#jrad

Caught LaMP last week in DC

Unless I get about 4000 times better at playing guitar and/or at making money, this is thee closest I'm ever gonna get to Bob Weir. So enjoy some truly mediocre cell phone pictures I took from last night's JRAD show.

Part one of this series extrapolated from the conceit that the 9/4/19 Hot Tuna show here at the Sheldon Concert Hall also marked the anniversary of my Fall 1969 Johnny Winter concert that was my first rock show.  50 years!!   That segment was about those early concerts in KC (well, a couple of Dylan shows in St. Louis and then Chicago).  

The glaring omission from that note was the Grateful Dead (11/11-12/72; 6/16/74 Des Moines; and 10/28/77).  I propose correcting that with this entry that can take up 7/26-27/94 and 7/5-6/95 (shows 4 and 3 from the end) plus visits with The Other Ones, The Dead, Furthur, Dead and Company, various Phil Lesh and Friends iterations (including the Q 3 times, the Campbell/Greene band twice, another time with Campbell, and this past summer with an Allison Krauss sit in); Ratdog maybe 5 times; Weir and Wolf Bros; and Joe Russo’s Almost Dead to whom I’ve passed the torch.

This is a quite modest Deadhead roll call, but it does include 1972, a Wall of Sound, and 1977.  So I’ve been around long enough to have opinions.  

And I do have opinions.

1972–The 11/11 show was all we thought we were going to get.  A Sunday night show after them always missing us.  There was a rumor then, pure fiction it turns out, that they opened (?!?) for Iron Butterfly (#@%!) in KC before I got on the bus (1969ish?).  I was transfixed—the long unfolding two sets, pauses including for a cigarette puffs), the wide range of songs, the stacks of speakers and Macintosh amps even if it wasn’t quite officially a Wall of Sound show—but that’s all I remember.  Set lists say there was a Box of Rain.  

The second show got added and I was going to go no matter what—two school nights in a row.  And that one is better fixed in memory because of an Owsley Stanley tape that captures a sprawling Playing in the Band to close the first set.  I don’t need that tape to remember the Dark Star>Morning Dew, though being able to revisit it sure is a treat.  It was in fact huge though I was beside myself from the opening notes announcing that the adventure was beginning.  In the moment, I just knew it was happening and that was good enough then.  It is a big big one though with lots of space travel before settling into the Dew.  I turned grumpy about Dew but this one was magic then and now.  

1974–I couldn’t get anybody to go to Des Moines to see them that June.  My dad, actually, was up for the drive and camping (him staying in camp while I and the other Deadheads went to the afternoon outdoor show.  He had a draft dissertation to read which he left somehow but we got it back).  The key parts of this show (another Playing with a gnarly breakdown) were released officially as part of the Road Trips series honoring the Wall of Sound.  That was a sight though I thought I’d seen a version of it inside in KC.  Also a sight was Garcia’s chin and upper lip as he had reduced the beard to mutton chops for a very short while.  The second set was where the meat of the show was culminating in the Playing.  I experienced it at the time as meandering and anxious, without the tranquil spaciness of some of their explorations, but it’s just fine and part of the oeuvre as per repeated listening AND a much broader experience with their music.

1977–When Steal Your Face and then Blues for Allah came out, my enthusiasm was waning.  To this day, I’m a pre-hiatus fan with a real focus on 71-74 when Kreutzmann was the only drummer.  They were more lithe, exploratory, and dynamic.  Still a good friend told me I was going back to Memorial Hall for a late 1977 show, so I got part of that magical year.  And what stood out was 1977 slinkiness even though there wasn’t a Dancin’ in the Streets.  But Lazy Lightning>Supplication, Samson and Delilah, and Passenger all caught my ear.  It was fun, but I was not on the bus much.

The taping scene pulled me back in in the late 1980s, though I’d been intrigued by Lowell George of Little Feat producing Shakedown Street.  I suppose in some ways I am a secondary Touch Head, though Without a Net too was welcome.

I was on the periphery of the Brent Mydland era and actually found Bruce Hornsby’s interlude a real boost to the creativity, particularly Garcia’s. That was spent really by 1994 and 1995.  I went to both nights that they were in St. Louis on those summer tours.  Still I was glad to see the break outs and covers (Here Comes Sunshine, Take Me to the River), but they were going through the motions, keeping Garcia in tow.  It was fun, I'm glad, I'm went, they are memorable in a general sense, but I won't go play recordings.  1995 was the third and fourth shows from the end as they headed from here to Chicago.  Within 5 weeks, Garcia was dead.

It was about the party or, ahem, the cultural experience. I'm glad I got that too with the originals (and subsequent Furthur Festival/The Other Ones/The Dead/Furthur/Dead and Company shows in big venues were as much about that as the music), but an advantage of the end of the big machine is that the shows got much smaller.  The party was still there, but the music was closer. Also as I have aged, I've been willing to pay for better seats (to see Phil Lesh at Willie Nelson's Outlaw Festival this summer we even paid for premium parking.  Sheesh.) so that helps put the music to the fore.

So has couch touring—and that is how my concert gang and I saw the first night of Fare The Well—GD 50 from Levi Stadium in the Bay Area as well as the Friday and Sunday from Chicago.  We also saw a Phil Lesh Quintet reunion.  Being in real time, I count those as shows which indicates that experiencing the music live is what counts for me.

The GD Meet Up at the Movies don’t, but they do remind me that I like to be in the presence of those songs and their creators. And that has pulled me along so far to shows that have included at least Phil Lesh and/or Bob Weir.  I actually am a fan of Drums/Space and stay in my seat to watch the spontaneous magic happen, so having Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart along for The Other Ones, The Dead, and Dead and Company is just fine.  But those operations felt a little bloated.  They have to be in large spaces to accommodate the party, so the gestures are equally grand and the rituals are observed.  Furthur (Lesh and Weir’s operation) was a bit more nimble—one drummer, Joe Russo, and more flexible set lists.  But I saw them in a small arena (12 K) and The Fox Theater (almost 5 K), so those were big concert experiences.

Bob Weir is an indefatigable road warrior, sometimes when he shouldn’t.  St. Louis was an early stop of a Fall 2004 tour that was aborted.  But we got to see him and it was awfully good, one I return to.  It jammed into Jack Straw into the opening of a Terrapin that would be concluded in the second set and the rest of the suite in the encore into Dark Star (my first since 1972 and the only one of two more I saw in person, both from Ratdog) that concluded at the end of the set before back into Jack Straw.  The second set had Peggy O, The Winners, and Friend of the Devil for a can’t be beat acoustic interlude before firing up The Other One and Uncle John’s Band (its reprise after Terrapin proper closed the second set.  With the exception of Playin’, he rehearsed all the big tunes and was energetic and in good voice.  That one was a treat.

Ratdog was always fun, a solid band and a showcase for Weir’s quirkinesses which help make the GD experience.  I like many of his songs more than Garcia’s, excuse the heresy, but I confess that I probably haven’t given up being angry at him not just for being dead but for dying, for giving up which probably started in the 1980s.

Ratdog shows were chances to hear the songs and Weir’s take on them, including Garcia’s at the heart of the canon were always good to hear.  He brought most things into circulation.  The bands were not the all star configurations that Lesh’s were, but they were effective.  St. Louis shows reflected his connection with Johnny Johnson (a 2003 The Dead Show had Johnson and Willie Nelson jam on Little Red Rooster (overplayed over the years, but the way to do a 12 bar blues) and Lovelight that was historic).  After Johnson’s death, it was his horn section sitting in, usually for one of the big jam tunes.  A Dark Star stands out, but there must have been a Sailor>Saint or Eyes another year.

But it is Lesh who is the curator of the part of the universe that matters to me—the invention, the opportunity that any tune can unfold into a world of possibility.  That was most clear with the Q—John Molo, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, and Rob Barracco whom I got to see in their prime three times.  They played the big barn with Weir’s Ratdog to open in July 2001, with a Weir sit in to open set one.  The feature of that one was a Viola Lee Blues sandwich that wove out of that primal jam vehicle from the GD past four times with interludes of Lovelight, Tons of Steel, and Into the Mystic.  Lesh would pull out tunes that had fallen out of the rotation—Alligator and Doin’ That Rag that night, Caution with Furthur at the Fox, Cosmic Charlie with the Q that November, and Viola itself.  The Q revival Couch Tour show we saw had a Mountains of the Moon which suggested a potential (not developed) for that tune as a subtle jam vehicle just as it was the last night of Fare The Well.  They did Beatles tunes, Brent Tunes, Van Morrison.  The second show at the Fox for some reason doesn’t leap out as magical.  But the third one, also at the Fox, on what would have been Garcia’s 60th birthday was.  The first hour was Bird Song>Here Comes Sunshine>Not Fade Away and had me riveted.  The second set had Sunshine of Your Love and a transcendent Low Spark of High Heeled Boys with Haynes somehow capturing the piano parts on guitar.

My only quasi bit of touring was to run over to Indianapolis to see Lesh in a hybrid band of Molo and Barraco with Larry Campbell, Barry Sless on pedal steel, Greg Osby on alto, and Joan Osborne on vocals.  It was a hot hot day but good adventurous stuff.  The Peggy O  as a story with Lesh narrating, Osborne being the fair maid, Campbell as our captain was very cool.  Bertha, Viola, and Shakedown stretched things out too.

With the Molo/Larry Campbell/Jackie Greene/Steve Molitz band, I got to see the premiere of the Ritter Eyes of Horus bass.  A dark stage, the fretboard LED lights on, a solo into The Other One and then Truckin' made quite an impression.  It didn't have the heft/power of the Modulus instruments he used before and after (a possibly smaller one) and it was more striking then pretty, but it was a moment of GD lore that happened on my watch.  Those were two good shows with Campbell showing a range I hadn't expected.  He could dig into the jams whereas I thought he would be more of a Robbie Robertson fills and one chorus solos player. It was also fun to watch Greene grow.  It was like he went to grad school or maybe a post doc in that band.

I have seen Greene at least 5 subsequent times (Duck Room, Old Rock House twice (band and "acoustic," Delmar Hall, and as an opener for Gov't Mule).  He has tasty covers including but not exclusively GD ones and some damn good tunes.  It's good to see his efforts to extend the GD universe.

But I'm putting my money on Joe Russo's Almost Dead as where the legacy will reside.

I saw them earlier in the year and they strike me as not just a Dead cover band, but a PLQ cover band--anything can be jammed out, the tunes can be played in any order in any part of the set.  Russo is a dynamo of energy on drums and his alter ego Marco Benevento is an inventive player.  It's cool to see the varied opportunities the music presents.

My shows this year with Weir (the Wolf Bros trio) and Lesh at Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Festival felt valedictory.  Weir was an interesting disappointment in that his wonderfully idiosyncratic guitar was at the fore, but too often through a too thin toned D’Angelico Bedford guitar.  He had that jangled tone in Ratdog but it went away during Fare The Well and beyond when he used Fender Stratocasters. His voice too was thinner.  So, while I wanted to see him in the spare setting, I don’t need to do it again.

And, though I’m likely to succumb to peer pressure if Dead and Company comes to town, I don’t need that party.

So, I’m content to go out on the Phil and Friends set at the barn with Willie Nelson as my last time seeing an original member.  There was Molo once again, Jason Crosby and Stu Allen from the Terrapin scene, and a new other guitarist Cris Jacobs.  The set had Jack Straw, Brown Eyed Women, Sugaree, and a Cumberland Blues (a favorite) as the closer.  Eyes was the jamming tune, but so was Help>Slip>Morning Dew.  And what a Dew it was as Alison Krauss sang it as she did on To Lay Me Down.  Amazing and what a rare moment in the Dead universe.

Dead music is magical and so it has been for me right to this end.

Joe Russo's Almost Dead w/Lee Ranaldo, "Dark Star"

9/7/24: The Rooftop at Pier 17, New York, NY