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Jerry Garcia
with Reconstruction
1979-05-30
Keystone Palo Alto
Palo Alto, CA
Soundboard Recording
320 kbps
Artwork Included
1st Set:
01. Lovely Night for Dancing
02. Someday Baby
03. Sama Layuca
04. I Just Wanna Stop
05. Mohican And The Great Spirit
2nd Set:
01. That's What Love Will Make You Do
02. Tellin' My Friends
03. Make It Better
04. Fast Tone
05. I'll Take A Melody
06. Another Star
07. Dear Prudence
Reconstruction was another side project Jerry Garcia was involved in during the decade of the 1970s. Founded by Garcia's long time bassist, John Kahn, in early 1979, Reconstruction was built around Jerry and a quartet of jazz players. According to the Jerry Garcia website, it's unclear if Garcia was supposed to be permanent member of the band. By the time they started to perform in January 1979, however, Jerry was officially in. That limited performances to when the Grateful Dead were off the road. On a couple of occasions, they attempted to sub Jerry Miller on guitar, but the crowds expected to see the "real" Jerry" each time. Reconstruction played just over fifty shows during 1979, all on the west coast. This soundboard captures one of those shows, in Palo Alto, on May 30, 1979, 47 years ago today!
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5 comments:
The whole Reconstruction saga's just weird. John Kahn puts together a band for when Jerry's out of town with the Dead, the music's laid out by Merl Saunders, abandoned by Garcia (and Kahn) in '75. Garcia hides behind it to get rid of Keith and Donna in his own non-confrontational way. How Garcia treated fellow band members baffles me. It makes me wonder if he had any real friends (besides his Peruvian and Persian ones). By then the Dead weren't exactly friends either (see Lowell George's comments after he produced Shakedown Street). Anyway, the real interesting thing here is the music - a mixture of Sly Stone, Santana, Herbie Hancock, Merl's music, Bay Area soul/funk/jazz... Hands down Garcia's best musical adventure ever and you picked a fine example, thanks Speedy. And of course hearing this one can't help asking that evident question: "What if?...". But hey, we've got this, listening now and thoroughly enjoying it. Take care, grtz.
I like Reconstruction with the real Jerry. It's always fun to hear Jerry play outside of the Dead.
Didn't want to sound too harsh on Garcia. In fact I love his side projects and it's the music that counts. And the musical level of Reconstruction is staggering. Probably too free so the music biz didn't know how to promote them. But a fantastic band nonetheless, and a joy to listen to.
Garcia had his demons unfortunately. But the man could play - and did, with almost everyone imaginable!
Got to see Reconstruction once on my 20th Birthday. I attended the Spartan Stadium show the day before and my friend heard JG was playing with this band I never heard of. As luck would have it, the Late show still had tickets. This was my first of many adventures to California to see my favorite band.
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