Live Dead are the touring band of Tom Constanten – piano player for the Grateful Dead back in 1969, thus appearing at Woodstock and featuring on the two finest Dead albums – ‘Aoxomoxoa’ and ‘Live/Dead’. The band features Slick Aguilar, a member of the current Jefferson Airplane/Starship line-up and Mark Karan, a member of Bob Weir’s side-project Rat Dog on guitar. Richard Newman on drums and Tony Morley on bass are the UK-based rhythm section. They’ve been coming over to Europe for a couple of years now, but this was my first encounter.
Spoiler alert: I enjoyed the evening, but didn't return for the second night.
The gig starts with a set by Auburn, who I thought were related in some way as they are the permanent support, year-on-year, but that seems to be just a friendship as they are from the UK. Liz Lenten is the front-woman and is very personable, sings well and has written some okay songs. The crowd ignored them.
Later, Tom Constanten gets on stage alone and sits at his keyboard. There he plays three tunes: something classical, a John Dowland lute piece, and some sub-Leonard Cohen rubbish which he tells us afterwards is by Paul McCartney. These are explained as what the Grateful Dead were listening to back in ’69. They are followed by an example of how, in Neil Young’s words “it’s all one song”: Bob Dylan’s ‘Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest’ to the tune of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’. Most of us laughed; others were unimpressed.
Tom Constanten
Then the band join us and the gig-proper begins, with of all things: the cosmic rocker ‘Saint Stephen’! They’re playing the Grateful Dead’s Woodstock set, which is a greatest-hits-so-far job featuring ‘Dark Star’ and the un-danceable wonder that is ‘The Eleven’ (named after the time signature). The band play up a storm, the guitarists carving up the air and the rhythm section nailing it down. Even the two annoying woman talking at the edge of the stage don’t kill the mood. Slick Aguilar tries to catch their attention between songs, but they ignore him. Eventually he persuades them to shut up or move away and they do the latter. The strange thing in all this is that Tom Constanten doesn’t play all that much and certainly doesn’t join in the jams. He’s very much the enabler of a very fine Grateful Dead cover band.
Tom Constanten, Mark Karan, Richard Newman
Richard Newman Slick Aguilar Tony Morley
The second set begins regularly enough, with various back-catalogue items but then there’s a break from the set list and we are introduced to Bonnie Dobson. This is the lady who wrote ‘Morning Dew’ – the classic anti-war song which everyone and their dog has covered. Dobson is a Canadian, now based in London and is in her seventies, but her voice is clear as a bell, like Joan Baez’s lower register. The band move into the song in the classic Grateful Dead style of mournful blues and Dobson slides right in. This is unplanned and unrehearsed and unbelievable. It feels like the greatest privilege to be there, and a man next to me is crying with joy.
Live Dead '69 with Bonnie Dobson
The rest of the gig is a bit of a mess. They’re over-running by 30 minutes or so, but subject us to a never-ending ‘Iko Iko’ rather that getting into the good stuff like ‘Viola Lee Blues’. The gig is brought to a rapid conclusion before the plug is pulled at 11pm prompt.
Live Dead '69
On my way home I looked up Bonnie Dobson and discovered that many people believe ‘Morning Dew’ to have been written by Tim Rose. Dobson published the song in 1962, I know this because I found a copy of the page from ‘Broadside’ on a web page devoted to this vexed topic. It was inspired by the nuclear apocalypse film ‘On the Beach’. She recorded it and over the next few years so did others. One was Fred Neil, who tweaked the words and made it more rock, less folk. In ’68, Tim Rose recorded the song and had himself added as co-writer because he’d “changed the lyrics”. Weirdly, they had changed to the ones Fred Neil wrote having not asked for a credit. Thus Tim Rose has been claiming credit for someone else’s lyrics on a song he didn’t write, and in the UK is often credited as sole songwriter.
Strangely enough, Ms Dobson is pissed off about this. Still.
There are many pages on the web devoted to this subject, but this one, ohh, this one puts a lump in my throat… Every label of every version, just to check the song-writing credits.
That is a level of obsession I can only dream of!
Morning Dew
My selection of versions...
Bonnie Dobson’s original
Episode Six
Grateful Dead
Live Dead '69 with Bonnie Dobson