When Janet & I moved to New York at the beginning of September 2010, I’d already booked some concert tickets. This was one of them.
Although the Grateful Dead broke up in 1995 following the death of Jerry Garcia, it wasn’t long before various surviving members began touring again. The 2009-2013 incarnation was Furthur, featuring guitarist Bob Weir and bassist Phil Lesh. The rest of the band came from Weir’s side-band RatDog with a drummer draft from the jazz-rock world. As a replacement for Garcia they hired John Kadlecik of the Dark Star Orchestra – a band that recreates entire Grateful Dead concerts, note-for-note. This always seemed weird to me, given that improvisation was the key to the Dead’s success (that and a lot of drugs).
Madison Square Gardens is a big old place and having bought my ticket way after they went on sale, I was near the back. However, I was so far back that I was in the tapers’ section. The Dead defeated the bootleg industry by inviting the audience to tape their shows and exchange tapes. This created the Deadhead network which still exists today and has extended around the world. At each gig there was and is a section at the back of the stalls, behind the sound desk, where you can put up a 6-foot mast with a couple of microphones on top, and record the concert. Normally with a certain amount of background chat as all the tapers know each other and treat it as a social occasion, since they can listen to the gig when they get home.
So, I get to the gig in plenty of time and I’m checking out the number of masts blocking my view when a nice bloke comes along and asks if I’ll swap my seat with his, as he wants to tape. His seat is in the middle of the 6th row. It took him a while to convince me it was a genuine ticket and he really wanted to swap. But who am I to argue? The guy was even willing to send me a copy of his tape, but I demurred as I’d already ordered a CD copy form the merch desk. These were the days of recording a gig and dumping it on to the CD that night. I was going to walk out of the gig with 3 CDs of the whole night, as long as I could handle hanging around for 30 minutes after the music finished.
Thus, I settled myself into my awesome seat and waited for the music.
I am in the Phil Zone
The band ambled onstage and after the traditional round of hitting everything to make sure it’s plugged in, kicked off with ‘Truckin’’. The setlist was pretty good and the playing was intense. I know, ‘cos I’m listening to the CDs as I type. Kadlecik did a good job of recreating Garcia licks and playing solos ‘in the style of’. One thing hadn’t changed – Phil Lesh still couldn’t sing. This was the first time I’d seen him sing (for years he didn’t sing on stage) and he got a rousing cheer when he did. They did have a couple of backing singers who could sing, but they were kept safely turned down. But he can still play a mean bass guitar and with the phenomenal drumming of Jeff Russo the rhythm machine was bang on all night. Jeff Chimenti on keyboards also did a great job – lots of flourishes and decoration, but never too much, and some great solos. Bob Weir’s main job is to sing the songs (his voice is okay, but still not great) and play rhythm guitar. Some nights it’s enough for him to strum a bit, and on really bad nights to just not fall over. This night he was on form and bounced around a bit while playing.
Furthur, from the sound desk
One of the absolute treats of the night was Pink Floyd’s ‘Time’ – complete with alarm clock recording at the head and Russo recreating the bizarre drum pattern. They nailed it and went on into a ‘Let it Grow’ which seemed to match. We got some old blues tunes, psychedelic workouts, some singalongs and a couple of Dead songs that never made it into the studio.
The encore was the ever-beautiful Brokedown Palace, as it had been last time we saw them in 2003. I walked home through the New York rain with a big grin on my face.
Phil Lesh, Jeff Russo, Bob Weir, Jeff Pehrson, Sunshine Becker, John Kadlecik
T-shirt iconography – This was the weekend before Thanksgiving and the Macy’s balloon parade. For this balloon parade we have a terrapin from ‘Terrapin Station’, ‘Uncle Sam’ and a Dancing Bear from ‘Bear’s Choice’ – an early live album compiled by their sound guy – although the bears have become a thing in their own right and a merchandising hit.
Videos
From the interweb, all from this night. Note that it is an old law, or an ancient charter or something that there will ALWAYS be whistles in a Dead-related audience recording, and that same guy will go "Yeah!" at the start of each song.
