By solo I mean apart from the Grateful Dead. What do you like the best in his solo career-period, ensemble, music type, issued recording or whatever you would like to add to the discussion. All good things.
His debut album Garcia (1972) continued the winning-streak of songs he and Hunter had started with Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. And I always preferred his hardcore psychedelic version of "Bird Song" on the album to the looser, more muted versions he and the Dead played live. And his solo noodling for Zabriskie Point is one of his loveliest pieces ever...
Garcia, Garcia (aka Compliments), Reflections, and Cats Under the Stars are among my favorite albums in my entire music collection. The live recordings at Keystone with Merl Saunders are splendid; Hooteroll, with Howard Wales is a must-have too; his albums with David Grisman are simply beautiful (particularly The Pizza Tapes, alongside Tony Rice), as well as the Old & In The Way live recordings. And, as Seederman posted before me, his work for Zabriskie Point is exquisite. Thank to that soundtrack, I got to know him and the Dead (and John Fahey, another musical hero). Rock, jazz, soul, folk, bluegrass, Jerry could play anything!
Yup, I've got a few things: "Cats Under The Stars" (fair), "Let It Rock" (fantastic) and "Lonesome Prison Blues" (nice - a bootleg?). I must get more Jerry.
Amazing solo album in that he does actually play all of the instruments (except for the drums, which are handled by Bill Kreutzmann.) This is just about as perfectly a realized psychedelic and post-psychedelic song cycle as you are ever to come across (with the albums four abstract electro-acoustic explorations adding some really creepy and unsettling bridges/atmospheres to the whole trip.) Back in the 1980s when I was living in Newton, Massachusetts (two towns west of Boston) during my teenage years, I would listen to a radio show called Psychedelic Regressions, which was broadcast on the Boston College radio station WZBC every Sunday in the late afternoon. The Wheel was the outro-theme song for the program (I Dig Rock And Roll Music by Peter, Paul & Mary was the show's intro-theme song.) The Wheel is/was just such an incredible outro to that program and it left absolute, definite impression upon me. Such a bittersweet, melancholic and confusingly hopeful, zen-like rondo that closes the album Garcia and that radio program from all those years ago.
His 1979 "Reconstruction" period is fantastic and completely unrepresented in official releases. Why this is? I have no clue.
If you went to either Bowen or (Charles E.) Brown (or Weeks), I was two years behind you (I attended high school out of state, though... I would have went to Newton South otherwise.) Sorry for the off-topic school daze talk, folks.
I find myself surprised that at age 55, being a music nut for 45 years, I end up with Garcia being my favorite singer (not guitarist, not writer, but plain old singer). While I came to him later in life via the Grateful Dead (around 1992) and became a deadhead, I now listen almost exclusively to solo Garcia to the exclusion of the Dead when I am in that mood. My favorite stuff: 1) The Garcia/Grisman material is all excellent, not a bad album in the bunch. For me, his best guitar playing and singing. From Youtube I was able to record over 6 hours of very good sounding live material (there is no official live Garcia/Grisman release) from 91-92, together with solo acoustic shows. Look for it. 2) The 70's live JGB, both the bands with Saunders and the bands with the Godchaux's. Incredibly soulful and funky stuff. 3) The 80's Acoustic Band, two live albums plus another 3 cd's worth on the Pure Jerry series (there is some overlap of performances among these). In all of them Jerry's joy and sense of having fun playing this music shines through. Jerry at his happiest. 4) The 1991 or 1992 release simply titled The Jerry Garcia Band, a live 2 cd now OOP, is easily his best live album with the Melvin Seals edition of the JGB. This version of the band has many live releases but usually with subpar or dissapointing sound quality. Not this one. How Sweet It Is is also very good. This is borderline gospel sounding stuff. Not that it is religious in any way. His studio albums were ok, but sometimes his vocals were too processed. I am one of the opinion that Jerry's electric guitar playing went steadily downhill from 77 until his death. I have some Dead shows from 92-94 where I swear he did not relearn how to play after his coma. Went he started playing those custom electric guitars in the 70's (Wolf, Tiger) his tone went to hell, specially compared to the sweet Nash Strat from 72. Many are the times when he is soloing where he goes very sharp and out of tune and I am praying for him just to get back to the microphone.
I would highly recommend the Garcia and Saunders keystone releases and old and in the way. Those are my favorites of his side bands.
I have lots of Garcia recordings in my holdings. My favorite band of his is whenever he had the Godchauxs on board and with Maria Muldaur added as well.
This one is hard to beat and since the set list didn't change much from 84 to 95 it is the best representation of a live set from that time. I had a 65 mustang that I put a cassette deck in. I had the second disc of this on an XLII in said cassette deck from November of 93 until I sold it in 2004. It wasn't a daily driver but I never felt the need to change the tape.
Yeah, that is a beautiful song and arrangement. I always thought it sounded badly-recorded though; too compressed or something. Maybe it was just my imagination. It is one of my favorite Garcia songs nonetheless; the kind of song worth listening to on one's deathbed...