When people tell me Jerry Garcia just 'aimlessly noodles'... 

What a great experience that must've been!

A friend told me he was at a show in Brooklyn, musta been around 1970. The fellow he was with was on his first trip and was crying on his knees. Garcia walked up to the edge of the stage and played Viola Lee Blues right into him and lifted up his spirit.

Thank you for sharing this Magical experience. 🧸🧸🌈✌❤🌞🙏

Beam me up Jerry

Yeah, When they sang Hell in a Bucket, some dude ran up the steps and out of the arena, declaring "I am going to Hell in a Bucket' he was on fire.

or at least that some fans never let go

@@wdechand let go? What does that mean exactly?

@@wdechand “it's the same reason why you like some music and you don't like others. There's something about it that you like. Ultimately I don't find it's in my best interests to try and analyze it, since it's fundamentally emotional." Jerry Garcia

@@augustwest4233 you could exhume Gracias body and bag the smell and fans would gush it's the best smell ever all peace and love and cosmic

holy hell, 27 years how am I this old...

Great point! I knew bluegrass was the key for Jerry’s melodic playing.

Great explanation of Jerry’s art!

100% spot on

Any decent musician can listen to Jerry and recognize how advanced his guitar playing was. He's leads were endlessly melodic and he would play to the individual chord of a progression much like a lot of jazz folks do.

@@morganghetti amen

Well said Richard.

I guess the practicing never paid off 😂

I agree with all of this. I can't remember where I read the quote, but Garcia said once in an interview that he's willing to risk a few wrong notes in order to hit the right notes and find something new and exciting. As someone who loves musical improv, I can get behind that. I don't mind digging through some rough patches to find the gems in a particular Dead show.

Hmm, interesting view you have,pretty sound evaluation I would say.

It's good to read something by an educated musician; it helps explain why Jerry's music is perpetually intriguing. Thank you!

Sß

Patrick Bateman?

Truth be told. Weir is NEVER on any "top guitarists" lists that I have seen.. besides a few of my friends on Facebook just posting their own little lists - I mean like from websites or magazines, and that's a shame. He's improving his guitar skills nowadays but he's particularly mastering his vocal range, which has become quite broad.

Weir was the perfect counterpoint to Garcia's playing style. I was watching a video about rhythm guitar once and the guy summed it up as (paraphrasing here), "If it's good, you don't even notice it. It's when it's missing that it stands out" ... As unique as Weir's style was, it complimented Garcia's so well that it's sometimes harder to pick it out. That lack of rhythm guitar is, I think, what helped create the spacious, wide-open sound that JGB embodied.

sure the rest of the band were awesome but Jerry was the Guru

@@ReedRosson1987 Blue Mountain is one of his best albums and he was like 70 when he recorded it. Bobby is just a hell of a musician and songwriter.

Always one of my very favorite moments in a Dead show is Weir's spot in the transition of China/Rider. Rock guitarists largely don't have his vocabulary of chord phrasing

Our garage band took guitar lessons from him at Dana Morgan’s in Palo Alto. He taught a lot early Stones’ licks. Saw them the first time they headlined the Fillmore in September ‘66.

He died when I was a year old so sadly I’ll never see him play unless VR gets really good but it still wouldn’t be the same to me

Nah they suck

​@@4touchdowns1game29You'll get it one day, don't worry

@@4touchdowns1game29from someone who’s never listened to them

/ He doesn't telegraph anything in advance... some of the coolest stuff he does is totally stealthy and often quiet.

@@Andrew_M_Ward absolutely, the surprises that he lived for were found therein.

I love that if you listen to a non-space jam, you can almost always tell where in the melody he is. He can "investigate" a melody better than anyone I know of, at least in a "rock" context.

@@daveguitarnowski4402 yeah, he turned melody upside down and backwards.

@@shovedhead exactly!

Dude. Put down the bong.

"seeker"

Good luck with the anti marijuana campaign on a Grateful Dead channel. I wish you the best my friend😎🤙

@@scottjeffries1127 Put down the brownies, dude. 😎

Not even a particularly far out thing to say, just obviously how it works

Thank you, friend. I found that very saddening, myself.

@@owlytimbre9103 I'm curious. What exactly did you find saddening?

@@InService77 He used it as an example of aimless noodling. Sure maybe when taken out of context of the rest of the piece of music. Lol.

Yup.

yeah, i was gonna say, "playing into the LSD influenced stratosphere" sounds about right, but there's nothing aimless about it. That shit is deliberate and expressive playing. I appreciate the effort in trying to battle the common crit of aimless noodling, but trying to validate Jerry's worth through his rock'n'roll chops is almost diminishing given how creative and involved his more free and experimental work was

Im not the biggest fan of john i do like music and appreciate his guitar work both electric and acoustic. But i get what hes saying.. he definitely had to expand his knowledge to play on jerrys level

@@herbythechef7624 I agree, I'm not the biggest Mayer fan (his playing can be great but I think pretty much everything he's done solo or with his trio is pretty hollow), I only mentioned him, specifically, because he's who the 'Core Four' have chosen to play with. Well, that and I think the quote is great, as well as accurate. It takes a Jedi to really understand a Jedi 🤣 and Mayers definitely no Jedi but knew he had to get closer to one before being able to fully appreciate JG.

I couldn't stand Mayer.... then I saw him stand in Jerry's shoes like so many have tried and ran like a wolf. He's definitely a player and he's slowly shedding his ego, we might be in the presence of one of the greatest.

@@dingusfuzzklonnkt2755 I hated John Mayer 15 years ago when I was a young punk and now I understand his greatness, granted I have never understood appeal of the dead, but If I can understand mayer finally, maybe one day.

Source? I must use this quote!

I'd say Doc brown is bang on. Anyone that says the phrase "aimless noodling" is probably not a musician or doesnt really get what the grateful dead were about or just straight up hasn't even listened, I've never heard another guitarist be able to dance around the melodies and chord tones like this man, even when hes out of his mind he can still navigate the guitar purely improvising and keeping it fresh everytime and most importantly following the chord tones which makes it the polar opposite of aimless noodling, he always sticks to the chord tones and has his magic little deviations that people still cant figure out now. It's like when people say all reggae sounds the same, yes, it does if you are simple folk. I love the unsanitized unpredictability that "aimless noodling" brings, like someone said, it's just creating chances and possibilities when you live in the moment and noodle.

I've listened to that Eyes literally hundreds of times. Both solos are absolutely insane; something just came together for him on that night.

This one is really tight. It’s one of his cleanest solos in my opinion. It’s so good though. That's It for the Other One: Cryptical Envelopment / Quadlibet for Tender Feet / The Faster We Go the Rounder We Get (Live at Shrine Auritorium, August 23-24,1968) · Grateful Dead

@@jimdarhower4945 '68 and '69 shows are really interesting. You can hear them pushing and pulling in all the directions they would eventually go, but the overall vibe is still very gritty and bluesy. I like shows from those years a lot.

Or just about any ramble on rose from spring 90 especially with his midi effects

5/17/77 is a barn burner!!!

True. You can pick the song Jerry was improvising over quickly. Not many other musicians had that skill.

To not say that Jerry Garcia was the greatest improvisationalist is to not know his music. I think that he was far and above the greatest musician that ever lived. For those of us who went from city to city to see the Dead, we understood it and realized it. Love Jerry Garcia forever..

@@jessesnyder5426 Amazing musician but not the greatest improvisor of all time, I'd argue it would have to be someone like Coltrane or someone else in the Jazz sphere

@@danieldennis7508 You are talking to the wrong guy. No one comes close to Garcia. If you don't know, then you don't know.

That's a big part of what makes this particular solo so special to me. The general rhythm pattern for the song is several bars of straight-ahead backbeat, with turnaround bars that hit on 1 and the downbeat of 2. And Garcia locks right into that. People have [rightfully] pointed out that there are better versions of this song, but I really like the "funky Cadillac in space" vibe that this version has.

Go see Mayer and Weir Mayer has some of the best blues guitar playing of this generation close to all time

Listen to the Europe 72' Live album. As a guitar player it's one of my favorites. If you prefer a Studio Album, try Workingman's dead, Everyone has their personal fav's. but as a guitar player those won't let you down. Of course, Headphones On, Dark room with some candle light, incense and you're own personal choice of enhancement. Weed is a good start, but it's intended to sound better with shrooms or LCD. but it's hard to find time for that these days as an adult. So some weed should be fine. But at least some headphones in an undesperd environment.

@@TangoNevada I will definitely check those out! I'm not much for LCD or shrooms but some herbal delight sounds good. I have some great studio speakers and a good treated room I will enjoy the tunes with. Thanks for putting me in the right direction!

Kudos to you for having an open mind! The Dead did tons of improvisionational playing so inevitably a lot of it will come off as what some refer to as "aimless noodling". Other times however something incredibly beautiful and spontaneous will result. Check out the Dark Star from 4/8/72 at the Wembley Empire Pool in London England. My personal favorite.

@@vitis65 I sure will! Many thanks!

@@fiddlefolk No problem. As mentioned, as an adult it's hard to find time for shrooms or LCD or even the interest. But I am sure many of us would love to hear your review of listening to some Grateful Dead under the conditions mentioned. I have rarely heard negative responses. But either way, I hope you enjoy.

Agreed! The sound is fantastic! Just received mine in the mail today!

I was part of an O&ITW cover band that did a bunch of their stuff and a good bit of Dead - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-A5RgCxOWzb0.html - Love Garcia's banjo playing. You can hear echoes of it in a lot of the jamming he does in the '68-'70 shows, but it's such a regimented type of playing that I can see how he felt the urge to pick up a guitar and keep creating/pushing.

I really got into Garcia via bluegrass and my love of Tony Rice. The Pizza Tapes with Rice and Grisman opened my eyes to Garcia being more than a whacked out psychedelic rock noodler. Always figured he must have been more than that given how many top level musicians rated him, just hadn't heard it myself until then. Now I really appreciate the Dead, and love to try to jam along with their recordings on guitar :)

In a Rolling Stone video interview on RU-vid (that's really irritatingly edited), Jerry said he spent 5 years playing just banjo back in his teens gigging with bluegrass bands. Also has a great banjo track on Glendale Train from the first New Riders album (which also has his pedal steel work on every track the whole album through).

Jerry played electric guitar as if it were a banjo

Yes he should have stuck to banjo and blue grass

I like that you brought up Jerry as a great composer and writer of lyrics, and I totally agree. But a funny thing is that I saw an interview with him where he said that he'd "rather fill in all the o's in a phone book than write a song". I guess that's where Robert Hunter comes in.

@A If you cant list 3 songs, you've not listened to them, therefore your opinion matters little. Listen to Hell In A Bucket. That's a good fun song to dip your toes into.

@A definitely a brainless sheep, make sure to get the next v a x

Robert Hunter was his lyricist. Jerry did collaborate with Hunter on lyrics, but the lyrics are mainly Robert Hunter, a great poet.

“More or less in line”… 😉😁✌️

Jerry could put the “wrong notes” if there is such a thing, in the right place. He went for it every night, that’s what matters

I adore Garcia, but surely even he would not agree with the notion that he "always" put the right notes in the right place at the right time. Yes, "more or less in line" is more like it.

He had that tension of just BARELY getting them on the beat in time, and it was not an accident. Vassar Clements talked about it in when they played together in "Old in the the Way" & how when he first started jamming with Jerry it was kind of unnerving, and he says he really didn't know who Jerry or the Dead were (since he came out of the bluegrass/new-grass/swing scene) and kind of thought it might have been a mistake getting involved, lol. This would have been when Jerry was on banjo, of course, and he'd even do it playing Scuggs-style rolls. He had moments where he just straight up was out of time, I think all musicians do if you play enough shows, but doing it for 30+ years essentially never taking a break unless he was hospitalized, yeah, you'll have some off-nights. Especially when you're strung-out on coke & heroin.

@@beezyflippins He thought of himself as "not very good" on guitar, especially acoustic. And he wasn't the best guitar player to ever live by a long shot, he knew it, we all knew it. But I don't think I've heard another player that can emote with a guitar (or voice...) better than Jerry. Never been another player like him that I've ever heard. He's still my favorite musician, even though there are much better technical players. Anyway... There was a show in the 90's, it was Jerry, Bela Fleck, David Grisman (pretty sure that was the main line-up... I'll dig and try to find and & update. Pretty sure it was a Grisman/Garcia show) where they all played together on "Eat my Dust" as an encore. It was kind of painful... Not that he wasn't getting some really good lines down, but EMD is really a technical showpiece piece to do at high bpm, and he's on stage taking turns soloing with two of the best instrumentalist's to ever touch their respective instrument... He some how pulled it off, but he was out of his league, lol. Just found it: 08-25-1991 Grisman/Garcia. There's a few versions of the full show on YT (might still be on Live Music Archive... that's where I got it ~20yr ago, lol) but it's the 2nd to last song, "Eat My Dust". Fantastic, and Jerry does a pretty good job on rhythm, but kind of bows out early during the solo. It had to be intimidating, haha. He did better than I remember though, and man am I glad I dug this up as I haven't listened to this set in well over a decade. Good stuff

He was also a great filmmaker and visual artist. Not a bad painter/sketch either! And I have a 30+ collection of his art-inspired, silk J.Garcia ties.

@@ReedRosson1987 Yes, and he was also an avid scuba diver as well!

@@biblebear6795 That's right! I love the video of him diving and observing the reefs and whatnot. Such neat footage!

The whole of "Europe '72" is pretty amazing. It's got my favorite of all the "China Cat > Rider" pairings, from the 5/3/72 Paris show. And the "Morning Dews" from that era will make me misty-eyed every time.

Couldn't agree more! It builds and builds and then drops you right back in the groove.

@@patrickvarine8476 I always use the EU '72 China Cat > IKYR to introduce newbs to the Dead's live magic. I know they overdubbed some of the vocals later in the studio but who cares -- it's magic!

Me too! That "China Cat" is the perfect example of how you can have practically every instrument playing a "solo" line and still, somehow, everything meshes together.

@@patrickvarine8476 I must have listened to it a thousand times, and the transition between the two songs still astounds me. I know they had been playing this segue for three years at that point (they'd debuted the pairing in 69) but it's smooth as silk and not a note wasted. Plus, I've always felt that with only Billy on drums, the GD were more nimble.

There's not nearly enough exploration of Weir's rhythm style and how he and Garcia weaved around one another.

@@patrickvarine8476 I agree: I'm not tuned in anywhere near enough to Weir's playing.

1974 Boston Garden. Weather Report Suite though US Blues. At one point the jam is just Jerry and Bobby. No one else. It's amazing.

I think of it as definitive, and I'm a huge Dylan fan.

It is. The Willie Nelson/calexico version gets me in the feels too.

His solo on 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' always blows mind my mind when I hear it

Yeah, the version of Senior on the Jerry Garcia band album is stunning. I love that whole album. Jerry's playing and singing at the top of his game for the whole thing.

This "Tangled Up In Blue" is my favorite Garcia playing Dylan although there are PLENTY of beautiful examples. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dxEsBAPleRY.html

"Althea" is one of those tunes where the jam starts to get real deep before you even realize it.

"Mexicali Blues" is a WILD song. I really wanna cover it with my bluegrass band, but DAMN, it's got a lot of chord changes, even for a Dead tune!

I can't get enough New Potato Caboose, what a fantastic song.

That is really well said!

For real I love all the new kinds of Dead “cover “ bands now a days but no one can do what Jerry did

There's a limber quality to his guitar playing, where you can always tell it's him. Someone else commented that there aren't many people you can identify when they're playing pedal steel guitar, and his musical personality was strong enough that you could absolutely tell when he's on a New Riders recording.

@@patrickvarine8476 I'd say I can identify Jerry more readily than any other guitarist except for maybe Hendrix. His pedal steel was absolutely unique: nobody sounded like him. Too bad he couldn't have cloned himself and kept going on steel!

@@commontater8630 Hendrix’s dobro and weissenborn work are both unparalleled. Detroit ‘66 was overtly iconic..

Keith Richards knows a little about guitar. I trust his judgment

'72, '76 and '77 are my personal banner years.

Where do you find quality recordings from all of these dates? Asking for a friend.

It could be a year long course taught 3 times a week and then we might have an understanding

I'm sorry but that just isn't the case. A good jazz player is never wandering haplessly. That's why we study, and spend thousands of hours practicing, so much theory on our instrument--to not end up doing that.

@@ADFerrizzi As a professional jazz guitarist. I'm sorry but that is just your opinion man...

@@ADFerrizzi as an amateur trumpet player who studied jazz somewhat seriously I agree with you 100%

@@alistairdunnington it is absolutely my opinion but it is also something I think most jazz musicians agree with. (This is also an opinion.)

@@ADFerrizzi uhhhh play 200 four+hour shows every year with different sets every time for 30 years.... you’re gonna have some random chaotic moments that are, by definition, “aimless” - but the pro will make meaning out of the randomness & find direction from what was directionless

Smoothness?? More jerky disconnected...

Jerry’s noodles were perfectly cooked! Al dente baby!

Jerry, after all, did teach Bobby the guitar. But I agree with you. He has a style all on his own as well, nothing like Garcia's but very complimentary to Garcia. He's NEVER on any guitar player lists and that's crappy! underrated, indeed.

I don't think it's all that important to compare two guitarists as different as Jerry and Jimmy Page. Their influences and styles were so radically different it's apples and oranges. To be honest, I'm not really much of a Zepellin fan, but Jimmy Page was clearly an excellent blues/rock guitarist. Jerry was much more influenced by bluegrass than he was the blues, which is why he tends more toward long eigth note or triplet runs with lots of chromatics, whereas Jimmy Page would play with a lot more expressive bends. I'm not saying one style is better than the other, but I will admit that I have a preference. I think zooming out, blues/rock guitarists are a dime a dozen, so to my ear it's just a lot more interesting hearing an improviser on guitar that doesn't play the same blues licks as every other guitarist.

@@joshrocha2500 nothing important ever happens in the RU-vid comment section.

Yeah right! I've been a huge fan of led zeppelin, jimi Hendrix, the doors pink floyd some real giants, only found out about the grateful dead a few years ago and theres no doubt in my mind, they are the greatest band in history, they have to be, even if you don't like the music, they are the only band that did what they did, and the music is absolutely sublime for the right people

I think that's the point of his playing philosophy, to not repeat himself. So what some see as just noodling is the constant search for new combinations of notes. You're not going to find something new unless you go looking for it and commit to the search. Watching and listening to Jerry's creative process, and the abandon with which he pursues it, is special. He is one of the great musical improvisors, like Charlie Parker or Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan. Listen to Mikaela Davis and Southern Star play The Bird Song and you'll see and hear what Jerry's "noodling" has inspired. John Mayer, Trey Anastasio, Billy Strings and others have also been similarly inspired covering Hunter/Garcia songs. Merl Saunders and Howard Wales explored the "noodling" with Jerry on keyboards, as well as several notable keyboard players with the Dead, and nowadays in spin off bands with Weir, Lesh and Kreutzman, and jam band groups that cover Dead material. Jerry's "noodling" lives!

That’s because you’re on drugs…

I like chicken.

I can admit that there are a lot of rough patches in the Dead's live compendium, particularly between about '83 and '86. There are some bad shows in there. I agree that paying close attention to the music can reward even their clunky moments, because you can usually sense what they were attempting to do. As a musician who loves improv, I respect that attempt and that willingness to work without a net. Sometimes it didn't work out, but other times it created real musical magic.

@@patrickvarine8476 there were some great one's in there also. As bad of shape as he was in there's some scorching shows from 83 to 85. Some of his best guitar work IMO

@@wolfsvision940 There's definitely great ones in there. For me, part of it is personal preference. I really like the more-organic sound the band has during the '70s, with grand piano and a lot less MIDI stuff in the percussion section. I don't fault them at all for staying on the cutting edge of music technology - that was always their M.O. - but it's just not my favorite "sound era" of the band.

@@patrickvarine8476 yo bro your so right. I'm more of a 60s/ early 70s head but the late 80s also really cool