Into each life, some new Jerry must play!

100 Days of The Dead and All Things Garcia ... Day 89

Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders -- March 7, 1973
Keystone -- Berkeley, California
setlist & soundboard (SBD) 320 kbps mp3 download
Partial Set 2 (all that is even known about the show!)

unknown song,
Merl's Tune-> Space,
Georgia On My Mind

Wow! I love getting new Garcia tuneage into my ears, not just another show but I mean some song or jam that I've never heard before. Merl's Tune I'm familiar with and I've heard Georgia On My Mind but the "unknown song" here is brand new to me. This is almost an instrumental as it has next to no organized lyrics and one of the things that I'm really diggin' hearing is the two guitars. At times, Tom Fogerty's playing is a lot more than just rhythm guitar, he's more like a second lead guitarist. It's very interesting to hear him play alongside Jerry. He drifts way into the background for some of the song but at other times he and Jerry compliment each other outstandingly, dare I say better than Garcia-Weir? I love Bob's rhythm but Fogerty can play! John Kahn adds tremendously on bass and the three of them really drive this song at the beginning. Merl joins in and becomes more prominent, too, and then there's presumably Bill Vitt on drums, although it could be the Dead's Billy Kreutzmann as he occasionally sat in with Jerry & Merl during this period of time. Sarah Fulcher is also here, lending some vocals and a beautiful female -- almost Janis Joplin-like, sometimes GOOD Donna-like -- touch to this. At just over 20 minutes, this is something I would really, really dig just totally kicking back and smoking a joint to.

My favorite part of this partial set is the spacey jam that Merl's Tune becomes. Jerry ranges from noodling to smoking to Outer Space while Tom and Merl help the spiral spin, spin, spin away all the while maintaining some core, somehow. Wow. This is as good as any spacey jam from the Grateful Dead. Ohhh! . . . and the way it melts into Georgia On My Mind... that just takes me breath away. When Ms. Fulcher starts singing, and later Merl's magic on organ, it's one of the most beautiful things I ever did hear!

And the sound quality is nearly perfect. Some would give this 5 stars out of 5, an A+ all the way.

Quite an interesting time for Jerry -- five days before, the very first Old & In The Way show took place and eight days after this, the Dead would go on tour, and there was a New Riders show in there, too.

Like other Garcia sets I've posted, this isn't a lot of music -- only just under 50 minutes but oh how sweet it is!

Source: Soundboard> Master Reel> DAT> FLAC Audio Quality:	3/7/73 Jerry & Merl @ Archive.org: As of Dec 20, 2008 there is no Garcia at the Internet Archive.
Download Here: Jerry-Merl 3/7/73 Keystone

3/7/73 aka 03/07/73 aka 3-7-73 aka 03-07-73 aka 73-03-07