Grateful Dead- Dave’s Picks, Vol. 22: Felt Forum, New York, NY, 12/7/71

Jerry Garcia Band- GarciaLive, Vol. 8: Bradley Center, Milwaukee, WI, 11/23/91

Sometimes dismissed by Deadheads as a musically conservative year for the Grateful Dead—both for the departure of second drummer Mickey Hart and the band’s ongoing turn from frothing psychedelia to a more stripped-down sound—1971 found the group’s sense of adventure hiding out in what Jerry Garcia called “a regular shoot-em-up saloon band.” And on the 22nd installment of Dave’s Picks—recorded December 7 (and 6), at the Felt Forum, adjacent to Madison Square Garden—it’s that sense of adventure that’s still clearly driving the group-mind, even if it doesn’t manifest in the form of exploratory jams. Building sets around new material debuted over the previous 12 months and played nearly every night, the band is still tweaking the soon-classic Europe ‘72 numbers (from the vocal arrangement of “Jack Straw” to the tempo of “Tennessee Jed”), and breaking in new keyboardist Keith Godchaux (who gets deeply moody on a 13-minute version of “Smokestack Lighting”). Cracking through into the mainstream that season with a hit self-titled double LP and a series of radio broadcasts, Dave’s Picks, Vol. 22 is the sound of a new generation of Deadheads being born. Recorded almost exactly 20 years later, GarciaLive, Vol. 8 documents the classic late-period iteration of Garcia’s gospel-driven other band. Gigging in the same arenas as the Dead by the early ‘90s, the Jerry Garcia Band feels comparably sleek, freed from double-drummer chaos, lead bass and other anachronisms of Garcia’s day job. With Garcia belting loud and confident atop the Jerryettes, Gloria Jones and Jaclyn LaBranch (all blurred with a wee dab of reverb), and sheltered in the warm churchly bed of Melvin Seals’ B3 organ, the Garcia Band floats free, both sacred and casual. The purity of “My Sisters and Brothers” hangs easily next to the hustle of Garcia and Robert Hunter’s “Cats Under the Stars” because when the lyrics end and Garcia’s ever-lyrical guitar picks up, the truth can be found in both (and especially in the first officially released live version of “Rubin and Cherise”). Garcia’s voice might wheeze and the synths might ground the music in the late 20th century, but it’s not a sense of adventure powering the band so much as Garcia’s musical charisma, and its fidelity comes through true and high.