The news is out: apparently Keith Richards doesn’t think much of the Dead and Jerry’s playing. I don’t actually care (asinine), but it reminded me of a gorgeous cover the Jerry Garcia Band did, for a few weeks only, of a Keith Richards and Mick Jagger tune.

In February, March, and April 1976, the Garcia Band played Moonlight Mile (as far as I can tell) just eleven times. In pretty close succession. After watching the above video of the 4.2.76 performance at the Capitol Theatre in New Jersey, also listen to the 3.6.76 at the Egyptian Theatre in Seattle.



It is sublime.

This was during a JGB period in which, night after night, Jerry led the band down a path of what you might call … almost complete musical stillness.



Almost because to have music you must have movement. But I believe, whatever else was going on, this was a period in which the Jerry Garcia Band served as an antidote to the crazy large busyness of the Dead scene, just getting back into high gear. And so, night after night, Jerry and cohorts (Ron Tutt, the Godchauxs, Kahn) lost themselves in slow, gorgeous tunes that often became long (ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty minute) pristine meditations in sound.

For example, Moonlight Mile in February through April of 1976.



Jerry laid bare. That’s what I hear.

When the wind blows and the rain feels cold

With a head full of snow

With a head full of snow

In the window there’s a face you know

Don’t the nights pass slow

Don’t the nights pass slow



The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind

Just another mad mad day on the road

I am just living to be lying by your side

But I’m just about a moonlight mile on down the road



Keith is welcome to his opinions. I am welcome to mine. :-)

*also h/t to newspeedwayboogie for the ongoing JGB-obsessed conversation that led me to Moonlight Mile.

