Seal That Silver Mine #9: 9/6/79
In which a certain iteration of the Dead starts to come together out of something else.
When Ed and I started making plans to do this thing, we were going to do it every week. I’ll just say the pandemic isn’t the only bad thing that’s happened to us since we sent the first installment in March. But, despite all of that—and despite not being able to crank these out as quickly as we initially hoped—there’s a real respite in this music, in this band, in trying to find the three minutes of the worst show imaginable that still gel and surprise you.
It’d be easy to go down one of those internet lists of everyone’s favorite shows and try to position this thing that way: “Actually, 5/9/77 is better than 5/8/77,” or something like that. But it’s the off-peak nights that interest me most, when the band goes searching for something and doesn’t quite find it, but still makes something that matters. I think this show is a great example of that, of being in flux and trying new things and seeing where it can go. Maybe it’s because I can relate, here in late 2020.
— KL
September 6, 1979: Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY
Listen Along: Relisten's Charlie Miller SBD
Who Are You?
Every year of Grateful Dead is a transition year in some way. Something is always dying and something is always rising, even on a week-to-week basis sometimes. So, the cliché thing to say here is "fall of 1979 was one of those times," but really, the whole thirty year run is one of those times; that's the whole point. The music is always evolving in some way, building or subsiding depending on what's happening with the alchemical mix of men (and woman, for a stretch) making it.
But, in September 1979, things really were changing. Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux had left, or been sent packing, or whatever happened, at the end of April after a long drawn-out decline in late '78 and early '79. The music had stagnated around that time, too, to my ears. Post-Egypt, the band was adrift, just like these hurricanes that lately sit out in the Gulf just churning water until the steering currents change. Depending on what book you read, they'd had their eye on Brent Mydland for a while as the next keyboardist up, and his first show with the band was on April 22 of '79.
Summer of '79 was spent with Brent getting his feet wet. The band was having a good time, he was learning the classics, but things weren't really gelling yet. The setlists in summer of '79 aren't much different from 1977 and 1978, and while the performances were often pretty good (Seattle from 7/1/79 is a personal fave) there's not any new material yet. The Dead are still doing the Terrapin/Shakedown Street stuff, with the Michael McDonald-adjacent new guy doing Keith's keys and Donna's vocals.
That started to change in August. Go To Heaven, maybe the band's last good studio album (is that a hot take?) wouldn't come out until April of the next year, but the material started to take shape over the previous summer at the band's studio, and the songs started to show up in setlists on 8/4 at the Oakland Auditorium, which was something approximating home base for the band in '79-80. That was the first "Althea," the first "Lost Sailor." Brent's first original for the band, "Easy To Love You," shows up on August 14. The rest of the songs took a while to make it to the stage: "Alabama Getaway" shows up on November 4, but "Feel Like a Stranger" didn't make a setlist until March (a day later than Brent's "Far From Me"). I can only assume that "Don't Ease Me In" made the album because they needed another track, because they'd been playing that one a full-on decade by that point.
This Go To Heaven period, for me, really culminates in the Spring and Summer tours of 1980. Things are getting dark for the band, but in 1980 that was still in the background; Jerry (and everybody else) wouldn't start to spiral, to my ears, until after the 1980 Warfield/Radio City Music Hall shows were over. But the chemicals that kept the tempos up in '77 and '78 had started to curdle by the end of the Godchaux's time, and once the excitement of having The New Guy around started to subside, things rapidly fell off a cliff. There are great things happening in '81 and even occasionally in '82, but they're harder to find, as the setlists start to stagnate and the magic starts to happen in smaller and smaller doses as the decade wears on.
Someday someone will write a book about this era, about what happened to the Grateful Dead between Elizabethtown in the fall of '77 and, say, the New Years' Eve show in 1980. It's a chapter of the Dead that, while well-regarded by Deadheads and sort of discussed in the books, still feels a little under-documented beyond the tapes. Given everything Garcia was up to--the '76 JGB runs eventually building up to the triumph of Cats Under The Stars--and the solo album Bob Weir put out in '78, the relative aimlessness of the Dead (Shakedown Street notwithstanding) feels noteworthy.
Where Are You?
On September 6, 1979, the Dead were playing the last of a three-night stand at Madison Square Garden. It wasn't the first time they'd played a big run at MSG — that was in January — but it was still new enough to feel like a big deal. In January, Garcia's hair was extra long, he was looking sweaty and pale, and Donna and Keith were gritting it out while, apparently, hating each other. But by now they'd been playing with Brent all summer, and they were winding up their Summer Tour in the Northeast, as was their custom in these years, a totally different and much better vibe.
They'd started throwing in the new material about a month before, but they were still doing an evolved version of the formula they'd set in the dawn of the Terrapin era. Brent brought a new and different energy to the band, a new groove, totally different tonal textures, a bitchin' Hammond organ, and things were starting to come together in a way that would point the band through an exploratory peak of playing that would last for the next year and change... but in September of '79 the soufflé was still undercooked.
I really like this show, and I also really like the way it points to the past and the future at the same time. It captures the band at a really transitional moment. The same way that the middle part of a good China > Rider is really both songs at the same time, rather than a bridge, this show captures the Dead in between, both at once.
How Are You?
It's a Thursday night in New York City, early September, and you're at the Garden looking through the haze at two drum sets, stacks of wooden cabinets and amplifiers, and a big keyboard setup off to stage left, your right. Garcia is playing Tiger, which he'd just received from Doug Irwin a while back and played for the first time at the 8/4 show with the first "Althea" and "Lost Sailor." Here’s what the people around you look like:
"New Minglewood Blues" kicks things off. It's a nice, mellow version to start out, not too hot, not too cold. Everybody gets a solo turn, and the one that stands out is Brent Mydland and his Hammond organ. It's such a contrast to hear the organ tones and the Rhodes piano sounds that Brent deploys in this show; it really gives you a sense of what he brought to the table even this early in his tenure. It's a totally different sonic palette from what Keith was doing, for better or for worse (and, compared to the 1978 and 1979 version of Keith, it's all better).
That builds nicely into "Dire Wolf." They trotted this one back out in 1978, playing it 39 times, compared to 12 in 1977 and 14 in 1979. The crowd recognizes it and loves it, and it's a nice version. It also sets up the alternating Bob/Jerry/Bob/Jerry dynamic of the whole first set.
Phil tells the crowd that the lights are on because "you all can always see us but we can't always see you, and we want to see you."
They're into it. Bob lights into "El Paso."
The main thing I notice in these early songs is Jerry's tone. This is really early in Tiger's run as the main guitar, and even this early it's already totally dialed in. The clean sounds are cutting and clear with a fluid quality that isn't there on the Travis Bean or the revamped Wolf from 76-78. Tiger has a little bit of a thicker, snappier sound. "El Paso" is fine, with Jerry playing well, and it builds up to a really, really nice "Brown Eyed Women."
Mickey almost sinks this one's groove a couple times by doing too much, and they almost miss the first chorus, but once things settle down, it's a really great version of the song. You can tell from the way Jerry is letting the guitar do the singing that he's feeling it on this night; his melodic runs are really subtle and perfect in a way that they won't be in 1980, when he tends to play little lightning speed butterfly noodles instead of digging in and sitting with the notes.
Next one is Bob's turn and it's "It's All Over now." This one doesn’t do it for me. It’s fine but would be even better at about four minutes instead of 8:39.
"Don’t Ease Me In" is one of those Dead songs that just keeps coming back in every iteration of the band. First played in 1966, it was a big part of the 1970 acoustic sets. Then in '72 and '73 it was something they'd throw in every couple of shows. For some reason, it disappeared until Brent came back into the picture--maybe because he could sing the high harmonies--and then gets played more from '79 to '81 than it ever did before or after, even getting recorded for the Go To Heaven album, though, let's admit it, that's probably just because they needed one more song to fill the side of vinyl. It's good here, and the crowd loves it, and Jerry rewards them with some really fluid playing, clear and bright.
Bob launches into "Looks Like Rain." It's not the song I would have played here, and for a second it feels like he's going to kill the building momentum, but from the second he starts singing, the crowd goes crazy. I guess they really love this song. I usually don't, but this version has a lot going for it. Feeding off the energy, Garcia is especially locked in, his solos really leaping around while never losing touch with the song or what the rest of the band is doing. He stays in the pocket in a way that is characteristic of '78 and '79 but that he'll lose in the next year or so.
From there Jerry takes it into the new material, playing around with some chords while the band gets primed for "Althea" before kicking it off.
"Althea" is probably my favorite Grateful Dead song, if you put a gun to my head and made me name one, even though as I type that it feels like I shouldn't pick it. Like I should pick something more substantial, epic, out there. But feelings is feelings.
The first Althea was in Oakland on 8/4, and that version is really tentative, not really knowing what to do or where to go, and transitions into "Lost Sailor" which then transitions into "Deal." Here, the song (musically anyway) feels much more mature. On the studio version it’s QUIET. And it kinda works that way… it’s a small song with a big solo, but here, in between the verses, Jerry is playing softly but leaning into the bends, letting it funk a little.
At this stage of the game, Althea's verses and choruses are still scrambled and out of order. The song is weaker for it. These are some of Hunter's best work ("honest to the point of recklessness"? Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman) but here, it's underdone. "Recklessness" is still "Innocence" and sounds wrong. "You may be the fate of Ophelia" is in the first verse. It's just not settled yet, and you can see why they decided to rework them; it doesn't flow at all.
Tiger is the real star, though. The guitar sound is dialed in. There are "BETTER", more magical versions of this song in 1980. Versions where the solos go big and reach for bombastic heights, and the whole band works itself up into a frenzy running through them. But this version and its dampened, loose, slinky feel match the recorded version in a way that I almost prefer. It's not a triumphant song, not really. There's no catharsis. It's just a guy in his own head, and a girl who knows he's that way and isn't gonna save him from it.
This song rules and this version of it rules. Is that effusive enough?
"Lost Sailor" is next, or really Bob's Go To Heaven set piece, because it transitions seamlessly into "Saint of Circumstance," which is really more of a companion piece than a transition into a whole new song, sort of a Barlow/Weir "Scarlet > Fire" without the jam potential. That comparison between those two two pairs of songs is a nice illumination of the philosophical differences between the Garcia/Hunters of the world and the Weir/Barlows of the world, I think. Would make a good masters thesis for somebody willing to take out the student loans.
Anyway, the classical structure of "Lost Sailor" > "Saint of Circumstance" is here, the bones are good, but what is this... not sure. "Lost Sailor" premiered the same show as "Althea" but the first "Saint" wasn't until 8/31, so this is still a very new transition. They whole thing feels tentative here, like Jerry isn't sure what he wants to say (he's "muddled", as Weir would say in this great interview before the '77 Elizabethtown show FIND THE LINK), but they land the plane anyway, and the first set closes with a trio of new songs.
The second set of the last show of a tour is always a little hit-or-miss. Sometimes they're too tired to think straight, sometimes they're on fire and bring it home with the hammer of Thor, and sometimes, as with everything, it's both at the same time. This is one of those. Second set starts out with a "China > Rider" which was a rarity post-hiatus. But with Brent, all things are new again, and hell, they made the new guy learn all the songs anyway, so why not play them?
Garcia's playing here isn't as clear as it was in the first set, and won't be the rest of the night. The little "butterfly runs" that take the place of what would have been more melodic runs in the first set start to creep in, whether because that's where his head was at with his playing or because of whatever was happening backstage during the set break, both, or neither. Before it settles down into the "pre-Rider" portion, the song almost goes into two different jammy directions, and you can tell Brent's driving the bus here, pushing them out of what could be a rote rendition of an old tune. The "Rider" is pretty cool, too. When it ends, the crowd roars for two solid minutes.
Next up is Brent's "Easy To Love You." Which is, uhh, well, it's a Brent song. If that's your thing, this will be your thing. Brent is growing on me in my old age, but this one's not for me.
Jerry launches into "Ramble on Rose," and it immediately becomes clear that he can't hit the high notes. It was the last night of the tour, and this is probably the first song where you can feel it in the music. In '79 and '80 his strong singing voice starts to give out and become something else, more nasal, a little shaky, a little more mumbled. The man did a lot of singing in his 53 years, and those body parts wear out just like any other. The solos are pretty good here, but not as good as the ones on the shorter first-set songs, and with his voice not really up to the task, they march on through it, tempo dragging a little, and then it's over. Bob tells everybody to move back and stay cool.
Then it's into the meat of the second set: "Terrapin Station," which I absolutely love in the early '77 shows, but which is also really good here. Brent does something to this song, too. But after the "Lady with a fan" section, this one almost spins out into something else, with all four non-percussionists pushing the song in different directions at the same time, still semi-locked into the song's lilting beat but moving into somewhere else for a little while. You can tell they're all trying to feel their way into some other piece before Jerry decides to bring it back into the next section of Terrapin. From there, it's a pretty standard rendition, but the fact that they were so willing to flirt with ditching it entirely and chasing whatever paths were becoming visible to them is just another reason to listen to every show: it can happen in any song at any time, even on a tired second set where Jerry just accidentally started a song he couldn't sing.
Terrapin runs straight into "Playing in the Band," which starts out too fast, a little too disco, and barely holds together. Brent's vocals sound good, but the organ sounds weird, and Garcia doesn't really know where to lock in because it's so fast. At 2:35, the song has already dropped off the ledge and into the jam, but it didn't get there the normal way. Instead of carrying the "Main Ten" riff into the minor key jam, they come back to the intro riff and launch off from that into a major key instead. It drifts for a while, getting spacey around the 11 minute mark with Brent breaking out some bleeps and bloops and Phil deciding to start playing in a different key, and the beat starts to slowly dissipate, but they're still pushing.
That's a thing that I like about this show. The second set jams aren't great, in the sense that they never really cohere into anything memorable or beautiful. But they're relentless. They're leaning into the wind and trying to get somewhere, even worn out on the last night of a tour. I think a big part of that is Brent: they liked playing with the guy and were eager to see what he could make them do that they couldn't do before. I think another part is the new material. The sets get more predictable from here through the rest of the coming decade, and after Go To Heaven they really wouldn't put out another studio record until 1987, despite a few failed attempts. This is a band in a new mode trying to see what kind of trouble they can get into while they're still standing, and if it doesn't work in one song, they just push through it to the next one.
That said, by the 14 minute mark this one is pretty noodly and it's clear that it's not really going anywhere. The boys (and they’re all boys now, in late ‘79) need to land the plane. It comes to an abrupt end at 18:54 and then it's Drums > Space, which was starting to become codified in the second set at this point. They'd been doing drum solos forever, and space sections forever, but at this point in their career is where the "everyone but the drummers always leaves and then we come back and do Space" starts to become the norm every single night. Really it started in ‘78, but Space wasn’t always a constant at first. There's a reason these things are labeled "Piss > Beer" on the tapes... it's a great break before the rest of the night. Space, here, is only about four minutes long, and is mostly just Jerry playing scales over the drum solo.
From there, we get the tour-ending medley we deserve. "Not Fade Away" emerges out of the Drums, and it's a good one. Having an organ back in the mix reminds me of some of the really good '70 versions of NFA, but this ain't that. Jerry's got his distortion tone on, and the boys are clearly spent.
Out of nowhere, "Not Fade Away" turns into one of the quietest, slowest, saddest "Stella Blue"s that ever Stella Blued. It's beautiful. Tiger's clean tone, clear as a bell in the first set, has come back to us in the reverb and the calm of the moment. The ending, where Garcia turns on some kind of echo effect, has a quiet dignity in its building chord progressions. This band, man. I just finished telling you they were tired and the music wasn't going anywhere, but if there was one thing they could do, it was make a ballad materialize out of a stalled jam vehicle and tug at the heartstrings. This one's about a minute too long, and gets bombastic enough that it almost undoes the subtlety of the first eleven minutes, but Garcia's absolutely shredding so all is forgiven.
They absolutely blow it out and it runs straight into "Sugar Magnolia" (which is fine, but slow and Weir's guitar is hopelessly out of tune) and then the encore is "Johnny B. Goode" (which is also fine, but the first night's encore was "Shakedown Street" and the second one's was "US Blues" so, it's hard not to feel like 9/6 got the third-string option). I don't need to write anything about these renditions of these songs; you know what they are. And then the tour is over.
The music would take the band to higher peaks over the next 12 months. The spring and summer '80 tours are full of highlights, and the end-of-1979 shows are a Dick's Pick worth checking out. That all culminated in the Warfield Auditorium and Radio City shows that were filmed and recorded, and from there it's off the diving board and into The Eighties.
But this night, September 6 of 1979, the Dead were wrapping up a Summer with the new guy trying to figure out what that decade might look like, what songs they might write and how they might perform them. It's a shaky second set, a masterful first set, great moments all around, all of them adding up to a greater whole than the sum of its parts. These gems are all through the Dead catalog. Night to night, song to song, minute to minute: that's how this stuff happened.
— Kevin Lipe
The Other One
I first heard “Ginseng Sulivan” at a Phish show. It was one of the covers they’d roll out during the 1.0 period. It has a fun resonance for me as I am from the North Georgia hills and also worked and trucked across the Mississippi Delta. Norman Blake represents, to me, a sort of purity in the love of making a narrow style of music and of being deeply entrenched in YOUR art, regardless of whatever the fuck else is happening. — Ed Arnold