David Crosby & Jerry Garcia - "David & the Dorks" - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 12-15-1970

In 2022, a deluxe edition of David Crosby's 1971 solo album "If I Could Only Remember My Name" was released. It's great stuff, with a second disc of interesting previously unreleased material. In celebration of that release, I'm posting this concert.

The guys in Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) were friends with the guys in the Grateful Dead. David Crosby was particularly close with the Dead's lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. In late 1970, Garcia got heavily involved with the recording of Crosby's "If I Could Only Remember My Name," taking part in many daily recording sessions. In fact, a who's who of the best and most famous San Francisco musicians took part in recording that album. Members of this loose group sometimes recorded their own song as well as Crosby's. This would turn into a short-lived musical collaboration often known as P.E.R.R.O., which stands for the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.

Somehow, out of this, with both Crosby and Garcia working on some of each other's new songs, the two of them decided to take their songs to a few concerts in San Francisco Bay Area clubs. They played three nights in a row at the Matrix, a club usually considered too small for the likes of big names like Crosby and Garcia. They also did one more concert at another venue a few days later (the Pepperland in Marin County). Then, just as quickly as it happened, this short lived experiment was over. Crosby and Garcia never jointly led a band in concert again. This experiment would have largely been forgotten except for the fact that a soundboard recording was made of one of the concerts, as well as some of their practice sessions in the hours before one of the shows.

Now, I need to better explain just who was in the band, and what it's called, because it's complicated. In addition to Crosby on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Garcia on lead vocals and lead guitar, there was a bassist and drummer. There's no doubt about the bassist: Phil Lesh from the Grateful Dead. And we know the drummer was also from the Dead, but the band had two drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and it's not certain who played this show. Most of the information about these concerts say it's Hart, but there's reason to believe it's Kreutzmann. For the band's final show, there are a few photos, and one is clearly of Kreutzmann. But Garcia has talked about these concerts, and he's mentioned both drummers. It could be one or the other played at any given time, depending on who was available.

The band's name is even more complicated. In the limited promotion of the shows, it was listed as "Jerry Garcia and Friends." But on stage, Garcia gave the jokey name "David and the Dorks." Yet also on stage, Crosby used the jokey name "Jerry and the Jerks." The truth is, because there never was a formal band as such, but just some musical friends playing together for a few days, they didn't have a name. And "Jerry Garcia and Friends" doesn't really work, because most of the songs and lead vocals were done by Crosby. So I'm billing this under "David Crosby and Jerry Garcia."

As far as I know, Crosby has never said much about these shows. But Garcia discussed them a couple decades later, when his memory was already a bit hazy on the details:

"We had a little band called David and the Dorks. He was the star and it was his trip that we were doing and it was right around the time he was doing his If I Could Only Remember My Name album and he was in the Bay Area a lot. One time me and Phil and Bill and Mickey, we backed up David. We did maybe two or three shows. I think they were all at the Matrix in San Francisco. They weren't announced or anything, we just went in there on a Monday night and had a lot of fun and the sound was cool. In fact, that was the core of the band that played on David's album: David and the Dorks. It was a fine band and a short-lived band. Almost legendary. We had a lot of fun."

(See the problem figuring out the drummer? He mentioned both!)

Now, let me explain some about the music here. The first six songs are from a rehearsal before one of the concerts, so there's no audience noise. I made significant edits to most of them. For "Alabama Bound," at first I thought it was an instrumental, but then I listened closely and head Crosby's voice buried deep in the mix in a couple of places. I used the sound editing program Spleeter to bring them up in the mix. I could only do so much - the louder I made them, the more some sonic flaws would show. But at least you can hear a little bit of him now.

For "Eight Miles High" (which Crosby co-wrote when he was in the Byrds), there was about four minutes of instrumental jam, which then petered out to a complete stop. After some silence, Crosby then sang one of the verses, before that too came to a stop. It seemed more logical to me to have his singing first, so I changed the order. Then I tried to merge the two bits together. It doesn't quite work because there was a change of rhythm, but still, I like it better this way than having it in two parts.

The same problem happened with all the remaining songs from the rehearsal. Namely, the band would hit a tricky spot and stop. Then, after figuring out what went wrong, they'd resume. I simply edited the break in the middle of the song out to make one continuous version. Generally, there was just one stop, but for "Cowboy Movie" there were several. 

Note that even with these edits, these were rehearsals and the versions were pretty rough. For instance, "Cowboy Movie" petered out before all the verses were sung. And "Bird Song," a brand new song at the time, was especially rough, petering out about halfway through. I also cut out many minutes at the start of "Bertha," where Garcia was teaching the song to the others by playing the same chords over and over. (That also was a new song, by the way. The Dead wouldn't play either "Bertha" or "Bird Song" in concert until February 1971.)

The rehearsal makes up their first half hour and the first six songs. The remainder, another hour and two minutes, consists of the Matrix show done in front of an audience. Personally, I think the sound quality is excellent, and the music is fascinating. Crosby has said in interviews that he wished he could have joined the Dead. He essentially got to live out that dream for a few days with these concerts, since he was backed by three members of the Dead. 

It's fascinating to consider that virtually NONE of these songs would have been familiar to the audience at the time, unless one counts the Jefferson Airplane version of "Triad" which came out in 1969, or they were familiar with some of the cover songs. Crosby's songs wouldn't be released until the "If I Could Only Remember My Name" album came out in early 1971. And, as I mentioned, the Garcia original played at the actual concert, "Bertha," hadn't been played in public (or appeared on album) yet. On top of that, they did some rare covers. "Deep Elem Blues" was played by the Dead from time to time, starting in early 1970, but they hadn't put it on album yet. "Drop Down Mama" wouldn't get on a Crosby album until 1989. And "Motherless Children" doesn't seem to have been done by Crosby or Garcia except for these shows.

Now, while the sound of the music is very good, there were some big problems between the songs. It seems that the owners of the Matrix club liked to record particularly interesting concerts, which is why this soundboard recording survives. But at the time it wasn't uncommon to turn the recording device off between songs in order to save tape. That's clearly what happened here. Usually, there's just a couple seconds of applause, which then gets suddenly cut off. Also, the applause was very quiet, because the soundboard picked up what was happening on stage nicely, but very little of the audience. So I boosted the audience volume a lot. I also did some copying and pasting, then editing, to get more applause after each song and have the volume of it rise and fall as one would expect. It doesn't sound great because I only had little bits and pieces to work with (and they sometimes had hiss or other issues), but at least it should be good enough to have the concert flow with an audience presence, as one would expect.

The other problem with the recording device getting turned off between songs is that there is no banter whatsoever. There isn't even a single "thank you" to be heard. There's nothing I could do about that. However, Crosby did speak a bit at the start of "Cowboy Movie," after the music had already started. His voice was very low, but I boosted it a lot so you can hopefully make out what he's saying.

If you're a fan of Crosby, Still and Nash and/or the Grateful Dead, you should give this a listen. We're lucky that any recording of such a unique concert has survived, much less a quality soundboard. If you don't like the rehearsal section, due to my edits or otherwise, you can still cut that out and you're left with a concert that's over an hour long.

01 Alabama Bound [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
02 Eight Miles High [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
03 Cowboy Movie [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
04 The Wall Song [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
05 Bertha [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
06 Bird Song [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
07 Drop Down Mama (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
08 Cowboy Movie (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
09 Triad (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
10 The Wall Song (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
11 Bertha (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
12 Deep Elem Blues (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
13 Motherless Children (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
14 Laughing (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)

https://www.imagenetz.de/iFWzn

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QgqbBpoZ

There are a few photos of this band playing at their fourth and last show, at the Pepperland in Marin County, a few days later. However, those photos are black and white, and of poor quality. Furthermore, none of them clearly show Crosby and Garcia together. So instead, I found a photo of Crosby and Garcia in the studio from late 1970, while working on Crosby's "If Only I Could Remember My Name" album. Neil Young was also playing with them, but I cropped him out so you only see some of the back of the neck of his guitar in front of Crosby's guitar. I believe that's Phil Lesh on bass in the background.

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I really dislike using black and white photos for cover art. So I colorized it.