Deal
July 19, 1989
Alpine Valley Music Theatre
@NJFunk: You just need to get over yourself, bruh, and do some hard listening. Here’s what’s better about 4-4-85 than 7-19-89: Jerry’s playing is far superior in 4-4-85 – and that’s what it’s all about, bro.
Now, granted he plays LONGER in 7-19-89. So if you’re a sucker for quantity over quality then there you have it. But both jams in the 4-4-85 version are better played and more interesting than the jams in 9-19-89.
Here’s a pro tip for yuh, my dude: the key to a great Jerry jam on a rock and roll song like Deal is how much tight and funky embellishment does he throw in, i.e. those fully articulated, amazing swinging, syncopated Jerry bends and slides and hammer ons and pull offs and descending/ascending patterns. Because that’s exactly what Jerry does with great fluidity, excitement, confidence, and creativity throughout 4-4-85. He is far less creative and interesting in 7-19-89, basically foregoing those amazing Jerry bends and slides and hammerons and pull offs and descending/ascending patterns almost completely in favor of comparatively boring, clunky at times, straight picking and simple ascending/descending noodling.
His solos are also much wider ranging in terms of pitch in 4-4-85 which makes them far more interesting and climactic, with Jerry going from the bottom strings at the top of the neck all the way down to the high notes at the bottom of the neck which he plays with piercing brilliance. He stays in a comparatively smaller box in 7-19-89. His tempo in parts of 7-19-89 also gets slow and drags at times. You called it “coked up tempo” in 4-4-85, but I say if he’s going to play that much better with the coke, then somebody should have given Jerry more coke on 7-19-89. Finally, particularly grating is the cheezy 80’s video game guitar tone he goes with in the 2nd solo in 7-19-89. The guitar tone in 4-4-85 is much better. So all-in-all the jamming is clearly superior in 4-4-85.
Now, I’ll give you the vocals are a little better in 7-19-89 – but only a little and not enough to make a material difference. In 4-4-85, Jerry dropped and/or garbled a few lyrics – wow, unprecedented! -- but really for the vast majority of the singing Jerry was just fine in 4-4-85. It wasn’t one of those froggy 1985 performances at all. And Deal, you see, is much more of a JAM vehicle than a vocal showcase so the marginally better vocals are not enough to rescue the clearly inferior guitar playing of 7-19-89.
Q.E.D.
