Live at Keystone, Volume 1 - Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders

Live at Keystone is the re-issue an an album originally released in 1973. It was the result of a jam session at the Keystone in Berkeley with guitarist Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders on keyboard, John Kahn on bass, and Bill Vitt on drums. When it was originally released in the 70's, this was record one of a two record set. With the remastered 2004 release, it was split into two separate discs; however, an additional track, "Merl's Tune" was added so that you have 55 minutes of music on volume one.

I assume that Jerry Garcia needs no introduction (well, just in case, he's the legendary late lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead) but the other headliner, Merl Saunders, may be less familiar. He's been a long-time collaborator with Garcia, with the Dead, and been the leader of many different bands in the Bay Area. He's also worked as a keyboardist on the Hammond organ with a long list of musicians, including Harry Belafonte, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, B.B. King, and Bonnie Raitt. He's outlasted Garcia, although he's been slowed by health
problems the past few years.

As befitting a jam session, the music is quite varied. They cover two Bob Dylan tunes, "Positively Fourth Street" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry"; Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come"; "It's No Use" from the Byrd's Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark; and three tunes from the musicians themselves — "Keepers" (by Saunders and Kahn), "Space" (credited to all four); and the bonus track "Merl's Tune".

This music from the past is a breath of fresh air. It's part of the eclectic mix you would expect from Garcia, with rock, blues, jazz, and reggae woven together, with Saunders nudging it more towards jazz. If you had to compare it to one of the Dead's albums of that era, (and Garcia's vocals and guitar are unmistakeable) you would say that it is closer to Blues for Allah than to American Beauty or Workingman's Dead. As befitting a jam session, the music tends to wander. Only one track, "Space", checks in at less than four minutes. The rest are all six to nine minutes long, with "Merl's Tune" rounding out the disc with thirteen minutes. This ain't your highly packaged and choreographed boy-band music, which is a Good Thing.

One technical note — this comes on a hybrid stereo Super Audio CD, or SACD. It's supposed to play on any CD player (and worked on all four that I tried) but seemed to cause a little bit of confusion on some of the computer software I used for playback.

Article Author: Bruce Kratofil

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

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