GarciaLive Volume 16 may be the ideal entry in this ongoing archive series to provide the curious music lover eager to comprehend the virtues of The Jerry Garcia Band. By the conclusion of this roughly three-hour performance recorded at Madison Square Garden on November 15, 1991, the familiar setlist rendered by the readily recognizable personnel lineup seems definitive in more ways than one.
It’s wholly appropriate the cover graphics here are based on original art by Jerry himself. Or that a photo of a beaming Garcia would appear with a similar backdrop inside the four-fold digipak: this concert sounds like nothing so much as the man telling his story in the most vivid terms he can manage. He is equally expressive through the selection of tunes by his favorite composers plus an eclectic range of other song choices, consistently vigorous vocals –like that on The Band’s “The Night, They Drove Old Dixie Down”– and, last but not least, versatile and inventive guitar work.
Garcia’s best playing on his main instrument was always distinguished by with a pin-point touch and these sixteen numbers are hardly an exception. Quite the contrary, in fact, and considering there is only a single tune played less than five minutes—4:36 of “My Sisters and Brothers”—with a half-dozen tracks over ten minutes long, the man’s frequent alterations of tone are nothing less than remarkable. For instance, as with the syncopated likes of Steve Miller bandmember Norton Buffalo’s “Ain’t No Bread in the Breadbox,” Garcia nimbly straddles the line between lead and rhythm guitar for Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down Sally” and in doing so, he insistently prods the band in its unified motion.
Using a wholly different tack, his bristling leads slice through the air on “Deal,” the first set’s fast-paced closer and the sole cull here from the canon of the Grateful Dead. Jerry hardly sounds like the same instrumentalist as on those two aforementioned tracks or, for that matter, as he carefully picks his solo during the encore “(What A) Wonderful World” (most often associated with jazz icon Louis Armstrong): its precision mirrors the gentle but stirring singing that surrounds it. John Cutler’s original recordings (mastered by Fred Kevorkian) capture those varied textures as fully as the ambiance of this famous room in New York City (where the Grateful Dead had just played nine nights two months earlier).
The leader’s bandmates respond in kind to his active engagement in the proceedings. Drummer David Kemper and bassist John Kahn remain steadfastly unobtrusive, but the pair are adept enough to pulse steadily on “Don’t Let Go,” then smoothly underline the frontman’s emotive delivery of Bob Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate;” one of the highlights of the Nobel Laureate’s Blood On The Tracks, Garcia makes this song his own as an expression of irretrievable loss.
Keyboardist Melvin Seals is appropriately more assertive than the rhythm section in his own accompaniment. In fact, at frequent junctures throughout the two sets, as on the opening of Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You,” he virtually steals the spotlight from the frontman. Yet the modern-day leader of the JGB also knows how to sublimate himself in service to the material: the church-like ambiance he coaxes from the organ on “That Lucky Old Sun” is only one such interlude fully in keeping with the fundamentally understated tenor of this show. Throughout GarciaLive Volume 16, all the musicians and singers strive to insinuate rather than overpower their audience.
The attendees populating the world-renowned venue respond in kind with respectful acclamation at multiple points, one notable instance of which is the near-instant recognition of Van Morrison’s “Bright Side of the Road.” The gentility in the voices of Jacklyn LaBranch and Gloria Jones as they coo their echoes of the namesake’s lead are every bit as nuanced as the musicianship around them at that moment, but the two also belt it out with gust when necessary too: hear the cover of Motown icon William ‘Smokey’ Robinson’s tune for The Miracles “The Way You Do The Things You Do.”
At the outset of his liner notes within this twelve-page booklet, Dean Budnick assumes a fairly measured approach in his writing. But as his play-by-play unfolds, he slowly but surely succumbs to a hyperbole rendered redundant by the palpable glow of pride deservedly radiating from the complete concert that comprises GarciaLive Volume 16.
