Prior to the Godchauxes’ last gig as
members of the Grateful Dead in the Oakland Alameda Coliseum on 2-17-79,
relationships between band members were deteriorating, and Keith’s drug
addictions turned him into a shell of the innovative piano player he once was.
And for the first time in their storied history, the Dead hit a sustained rut.
In 1978, the band played brilliantly at times, and at other times they went
through the motions and banged out dull set lists. Garcia had laryngitis early
in the year and was hospitalized with bronchitis late in the year. During the
last six months of ’78, if the band had played more shows like they did on
Keith and Donna’s final night, replacing the Godchauxes would have been
unthinkable.
“Greatest Story Ever Told,” the Weir
thriller that had not been played in five years, establishes the tone for this
imaginative show in the opening slot. There are no screaming shrieks from Donna
as the house lights remain on and the boys wail—Jerry engages his Mu-Tron filter
and shreds a shrill run—dramatic and emphatic. The Oakland Coliseum is in
heaven. This was the first time “Greatest Story” appeared as an opener, and it
was the last extended jam on this tune, as the band chose the path of least
resistance on most future renditions. “Greatest Story” would never again rock
as hard or as long as it did in the Godchaux era. This show immediately took on
an air of celebration as the band steamed through “Don’t Ease Me In,” another
unexpected guest in a strange place. This was the most thoughtful set list the
band constructed since 7-8-78 Red Rocks. There must have been sadness and
sentimentality involved during Keith and Donna’s last show, but the music is
euphoric—a divorce has never sounded so sweet.
Donna’s final performance as lead
vocalist occurred early in set two with “Heart of Me,” and was followed by a
bawdy “Big Railroad Blues.” The unusual succession of songs kept the musicians
on their toes, and it gave 2-17-79 a brazen flavor—there’s no show remotely
like it. Lazy Lightning > Supplication is a psychedelic blitzkrieg to end
the opening set, and the Terrapin > Playin’ combo is a hearty prelude to the
evening’s second set masterpiece.
“The Wheel” spins out of Drums >
Space, and Chez Garcia dishes out some sizzling-butter-hits-frying-pan licks as
“The Wheel” rotates to a brief pause. The band reloads and ignites the funkiest
stroll down “Shakedown Street.” The thunderous opening is a mix of collective
improvisational genius and execution. The 2-17-79 “Shakedown” also features
rich group vocals and a charged between-verse solo from Jerry. The lengthy
Shakedown > Playin’ reprise transition transcends and travels through
multiple dimensions of time and space. This was the final psychedelic
meandering of one the great eras in the annals of live music. The Godchaux
Dynasty ended with “Sugar Magnolia” and a “One More Saturday Night” encore.
The denizens of the Bay Area were
still in shock from the horrific atrocities of November 1978. Reverend Jim
Jones, the founder of the People’s Temple and influential figure in San
Francisco political circles, initiated a group suicide that resulted in the mass
murder of 918 of his followers in Jonestown, Guyana. Nine days after the
unspeakable massacre, San Francisco mayor George Moscone and city supervisor
Harvey Milk were assassinated. Times were crazy in America, and they didn’t
improve over the next year. There were gas shortages and furious motorists as
inflation and stagnation pinched the pockets of the working man. American
hostages were humiliated in Iran as the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. In
the thick of this chaos, one thing was for certain: If the Grateful Dead
weren’t touring, Jerry Garcia and John Kahn were.
On February 17, 1980, the Jerry
Garcia Band arrived on the campus of SUNY Oswego to play a show in Laker Hall
on the shores of Lake Ontario, and in the shadows of the Nine Mile Point Nuclear
Station. The night before, the neophyte amateur hockey players representing the
United States of America thrashed the second-best team in the world,
Czechoslovakia, 7–3. A Miracle on Ice was
looming. In a few days, David would slay Goliath. The US hockey team shocked
the world as they upset the Soviets, one of the greatest teams in the history
of the game, and the American kids went on to win the gold medal in Lake
Placid. Strange things were happening in Upstate New York, and the Jerry Garcia
Band tapped into that vibe on 2-17-80.
A bare-bones quartet of Garcia, John
Kahn (bass), Ozzie Ahlers (keyboards), and Johnny de Foncesca (drums), kicked
the festivities off with “I’ll Take a Melody.” The show’s ascent to immortality
began with the fifth tune, “Deal,” as the crowd roared after Jerry tacked on an
extra solo. Later in the year, the Dead adopted the JGB format of “Deal,” and
the song became a set-ending jamming showcase. The opening set of 2-17-80 ended
with long and ridiculously hot offerings of “Positively 4th Street” and “That’s
All Right Mama.”
Commenting on his fascination with
Dylan’s songwriting in an interview with David Gans, Garcia said, "It was the beautiful sound of ‘Positively 4th Street’ that
got to me more than the bitterness of the lyric. The combination of the beauty and
the bitterness, to me, is wonderful. It’s like a combination of something being
funny and horrible—it’s a great combination of two odd ingredients in the human
experience." Jerry manages to tap into the sadness of Dylan’s anthem as he
celebrates and expands the beautiful sound.
Out of this extraordinary second
set, two pieces stand out: Chuck Berry’s “Let it Rock,” and the majestic JGB
cover creation, After Midnight > Eleanor Rigby > After Midnight. In this
stripped-down quartet, Garcia shouldered a heavy load. During “Let it Rock,”
his guitar relentlessly pounded like a steel jackhammer. Perhaps Garcia was
tapping into the turbulent weather that drops about twenty feet of snow on
Oswego every winter, but his aggressive virtuosity was stunning.
The
Jerry Garcia Band only played six versions of Midnight > Rigby >
Midnight, all with this quartet configuration. Garcia glides into “After
Midnight” nonchalantly, singing the lyrics thoughtfully. Time constraints
vanish as Jerry and Ozzie trade solos in a long instrumental segment that
eventually is played over a funky beat. As the band drifts towards “Eleanor
Rigby,” they are in segue paradise—anxious to play the Beatles song, but in no
hurry to leave “After Midnight.” “Rigby” is a jazz moment for JGB as they
gradually increase the tempo with each round. After nailing the melody double
time, Garcia bids farewell to “Rigby” with careening chord progressions until
the jam smolders back into “After Midnight” and a final rock and roll
blitzkrieg.
I delve deeper into 2-17-80 Oswego in Positively Garcia: Reflections of the JGB (2013).
I ranked it as the fourth-greatest Jerry Garcia Band show. This remarkable
performance shows another side of Garcia: his fascination with deliberately
exploring Dylan tunes; his love of Motown and reggae on numbers like “Harder They
Come,” “Sittin’ in Limbo,” and “How Sweet it Is;” and his passion for tunes
that inspired him to play guitar, “Money Honey” and “Let it Rock.”
For more on February 17 and the other 33 essential dates of GD History, check out Deadology
1 comment:
The 2/12/80 After Midnight with Eleanor is the one for me, and I think I heard them all.
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