and played their many times (there are some nice pictures of the band at the Hullabaloo here). The Power, from what little I can determine, seem to have been managed by the same guy who managed The Palace Guard, who were the Hullabaloo house band prior to the Yellow Payges.

Given the rotating stages at the Earl Carroll Theater, my own guess is that the all the bands played at least two sets each show. Thus the Dead would have played at least four sets from 8:00 pm until 4:00am, and possibly as many as six. The lengthy engagement would also explain the chronology wherein the band did  not fly into Monterey for the Pop Festival until Saturday morning (confirmed by Rosie McGee's book). After the group played their last set at The Hullabaloo, they probably went and took an early morning flight out of LAX to Monterey. The only other known fact about the Hullabaloo show was that Phil's bass got stolen. Somewhere in the midst of all that, Phil had his bass stolen but given the extended evening its easier to understand how Phil could lose track of it. On the other hand, did Phil lose his bass mid-show, and have to play some final sets on a borrowed axe?

Aftermath
I do not know exactly when The Hullabaloo closed, but I don't believe it lasted into 1968. Rock continued to grow up with its audience, and relatively age-segregated 'teen clubs' became passe, since teenagers wanted to see the widely popular groups that older fans wanted to see. FM radio broke the hegemony of 45s and record promotion, and while AM radio actually was bigger than ever, the concert industry was more oriented towards the groups that were played on FM radio.

The former Earl Carroll Theater, however, at 6230 Sunset, continued to change with the times. A consortium headed by the management of Canned Heat took over the building, and opened it as The Kaleidoscope. The Kaleidoscope had its own hip, complicated history, and some great posters, which I have dealt with elsewhere at length.  Lots of great bands played there throughout 1968, although, not as it happened, the Grateful Dead (for the only known photo of The Kaleidoscope incarnation, from the weekend of July 12-13, 1968, see here).

When the Kaleidoscope folded by the end of the Summer of 1968, the venue evolved again as the home base for the Los Angeles-based production of the rock musical Hair. 6230 Sunset was renamed the Aquarius Theater, and Hair was shown six days a week, starting in September 1968. Periodic rock shows were held at The Aquarius in 1969, usually on Monday nights (when Hair wasn't playing). The events were usually industry showcases of some kind--it was Hollywood, after all--and often benefits for some cause as well. In 1970, the Aquarius hosted a stage version of Tommy.  It is possible that the Grateful Dead played the Aquarius for a Warner Brothers Records promotional party on December 14, 1969 (Tom Constanten's diary says they played "The Kaleidoscope"). Today, 6230 Sunset is a movie theater (Update: a Los Angeles native points out that the building was catty corner from the Hollywood Palladium, at 6215 Sunset, where the Grateful Dead played on August 5-6, 1971, and doing the pre-eminent "Hard To Handle").

By the end of 1968, San Francisco style rock concerts were dominating the music industry, and the same type of teenager who went to The Hullabaloo wanted to go The Shrine or The Bank to see bands like the Dead. Thanks to Commentator Paul and U-Spaces, however, we have audio evidence that for one night, at least, the Grateful Dead played on a rotating stage on the former set of Queen For A Day. Uncovering lost Grateful Dead dates has become a surprisingly atomized endeavour, as none of the major sites listing Grateful Dead shows actually update their data on a meaningful basis (unlike TheJerrySite, which strives to remain up-to-the-moment). Nonetheless, a step forward is still a step forward, and it's good to get another date right. So for those of you keeping your own list:

June 16, 1967: The Hullabaloo, Los Angeles, CA: The Grateful Dead/Yellow Payges/The Power (two shows 8:00pm and 1:00am)

Reconstructing Reconstruction, January-February and August-September 1979

Reconstruction, with 'Special Guest' Jerry Garcia, playing at The Old Waldorf in San Francisco on April 23, 1979

Some research into other areas led me to focus on the genesis of the band Reconstruction, a Bay Area jazz-funk ensemble formed by John Kahn that featured Jerry Garcia on lead guitar and vocals. The group only existed in 1979, performing 57 shows with Garcia and a handful without him. As a result, the group is known as an iteration of the Jerry Garcia Band, rather than as a stand-alone ensemble.

In retrospect, this is not entirely unfair, given Garcia's prominence, but a closer look reveals that the group was conceived in a very different manner, where Garcia would have only been an ongoing, if important, guest star for a permanent band. Reconstruction was a fascinating, underrated band, whose music has held up very well to repeated listening over the decades. Nonetheless, for all the extant Garcia scholarship, the roots of the Reconstruction band have hardly been discussed. This post will look at what appears to have been the circumstances surrounding the formation of Reconstruction, with an emphasis on what it was planned to be, rather than what exactly turned out to happen

The Jerry Garcia Band album Cats Under The Stars, released on Arista in April 1978

Cats Under The Stars-Jerry Garcia Band (Arista Records, April 1978)
Somewhere around 1974, Jerry Garcia and John Kahn went from collaborators to partners. Kahn had produced Garcia's first solo album for Round (known now as Compliments Of Garcia), and Kahn's bass playing anchored the live performances of the Jerry Garcia Band. Kahn had had an ongoing career as a producer and session musician in San Francisco and Los Angeles studios, but he had largely put that aside to work with Garcia. The centerpiece for Garcia and Kahn's ambitions was Garcia's first album for Arista Records, Cats Under The Stars, attributed to the Jerry Garcia Band, and released in April 1978. Garcia and Kahn regularly spoke about how much effort they put into that album, and how its poor sales were a true disappointment to both of them. Whatever plans the pair may have had for the future of the Jerry Garcia Band, they must have had to re-think them after Cats was--in industry parlance--a stiff.

Parallel to the Garcia Band album's dismal sales, the onstage contribution of pianist Keith Godchaux had significantly declined. Since Keith and Donna Godchaux were members of both the Grateful Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band, this had multiple ramifications for Garcia and Kahn. I think that Keith's weaknesses affected the Garcia Band less than the Dead, and in any case I think Garcia's principal musical interest in Keith and Donna was, in fact, Donna Godchaux's vocals. Nonetheless, a change was gonna come, even if it took a while. I have made the argument elsewhere that Garcia had quietly spent 1978 thinking about replacing Keith and Donna in the Dead and the Garcia Band. From observing his opening acts, Garcia seems to have identified Brent Mydland, Ozzie Ahlers and Melvin Seals as future collaborators, and indeed they all played with the Dead and the Garcia Band over the next dozen years.

Meanwhile, what of John Kahn? Kahn had let his record industry career slip away in order to throw in his lot with Garcia. Kahn, like Garcia, had surely hoped that Cats Under The Stars would be like Fly Like An Eagle or Red Octopus, a radio friendly hit album by a band of Fillmore-era veterans, but the reality was quite different. Although in the relatively few interviews that Kahn did over the years he had a wry sense of humor about the dismal sales of Cats, it can't have been casual for him. Garcia had the Grateful Dead as a full-time activity--what did Kahn have, given that he had pushed aside his Hollywood career? According to Kahn, he organized Reconstruction, and it makes perfect sense not only because of the timeline, but because Kahn would have been returning to jazz, the music that made him become a professional bassist in the first place.

October 2-3, 1978: The Shady Grove, San Francisco, CA: Merl Saunders and Friends
Given Jerry Garcia's long friendship with Merl Saunders, the fact that he sat in with Merl for two nights at a tiny club on Haight Street seems perfectly plausible. The tiny Shady Grove was a club that featured bands playing original music, and when it got in financial trouble, not only did Merl play a benefit, he got Jerry to come out too, and it must have packed out the house both nights. However, a closer look makes Garcia's presence rather more curious.

Let me be clear and say that Garcia loved to play, and I don't doubt that on both nights at the Shady Grove, Jerry loved funking out with Merl, just like he had done a few years earlier. Nonetheless, why the Shady Grove, and why October 1978? Garcia had unceremoniously dumped Saunders in 1975, leaving Kahn the unpleasant task of telling his friend that he was no longer working with Garcia. The financial ramifications for Saunders would have been significant, too.

For much of 1974 and '75, Garcia had not only had a regular band with Saunders, he had regularly dropped in on Merl's smaller gigs (much to the delight of Merl, the club owners and the fans), and he had abruptly stopped all that. Saunders worked steadily in the Bay Area for the next twenty-five years, and yet the October '78 shows at the Shady Grove were the only time that Garcia took the opportunity to drop in, an opportunity that must always have been there.

In October 1978, Garcia and Kahn would have known that Keith and Donna Godchaux were leaving both the Dead and the Garcia Band one way or the other. I don't know how explicitly they talked about it, but Garcia and Kahn had to be thinking about their next move. What few remarks Kahn has made about Reconstruction suggest that he wanted to form a jazz group. I think Kahn wanted to form a group with Merl Saunders, and he and Garcia needed some confirmation that Saunders was still a willing and functional partner.

To this day, I do not know who called Garcia about dropping in at the Shady Grove--did Merl regularly invite him to gigs? Did Kahn or someone else act as a middleman? I don't even know who was in Saunders band in October 1978 when Garcia dropped by. Was Kahn with him those nights? In any case, since Garcia showed up for two shows, it wasn't any kind of accident. By 1978, Garcia's musical life was structured enough that there were no free nights by chance. By the time Garcia showed up at the Shady Grove on October 2 and 3, 1978, it was a plan and Garcia was sticking to it.

Without impugning any other motives--Garcia liked to play, Robert Hunter liked the Shady Grove and may have nudged him, and so on--I think Garcia's guest appearance with Saunders was a sort of reverse audition. Merl's musical sympathy with Jerry wasn't in question, but there may have been some unspoken issues about Garcia dismissing him from his circle. It does seem, however, that those unspoken issues remained unspoken, and Garcia implicitly or explicitly must have given Kahn the go-ahead to think about a jazz band.

What Was The Plan? 
Here is what I think the key issues were for Kahn and Garcia

• Cats Under The Stars' failure meant that the JGB would become primarily a performing ensemble, not a recording one
• Kahn needed something musically meaningful to do when Garcia was engaged with the Dead
• Although Keith and Donna Godchaux were short-timers in the Grateful Dead, the exact timing and nature of their departure was unknown, since no one in the Grateful Dead had even talked about it
• Given the ambiguity of Keith and Donna's status with the Grateful Dead, the least confrontational way to address the Jerry Garcia Band was to shut it down for a while, thus avoiding explaining to Keith or Donna that they were being 'fired' from the JGB and the Dead, since the band itself would be on hiatus
• Kahn would form a jazz band, and Garcia would play some gigs, bringing attention to the group while ducking any responsibility for explaining anything to Keith and Donna.
• Meanwhile, Garcia and Kahn would form a new Jerry Garcia Band, working in parallel with the jazz band
• The Jerry Garcia Band would focus on songs, and the jazz band would leave Garcia free to play some wild music in a more low-key context, similar to what he had done with Merl Saunders in 1975 in some under-the-radar shows 

Blair Jackson quotes John Kahn on the formation of Reconstruction (p.306), dating it to December 1978,and Kahn more or less confirms my outline:

"Reconstruction was going to be a band that would do more jazz, explore that avenue on a deeper level than the old Merl and Jerry thing," Kahn recalled. "It was supposed to be a thing where if Jerry was going to play in the band, which he ended up doing, we could still work when he was out of town with the Grateful Dead, which seemed to be more and more of the time. That was the point. In which case we'd have another guitar player. I actually did it a few times--I did some gigs with Jerry Miller of Moby Grape. He was a really good guy and a great player. I wasn't really planning on Jerry [Garcia] being in the band originally, and then when he was in the band it sort of changed everything from what the plan was."

What Was The Proposed Timeline?
Garcia sat in with Merl Saunders for two nights on October 2 and 3, 1978, effectively confirming that they could work together, even if that was hardly stated out loud, even by Garcia and Kahn. I think Kahn's timeline would have looked like this, even if it wasn't precisely written out

• Jerry Garcia saw Brent Mydland play with Bob Weir on October 26, 1978, and afterwards said to Weir "this guy might work"
• The Jerry Garcia Band with Keith and Donna was booked through November 4, 1978
• The Grateful Dead's Eastern Tour began November 11, 1978 on NBC-TV's Saturday Night Live, anticipating the release of their new album Shakedown Street on November 15, 1978
•  The Dead's Eastern tour continued throughout November and into early December.
• The Grateful Dead some December dates in Florida, and then a few late December dates in California, leading up to New Year's Eve at Winterland
• If it was implicitly assumed that Keith and Donna would be out of both bands after New Year's, then Kahn could get his jazz band together during the Dead's Eastern tour in November and December.
• If the stars aligned correctly, Garcia and the jazz band might slip in a few shows in December of 1978
• As the jazz band played around, Garcia and Kahn could get the new Garcia Band together, too

What Really Happened?
Events did not go as planned. They rarely do.

• Shakedown Street was released, and the Dead went on tour
• The Grateful Dead performed at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ on November 24, 1978, and the show was broadcast live on a network of FM radio stations
• After the Passaic show, Garcia's poor health got the better of him and he was checked into a hospital
• The Grateful Dead were set up at the Veteran's Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, CT on November 25, but Bob Weir and Mickey Hart had to come onstage and announce that Garcia was sick, and that the show would be rescheduled
• Garcia, amazingly, managed to recover in time for a Florida date on December 12, 1978 (at the Jai Alai Fronton in Miami), and played out the remaining booked Dead dates on the schedule.
• Sometime before the end of 1978--possibly January 1979--Brent Mydland got a call from Bob Weir, who told him there was a chance he could end up in the Grateful Dead
• The Grateful Dead ended up playing numerous East Coast dates in January of 1979 to make up the canceled shows. Whether every one of the shows in January and February of 1979 were cancellation makeups isn't clear to me, but in any case the Keith and Donna era lasted a few months longer than the Grateful Dead perhaps intended it to.
• The final show with Keith and Donna Godchuax was a wonderful show at the Oakland Coliseum Arena on February 17, 1979. At a band meeting in February, Keith and Donna quit the Grateful Dead. While they probably saw the writing on the wall, in any case they couldn't take anymore, saving Jerry or anyone else the stress of saying "it's been a good 7 years--you're fired."

Reconstruction, booked at the Rio Theater in Rodeo for March 11, 1979 (from the SF Chronicle Pink Section). The Goodman Brothers, from Northeast Pennsylvania, opening for Mickey Thomas on March 17, featured Steve Kimock on lead guitar.

Reconstruction Construction
Based on my presumed timeline, and Kahn's comments, when the Jerry Garcia Band stopped playing in November 1978, Kahn must have started talking to Merl about putting a band together. With Garcia's usual desire to avoid conflict while still getting his way, since Kahn was forming a new group, Keith and Donna Godchaux weren't 'fired' from the Jerry Garcia Band. No unpleasant meetings or phone calls were required. Based on Kahn's comments, it seems that Garcia may have been more enthusiastically involved from the very beginning that Kahn or Saunders had expected. This would have been a two-edged sword: on one hand, it would make Reconstruction well known immediately, but on the other hand it would lead fans to expect to see Garcia as a member of the band.

Nonetheless, Reconstruction debuted at the Keystone Berkeley on January 30 and 31, 1979 a Tuesday and a Wednesday night, in between legs of the Grateful Dead tour. These shows were followed some weeks later by Tuesday night shows on February 20 and 27. Reconstruction played a string of shows in the next few weeks, but they avoided playing weekend nights at Keystone Berkeley or other large clubs. The members of Reconstruction were:

Merl Saunders-organ, keyboards, vocals
'Reverend' Ron Stallings-tenor sax, vocals
Ed Neumeister-trombone
John Kahn-electric bass
Gaylord Birch-drums
special guest-Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals

Ron Stallings had played with Kahn back in his first rock group, The Tits And Ass Rhythm and Blues Band, and he had been in the group Southern Comfort, for whom Kahn co-produced an album. Gaylord Birch, a fine drummer from Oakland who had played with The Pointer Sisters, Santana and many others, was probably brought in by Merl Saunders. According to an interesting interview by Hank Sforzini, Ron Stallings called Ed Neumeister. Apparently, there had been some rehearsals, but another horn player was deemed desirable. Neumeister was an exceptional player. Beside playing in local jazz combos, he was in the house band with the Circle Star Theater as well as the Sacramento Symphony.

Given Garcia's revised schedule, as a result of the canceled shows, I suspect that Reconstruction was supposed to be put together without Garcia, but he made a few more rehearsals than was initially expected. Nonetheless, Neumeister refers to meeting Garcia in rehearsal before the first show, so there definitely were some rehearsals with Garcia. On the first night, January 30, 1979 at Keystone Palo Alto, the only song that Garcia sang with the band was the blues "It's No Use," which would have required little rehearsal, since Kahn and Saunders already knew it well.

Listening to the February 27 tape, the next one we have, seems to suggest that there hadn't been much if any rehearsal with Garcia between January and February. Garcia's playing is very muted for the first verse and chorus of almost every song, but subsequently Garcia steps up and plays with great confidence for the balance of each number. This sounds very much like an experienced player listening to the band's arrangement and then stepping up, a clear hint to me that while he may have jammed some with the band, Garcia hadn't formally rehearsed that much with respect to specific arrangements.

In an interesting interview with Hank Sforzini for Paste magazine,

Neumeister recalls how he became part of the band, “I think they rehearsed once or twice and they decided they would get another horn player, so Stallings recommended me, and actually Ron called me. He said, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a gig on Saturday and we’re rehearsing Thursday. It’s just a door gig.’” Neumeister knew who Garcia was but did not follow the Grateful Dead, “I had no idea to be honest the following that Jerry had. I showed up for that first gig and there were wall-to-wall people. It was at Keystone Berkley.”

Although the show was actually on a Tuesday, Neumeister's description suggests about a week of rehearsal, where he came through midway, and that fits Garcia's touring schedule. The previous Dead gig had been January 21, 1979, and the first Reconstruction show was January 30.

Early Reconstruction
After several weekday shows from January through March, the very first weekend show of Reconstruction was Friday, March 9 at the tiny Cabaret Cotati. The first true weekend booking for Reconstruction was not until March 30 and 31 at the Catalyst, the 16th and 17th shows for the group. Clearly the band was intentionally keeping a very low profile. By 1979, the Jerry Garcia Band and its predecessors had been headlining weekend shows at the various Keystones for eight years. The decision to stick to weekday shows was probably predicated on a number of factors

• The other members of Reconstruction, particularly Ed Neumeister, may have had a variety of conflicts with previously booked weekend shows
• Since Reconstruction had no intention of doing a "full Garcia Band," they may have wanted to tamp down expectations by staying away from the typical JGB weekend gig
• Given the complexity of Garcia's schedule, and the fact that Keystone dates were probably booked 30 to 60 days in advance, there may have been a residual concern that Garcia might not make every booked show, so Reconstruction didn't want to commit to a weekend, since they couldn't guarantee the Keystone a profit

Whatever the circumstances surrounding the establishment of Reconstruction, Garcia seems to have made every gig. Other than a tape from the debut on Tuesday, January 30, but we have only occasional setlists. On February 27, Jerry sang "It's No Use" and "The Harder They Come," another song that would have needed little rehearsal. The next list is March 7 (a Wednesday at tiny Rancho Nicasio), and it features "Struggling Man," the first known appearance of a Garcia song that would have actually required at least a run-through. The rarity of different Garcia songs suggests that rehearsals that included Garcia were pretty rare.

Reconstruction was initially intended as a sort of funky jazz project for Kahn and his friends, who of course included Jerry. However, the music was so good that the band started to take itself seriously. Once the band played some weekend shows at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz (March 30-31), they started to play more high profile events, including the group's occasional road trips (to Colorado, for whatever reasons). My own taste may be coloring my opinion here, but I find Reconstruction tapes to be extremely compelling 30+ years later, not true of every Garcia enterprise.

Ironically enough, I think the very power of Reconstruction's music blocked them from much success. Many Deadheads liked jazz, certainly including me, but most us were hardly any kind of experts. By 1979, I had just figured out how to make sense of Miles Davis's mid-60s music (like Miles Smiles) and his fusion efforts (like In A Silent Way), but I hadn't caught up to contemporary jazz itself. Knowing what I know now, a lot of late 70s jazz was following up on the Oakland funk of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, playing very sophisticated music over a funky but ever-changing beat. At the same time, Reconstruction still had a smattering of vocal numbers, shared between Merl Saunders, Ron Stallings and Garcia (with occasional backups from Gaylord Birch).

 In many respects, Reconstruction was very contemporary, but it didn't have an easy slot for the record or concert industry to package it. Reconstruction was too loose and and had too much improvisation to call itself a rock or funk band, but since it didn't sound like early 70s "Fusion Music" (like Return To Forever) it didn't have a commercial slot in jazz either. Jazz always takes a few years to sink into listeners' consciousness, and by the time I grasped how deep Reconstruction was, the band was ten years gone.

Merl Saunders 1979 album Do I Move You, featuring Edd Neumeister on trombone

Reconstructing Studio Traces
Reconstruction never made a studio album. Yet a few traces remain.  One curious legacy was the obscure Merl Saunders album Do I Move You. Released in 1979 on Crystal Clear Records, it was a "Direct To Disc" one take recording, cut straight into the vinyl, an audiophile treat at the time. Five of the six songs were regular parts of Reconstruction sets ("Tellin' My Friends," "Shining Star," "Long Train Running," "Another Star" and "Do I Move You"). Merl's backing group on the album consisted of players with whom he regularly played, including his son Tony on bass, Larry Vann on drums and Martin Fierro on sax. Carl Lockett played guitar. The only member of Reconstruction on the album was Ed Neumeister, who joined the horn section on trombone. Given that the album was cut on February 3, 1979, Neumeister would have just met Saunders. The material on Do I Move You, all sung by Merl, suggests that it was a typical set of the Merl Saunders Band circa 1978, and thus that Reconstruction's material was initially grounded in Merl's arrangements of his working repertoire.

Another curious tidbit were some demos recorded in Spring 1979 by Jerry Garcia, and released as bonus tracks on the All Good Things boxed set (on the Run For The Roses disc). There are three tracks recorded with John Kahn on bass and Johnny D'Foncesca on drums. One of them, "Alabama Getaway," which includes Dan Healy on guitar, was probably just a demo to get the song on tape. Yet why record "Fennario" and "Simple Twist Of Fate?"

There are a variety of possible explanations, the most likely of which was to test out new recording equipment at Club Front. It's important to remember, however, that Garcia wasn't interested in making a studio album at this time, having just had the disappointment of the Cats release. It's also important to remember that there were plenty of live tapes around of both those songs, if a reference tape was needed. However, in the context of Reconstruction, whatever Garcia's motives for the demos, he was working with drummer Johnny D'Foncesca. Johnny D had moved to Mickey Hart's ranch at about age 10, in 1969, and was probably not yet 20 at the time of these recordings. I think Garcia was quietly checking out Johnny D's playing, because Garcia and Kahn were thinking about the next version of the Jerry Garcia Band.

The most significant recording on the boxed set, however, was a version of "Dear Prudence," also recorded in Spring 1979. "Dear Prudence" first turned up in Reconstruction sets around April, 1979, so I assume the recording was from around then. Unlike many other songs, Garcia had never played the song live, so there would have had to have been some discussion and rehearsal to get the parts right. Yet the recording was not just a quick demo of a song. Not only was most of Reconstruction on the recording, with only Gaylord Birch absent (replaced by Johnny D--Birch probably had a session), but Marin veteran Mark Isham was on the recording as well.

In the Sforzini interview Neumeister recalled what must have been these sessions:

Neumeister recalls one specific instance of Garcia’s devotion to his craft during a recording session. Neumeister, who had written the horn arrangements for the session, was discussing the arrangements with Garcia, “He decided for the recording we would extend the horn section—trumpet, some trombones—and we actually double tracked some of it so it was six horns. Jerry sat in the recording studio and not in the booth, so he could hear the track being mixed with the horns. He sat in with the horns, and he was very, very focused and concentrated and extremely detail-oriented. You wouldn’t think this about Jerry sometimes, but he was looking for perfection. We were there until we got it absolutely perfect. He was really into it being really, really clean and tight. Of course that’s what you want but on the other hand you think of Jerry as being this loose improviser.”

I assume that the recording session was at Club Front, but what was Garcia up to? Why bring in an extra horn player, have a pro--Neumeister--write out charts, and then double track the horns, and do multiple takes? This wasn't a casual demo, whatever it was. Something else must have been afoot. An album demo, perhaps? In any case, no one ever asked Garcia or Kahn and they never brought it up.

The End Of Reconstruction
Reconstruction played throughout most of 1979. The final show by the band was September 22, 1979, at the Keystone Berkeley, where they had begun almost nine months before. Just two weeks later, on Sunday, October 7, 1979, the new-model Jerry Garcia Band debuted at Keystone Palo Alto, with Ozzie Ahlers on keyboards and Johnny D'Foncesca on drums. In fact, however, Reconstruction had played a few shows in August and September without Garcia.

Inexplicably, the first known booking without Garcia was at the Keystone Palo Alto on August 4-5. It was inexplicable due to the fact that the Grateful Dead were playing the Oakland Auditorium the same nights, so the potential audience for Reconstruction, even without Jerry, was otherwise engaged. The advertised guitarist was Carl Lockett, a local player who had played on Merl's Do I Move You album (I think Lockett played the August 3 booking at Keystone Berkeley too, but perhaps Jerry played or was supposed to play). JGMF managed to dig up some obscure Reconstruction bookings, although its not certain if the events ever occurred, or how they went down.

Reconstruction: August-September  1979
August 3, 1979: Keystone Berkeley
Garcia could have played this show, but I think Carl Lockett was advertised. On the other hand, maybe this was the show where Merl thought Jerry was booked, but someone unnamed didn't tell him about it (see below).

August 4-5, 1979: Keystone Palo Alto
The Grateful Dead were playing Oakland Auditorium. Carl Lockett was advertised as Reconstruction's guitarist.

August 10, 1979: Temple Beautiful, San Francisco
Garcia played this date, at the former Synagogue which had previously been known as Theater 1839 (where the JGB had played on July 29-30, 1977)

September 3, 1979: Frenchy's, Hayward
The Grateful Dead played Madison Square Garden from September 4-6, so it's unlikely Garcia was in town. This may have been a show with Jerry Miller. Incidentally, Frenchy's was the very same venue from which the Warlocks were hired for a three day booking and then fired, reputedly on June 18, 1965. A Monday night at Frenchy's would be a good place for the band to try out its "new look" without Garcia. The show was subtitled "Merl Saunders And Friends," I think as an indicator of fans as to what to expect.

September 4, 1979: Sleeping Lady Cafe, Fairfax
The Dead were in Madison Square Garden. Whoever played guitar the night before most likely played guitar this night. According to Kahn, the shows with Jerry Miller were quite good, if it was indeed him.

September 15, 1979: Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto
Garcia played this show.

September 22, 1979: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley
Garcia played this show as well, and I think this was the last performance of Reconstruction, with or without Jerry.

A listing from BAM Magazine, September 1, 1979, showing a Keystone Palo Alto date for September 29, 1979, found by JGMF. The ad would have had to have been sent to press before September 1.

September 29, 1979: Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto
JGMF found an ad for this show, but its not clear what happened. I don't think Reconstruction would have been booked for a Friday night without Garcia. On the other hand, the Dead were not playing, and Garcia could have played this show. At this point, we have to file this show as likely with Garcia if it happened, but 'unproven.'

However, Jackson quoted a bitter Merl Saunders on the demise of Reconstruction (p.307), when Garcia seemingly abandoned the band:

"..there was a night when he didn't show up for a gig., which was done purposely, I think. It was sabotaged [Saunders won't say by whom]. They didn't tell him there was a gig to get to. And shortly after that he and John started a different group and I sort of lost touch with him."

The September 29 Palo Alto show might fit the timeline for this, but the August 3 Keystone Berkeley show would fit even better. Of course, what does "shortly after" mean? A week, a month? The implication is that the rest of Reconstruction was there, and Garcia was not, so that would exempt Kahn from any subterfuge--but it remains mysterious who Saunders felt was threatened by Garcia's participation in Reconstruction.

October 7, 1979: Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley: Jerry Garcia Band
The Ozzie Ahlers version of the JGB debuted this night, and there isn't any doubt about it.

According to Kahn, on at least one occasion, the guest guitarist was Jerry Miller, a fantastic player who was the once and future lead guitarist for Moby Grape. It was an intriguing idea, really--a far-out jazz funk band with a series of guest guitarists, who sometimes might be Jerry Garcia. Yet for whatever reason, Reconstruction sputtered to a halt without Garcia. I think the music was just too advanced to draw an audience without the natural pull of Garcia, and Reconstruction simply disappeared without a trace. I think there were three shows at the Keystone with Carl Lockett (August 3-5). and two more in September (3-4), possibly with Jerry Miller, and maybe another obscure show or two, but they didn't gain any traction. Garcia and Kahn would have been planning the next iteration of the Jerry Garcia Band, and it looks like Reconstruction just didn't take without Garcia.

Reconstruction was an inspired idea, a plan for a working jazz band with Garcia as a regular but not permanent guest, and a chance for Garcia to get some serious playing done. Garcia had sort of managed to pull that off with Merl Saunders in late '74/early '75, and this seemed like another chance. The music lived up to its name, the players were great and the inspiration was there, yet it never went any further. No one asked Garcia or Kahn about it, or Merl Saunders for that matter, so we'll never know exactly what was planned and whether the group's arc was satisfactory or not. We are left only with some fine tapes, a single studio track and a whiff of what might have been.

March 23, 1975: Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA: The SNACK Concert with Jerry Garcia And Friends (FM VIII)

The Grateful Dead had officially retired from performing after their five-night stand at Winterland in October, 1974, so it was quite a surprise when they appeared in concert and on the radio at Kezar Stadium on March 23, 1975. The band played entirely unheard new material, joined by guest keyboardists Merl Saunders and Ned Lagin, suggesting that rumors that they had not in fact broken up were actually true. The day's performance was actually billed as "Jerry Garcia And Friends," but it was generally perceived as a Grateful Dead show, and indeed, as most of it was released as a Grateful Dead bonus disc some time ago, it's fair to call it a Grateful Dead performance. However, the events and circumstances surrounding the event, including the radio broadcast, seem to have largely been overlooked. This post will consider the performance and broadcast of the Jerry Garcia And Friends set within the context of the SNACK Benefit concert on March 23, 1975, at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park.

SF SNACK: San Francisco Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks
In early 1975, the San Francisco school district announced that due to an unexpected budget shortfall, programs for the 1975/76 school year would have to be drastically cut throughout the city. The School Board released a plan that pretty much cut all arts and sports in every school. In today's environment, where Public School Teacher's unions are demonized in order to lower taxes for billionaires, it may seem strange that there was public outrage at this turn of events, but such a world existed then. Amidst all the outrage, Bill Graham decided to organize a benefit concert to provide funds to help the San Francisco Public Schools to provide extracurricular activities for its students. Hence the name: SF SNACK--San Francisco Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks.

Bill Graham, ahead of his time as always, grasped that large rock concerts were a dramatic instrument for calling attention to problems, and a dramatic instrument that was not only self-funding but could in turn raise meaningful amounts of money. He also recognized that the management of major bands in the area would benefit professionally from the publicity and exposure, and would for their part work for little more than expenses. In that sense, SNACK was very much the forerunner of international fundraisers like Live/Aid and Farm-Aid.

As it happened, while there was an intense glare of publicity about the School District's plight, magnified by the publicity for the concert, the benefit was conceived and directed by Bill Graham, rather than with the direct cooperation of the city or the district. The School District did not appreciate being made to look like chumps--which they pretty much did--and more rational voices pointed out that the six-figure sum that would likely be raised by SNACK was just a fraction of the several million dollars that the schools would have needed. There was some distinct grumbling that the benefit concert was really a publicity grab by Graham and the bands, who were using the crisis as a promotional tool.

In the end, shortly before the SNACK concert took place, the San Francisco School District announced that they did not, in fact, have a budget shortfall. There had essentially been an accounting error, and the projected funds available for the forthcoming year had thus been off by several million dollars. There was no crisis; arts and sports would not be cut. Thus the raison d'etre for the SNACK concert was neutralized about a week before the show. The city was probably pretty relieved, and if I recall the School District pretty much washed their hands of SNACK, at least according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It was too late to turn back, however, so the show went on as scheduled. By that time, it was just a rock promotion, albeit a very successful one. The proceeds of the concert, apparently about $200,000, were apparently donated to unnamed charities. Thus, on Sunday, March 23, 1975, some of the Bay Area's biggest working rock acts--plus a few out-of-town friends--gathered to play at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

The poster for the canceled Wild West Festival at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park, scheduled for August 22-24, 1969. The Grateful Dead were booked for Friday, August 22

Kezar Stadium, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
Kezar Stadium had been built in Golden Gate Park in 1925. The stadium is located on the Eastern edge of the Park, on Stanyan and Frederick, a short walk from the Haight Ashbury district. In the 1920s, the area around Golden Gate Park was less populated, so building a stadium there was the equivalent of building one today on the outskirts of town. The stadium had a capacity of 59,000, so it was San Francisco's primary venue for events. All sorts of major sports attractions were held there in the 1930s and 40s.

The principal attraction at Kezar was football. High School and college football championships were held there from the 1920s onward, and Kezar was the home park for various local colleges, back when they all had football. The most famous tenant of Kezar, however, was the San Francisco 49ers, who used Kezar as their home field from 1946 through 1970. After the 49ers moved to Candlestick Park in 1971, many old time San Franciscans sniffily refused to attend 49ers games, at least until Joe Montana showed up. However, Kezar was an old-style stadium, with wooden benches, few amenities and an increasingly terrible parking situation, so it was no longer viable as a major sports venue.

There were a few efforts to turn Kezar Stadium into a rock concert venue. The stadium had been used for a few political rallies and the like, which sometimes included music (Yellow Shark has a great precis of Country Joe And The Fish's contribution to a Kezar Rally on April 15, 1967), but the increasingly crowded neighborhoods surrounding the park offered nothing in the way of parking, and there were no nearby garages, either. In August, 1969, San Francisco nearly had its own Woodstock, the Wild West Festival, based at Kezar Stadium, but that poorly organized affair fell apart at the last second.

In 1973, Bill Graham Presents started presenting rock concerts at Kezar, correctly anticipating that rock music had grown beyond the confines of even the largest indoor arenas. The first such event, dubbed "A Day On The Green," was held at Kezar Stadium on May 26, 1973, and featured the Grateful Dead, Waylon Jennings and The New Riders of The Purple Sage. The show was well attended, but not sold out, and the atmosphere around the neighborhood was nice. In 1973, Kezar was still Home Field territory for the Grateful Dead.

Seven days later, Bill Graham Presents held the second and seemingly last rock concert at Kezar, with headliners Led Zeppelin (and among the opening acts was unsigned local band The Tubes, featuring Vince Welnick on keyboards). The June 2, 1973 show was packed to the rafters, and the sound system was pointed differently than it had been for the Dead, so the sound was audible all over the area, much to the dismay of the neighborhood. The sound issue was used by the city to pass an ordnance that effectively prevented any future rock concerts at Kezar. I suspect also that the sold out show caused a parking nightmare, and that amped up Led Zeppelin fans were less appealing to the locals than mellow Deadheads. Thus there was a permanent injunction against any future shows at Kezar.

I have written at some length about how Graham moved his Day On The Green shows to the larger and more accessible Oakland Coliseum Stadium, an arrangement that continued successfully throughout the balance of the century. When Graham proposed the SNACK concert, however, he needed a San Francisco site, so he persuaded the powers-that-be to make an exception to the rule and allow the concert to be held at Kezar. Graham was great at working the press, so the Mayor and the City Council had little choice, but the neighborhood would have been very much against the event, and it had to have been a tricky political situation. Once it turned out that the entire basis for SNACK was an accounting error, no political good will would be coming back to the City, so the chances of there ever being another major rock event at Kezar approached zero. SNACK was the last rock event at Kezar Stadium.

The Billing
The poster lists both the rock acts and the various celebrities that would be at the show. This too prefigures the Live/Aid concert, which, if you will recall, had a heavy Graham presence. Graham's basic idea was that between each set, some sort of luminary would come out and praise the need for arts or athletics in the schools.

The Celebrities:
Frankie Albert, John Brodie, Rosie Casals, Werner Erhard, Cedric Hardman, Willie Mays, Jesse Owens, Gene Washington, the Rev. A. Cecil Williams
Most of the celebrities were San Francisco athletes, with an emphasis on 49ers who had played at Kezar (Frankie Albert, John Brodie, Cedric Hardman, Gene Washington). Willie Mays was, of course, Willie Mays, and the recently-retired star of the San Francisco Giants. The Giants had never played in Kezar (they had played in Seals Stadium, over on 16th and Potrero, in 1958-59), but he was a San Francisco icon (according to Dead.net, Mays got the biggest cheer of the day). Jesse Owens was a worldwide icon, but somehow Graham had persuaded him to appear, no doubt because Owens career was owed to sports programs in the public schools (in his case, in Ohio).

Rosie Casals (b. 1948) was a women's tennis champion who had learned to play on public courts in San Francisco. The Reverend Cecil Williams was the pastor of Glide Memorial Church in the City, and a well known person who lent credibility to anything he was associated with. As for that other name, Werner Erhard? The founder of Erhard Seminar Training (est)? Let's just say as little as possible.

There were also a few unbilled guests between sets as well. As I recall, the most famous of these was none other than Marlon Brando, who came out and made some remarks prior to Neil Young's set. Brando was perhaps the biggest active movie star in the world at the time, so in that sense it was a real coup by Graham to have him onstage. I do not know what, if any connection Brando had to San Francisco, Bill Graham or any of the causes, so I don't know how Graham persuaded Brando to appear--I will allow you to insert your own favorite variation on the obvious joke here.

The Music:

Doobie Brothers/Graham Central Station/Mimi Farina/Jefferson Starship/Jerry Garcia And Friends/ The Miracles/Joan Baez/Santana/Tower of Power/Neil Young

All of the billed performers had a significant Bay Area connection save for The Miracles. In the context of the benefit, it was important that acts with a largely African-American fan base, namely Graham Central Station, Tower Of Power and The Miracles, were a part of the SNACK show. If only white hippie rock acts had played the show, it would have struck a wrong note with the rather diverse San Francisco school district. In the perception of the time, I think Santana would have "counted" for a Hispanic act. 

Whether teenage African Americans and Hispanics were really listening to The Miracles and Santana is unknown to me, and beside the point. Since Graham had arranged the concert to support the school district, he had to have a diverse bill. At the time, Tower Of Power was perceived as a "soul" act in the Bay Area--a sort of code word for "appealing to non-white people"--even though the band had come up through the rock circuit and had many white members. With Tower, Graham Central Station, a popular R&B band that was led by ex-Sly And The Family Stone bassist Larry Graham, and Motown act The Miracles (who no longer featured Smokey Robinson) the R&B side of the equation was spoken for.

Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina were usually billed at major Bay Area benefits, and, similar to Rev. Cecil Williams, they lent an air of social credibility that was separate from their then-waning status as folk stars. At the time, Baez's best days seemed long behind her. Of course, just a month later, she would release her album Diamonds And Rust, which put her back on the charts, but no one knew that at the time. Neil Young, meanwhile, had moved to a ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains a few years prior, which was generally known, but SNACK was the first time he had appeared at one of these "only-in-San-Francisco" benefits that Bill Graham had made into part of rock history. It is worth noting that Neil Young's own legendary Bridge Concerts are to some extent built on the SNACK model pioneered by Graham, even if Neil has played so many gigs by now that he has probably sort of forgotten it himself. 

SNACK: Sunday, March 23, 1975
The SNACK Concert was heavily publicized in the days leading up to the concert. Much of the publicity, however, had to do with the politics surrounding the school board, leading up to the announcement that the entire crisis was simply a result of an accounting error. Bill Graham was regularly quoted, directly and indirectly, that all sorts of special guests were scheduled to appear. It was uncertain at the time whether those guests would be musicians or just 'celebrities.' There was no mention of the Grateful Dead playing. Everybody, including myself, assumed that 'Jerry Garcia And Friends' would be Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders.

As for me, I was a lowly High School student in the suburbs, lacking a car. My access to concerts depended on persuading friends with vehicles, or my cousin, to take me to something. In fact, I was pretty persuasive, so persuasive in fact that I went to concerts at Winterland both on the Friday before and the Sunday after the SNACK concert, but that obviated any chance of making a pitch to my friends for SNACK. Overall, however, I was not bothered, other than the general thing that I wanted to go to every single concert in the Bay Area regardless of who was playing. The only acts on the SNACK bill who appealed to me were Garcia and Neil Young. I correctly figured out that both would only have been playing about 45 minutes at most, and I didn't have a big Jones to deal with a stadium concert just to see short sets by Garcia/Saunders and a probably solo Neil. Well,--summing up High School in a nutshell--I was smart, but I was wrong.

In the Winter of 1975, there was almost no coverage of Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead. SF Chronicle rock critic Joel Selvin had a weekly column called "The Lively Arts" in the Sunday paper, and he sometimes mentioned the Dead, but it was a passing thing, just a sentence or two. Selvin had mentioned that the Dead were recording, but I for one wasn't convinced. Rolling Stone reported annually that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were recording a new album, and I still hadn't seen one. I didn't doubt Selvin's assertion that the Dead were doing something, but I had just assumed that it would be a long time, if ever, that we would ever see the Dead in concert again. Up until SNACK, there had never been a show billed as Jerry Garcia And Friends, so everyone made the logical assumption that this was just another name for Garcia/Saunders, perhaps with an extra guest of some kind. 

Shortly before the SNACK concert, it was announced that the show would be broadcast live on KIOI-fm (known as K101 for its place on the dial). KIOI was a sort of commercial rock station, well down the hipness scale from the mighty KSAN. This seemed appropriate, as most of the acts were pretty 'popular,' a somewhat loaded term in those days. I had a vague idea that I would tune into the radio broadcast some time during the day, to see what was up (this was before I had a tape deck, so that wasn't a factor). The SNACK show started at about 9:00am, very early for a rock show. I got up late in those days, so I was sitting around drinking coffee at about noon when a friend called (thank you Paul A) and said "the Grateful Dead are on the radio, you should probably turn it on."

I rapidly turned on my little FM radio, moving the dial from 94.9 to 101.1, and heard the distinct sound of the Grateful Dead playing some very strange music. They played nothing I remotely recognized, nor anything that sounded like any previous Dead recording. I even had a vinyl bootleg or two by that time, and the music on K101 didn't sound anything like them, either. But I could hear Garcia's guitar, and I knew it was them. As I had predicted, the band only played about 40 minutes, but only the encore of "Johnny B. Goode" was familiar--the rest was completely strange.

What Were The Grateful Dead Thinking?
The Grateful Dead's appearance on the SNACK FM radio broadcast, in retrospect, stands as one of the most bizarre and in turn brilliant steps by the group. Of course, the band's choices were probably driven by no forethought whatsoever. Graham seems to have used his legendary persuasive powers to get the band to appear, and their compromise seems to have been that they had to billed as Jerry Garcia And Friends, rather than as the Dead. Since the show sold out anyway, the billing didn't matter, and Graham got to take credit for "getting the Dead back together," which wasn't really true, but it was how it seemed at the time. 

Knowing what we know now, it's plain the Dead were busy recording Blues For Allah, and played the material since it was all they really knew. Of course, they could have done "Not Fade Away">"Goin Down The Road" without effort or rehearsal, but one advantage to having billed themselves as Jerry Garcia and Friends was that there were no expectations and no obligations to play traditional crowd pleasers. In another sense, by appearing unexpectedly in concert and playing strange, challenging new music, the Grateful Dead not only confirmed the story that they had been playing together, but in distinct contrast to the likes of CSNY, showed that they had really been doing something while they were away. 

Of course, the Dead's appearance couldn't have happened if the Dead had not been independent of any record company. It would be incomprehensible to a record company like Warners or Columbia that one of their bands would appear on an FM broadcast at a major regional concert without using their own name--RCA, for example, would have flipped out if Jefferson Starship had been billed as "Paul Kantner And Friends." What would be the point of playing a largely unpaid gig otherwise?  As for the music itself, well, no record company would have really wanted the Dead to be working on "Blues For Allah" when they were hoping for the next "Uncle John's Band." 

Still, the idea that a major band would play parts of an unfinished album live on the radio would have made a 1975 record company apoplectic. Clinton Heylin's fascinating book Bootleg looks at the history of the vinyl bootleg industry, and record companies were frantically concerned with artist's new material being made available outside of official channels. Of course, the actual dollars and cents involved were miniscule, but the record companies were very alert to the threat of disintermediation, and managed to throttle the bootleg industry until the rise of Napster in the early 20th century. Rule #1, according to the record companies own agendas, was never to let anything new out before it could receive the full corporate marketing treatment, with accompanying profits.

The Grateful Dead defied all these rules by performing an instrumental version of "Blues For Allah" at SNACK. Of course, the lack of vocals and the strangeness of the material insured that it was not ripe fodder for bootleggers--I'm not aware of a vinyl boot of the broadcast, in any case. In a larger sense, the Dead's strange choice of material indicated to their fans that they were not only recording, they were still busily carving a unique path that no one expected. After the SNACK show and broadcast, strange as it was, Deadheads knew that the Grateful Dead were still in the game, even if the rules of that game were not yet known. When Jerry Garcia And Friends headlined a Winterland concert on June 17, 1975, everybody knew what it meant: it was just a matter of time.

The SNACK Concert
The SNACK Concert sold out, so obviously a lot of people attended the show, probably somewhere in the range of 50,000. However, I have never spoken to anyone who went. SNACK was a sort of "rock event," but not particularly a Grateful Dead event, since almost no one really knew the Dead would play. Reading the comments about the show on Dead.net, it seems that many who attended were local high school kids, seeing bands that were probably generally popular. A number of people have commented there that SNACK was their first Dead show. Correspondingly, there are not many photos from the show, nor audience tapes, ticket stubs and the usual memorabilia. In that respect, SNACK only became important to Grateful Dead history after the fact. 

The rest of the SNACK concert and broadcast was pretty conventional, save for the very last act. After the Dead played, I listened to the broadcast all afternoon. DJs were hinting at a big event to end the show. When Marlon Brando said a few words just before Neil Young's set, I assumed that was it. Nonetheless, while I had assumed that Neil Young would play solo or with Crazy Horse, I was profoundly mistaken. I was pretty excited when Bill Graham announced that Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Levon Helm were playing with Neil Young, because I was a huge fan of The Band. However, after announcing Danko, a hoarse Graham said "on guitar, piano and vocals, Mr. Bob Dylan" I went nuts in my very own bedroom, along with the entire crowd at Kezar.

Bob Dylan's appearance with Neil Young at SNACK was Dylan's first appearance on a live FM radio broadcast, and one of the very few he would do in his career. At the time, it was electrifying. Of course, the set was brief and very strange. After songs by Neil Young, Levon Helm and Rick Danko, Bob stepped up for his very first ever live performance of "I Want You." However, Bob's vocal mic failed, and his voice was only faintly audible only through (I assume) the drum mics. It was very frustrating. A friend of mine had a scar on his knee for years, from where he kicked his kitchen table when he realized what was happening.

The informal band played another round of songs by Neil, and Rick and Levon (sharing vocals on "The Weight"), and eventually they played "Knocking On Heaven's Door." Dylan, mysteriously, changed the lyrics to something like "Knocking On The Dragon's Door," among other incomprehensible vocals. Finally, the ensemble ended the 40-minute set by doing "Will The Circle Be Unbroken," with lead vocals by Dylan and Danko. The electric presence of Bob Dylan, then a true figure of mystery and delight, overwhelmed all coverage of SNACK. Dylan had appeared several hours after the Grateful Dead, so the possible implications of the Grateful Dead's return to performing were only remarked upon as an afterthought in ensuing coverage.

SNACK: Aftermath

• There was never another concert in Kezar Stadium. The old stadium was torn down in 1989, replaced by a modern facility that was one-sixth the size.
• 1975 was the year that turned San Francisco against events in Golden Gate Park. After SNACK, there was a stealthy free concert by Jefferson Starship (May 16 '75) and a less stealthy one by the Dead (Sep 28 '75), but after that year the neighborhood  and the City were dead set against any Dead sets. Bill Graham's death, ironically, broke the logjam.
• There was a bad feeling about SNACK, because it was based on an accounting error. It was only many years later that fans and journalists started to appreciate the scope of the event. It didn't hurt that the Grateful Dead, Neil Young and Marlon Brando had only become bigger than ever in the ensuing decades.
• SNACK was Bill Graham's blueprint for Live/Aid, Farm-Aid and the 1989 Earthquake Benefit, which in turn were the blueprints for Neil Young's Bridge Concerts at Shoreline Amphitheater. Modern technology and a greater appreciation for the promotional value of appearing in benefit concerts made all of those events more effective than SNACK, but SNACK was the first of its breed.
• The Grateful Dead completed and released Blues For Allah later in 1975. No other major rock band ever played such strange, unrecorded music on a regional FM broadcast, but it did the band no lasting harm.

Appendix: Set Details, SF SNACK Concert, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA March 23, 1975
Jerry Garcia And Friends

Jerry Garcia-lead guitar
Bob Weir-guitar, vocals
Merl Saunders-organ
Ned Lagin-electric piano
Keith Godchaux-piano
Phil Lesh-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums
Mickey Hart-drums
Donna Godchaux-vocals

Blues For Allah>
  Stronger Than Dirt>
  drums>
  Stronger Than Dirt>
  Blues For Allah
Johnny B. Goode

The entire set was broadcast on KIOI-fm (101.1), and later released as a bonus disc that was only available as a premium for those who pre-ordered the Beyond Description box. David Crosby had rehearsed with the Dead, and was supposed to perform with them, but was called away at the last minute for a personal emergency. Bill Graham announced each player by name and instrument, although he inadvertently overlooked Ned Lagin, and then said "The Grateful Dead And Their Friends." Graham apologized to Lagin afterwards for skipping him.

Neil Young

Neil Young-guitar, piano, harmonica, vocals
Bob Dylan-guitar, piano, harmonica, vocals 
Tim Drummond-guitar
Ben Keith-pedal steel guitar
Garth Hudson-organ, piano
Rick Danko-bass, vocals
Levon Helm-drums

Are You Ready For The Country?  [lead vocal-Neil]
Ain't That A Lot Of Love [Levon]
Looking For A Love [Neil]
Lovin' You (Has Made My Life Sweeter Than Ever) [Rick]
I Want You [Bob]
The Weight [Levon and Rick]
Helpless> [Neil]
  Knockin' On Heaven's Door [Bob]
Will The Circle Be Unbroken [Bob and Rick]

K101 djs make various comments throughout the tapes. Old time Bay Area residents may be amused to realize that one of them was James Gabbert, later famous as the owner and host of KOFY-TV (Channel 20). The Neil Young set can be heard at Wolfgang's Vault.

Jerry Garcia>1978>Keyboards (Jerry Garcia-Bandleader)

A backstage pass from the October 27, 1978 show at Eastern Washington University

It is a conventional trope of Jerry Garcia scholarship that he deferred any responsibility for leading the Jerry Garcia Band. By the time the JGB was formed in 1975, Garcia was already a famous rock star, if in fact a famous rock star with a serious cash flow problem. After some brief flirtations with difficult geniuses like Nicky Hopkins and James Booker, Garcia seems to have spent the next twenty years working with low-key professionals who did not challenge the strange hegemony of Garcia and John Kahn's lucrative but part-time enterprise. It fits a certain narrative to say that Garcia was both compulsive and passive, wanting to play all the time, but seemingly refusing to exert any influence upon the band that bore his name. From that point of view, it would seem that it was remarkable that the Jerry Garcia Band was worth listening to at all.

Yet quite the opposite was the case. The Jerry Garcia Band played around a thousand shows, and a very high percentage of them featured exceptional music. Quite a few of them were exceptional from beginning to end. Of course, much of the excellence of the Jerry Garcia Band's various performances has to do with Garcia himself. If Garcia was on, then even the 200th version of "How Sweet It Is" would be emotionally powerful and musically inventive. Was this random chance? I accept that even a stoned out player with no plan can have a good gig now and again, but hundreds of great shows over the course of twenty years? Garcia wasn't very forthcoming with his plans to his own bandmates, and he certainly had his problems with drugs, but I will make the case that he was a very good bandleader, and it was no accident at all.

The cover to Miles Davis' groundbreaking 1969 album, In A Silent Way

Miles Davis, about whom I can make a very good case for being the greatest bandleader of improvised music in North American history, was a famously difficult bandleader from the point of view of his band. Miles typically had the greatest players in modern jazz history, and yet he always made things extraordinarily difficult on them. One famous Miles trick was to give sheet music only to the piano player, and to force the other musicians to simply guess what the guy was improvising off of, and thus have to struggle to make music out of it. Miles thrived on the tension, and he felt the lack of certainty added to the creative process, allowing him to achieve the collaborative synergy he was seeking. Yet his own band had mixed feelings, at least until afterwards, when they heard the tapes played back of the fine music that they had made.

Jerry Garcia was benign where Miles was acerbic, and talkative where Miles was silent. Yet I think he consciously led the Jerry Garcia Band in a very similar way. Garcia assembled the different pieces of the Jerry Garcia Band, and chose and sang the songs. Yet he never really told most of the band members what he was striving for, and seems to have exerted little direction beyond counting off the songs at very slow tempos. Descriptions of what few rehearsals there were, from David Kemper at least, describe a charming, talkative Garcia, discussing absolutely everything but the music that they were actually playing.

Yet a close look at the timeline for Jerry Garcia in 1978 reveals some fascinating insights into how Garcia asserted his influence on his own band. It's true that John Kahn took care of most of the musical business of the band, and was probably privy to some or most of Garcia's concepts, yet Garcia's hand was firmly on the tiller. Garcia seems to have exerted a firm grip on who was in the band, and by definition selected the songs he wanted to play at his own slow tempos. Nonetheless, that was part of Garcia's quiet method--having chosen whom he felt to be the right musicians, he wanted them to participate as they saw fit, rather than take direction. This post will look at Garcia's timeline for 1978, and how it foretold the next dozen years of Garcia's music, even though his handprints could hardly be seen later.

Jerry Garcia's 1978 Arista album Cats Under The Stars

Jerry Garcia 1978
1978 was a transitional year for The Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia. The Dead had had high hopes for their first Arista album, Terrapin Station, released in 1977, but it had been somewhat of a disappointment. Still, the first tour of 1978 featured some fantastic music, even if the January and February swing through the West and Midwest may not have been a great financial success. Garcia and Bob Weir also had high hopes for their Arista solo albums, but both of those made little impact. The dominant event for the Grateful Dead that year was their historic trip to perform in front of the Egyptian Pyramids during an Eclipse, so 1978 was a memorable year in the annals of the Dead.

By the end of 1978, however, the Grateful Dead's music seemed to be in a stagnant state, a situation mostly blamed on piano player Keith Godchaux. Keith's piano playing had been brilliant when he first signed on with the Dead, and he had held down the same chair with the Jerry Garcia Band. Yet by 1978, Keith had serious health problems, and his marriage to Donna Godchaux was shaky as well. In retrospect, all the members of the Grateful Dead, Donna included, have said they were planning on Keith and Donna's departure, even if no one actually spoke about it. The Dead generally, and Garcia particularly, were notoriously non-confrontational over personal and financial issues, and the music of the Dead generally suffered throughout the balance of 1978, even if there were still some great shows on occasion.

I have written at length about a show in Portland, OR, on October 26, 1978, where the Bob Weir Band opened for the Jerry Garcia Band. That show was the first time that Garcia heard Brent Mydland play, and apparently after the show Garcia told Weir "this guy might work." Apparently unspoken was the context, that Keith and Donna would need to be replaced. In a certain way, the exchange between Garcia and Weir was a profound insight into the inner workings of the Grateful Dead. With a relentless touring schedule, the Dead were not going to undertake the messy business of forcing out Keith and Donna Godchaux without a batter in the on-deck circle.

Upon further reflection, however, Garcia talent-spotting Brent Mydland in Weir's band turns out to be a hidden narrative of Jerry Garcia's 1978. Most of the shows that Jerry Garcia would play between 1979 and 1990 featured keyboard players in bands that opened for Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead in 1978. In that sense, Jerry Garcia defined some essential paths for his future music in 1978, even though it would not become obvious until later. What you think of those paths depends on how much you like the musical contributions of Ozzie Ahlers, Melvin Seals and Brent Mydland, but all of them were spotted by Garcia in 1978. In that sense, 1978 can be seen as a watershed year in the history of both Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. This post will look at how Garcia appears to have spotted and chosen his keyboard players throughout that year.

Former JGB keyboard player Ozzie Ahlers with another great American

Ozzie Ahlers: February 18, 1978: Marin Veteran's Memorial Auditorium, San Rafael, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Robert Hunter and Comfort
Ozzie Ahlers was from the Woodstock, NY, area, and he had been in a band called Glory River. Ahlers relocated to Marin County partly for the opportunity to work with former Woodstock resident Van Morrison. The mercurial Morrison mixed and matched band members, and was uncomfortable in many performance contexts, so Ahlers probably didn't play that many shows with him. Ahlers also ended up being a regular in Jesse Colin Young's band, alternating tours and recording dates with Scott Lawrence. In early 1978, Ahlers joined Robert Hunter and Comfort, replacing Richard "Sunshine" McNeese.

At the time, Hunter and Comfort were planning to release an album called Alligator Moon, although in fact it was ultimately never released. Probably in anticipation of this effort, Hunter and Comfort were to join the Jerry Garcia Band on several dates on their March, 1978 Eastern tour. Both Comfort and the Garcia Band played some warmup gigs on the West Coast to get ready for the tour. In a break from normal practice, the Jerry Garcia Band headlined two small concerts in the Bay Area, instead of only playing the Keystones. Robert Hunter and Comfort opened both shows. I assume that one reason for the concerts was for the JGB/Comfort team to get road ready, with a concert sound system and equipment.

In any case, Robert Hunter and Comfort opened for the Garcia Band on Saturday, February 18, at the 1900-seat Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael. Even if Garcia had heard Ahlers in rehearsal with Hunter--unlikely--this would have been Garcia's first opportunity to see Ahlers in concert. Even if Garcia missed the set, it wouldn't have mattered, since the same bill played the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium the next night (Monday was President's Day, so Sunday night was like a weekend). While I don't think Garcia usually hung out backstage and watched other bands, the circumstances were a little different. Robert Hunter was one of Garcia's oldest and closest friends, and Garcia's opportunities to see him perform were rare, so there's every reason to think Garcia was hovering around with an open ear.

The Jerry Garcia Band opened their East Coast tour on March 9, 1978, in Cleveland. Hunter and Comfort were added to the bill in Long Island on March 12, and in the end Comfort opened for eight Garcia band shows (over six nights). Thus all told, Garcia had ten opportunities to hear Ozzie Ahlers play, and he must have liked what he heard. Keith and Donna Godchaux remained part of the Jerry Garcia Band through November, 1978, but Garcia put the JGB on hold after that. However, when the Jerry Garcia Band was re-established in September, 1979, Ahlers was in the keyboard chair.

No one inside the band has ever commented on Garcia's choice of Ahlers, to my knowledge. Based only on our knowledge of Garcia's comment to Weir, I have to think that Garcia and Kahn had some sort of moment where they listened to Ahlers and said to each other "this guy might work." Then they filed his name away. Ahlers didn't get a call until nearly 18 months later, but Garcia didn't get out much or socialize with outsiders, so there's scant chance that he bumped into Ahlers somewhere later, or checked him out at some local club. It appears that Ahlers played in Garcia's best friend's band, and as a result Garcia had confidence that Ahlers could be worth a phone call in the future.

Musical skill aside,  I think there's another factor in the Garcia Band that made choosing people from shared concert bills desirable. By 1978, although Jerry Garcia was not the icon he would become, he was still a figure that radiated an immense gravitational pull backstage at his own shows. There was also a weird, insular history to the Grateful Dead that could be difficult to penetrate. Even if Garcia had very little direct contact with Ahlers backstage, after an East Coast tour he would have known that Ahlers was not overwhelmed by Garcia's presence, and that he had a personality that suited Garcia. If Ahlers had been personally difficult, Garcia would have heard about it from Hunter.

In a BAM Magazine interview in 1978 (by either David Gans, Blair Jackson or both), Garcia said that his band and the Dead had different personalities. Garcia said that (to paraphrase) "the Dead were about dissonance, and his own band was about consonance." The key members of the Dead were great musicians, but they were opinionated and forthright, to the point of being difficult. Certainly the strong personalities of Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart were what made the Dead so vibrant. The Jerry Garcia Band, however--including Garcia--was historically full of fine players who had a reputation amongst other musicians for being a pleasure to work with: John Kahn, Ron Tutt, Maria Muldaur, and so on. This seems to have been borne out in interviews over the years.

Thus the Jerry Garcia Band not only had a musical profile, but a personality profile as well. Someone like David Crosby would have made a plausible member of the Grateful Dead, but he was too forthright for the low-key Garcia Band. After giving an ear to Ahlers' tasteful playing with Hunter, Garcia and Kahn would have also had a chance to see that Ahlers was a low mainenance band member, and that would have counted for a lot.

The Jerry Garcia Band had had episodes with Nicky Hopkins and James Booker, where they chose genius over professionalism, and they regretted it. Indeed, from one point of view, it appears that Garcia's frustration with Keith Godchaux in the Garcia Band seemed to have as much to do with Keith having become high maintenance, rather than direct criticism of his playing. It's also worth noting that when the JGB flirted with genius by hiring Hopkins and Booker, Garcia wasn't touring with the Grateful Dead. Yet Garcia seems to have realize that he could only have one band of jagged edges. As one scholar has observed, given how much Garcia had accomplished with the Dead, and how much effort Garcia still put into the Garcia Band, its not at all surprising that he wanted compatible band members as a prerequisite.

 

In this 1977 episode of The Midnight Special, Melvin Seals can be seen playing some funky piano as Van Morrison leads Mickey Thomas, Reni Slais and the rest of the Elvin Bishop Group through "Domino"

Melvin Seals: June 4, 1978: County Stadium, Santa Barbara, CA: Grateful Dead/Elvin Bishop Group/Wha-Koo
Even if Terrapin Station hadn't been a big success, the Grateful Dead nonetheless had become a bigger live attraction than ever. In the early Summer of 1978, they headlined an outdoor show in Santa Barbara. I believe that the approximately 20,000-capacity stadium would have been the biggest venue that the Dead had ever headlined in Southern California up through that time. To fill out the bill, however, and sell a few more tickets, the Dead were supported by their old friends The Elvin Bishop Group. The Elvin Bishop Group had a much higher profile than they had ever had, thanks to a big 1976 hit called "Fooled Around And Fell In Love," featuring vocalist Mickey Thomas. After that hit, Bishop expanded his group to a much larger ensemble.

Deadheads remember Elvin Bishop's performance in Santa Barbara mainly because Jerry Garcia came out and played a little bit, taking a solo on the song "Fishing Blues." As a result of being invited onstage to jam, which had to have been planned (for logistical reasons), we know that Garcia was hovering around the stage. In a 1991 interview with Scott Muni, Garcia recalled

;.... somewhere there in the '70s the Grateful Dead did a show with Elvin Bishop. I was standing behind this guy on the stage. He was the second keyboard player in Elvin's band. This big guy, he was just playing a Fender Rhodes. But he was playing so tasty, I'm just standing behind him. It's a pretty thick band, so figuring out just how to get in there was, I thought, the work of a good musician. He was just playing the tastiest little stuff. I thought, 'This guy is just too much!' 

I asked him what his name was. He said, 'Melvin Seals'. Melvin Seals. So years later I got Melvin. I don't remember exactly when he started playing with us, but right around the late '70s, early '80s, Melvin started playing with us, and he was just a monster. He's turned out to be the guy that we were looking for all along.

It seems pretty clear that the June 4, 1978 show in Santa Barbara has to be where Garcia heard Seals. Garcia had the foresight to ask Melvin's name. There has always been a tendency to think of Garcia as this sort of stoned genius, who let other people handle everything for him. That may have been true with respect to his personal life and finances, but Garcia was his own man as a musician. He heard a guy he liked, and knew he'd be looking for a keyboard player some day soon, so he filed the name away, even if Melvin Seals would not play with Garcia until 1981. Once again, it appears that the restless Garcia was looking for keyboard players where he could find them.

Intriguingly, Seals has a different memory

I did some gigs with Maria Muldaur. Her boyfriend at the time was John Kahn. He [came to] the gigs, and he admired what I was doing so he asked me if I'd be interested in jamming with another band sometime. He never really went into the details of what it was. Nobody even told me he played with [Jerry].

[Kahn] called me up one day [and said] we're trying to put some rehearsals together to get some gigs. I went up to the address and there's Jerry Garcia and John Kahn and all these other musicians. I didn't even know what was going on. Really, it still didn't hit me until the end of the rehearsal.

I have to presume that Seals was playing with Maria Muldaur in 1979 or 1980, and got scouted by Kahn (Seals was in the Elvin Bishop Group until at least mid-1979).  In fact, Garcia may have already given Kahn the heads-up, who passed the name to Maria. In any case, Seals' little story hints at the dynamic between Garcia and Kahn. Garcia finds a likely candidate, and the low-profile Kahn is able to check out prospects without attracting attention.

Merl Saunders 1979 album Do I Move You, on Crystal Clear Records, recorded Direct-to-Disc in early 1979

Merl Saunders: October 2-3, 1978: The Shady Grove, San Francisco, CA: Merl Saunders And Friends
I realize that the two guest appearances by Jerry Garcia with Merl Saunders at a tiny Haight Street club don't quite fit the narrative here. Ahlers, Seals and Mydland were all new to Garcia, while Saunders was an old pal. Garcia was present at the other shows, and simply listened to his opening acts, whereas Garcia made a conscious effort to drop in twice to sit in with Merl. However, Merl Saunders had been an active working musician since Garcia had stopped working with him in 1975. Garcia could have sat in at any time--why October of 1978, at a club where Garcia had no direct connection, and was nowhere particularly convenient? And why two nights?

In the context of this analysis, it seems pretty clear that Garcia knew he had to find replacements for Keith and Donna Godchaux, even if he was personally dreading any actual confrontation. Garcia, unlike the rest of the Dead, had to find two replacements for two bands, not just one. Of course, it would be theoretically possible for Garcia not to have a second band, or to only play acoustic, or something, but that clearly wasn't Garcia's plan. It seems that Garcia went to some effort to play some funky jazz for two nights with Merl Saunders to see if it was still musically viable. It clearly was, as John Kahn put together the Reconstruction band, and Garcia debuted with them on January 30, 1979.

From what we know, John Kahn had put together Reconstruction with the idea that it would be a working jazz band with or without Garcia. Garcia was almost always booked as a "special guest" with Reconstruction for this reason. Thus when Kahn and Garcia re-activated the Jerry Garcia Band in late 1979, it was originally with the idea that it would be parallel to Reconstruction, rather than replacing it. The reality didn't work out that way, more's the pity. From Garcia's point of view in 1978, however, the jams with Merl made it clear to him that Saunders was still a good interim partner, even if the longer range plans didn't work out. Once again, the seemingly casual Garcia was merely taciturn, and appears to have a much more organized plan for his bands than anyone gave him credit for.

Brent Mydland: October 26, 1978: Paramount Northwest Theater, Portland, OR: Jerry Garcia Band/Bob Weir Band
When Jerry Garcia saw Brent Mydland play and sing with the Bob Weir Band, his remark to Weir that "this guy might work," turns out not to have come out of the blue. We can see that Garcia was filing away keyboard players for future reference, but Mydland was finally the one he needed to allow the band to move past Keith and Donna Godchaux. Interestingly, I think it was Brent's harmony vocals that helped put him over the top, since he could replace both Keith and Donna, which Ahlers, Seals and Saunders could not have.

Once Keith's replacement was lined up, the Godchauxs could be moved out of the band, and touring could continue accordingly. Garcia had some candidates lined up for his own bands as well, so to the extent Garcia ever wanted any kind of confrontation, he would have been finally willing to take such a step. Fate intervened, however, when Garcia fell ill in November, 1978, canceling a  slate of Grateful Dead shows. Those shows were re-scheduled for January and February 1979, so the Godchauxs had to remain in the band. After a tour that was apparently very difficult personally but produced some fine music, the Godchauxs simply resigned at a band meeting on March 1. They may have seen the inevitable coming--Garcia had already started playing with Reconstruction--but it hardly mattered, as they needed out. It was unfortunate that having taken some control of his life, Keith Godchaux died in an auto accident in 1980.

Jerry Garcia's Other Choices
While it's fascinating to note that Garcia picked most of his future keyboard players from some opening acts in 1978, its important to at least think about what other alternatives Garcia may have been able to consider. For one thing, while the Grateful Dead were a pretty popular touring act after 1976, they generally headlined shows without having an opening act in support. The band played long enough for promoters to avoid having to have an opener to fill time, but the group was big enough to not need another band to help sell tickets. The Marin show with Comfort and the Northwest shows with Weir were consciously promoted as double bills featuring two Dead spinoff acts.

The June, 1978 show in Santa Barbara was one of the very few shows after 1976 where the Dead played with an opening act. Among those few were a number of bands without keyboard players (The Who, the New Riders and Marshal Tucker, for example), so the universe of players for Garcia to observe from backstage was pretty small. The only ones I can find would be Tom Coster (Santana, Cow Palace 1976), John Farey (Soundhole, Cow Palace 1976), Bill Slais (Elvin Bishop's other keyboard player, 1978) and Bobbye Nelson (Willie's sister, Giants Stadium, 1978). So while Garcia made some good musical choices, he didn't get a chance to observe a lot of players live.

On the other hand, Garcia knew a lot of keyboard players from the Bay Area, such as Mark Naftalin, Bill Champlin or Geoff Palmer, all of whom were quality musicians who would have been available for the long-term part-time employment of the Garcia Band. And Garcia would have known or been able to find out who was low-maintenance and who was difficult. Yet he passed on all the locals. John Kahn and Maria Muldaur knew their way around the Los Angeles studio scene, and Garcia had always done well with studio guys like Ron Tutt, Paul Humphrey and Larry Knechtel. In many ways, the Garcia Band was ideal for a Hollywood session guy: total freedom in an inherently half-time gig, leaving them free to make real money and live their life in Los Angeles. Yet Garcia made no effort that we know of, via Kahn or anyone else, to find an LA player.

So even if Garcia stuck to some players he had seen from backstage, and he hadn't seen many other candidates, Garcia wasn't completely boxed in. By 1978, the Jerry Garcia Band made good money, and it had a schedule that suited a lot of pros. Garcia's penchant for not rehearsing was generally a convenience for experienced musicians, too, as they didn't need the rehearsal nor have time for it. Yet Garcia passed on any old San Francisco hands or Hollywood studio regulars, and chose who he wanted.

For all the problems the Grateful Dead had in 1978, and there were a few, Garcia seems to have spent the year thinking about how he was going to move forward musically, even if he did it in his typical insular style that made no sense at the time.The fine music made in ensuing years by Reconstruction and the Jerry Garcia Band--not to mention the Grateful Dead--was hardly some kind of happy accident.