I thought this thread was here, but I guess it was in our earlier incarnation.
So tells of your plans and shows you see!!
Yeah, this thread was here... I certainly remember it... As for what I'll be hearing... Prolly only low level area groups as that's what current finances seem to be dictating....
No Cal is on our short list of vacation destinations. A couple of shows being announced in the next while could entice us to do a stint in a condo on monterey bay rather than take another trip to hawaii later in the year.
lw
Maybe we can hook up!?!? About time............
That's what I'm hoping, bruddah.
My better half was pricing condos on the beach and thought we could make it work. Basically, it was her idea, so it will prolly happen eventually. Kinda depends on the music scene.
lw
As soon as you got the dates, let me know. Maybe you could make a side trip to hear your old buddy do his thang.
For sure.
Hopefully maybe Phil might tempt you to visit the coast as well.
lw
That would be loverly!
Not much music for me these daze out here on the prairie. But I guess its feast or famine. Tonight we see Steve Earle and tomorrow I'm catching the Gogol Bordello show. (Gypsy punk, or prolly more respectfully, Roma punk.) Can't wait. Tonight might be pretty mellow, but tomorrow night.........
lw
I love Steve Earl, used to do Guitar Town and Copperhead Road when I was in the Beer Dawgs.
And just yesterday a young friend of mine was talking about Gogol, do they have any accordians?
I'm pretty sure they do have an accordion.
lw
yo-jrl...
Your boy Jackie Greene is coming to town tomorrow night. The wife is scoring tix as we speak. Sounds like he's bringing a bassie and drummer for an acoustic evening at the House of Blues.
I'm a bit curious to hear how Phil has influenced Jackie's solo shows but I think my wife wet her panties when I gave her the news just now.
lw
HAH! I was planning on seeing Gogol aswell(I love Eugene Hütz!) I feel like it is going to be a good show, I meant to see them last year but I went to too many other shows and did not have the funds.
Let me know what you think.
I'll keep you posted, jrl.
The wife made the comment last night that jackie is looking pretty rough these daze. I took that as a good sign. Hopefully Phil psychedelisized the guy.
Anyway, the four of us will probably take two cars just in case I feel the need to flee the scene early.
ps: I'll try not to scare the little guy this time if I run into him again before the show. hehe
lw
Jackie's got the whole band with him, Nate his guitar player posted on facebook from the road to Des Moines.
If you get close tell the fellows 'specially my arch nemesis (j/k), Bruce Spencer, da drummer , that Joe Lev says high.
Interesting evening. Jackie is touring with his drummer and (acoustic) guitar player. I ran into them before the show and asked if they wanted a smoke, but they declined, intent on finding cigarettes instead. hehe
We scored the last table in the back of the room. In front of us was a group of maybe 15 people made up mostly of men in their 60's and women in a little younger age group. And these fookers were (are) smashed. We watched two full face plants right in front of us and had to worry about stumble bums crashing on us the whole time. I finally went behind the bar after the second person face planted into the carpet on her way out the door and told them it was pretty obvious that they were over serving the old folks. Barkeep asked where their table was and I told him it was the idiots sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. (You know, the one's sitting closest to the bar who have been downing round after round of shots?)
Anyway, jackie's voice sounds good. A couple of his tunes were nice. I liked the dead influenced covers he did best. However, it was pretty clear that the two other fellow are backing jackie. He was the show. Not much volume coming out of his sidekick's ax and the drums were played mostly with brushes and mallets.
My wife and friends were enjoying themselves and weren't ready to call it quits as soon as I did. But two hours was enough for me. We is one lame crowd, here in Des Moines and the alcohol scene just isn't for me. On my way out the door, a guy told me he had just helped one of the drunk women get up after she face planted on the concrete outside of the venue. Hopefully none of them were driving.
My guess is that catching Jackie's act in the presence of a bunch of dirty hippies would make for a better experience.
lw
it's crazy how many people drink and drive. I have seen some crazy shit....people driving down the street with their passenger door open, and swerving all around taking out mail boxes.
not to mention all the drunk fights and black outs.
it always makes me wonder: WHY THE FUCK IS ALCOHOL LEGAL AND SOME PLANTS AREN'T!!!!!!!!!!!
don't get me wrong I love to drink, but it's just beyond absurd.
Right in, Alice.
I have nothing against alcohol consumption, but watching drunks getting legally blasted on booze in public pisses me off a little when ingesting a sacrament in the privacy of my own home can get me arrested.
lw
I have some stories about drunks, let me tell ya. When i stopped drinking 16 years ago I was thrust i nto many situations where I was one of the few sober people around. It's an ugly drug.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against alcohol. I don't drink very much, but most of my friends do, with little or no problem with behavior in public. Heck, I even had a couple of beers at the show.
The wife finally acknowledged that a big percentage of fans at jackies shows are females of all ages who want to fuck him. I saw a few jam band fans spread through out the crowd and a bunch of women sitting up front or shaking their booties (with other women) in front of jackie.
lw
We caught the Wailers last night at a venue we can walk to from our house. Family Man has a new lead singer and he brought the female back up singers, too. There was plenty of room to groove, good air circulation (Iowa is now non-smoking in all public places except casinos) and packs of children adding their own frequency of jubilation to the reggae vibe. Reminded me of the old days in the City on the pier.
Anyway, it had been a long time since we had caught a show that made me want to move to da groove. In the process, I managed to self-adjust my neck and upper back to a better alignment than I've had in years. So I'm a little stiff this morning, but my history with getting adjusted by a chiropractor leads me to believe I'll be feeling aligned and ready to roll when Carlos shows up in Sioux City for a day of free music in the park. Can't wait to see friends we haven't talked to for a whole year. Every year.
lw
I saw the Wailers some years back, great show!!!
Summer is here and looks like i am gonna be way to busy playing to see many shows I am not on. I do get to hear great music playing festivals. Already did the Crawdad Festival in Red Bluff CA. Lot's of great CZ(cajun/zydeco). My favorite was the Saint Celeste Brass Band. They marched the grounds and did occasional sets at one or the other of the venues. They tried to be traditional, but since they are made up of top Bay Area jazz musicians, I think they took it somewhere else, a lot like the Dirty Dozen.
Tonight I am reunited with my old employer, the great Frankie Lee. We are doing a club show to warm up for festivals later in the month.
I love summer.
Knee deep in festival season. Did 2 big blues festivals with Frankie Lee in the SF Bay Area, park concerts, farmer's markets, horse races, art's council gigs.
Goin to the big Cowboy fest in Big Bear Lake in August.
Ya'know...
I think I could make at least a couple more West-Coasters happen...Willow owes me anyway. I got a can of spam that I gave away to give him anyway...
(Uh, think Andy and I...)
Peace?
Lizzy
Phil, Bobby and cohorts are coming to L'Ames Ioway sometime next month. Wife said the tickets came in da mail yesterday. I've been too busy to even think about catching a real show, but fortunately, that rush should be dying down by the end of this month. Anyway, they are playing in a cozy little theater where we'll prolly know about half the freaks on location.
The trick in this joint will be finding a spot to lay me head without security wanting to throw me out for drunken vagrancy or something. Having the wife act as babysitter usually keeps 'em off my back. (if my head is in her lap, she can talk to concerned folks while I continue "snoozing.")
Anyway, this one should be interesting to say the least.
lw
Lucky you. We had to settle for DSO at the Crest on Nov 28th.
Phil, Bobby and company come to L'Ames tonight. I'm pretty sure its the first time they have played together in Iowa since 7-4-84. (Both mrs lw's and my first show.) Upping my arsenal as we speak........
lw
cool. enjoy!
What a ride.
The boys came out with one of the strangest "Strangers" I've heard. Nuance put a whole new spin on one of my favorite openers. They just plain grew teeth and laid me out quick. Had me down for most of the first set. Straight up wi-fi digital download right between the eyes. The Dr was in...... After enduring the frontal lobotomy, a bit of cosmic salve was applied to the gaping hole in me cranium in the form of "The Music Never Stopped."
Well the cool breeze came on Tuesday, And the corn's a bumper crop
And the fields are full of dancin' Full of singin' and romancin'
The music never stopped.
(It WAS a Tuesday show and a local bumper crop of corn was just announced. hehe)
Twenty-six years since the missus and I first stepped on that bus and the music never stopped......
Anyway, if the first set knocked my socks off, the second massaged me tired feet. I remember a nice china/rider, fire and a thunderous other one.
We met some nice folks and saw a bunch of old friends. A couple sitting behind us appeared to maybe be college professors conducting sociological observations. The missus said they seemed a little baffled/amused by my experience. (I'm guessing they thought I was really fucked up and down for the count.) But the missus said they finally appeared to grasp the fact that my actions were tied to the music, maybe even if they didn't fully understand the mechanics.
lw
laid us down some gorgeous description there, Lw-
you could throw it all into being a reporter
(spirit plants daily?)
THanks for the kind words, sistah.
This was a friend's first dead related show. She told mrs lw last night that she thought it was a real snoozer. And without consuming an active sacrament, I could maybe see how it would have been experienced in that way. However, from my perspective, the first set was a cosmic pressure cooker and the second a nice warm steam bath that massaged synapses during a peaceful transition through the here and now from 4-D back to 3.
Chimenti really shined on keys. Sunshine Garcia on vocals was a nice addition to the mix.
11/09/10 (Tue) Stephens Auditorium - Ames, IA
Set 1: Feel Like A Stranger > Music Never Stops, Brown-eyed Women, When I Make My Masterpiece, Alabama Getaway, One-eyed Jacks > Liberty > Casey Jones
Set 2: Dear Mr. Fantasy, Playin' In The Band > Jam > Fire On The Mountain > Other One > China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider > Black Peter > Feelin' All Right, Going Down The Road Feeling Bad, Bid You Goodnight, E: Touch Of Grey
Lineup: Phil Lesh - Bass; Bob Weir - Guitar & Vocals; Jeff Chimenti - Keyboards; John Kadlecik - Guitar & Vocals; Joe Russo - Drums; Jeff Pehrson - Vocals; Sunshine Becker - Vocals
Phil's not singing?
As to your friend and sacraments:
What did the Deadhead say when his stash ran out?
This band sucks.
Phil did very little singing. Mrs lw was hoping to hear more from him, as was usual with his previous lineups.
I enjoy listening to dead bootlegs in "normal" consciousness, but that wouldn't be my first choice of realities for a live show.
lw
Was he singing much harmony? His tenor parts always were a part of there sound.
I don't remember Phil really singing much the other night. He did sing a little on Brown Eyed Women. His bass work sounded great in that intimate setting. But Sunshine Garcia and another dude sang harmony for the most part.
I was just happy to have Phil and Bobby back on stage together. Stephens auditorium has great acoustics and only holds a few thousand people.
lw
I know this isn't really the place for this conversation, but here goes....
Mrs lw has mentioned on a few occasions (including last Tuesday) that when I go down to "nap" during a show she often sees other members of the audience exhibiting signs of bad trips. I find that interesting, because before I started going with that cosmic flow, I also would have been visibly distressed. Don't get me wrong, I'm still scared shiteless when the music grows fangs and whispers sweet nothings in my ear about mortality. But for some reason, those lessons are much easier for me to take while wrapped in dream......
lw
Small hall sounds good. In his book Phil says they never could really get it in huge stadium shows.
I remember seeing them at Sacramento memorial Auditorium, 300o seats, or my first show at cal Expo building A, years before they built the amphitheater.
I also saw Garcia/Saunders twice at a club that help maybe 500, maybe more like 300.
Looking back, I remember the band playing an interesting version of casey Jones last week. They made it up tempo and choppy. And I'm pretty sure they were singing, "Riding that train, high on propane," instead of the traditional coke reference.
lw
Reminds me of the time I was working for an asshat named Nugget. he wanted me to sing this song I had written about a girl I knew called Real Live Wire. First line was "She said hey baby want to have some fun to night, lets go get some cocaine, it will make you feel all right"
As I step up to the mic, Nugget says, "no drug references" and gives me a dirty look. (Holmes lived to fuck with people)
So I changed cocaine to propane.
Quote from: "laughingwillow"I know this isn't really the place for this conversation, but here goes....
Mrs lw has mentioned on a few occasions (including last Tuesday) that when I go down to "nap" during a show she often sees other members of the audience exhibiting signs of bad trips. I find that interesting, because before I started going with that cosmic flow, I also would have been visibly distressed. Don't get me wrong, I'm still scared shiteless when the music grows fangs and whispers sweet nothings in my ear about mortality. But for some reason, those lessons are much easier for me to take while wrapped in dream......
lw
How did Mrs. LW take it? Was she worried? Was she feeling she should alert somebody or offer help?
LOL How does Mrs lw take it? She knows I'm OK. (I'm guessing folks on the prairie just think I'm sleeping through the show, for the most part.) Some folks think I'm really fucked up. However, I've seen quite a few folks doing shows in the same manner on the west coast. You just have to walk around or step over them and their sitters.
I contend that folks having bad trips at shows can get through the experience easier by following this lead. (Some heads tried to demonstrate this to me years back a few times, but I was too hard headed at the time.)
The thing that seems to trip out the masses the most is that often shortly after visibly being deemed "too fucked up to function" I'm up and about with a smile on me face. And when the show ends, I'm the one behind the wheel driving home.
As far as I'm concerned, I've learned to control most every aspect of fear encountered during the psychedelic experience except for the SMELL of fear our bodies automatically emit when under that sort of psychological pressure.
lw
DSO tomorrow at the beautiful Crest Theater!!!
Hope you have a good show, mon.
Keep us posted, eh?
lw
Thanks, bro. Will do.
oops. How did I get here?
Oh, well.... How was the show?
lw
Set One: Iko Iko ; Hell In A Bucket ; Loser ; Cassidy ; Dupree's Diamond Blues ; C C Rider ; Deal
Set Two: I Need A Miracle > Bertha ; Playing In The Band > China Doll > Jam > Drums > Space > Playing In The Band > Black Peter > Sugar Magnolia ; One More Saturday Night
Encore: Keep Your Day Job
Filler: Let Me Sing Your Blues Away Show from 86-6-9 Cal Expo TJ was pretty sure she was there.
We had a good time. Me, still kinda thinking it was the real band expected a long line of people waiting to get in, wanted to get there the moment the doors open. TJ being a cooler head(heads ARE cool, like our sticker, "if You're Not A Head You're Behind")
got us there about 45 minutes before the advertised time and we walked right up to will call and had our pick of seats, in the 5th row. Hall never got much more than half full.
Band hit the stage on Dead time, about 20 minutes late, immediately hit a strong groove with Aiko. First thing I noticed:Jeff Mattson is a bad ass, much stronger presence than Stu Allen.
Well I got to say, that the slight cheesiness of it all is forgotten when the band starts cooking. These guys have learned their lessons well, they breath together like the Dead, actually tighter musically and way better vocally. And the Dead have never had a keyboard player like Rob Barraco, and keys play a much bigger role. Rob is a great singer, did all of Brent's tenor parts strong and crisp. I think it's the quality of that gives it legitamcy.
The other thing is : IT WORKS!!!!! IN spite of a crowd that was a bit small to generate high energy, we did get it off the ground. I think with a couple hundred more than the 500 or so it would have been a better party, but it kept it comfortable for the old folks. And I think that is what the DSO is about. letting middle aged hippies be Dead Heads for a few days. I heard many people talking about the 2 nights before at the Regency in SF, (sample: "It sucks being 50, I am so sore from dancing)
I could feel LSD energy big time, I always get as huge contact hit in these scenes. A few people were obviously trippin, not a huge number.
But the main thing is, this is one hell of a band, really listen to each other and really hear, maybe like the Dead without hard drugs The schedule they keep(1876 shows in 12 years) is James Brown worthy, they got to be in great shape. They really look like they are having fun, and when the music turns weird they are right there ready for it. Rob Eaton the guy that does Weir, leads the band on stage just like Bobby did(people always say Gar was the leader, but from what i've seen it was Pig Pen in the old days, and Weir later, at least on stage).
They played a really long 2nd set, and I think they kinda lost the crowd with drums/space and the monster jam after it, before the playing in the band reprise. it started to feel like a yuppie Sunday night, quite a few bailed. The ones that did missed out on one real high pont, Rob Barraco doing Sing Your Blues Away. Not only is he a way better singer than Keith was, he is a way better singer than anyone ever in the Dead and offshoot, even better than Warren Haynes who is one singing white boy in my opinion. I think Rob, having been with Phil gives them a bit of street cred, at any rate he may be the most underrated musician around.
In closing let me say there is nothing like a DSO concert except a Dead show.
Come on honey let me sing em away!!
jrl: LOL I just found out that DSO is playing a show down the street from our house tonight. Should I relent and attend? (Btw, walking those three freeking blocks are a bitch when its this cold. hehe)
lw
lw, did you see my DSO post from this morning??? Apparently it disappeared into the void.
I ended up walking down the block to see DSO last night. At least I can say I saw them once. I caught the first set and then walked back up the hill. There was really nothing there for me. We're pretty sure the show was from 1980. I guess the band sounded OK. The scene was just creepy to me. Dude wants to be Bobby, imo. The Jerry clone played alright and Rob B held down the keys but there was nothing there for me. There were a few tripping hippies in the few hundred folks who showed up. Mostly the cologne and under 21 crowd. Honest to God, I failed to get the draw, at least musically.
I was happy to see friends I've missed for awhile. And there were a bunch of people who appeared to be having a great time. But the experience was hollow for me and a little embarrassing, to be honest.
I listen to live dead on my rig every day without dosing and I must say I get more out of those old recordings than I did from the live DSO show last night. At least I can say I've been there and done that.
lw
That's pretty much where I ended up with about them. Doubt if i will be seeing em again soon. Can't take their skill away from them and Rob Barraco is pretty much the best musician out there on the jam scene IMHO, actually a pretty damn good jazz player sounds like to me, they must have made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
And while the experience kind of left me hollow, I know a good band when I hear one. I can see why they do it, if they didn't do the Dead shows they would just be another jam band from Chicago. Don't know if they are motivated by greed, love of the music and the mojo or some combination. I think you are right about Rob Eaton, will the real Rob please stand up.
If I had known in 1972 that people were gonna make a career out of being Garcia clones maybe I never would have bought that bass.
Well, I'm guessing $22.50/ticket makes for a nice paycheck, if'n you can draw them in. Their schtick seems to be to play dead shows right down to musicians placement on stage and then attempt to recreate, note for note, what the band did that night so long ago. I witnessed no effort to capture lightning in a bottle and felt no creativity. However, there were a couple of guys hooking up to the board and making copies of the show.
I heard a few youngsters behind me were wide-eyed gawking and taking it all in.
One said, "Look at the freaks," as a couple of trustafarian chicks flitted by.
One other bearded guy made passes through the crowd, two-stepping away with a beatific smile on his face and the cologne crowd seemed to get a kick out of him, too.
So end the end, I saw folks looking to recreate a moment, posers trying to act like they were recreating a moment, the cologne crowd acting like the posers were bone fide freaks and the kids, taking it all in while under the impression that they were getting to experience a bit of that old-time religion without understanding the prizes found in the bottom of that cracker jack box were but hollow imitations; costume jewelry, if you will.
lw
How big a crowd did they pull? They packed the Regency in SF(Fillmore size?) but here the Crest was barely half full.
I think they work hard for their money, brutal schedule from what I've seen.
Though they do the set lists and stage placement, I don't think they could possibly note for note a show, too many notes!!!!
Last time I saw em, they jammed extensively in the second set and put their own twist on it. And I definitely prefer Mattson to Stu Allen.
jrl: There were two or three hundred people at the show.
This band might work hard by playing a bunch of dates, but I really don't see any creativity in what they do. Their hard work is in trying to reproduce a particular show already put out there by the Dead. These guys are profiting off of THEIR hard work and the fact that some folks get into that type of schtick.
When I say they play note for note, in part, I'm talking about the way they connect their set list. If the dead jammed their way from one song to the next during the original show, DSO does the same. If the band took a break between two songs in a show, dso does the same. While I doubt they could pull off a note for note reproduction, I believe they do try. (And what is the difference between that and classical music?) While they don't have the sheet music in front of them, they do have copies of the shows in question to prepare with.
lw
You ever try to learn one Dead tune, let alone a performance of one tune "note for note"? In his book Mr Lesh said something to the effect of "if the music is much more complex than anyone person could compose you know you are listening to collective improvisation"
Then multiply that by the number of tunes in a show and shows in a tour.
I would be interested in their methodology, being someone who often has to learn a lot of music in a short time there might be something useful there for me.
I guess either you buy into their concept or don't, but I think the work they do is obvious. and if they are drawing 200-300 to their shows, they sure aren't getting rich off it. Touring an't cheap and anyway you slice it, brutal hard work not for the faint of heart.
This dude is after me to start a "Grateful Dead band". I don't want to do a mini DSO but that whole era is really a great source for tunes. So many great SF bands from that era, some were ahead of the boys in 66, The Sons, Quicksilver and Moby Grape come to mind. What the Dead did, and Terry Haggerty (Sons guitar player) talked to me about it, was stay together and grow together, did what it took to keep the spark alive. 30 years is a very long time for 6 guys to sustain such an intimate relationship as playing high music, it takes work to keep the circuits clear.
I could see building a song list from all the bands from that scene, and developing a sound of our own.
BTW what is your take on Melvin Seals? He still calls his band the "JGB" and is still playin Mr. Garcia's set list.
14 year old youngblood guitar player that I know from Blues in the Schools and all ages jams, saw I was into the Dead and told me he was too. I said "let's learn a tune or 2, have some fun at a jam" He suggested China Cat or Scarlet>Fire!!!!!
New ones coming as the old ones go.........
I have nothing against a cover band. Melvin is composing his own set lists, even if they are others songs.
Btw, how does an entire evening of classical music get performed? I thought it was done note for note, as composed. The DSO guys already know the songs. What they attempt top do is duplicate the way the dead played them way back when, all the way down to recreating the original basic stage set up for each show.
I checked them out and guess I just don't buy into what they are doing.
lw
I figured you weren't gonna like em.
I think my thing with Melvin is his calling it the "JGB". I guess he has a better claim to that than anyone, but why not call it The Melvin Seals Band? And why not stray from Garcia's set list?
Thing about symphony players: They don't
do a different show 20 times a month, and someone else has figured out the parts LOL. I guess my point is knowing and playing the songs is one thing, note for note entirely different. I would guess there are a lot more notes in an average Dead show than a symphony program.
One thing musicians do to learn is to transcribe solos. I have done it with bass parts, I'm not real good at it, but even for someone more facile than me the task of learning a nights worth of Garcia's solos or Lesh's bass parts would be a daunting task.
Well, obviously note for note isn't accurate. Solo for solo, then maybe?
I could care less what Melvin calls his band. I'd rather catch his act than DSO. I can at least get the sense that the JGB solos and jams are actually being influenced by what is happening on stage rather than what happened on stage way back when.
Basically, the type of Dead cover band I support would take the band's material and find ways to make it their own. THis crowd likes improvision. Give us something fresh, using dead songs as a starting point. Pick your own psychedelic jams to cover as well. The dead covered other's work. Basically, just improvise.
Btw, do you really doubt that the guy who wants to be Bobby in the band that plays dead shows song for song with band members positioned on stage based on where the individual dead members stood way back when ago would have any problem with transcribing solos? That approach isn't viewing the music as a platform or launch pad, but rather as something to be faithfully reproduced, imo.
The set I caught the other day had no coherence between songs. DSO took a little break between each number, just as I'm sure the dead did that night way back when. Don't get me wrong, I don't fault the Dead for how their deal went down that night, but it didn't endear me to the band in question the other night.
lw
Well I guess Rob Eaton would have a handle on Weir's language, but the sheer quantity of parts to be learned to really copy just one show would be a huge task. I just wanted to get the definition of "note for note" on the table.
Like I said from the start my feelings about DSO are mixed. The working musician in me wonders about the nuts and bolts, the day to day routine of the band. The Dead lover in me is a little creeped out by the whole thing, but involuntarily carried away by some of the tunes.
I would have to AB the DSO show to the original, but it sounded to me like they were making it their own during the second set jams of the aforementioned show. That kind of energy can't be faked.
In a way they remind me of ALL the Western Swing bands and their devotion to Bob Wills.
You could be right. I lost interest before the second set.
lw
SO I just read an interview with a couple of DSO members. They said they don't attempt to reproduce songs note for note. However they do try to reproduce the "sound" and stage set up of a particular era. For me an example of that would be Rob B's keyboard contributions to the set I caught. The effects that he employed were recognizable as those used by B Midland during the original dead show in question. The notes may have been of Rob B's choosing, but that jangle belonged to Brent Midland.
I'll give a listen to any dead cover band that uses the material in question to explore novel musical possibilities, just as the Dead/Further continue to do. Imo, DSO is a band that draws many folks interested in minutia of a past era. And that's not what the dead were about.
I can get behind most any band that takes that material and makes it their own.
lw
I remember being on a show with the New Riders in 95 and they did I think Brokedown Palace, Friend of the Devil(Marmaduke co-wrote)
and realizing that the GD legacy of tunes was too good not to be played and the tunes would live for ever even if Garcia didn't.
Lot of good cover versions. I was gifted with Vassars Clements Deadgrass and there is a bunch of good stuff on Deadicated.
Only one on there I hate is Janes Addiction's Ripple, if I ever meet Perry Farell I would be tempted to smack him. I really like Elvis Costello/James Burton's Ship of Fool's. James' solos seem like loving tribute to guy that James was probably an influence on.
Burton's work with Ricky Nelson on Ozzie and Harriet certainly pointed a lot of people towards electric guitaring and then he was a SHINDOG!!!!! Shindig was the cream of rock shows from that era and the Shindogs a most rocking house band. Other Shindogs included Leon Russell and Delany Bramlett.
George Clinton is coming to town next Saturday. We're getting pumped up for this one.
SO, I've been trying to get my head around this DSO bidness a bit.
One thing that I don't think has been mentioned in the above conversation is the role of bass guitar in the sonic mix. ANY attempt to recreate a dead show goes nowhere with me if there isn't a bassie playing counterpoint to the lead. Phil was the musician who captured my attention from the first dead show I caught. And that hasn't changed for me in over 26 years.
Phil's bands have consistently put on great shows with musicians who have added their own styles to the mix. And for that reason, most of the heads that we know have moved on since jerry died from needing to hear his familiar licks to embracing the various interpretations of old favorites. As long as the musical conversations continue on stage, the evolution of the sound moves further.....
lw
I agree about Phil, but Kevin Rosen is a hella good bassie(is the name right?) in his own right IMHO. Seems to be the least slavish in reinterpreting the GD.
He uses the same Eden set up every gig, similiar to what Phil uses now,but nothing like Phils classic Fender/MacIntosh/JBL rigs from the GD days. but often plays a 4 string Fender which is about as far from Phils Modulus and Ritter 6 strings as you can get. (Question: does he use the 4 on shows that Phil used his 4 stringers on?)
Good point about moving the music on, though Phil has used some pretty Jerry sounding guys over the years like Jimmy Herring, Steve Kimock and Jeff Mattson (name right?) Hard for a guitar player in that vein not to sound like Garcia, just like tenor men can't escape Trane, alto players all sound like Bird and bass player all channel Jamerson. I always dug it when Phil used unique stylists like John Scofield and Warren Haynes.
George Clinton?? How cool is that? Enjoy!!!
I really like Jimmy Herring's playing. Steve Kimock's, too. But neither remind me of Jerry much,
Jeff Mattson? Doesn't he play for DSO? Never saw him with Phil or Bobby.
I think you said the current gat player for Phil came from DSO? He didn't do much for me when Phil and Bobbby came to town awhil back but he didn't sound like a jerry clone, either.
kw
I guess I got em confused with John Kadelik.
Have you heard Merle's Rainforest side? I thought Kimock was Garcia for sure when I heard it.
I love both those guys playin. Kimock is a force of nature. I got a recording of the Alan Hertz Marijuana Jazz Band with Kimock, Terry Haggerty and Bobby Vega from the Great American Music Hall, want a copy? Great jazz/funk inflected jam band ecstasy!!!