Album review: Keith Jarrett, No End (ECM)

He never took drugs, Jarrett writes in the sleeve notes to this double CD of previously unreleased private studio recordings from 1986, but otherwise happily participated in the Haight-Ashbury summer of love, whose melody lingers on.

This may explain why his guitar playing (yes, guitar: and bass, drums and recorder, all overdubbed on two Tandberg cassette decks), sounds so much like Jerry Garcia, and the long, often aimless-seeming Eastern jams like the Grateful Dead on a duff night. But mostly No End sounds like pretty much anyone noodling about in their shed. There are good bits, like the opening to CD2, but it’s a long haul. A parallel release: Concerts: Bregenz, Munchen, from 1981 reasserts the Jarrett we know.