Jerry Garcia – After Midnight Kean College – 1980

[Roland Bru]

The Grateful Dead is a great band that in its thirty year history played a lot of concerts. For the nominal leader, singer, guitarist Jerry Garcia, this was not enough. He assembled groups of his owned and toured the Bay area in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. He played a lot of self-penned songs, off his solo albums mostly, that ended up in Dead concerts as wel (Sugaree is a nice example from this cd). He played a lot of old standards, Dylan songs and numerous other covers.

This album is important because it features one of the After midnight / Eleanor Rigby (instrumental) / After Midnight combos that he played only a few times in his career but that are revered by his fans. Here, clocking at 23 minutes, you get the impression that the songs are really, really covered. As you may know the originals are, together, about 5 minutes long, so this is quite a stretch. It is such an illogical combination that either your heart melts in admiration, or you puke. In Johnny de Foncesca Jerry found a sympathetic but limited drummer, but John Kahn, his regular bass player, and Ozzie Ahlers (keys and vocals) are more than competent. Compared to Grateful Dead shows this is really a Jerry solo show however. Nothing wrong with that, I say!