Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals
John Kahn - electric bass
Melvin Seals - keyboards
David Kemper - drums
Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals
Gloria Jones - vocals
Set 1:
Cats Under The Stars , Forever Young , Stop That Train , Run For The Roses , And It Stoned Me , My Sisters And Brothers , Deal
Set 2:
Harder They Come , I Shall Be Released , Think , Dear Prudence , That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day) , Tangled Up In Blue
Since I gathered an ad and a few listings in Santa Cruz, I gave the 2/24/87 JGB show at the Civic Aud a spin and discovered a great tape (a single one in circulation, thanks to taper Tom Pinney and all involved in getting his tape into the Official Record) of a Garcia Band sounding really good and band leader who sounds cogent, focused, engaged, and increasingly frisky. I'd need to listen to more of the surrounding shows to get a really clean sense, but I if I draw a straight line between some of the Rock Bottom shows (and even some of the early 1986 shows) to the great 18 months that would begin on 8/29/87 and end on 5/19/89, I pass right through this show on the way up. (I do now see that I wasn't doing backflips over 3/14/87.)
I cannot believe Bill Graham Presents ran this with what we might render today as #thefatmanisback, nor that the Garcia people allowed it to run. But here we are! That Lucky Old Sun is a stunningly improbable highlight for me. I never thought I'd hear of it highlighting, less still writing of it. I usually find it a bore. But of this version, on this listen, I have nothing but love. Let's use TLOS as a window on the show.
! song: That Lucky Old Sun [Allan | deaddisc]: The great Tin Pan Alley songwriter Haven Gillespie wrote this reverie with the lesser-known Beasley Smith, a glimpsed-thought-turns-philosophical-truism solar daydream, which makes a really good point. Americana? How about Frankie Laine, Sarah Vaughan, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Louis Armstrong covering your song -- in 1949 alone! Tony Bennett, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Bing Crosby, Bobby Darin, Aretha Franklin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, the Righteous Brothers, and too many others to name would follow.
Jerry put it in his repertoire immediately after the coma, draping it in mournful hopefulness, the man who six months earlier lay at death's door, three weeks in the hospital coming back to something like life, thinking "Man, if I get out of here, I'm gonna play every chance I get" (Vaughn 1987, 80), now coming back to health, regaining strength, maybe the coma wrung the junk-sickness out of him, too, because he's clear-headed for the first time in forever, like more than a decade depending on how you reckon it, and he's playing a neat little gig at the Santa Cruz Civic, the breathtaking little Civic Aud, and he's working his craft. Check out the Jerry Band on a Tuesday night, a worknight, February 24, 1987, and hear him right where he belongs, in a sweet little room working up a slice of Americana for an appreciative listener. It's not perfect, but it's careful, attentive arranging, singing and guitar playing. The song is perfect for JGB #21b because Melvin can swirl up a sweet, colorful Sunday garland right around your ears, drape it around you a little, the ladies supply the backing diaphragm that lets Jerry focus on articulation, phrasing, breath management, and the band simmers it just right, so there's room for the same guitar feel, well plucked and articulate rather than face-melting (though Jerry still plays LOUD!). You don't have to love Garcia to concede him his place, doing this song – see 2/24/87 for what I hope is the open and shut argument.
The whole show and tape have this sweet feel. Garcia sounds great, the band sounds great, the tape sounds great, and I wish I had been able to sit in deco splendor on this night, maybe drink some club soda and commune with the Jerry Band. "The Fat Man Is Back," indeed!
- Weather
- High: 57.8 °F
- Low: 35.9 °F
- Feels Like High: 57.8 °F
- Feels Like Low: 35.9 °F
- Wind Speed: 11.4 mph
- Humidity: 59.4 %
- Moonphase: 0.89
- Partly cloudy throughout the day.
- Time 8:00 PM
- Ticket Price $16.50 / $18.00