Happy Birthday Jerry Garcia!

[sgrexa]

BTW, anyone know anything about Jerry's old Martin that is for sale?

http://om28.com/ProductDetail?product=P140325002

Wow, that would be a dream guitar for me!

Sean

[Tom C]

I have the video of the Playboy After Dark. Pretty funny watching these well dressed people dancing to the Dead. Jerry in full poncho and all.

[sgrexa]

According to Eric it is a fantastic instrument and being offered for $125K but open to offers.

Sean

[AlanN]

Now, where's that Duane Eddy 50's F-5?

[barney 59]

Now, where's that Duane Eddy 50's F-5?

This is a cut above that---Jerry did play this guitar in performance and that is documented where as Duane Eddy was a guitar player and I would be surprised to hear that he ever performed with that mandolin. A celebrity instrument only counts if it was in fact used by the celebrity in performance or possibly recorded with it and the instrument is identifiable with the musician. Musicians sometimes own an astonishing number of instruments but only perform with a small fraction of them. Those other instruments don't count in my opinion. Dave Grisman buys and sell instruments all the time but he doesn't pass them off as a "Dave Grisman owned instrument" and in fact tries to actually put some distance between himself and the instrument so someone doesn't buy it because it "belonged to Dawg!" I would think if "Crusher" or "Little Pup" were to come up on the market Dawg would probably use the celebrity card then! I do think the price on this one is based on the celebrity status rather than the actual value of the instrument. Eric has some others in that price range that are based on the instrument only--- one is an OM 28 that is the best guitar ever! --the Robert Hunter graffiti would on any other guitar bring the value down rather than being a selling point!
I think that Eric is likely to get his price. While Duane Eddy had fans Jerry Garcia had devotees and it's for sale in the right place--right dead center in the heart of Marin Co!

[journeybear]

Anyway ... Happy Birthday, Jerry Garcia, one of the most necessary musicians of the modern era. He would have been 72 today. I'm glad I got to experience his adventurous spirit the dozens of times I did, going back to 8/6/67 at Montreal Expo. Now if only I could remember more of what I heard at all those shows and especially find a tape of that show. Ça n'existe pas.

[LongBlackVeil]

Anyway ... Happy Birthday, Jerry Garcia, one of the most necessary musicians of the modern era.

Well put

[High Lonesome Valley]

Jerry attributed his great lead work to using his little finger on his playing hand, which he said most guitarists didn't do. The day I read the interview, guess what I started using?

[journeybear]

Reading glasses? OK, just kidding. If he says so, OK. But as a listener, I attribute his guitar style(s) to a very active imagination, a wide open mind, a willingness to explore the possibilities of his guitar and rig, paying attention to what his band mates were doing, really good ears, and a very short distance between his brain and fingers. That is, his ability to accurately translate what his mind was thinking into what his fingers were playing. At least, that's the impression I got from the audience or the couch; I really have no idea how well he thought he was doing in this regard. It all worked fine for me, though ...

[John Soper]

Jerry attributed his great lead work to using his little finger on his playing hand, which he said most guitarists didn't do. The day I read the interview, guess what I started using?

Did you stop using your middle finger? Jerry could surely maneuver well fingerpicking with a different set of digits than the average on banjo, pedal steel and guitar.

[High Lonesome Valley]

Did you stop using your middle finger? Jerry could surely maneuver well fingerpicking with a different set of digits than the average on banjo, pedal steel and guitar.

Banjo Eric and I played "Rider" at tonite's bluegrass gig and spent 5 minutes crafting verbiage around Jerry's missing digitus impudis. 1973, the Spectrum, Philadelphia. A 5 1/2 hour non-stop Dead concert I was surely blessed to attend. Hundreds of 10" speakers from floor to ceiling, the band just recycling when they needed a potty break. Garcia was surely the hardest working man in show business.

[journeybear]

This just in, thanks to Fast Eddie: 25 Reasons To Be Grateful For The Dead

There are many reasons - countless reasons - but this is a great jumping-off point, chock full of links for further exploration. Also, for everything Grateful Dead, dead.net is an exemplary on-line resource: lyrics to every song The Dead ever did, even just once; a complete list to every show ever, including concert-goers remembrances, to which you can add your own (I did); and so much more.

[Jeff Mando]

I happened to have been walking around Haight-Ashbury the day Jerry Garcia died. Lotta sad folks around there. One young fan was really beside himself with grief, (and probably stoned on something) kept obsessing that now they were going to have to take Jerry's name off of the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream cartons! He kept following us around and repeating the ice cream bit. A bizarre, yet heartfelt tribute, that seemed oddly appropriate at the time. Something I'll always remember, that's for sure.

[journeybear]

According to the dead.net list of shows, Jerry spent his 23rd birthday (8/1/65) playing a double, presumably as The Warlocks. These would have been their fifth and sixth shows, at The Fireside Club in San Mateo, and Cinnamon A-Go-Go (or Cinnamon Tree) in Redwood City.

[paul dirac]

In the interest of being thorough, if we're listing online Dead references, have to mention the Internet Archive
Nearly every show available for streaming and many (used to be all) available for download.