(TMIGDH = This Month in Grateful Dead History)
This post first appeared on the Phish.net forum on January 21, 2019.
When, in November of 1978, the Dead had to cancel five shows because of Jerry's "laryngitis," I'm pretty certain that other alarm bells were going off in various heads. The tour picked back up in mid-December, and the band rescheduled the missed gigs as part of a 20-show East Coast and Midwest run January and February of 1979. However, Garcia's voice would never be the same again, and these two legs would prove to be Keith and Donna's final shows.
I won't even consider what one must be smoking to induce TWO BOUTS of voice-stealing laryngitis in one year. January of 1978 was the Laryngitis/Bob tour, as Jerry's throat was suffering; and these late-November, early-December 1978 East Coast dates were cancelled for the same reason. However, dysfunction, at least during its most early onset, can reveal bold truths. One lesson from January of 78 was that the Grateful Dead was a vibrant machine that could bounce back from the lack of Jerry vocals. Would we miss the Jerr-bear ballad after Space? Would there be a deep well of empathy lacking after a Promised> Miracle> Good Lovin'? Sure. But dang-ola, this rock-n-roll stuff is fun, right? Some would even argue that Jerry's new "cracked" voice could induce more empathy.
So, here we are, in January 1979. The cancelled gigs had come somewhere between landing back home at SFO post-Pyramids (see "From Egypt with Love") and pre-Closing of Winterland. Whenever they were in the New York region, Belushi's Manhattan club house was open all night. Heady times. I just can't shake the idea that dope-sick Jerry hit it too hard after coming back from Egypt (I know, cringy). The Grateful Dead then slip back East (inconspicuously?) in a rare January tour. And it's a subdued affair. It's that post-holiday, deep winter exhaustion time for the rabid East Coast revelers, and your cancelled late-78 tickets gain you entry into several January shows. The venues are the usual suspects, even if the timing is off. (Philly on two consecutive Fridays with MSG and Nassau sandwiched in between. Weird.) Audiences (as evidenced on all the great audience recordings available) are near silent. Something else, though, something worse, is amiss.
What's worse than Jerry's (cough, cough) "throat condition"? Well, one dysfunction follows on the heels of another, right? Keith Godchaux is a literal non-entity this entire tour. Donna, too, comes and goes, taking lead vocals more consistently than caterwauling. Now, call me sick and twisted, call me cruel, but I think that all of this dysfunction had an electric effect on the remaining band members. Jerry, the cause of the late-Fall, early-Winter trouble, is now in a mood to make up for the earlier losses. There's a last-night-on-earth quality to some of the jams. The guitar volume is up, and every solo has a sense of searching. He even stays on stage to jam with the drummers for several Egyptian flavored passages throughout the tour, continuing that party. Godchaux, on the other hand, is asleep at the wheel, literally low in the mix, almost the entire mini-tour. He's fading out, literally.
At best, Keith could hit the down notes, rhythmically, acting as a somewhat melodic form of percussion, fermata-style. Jerry seems to notice, too, perking up where others lag. Dysfunction forces innovation, and Jerry, in Keith's absence, has room to open up and shine. The fewer the instruments, the more latitude his sound has to wander. A bit unsteadily, at first, the New Haven Peggy-O, for one example, exhales a spiraling Jerry passage that forms a dirt devil spin from an otherwise static landscape. During Minglewood, that night, in the space set aside for a keyboard break, Godchaux can't add much. Bob continues his slide experiments, and then Jerry steps up to lay waste with some searing, fuzzy blues peaks. The song is both disaster and sweet reward, and Jerry becomes master phoenix, always rising from the ashes.
While the Springfield gig had a miraculous Playin jam, worthy of listen (01/15/79), the New Haven gig (01/17/79) is a great example of how Jerry steps up, across the board, throughout this tour. The Shakedown opener is a monster. Steve Rolfe's FOB lays a clear foundation in Phil and the drummers, but Jerry leaps off the page and roams around the room. One can feel his extra mustard slinking out and about, even as his voice still suffers. Somewhere in the transition from Scarlet to Fire, Jerry, Bob and Phil nearly slip into Type II territory, and I can't help but think that the lack of keyboard support is what fuels this untethered exuberance.
Still, as many have pointed out over the years, this was an era of excessive repeats. The Miracle> Bertha> Good Lovin' triad appeared either as a tryptic or spread out over two nights. Miracle floated independently the most, and hearing the full three song combo on back to back nights was not unheard of. Take Estimated> Eyes, Terrapin> Playin, and Scarlet> Fire, spread them and some cowboy tunes around a bit, and you already have quite a chunk of the rotation. This is part of the reason why the return of Dark Star on the New Year was as miraculous as it was. Absent since 1974, Dark Star added a new spice much needed for the new Shakedown disco Dead.
Stagger Lee, Peggy-O, Jack-A-Roe, and From the Heart of Me had put a little pep into Jerry's ballad swagger late in 78, but Dark Star brings out a whole other element in Captain Trips. The first outing of the tour, from Nassau (01/10/79), is by far the more in-depth reading. Following a standard Miracle> Bertha> Good Lovin, the (north) East Coast return of Dark Star is the first since Boston 11/30/73. It's a nice two drummer jaunt, bouncy and upbeat, with quite a different flavor than the Wall of Sound era. As if that weren't sweet enough, the St. Stephen that follows is quite strong, and it's last time that Dark Star and St. Stephen would appear in the same show. Historic, though few could have imagined at the time.
The second Dark Star of the tour comes into being at Shea's Buffalo Theater (01/20/79). On the heels of an excellent, soaring Estimated-> Other One-> Drums-> Other One, this Dark Star is more a part of a whole than a number in and of itself. The jams into and out of Drums contain some very special space. Jerry is heavy on his Mutron filters, creating a delay effect I always came to associate with the best of nights of the early-80s when his fingering could be heard without interference. Jerry Moore's audience recording captures how intently this Saturday night Buffalo crowd came to listen.
The room is quiet, Shea's, and aside from the few appreciative hoots, claps or whistles, the overwhelming sound is that of a space full of ears. There's no synth wash, wobbling organ, midi honking, or Donna singing even (she was absent) to come between Jerry and the listening. The Dark Star is on the shorter side of the spectrum (about 9:22), but the clarity makes it a must listen. As with the masterful Playin' from 01/15/79 in Springfield, certain grooves in the Drums and Space jam preseage sounds of the early-80s while also pointing to a dreamier, more psychedelic era. I don't know, in some ways this defiant sounding hippie-Jerry captures the dissipation of Keith and Donna's departure. But it's more a whimper than a bang.
Donna drifts in and out of tour. Keith naps. The band returns to the Bay Area for one more Oakland gig, an environmental benefit, and a new chapter opens in April with Brent. By September, they sound like an entirely different band.
Fans of the late-70s sound shouldn't sleep on this sleeper of a tour. Though there is a certain amount of repetition, the set lists belie what is, at times, inspired playing.
Leg I: Northeast
The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA (1/5/79)
Madison Square Garden, New York, NY (1/7/79)
Madison Square Garden, New York, NY (1/8/79)
Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY (1/10/79)
Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY (1/11/79)
The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA (1/12/79)
Utica Memorial Coliseum, Utica, NY (1/14/79)
Springfield Civic Center, Springfield, MA (01/15/79)
Veterans' Memorial Coliseum, New Haven, CT (1/17/79)
Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI (1/18/79)
Shea's Theater, Buffalo, NY (1/20/79)
Masonic Temple, Detroit, MI (1/21/79)
Leg II: Midwest
Market Square Arena, Indianapolis, IN (2/3/79: set 1; set 2)
Dane County Coliseum, Madison, WI (2/4/79 set 1; set 2)
Tulsa Fairgrounds Pavilion, Tulsa, OK (2/6/79)*
*no known recording
Arena (U of Southern Illinois), Carbondale, IL (2/7/79)
Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Hall, Kansas City, KS (2/9/79)
Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Hall, Kansas City, KS (2/10/79)
Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, MO (2/11/79)
Final Show: Bay Area
Oakland Coliseum, Oakland, CA (2/17/79)^
^ For more on this show, see @MJZ1974's awesome Workingman's Wednesday CCVIII.
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