The third installment of the
Garcia Live
series, an ongoing concert-recording archive for die-hard
Grateful Dead
/
Jerry Garcia Band
fans, finds over two and a half hours of previously unreleased material from a two-night stand by one of
Garcia
's more obscure incarnations
Legion of Mary
. The project quietly grew during a year-long
hiatus in 1974, starting out as a collaboration between
and organist
Merl Saunders
and quickly expanding to include drummer
Ron Tutt
, bassist
John Kahn
, and multi-instrumentalist
Martin Fierro
.
Garcia Live, Vol. 3
includes unheard audio from some of the group's first shows, and the vibe is more experimental, proggy, and coldly adventurous than much of the rest of
's massive ouvre. Beginning with an incredibly jammed-out 18-minute cover of
Stevie Wonder
's "Boogie on Reggae Woman," things just get wilder from there. A painfully slow reading of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," jazz improvisations, and burning, manic renditions of classic soul tunes make up a large patches of the set, and things culminate with the unbelievably slow-burning intensity of the almost half-hour-long
Saunders
tune "Wondering Why," which simmers endlessly in a silent, moody fog without ever reaching a predictable boiling point. With the oceanic amounts of live recordings from
and
the Dead
, even the biggest Deadheads can get bogged down by the repetitive elements of their complete catalog of live shows.
represents some truly reaching and challenging sounds even for the ever-searching
. It's an anomaly and a somewhat lost page in the
history book, certainly one of the more interesting releases of its type, and a must-hear addition to anyone even remotely interested in the countless hours of
Dick's Picks
Live Dead
material. ~ Fred Thomas