Monday, June 19, 2017

Dead & Co "Summer 2017," Fenway part 2

We woke up really earlier than we should after staying up late for Dead & Company’s first Fenway show in their “Summer 2017” tour, but that’s what older people do I guess.  It turned out to be good, because we had a full morning of getting ready for a planned short vacation and for the second show, as well as the housework that had to be done.  In any event, we were ready to get going by mid-afternoon and this time drove into the city and parked at the Dalton Street garage so we wouldn’t have as far to walk after the show.  Smart!

Met Dave at Bukowski’s for a beer and some highly important recapping of last night and predictions for tonight.  Trundled over the [Green] Muddy River and past an urban rabbit over to Yard House and had another excellent late lunch and couple of rounds of beers.  We were psyched, and did the now familiar truck into Fenway and out onto the field(!), this time settling into section B5 in excellent seats on a very humid and very hazy-bright late Spring day.

We’d had an easier time getting good seats for Sunday than we had for Saturday, but by the time the show started we realized it was almost as packed.  I had some nice time to spread out in the seats and enjoy the late afternoon, the funny clouds whipping by (the wind was blowing out to left, promising quite a game), and the arriving crowd.  Many people wore my t-shirt of choice that day, Fare Thee Well; I also saw one woman with my second choice, Golden Gate Wingmen.

The guys came out a bit after 6:30 again that day, and started right off into their classic Sunday song.  But before I get into the first set, let me get a little meta here.

There’s a school of thought, which is a pretty good one, that one of the things that makes “Grateful Dead music” so compelling is the element of risk and unknown possibilities woven into it, and that a band playing that type of music should be pursuing that fine edge of improvisation over rote capability.  One possible criticism of Dead & Company is that they haven’t really been pursuing that edge, though in lieu of that they’ve been pursuing performing excellence IMO, and have been pleasingly successful at that (to put it mildly).  But in their Fenway concert on 6/18 they showed an ability to walk their own edge that made the concert incredibly exciting, though it might also be labeled a bit strange.

Their recently-rolled-out twist of switching to acoustics for the last bit of the first set, their doing songs out of turn such as Dark Star and Let It Grow, their innovative vocals such as Oteil singing FOTM, and their ability to add other beats and textures (à la JRAD) to set-in-stone songs like FOTM, NFA, and Days Between, are all exciting in a new way.  And isn’t that what we want, to be excited in new ways?  Though I’ve criticized some of Dead & Company’s choices, I can’t help but admire their style, and I immensely have enjoyed every second of their performances that I’ve heard.

Well anyway, enough of generalization.  I hope to describe the event, and my point is that this was far from your ordinary “Grateful Dead” concert, if there is such a thing.  John is still new and every measure of his leads has the promise of something new, and Jeff and Oteil have a lot to say.  Bobby lets them say it and Billy and Mickey egg them on; this is quite a band.  Here’s the first set:

Samson and Delilah
Brown-Eyed Women
Big River
Candyman
Let It Grow
Friend Of the Devil
Dark Star
Ripple

Samson was as great as can be, with the drummers pounding out a rhythm that echoed through the Fens.  Big River was short, and Candyman was long … the kind of up and down you’d expect in a first set.  They did a great Let It Grow, though this is a song they could really add to (like, maybe do the whole Weather Report Suite!?!).  But then they switched to acoustics so quickly after the end of Let It Grow that you could tell they had lots up their sleeves and were eager to let those ferrets out.

FOTD was fantastic, including an amazing lead from Jeff on piano.  And what was next?  Dark Star on acoustic guitars over the Fenway and into American history.  Geez, you had to be there for this one.  Of course, I don’t think this will become as famous as the 1970 Fillmore East acoustic sets; but this was a rarity, a first.  And it was as successful as a lot of things this band does: John’s leads were firecrackers in the late afternoon, and Bobby’s ability to deploy his great variety of sounds was on full display.  Bobby’s had a lot of time to play this sucker, and he knows where the darkest rooms and the brightest vistas are.

And just as you were wondering if they were going to go into a second 20 minutes of the song or wind up the second verse and move on … they shared one of those “we know what we’re doing” glances and changed down into Ripple.  At the time we were amazed and delighted, but the full impact of what they were doing was a little lost in the gloriousness of the moment.

Wow, I say again!  What a first set!!  The Saturday show had been stellar to me, and I wondered if Sunday’s show would come up to that level.  Damn, it was on a whole different level and was already beyond comparison.  Oh well, time for our pedestrian between-set concerns, such as waiting in bathroom lines and trying to get around the Park without freaking out at the crush of people.  The rain was holding off and the sky was beautiful as the sun set, far behind the left field grandstand.

And then we waited … it was a long set break, seemingly over an hour.  Oh well, the guys came back out and started up into a jam.  Dave called it at the first change and a few minutes later one of the guys in front of us whipped around and said, “Wait a minute, did you call that??”  These guys were Deadicated but big … I spent a lot of the concert trying to see around or through the guy in front of me, who was wearing an Isaiah Thomas jersey (though he was maybe twice his size), and I was unsuccessful at that most of the time.  Anyway, it was Jam > Truckin’ of course … here’s the second set:

Truckin’
Fire On the Mountain
St. Stephen
Drums
Space
Dark Star
Days Between
Not Fade Away

Geez, only a 7(ish)-song second set?!?  Don’t worry, we were not ripped off.  This was a feast.  Truckin’ was slow, stately, mellow, and resonant.  FOTM was sung by Oteil, only his second vocal on the tour (twice on China Doll) after many hints that he’d be doing such.  And St. Stephen was sung with reverence by John.

Let me digress a bit here.  One of the best things about the 2016 tour IMO was the tandem backup vocals by John and Oteil.  This layer is almost totally lacking in their current tour and the result can leave lots of holes and raggedness, as in the Here Comes Sunshine in Atlanta.  They really haven’t replaced this part of their sound, but the lead vocals so far have been so excellent it’s not missed as much as it could be.

Ok, what next?  How about a great Drums/Space segment with Mickey tooting those clown horns again and cranking up The Beam in the sudden Fenway night?  And then, one of the most magical stretches of the night: a reprise of Dark Star on electrics (including the last verse), and then a beautiful, beautiful deconstruction of the sound into a Jeff Chimenti piano solo that has to go down in history … slowly leading us by the hands and minds into Days Between.

As mentioned, Bobby has done a few fine things on vocals, and he was sure up to this one, singing one of the ultimate Dead anthems (maybe THE ultimate Dead anthem) into the humid dark in front of tens of thousands of awe-struck pilgrims.  No Sailor/Saint this time, or GDTRFB, or Dew, but this was the touch that we all wanted and needed.

And then they shrugged it off and ended it all with a rocking Not Fade Away with some fantastic, screwy drumming, and a masterful transfer to the crowd of the chorus.  They’ve done this before.

Back out for the encore after just a minute, and they did the Brokedown Palace we’d all been waiting for, most of all us legions with the Fare Thee Well t-shirts.  This was an epic second set, but we turned to each other after it was over and said, “What did we just hear?”  How great was this?  We’ll have to let time tell, but it sure was good.

Damn, the Fenway shows were over, and we had to get out of there through the hordes and hordes of people.  Oh well, we’ve done this before ourselves, and it actually went pretty well.  Shuffled out of the stadium and back over the Fens and finally back to the parking garage, where the attendants showed some unique incompetence of their own.

Out to Boylston at last, down to Berkeley, left Dave at Charles Circle, and then back up to 93 North.  Have to wake up early the next morning to continue the adventure!

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Dead & Co "Summer 2017," Fenway part 1

Dead & Company are touring again this year, they're calling it a "summer" tour, though almost all of it is taking place in the Spring.  As you might imagine, we've been filled with anticipation, especially since they've adopted an unheard of innovation, offering the first three songs of each night (the whole show in Atlanta) for free, live streaming and of course on YouTube thereafter.  This allows those among us who follow their every move to obsess even further, and it seems to have worked to bump up interest generally since last night's Saturday show was sold out and Sunday will probably be almost full.

And how have the shows been you may ask?  Well let me give you my Dead-drenched opinion: they've been great, though they could be better.  As mentioned earlier, their schedule of touring once a year and the number of side projects they all have makes one think, is Dead & Company really a working band or are they an oldies act that gets together every once in a while with a minimum of practice and entertains stadiums full of people with the old chestnuts?  The answer is that they're such high-level musicians, their ensemble performances are tight, innovative, and riveting.  They've only added three (well, one and two half) songs to their repertoire with this year's tour, but the ones they do (well over a hundred in fact) are progressing from fantastic into the stratosphere.  I wish they'd practice together more and add more new songs, but they follow their own muse and I can't fault musicians for that.

We parked in Sarah's building and walked uptown on an overcast day with the sun threatening to come out and the temperature threatening to approach 70.  The Tall Ships were returning to Boston that afternoon and the waterfront must have been a madhouse with the millions(!) of people projected to be there, but it was pretty crowded uptown too.  Made a left turn in Kenmore Square and trundled down to Yard House, where Scott and Michelle were waiting, and Dave, Leen, and Andrew showed up soon.  We had some great beer and lot of conversation about our house project and of course music.  Time rolled by and before we knew it it was time to check out Shakedown Street and then head into the Park!

Went in through the main gate and followed the normally shut-off tunnel around to the left to enter the field by the left field wall.  Fenway was as magical as ever and we were on the goddamn field.  Stopped by to have a close-up look at the visitors' dugout and the beyond-perfect infield before finding our seats in section C6 ... more center this year than last, but not close.  Getting turf tickets for Saturday had been hard and I had to make two purchases as they wouldn't sell me 4 together, so Dave and Leen were over in C2.  The rain was definitely going to hold off and the guys came on and lined up soon after 6:30.  And then they started into Music and we were right back there.  Here's the first set:

The Music Never Stopped
Cold Rain and Snow
Me and My Uncle
Big Boss Man
Ramble On Rose
Sugaree
Passenger

As mentioned, the band was playing as tightly as could be and the sound in Fenway was excellent.  We could hear every note and flourish and every beat of the drums.  Mickey's setup is less wild this year and I think it's added even more to their rhythm section to have him playing with Bill instead of around him.  Oteil seems so comfortable with this music it's incredible and his funk and nimbleness is amazing.

John continues to ascend in the Dead milieu and some of the leads he's been cracking off this tour are phenomenal.  I've gotten beyond being gob-smacked by him, and perhaps am a little less accepting of his small miscues and forgetting exactly when the lead is supposed to come in and end, but when he gets going the world revolves around his guitar and his fingers are a blur on the fretboard.  He kills Cold Rain and Snow and though this was a bit of an up-and-down set, it sure had a lot of highlights, such as his leads on Big Boss Man (on the 45th anniversary of Pigpen's last performance) and Sugaree.

Jeff continues to get better also, contributing great organ runs and sparkling piano to songs like Ramble On Rose (we booed the "just like New York City" line, we *were* at Fenway Park during baseball season after all!).  And Bobby is as good as ever, he's obviously enjoying the heck out of this band.  He closed the set with a powerful Passenger, perhaps to make up for mangling it a bit at Fenway with Donna last summer.

Here's the slightly poofy review from The Globe from the next day.  And here's a link to Sarah's pictures.  And here's a really nice piece about Mayer appearing at his alma mater, Berklee College Of Music, earlier in the day.

Though it was only 7 songs, that was a long first set, but the bathroom lines were not too crazy and we were soon back out on the field, enjoying beautiful Fenway and gabbing about the first set with neighbors and friends.  A bunch of guys in front of us were not the best neighbors; a couple of them were loud and extremely drunk to begin with, before smoking pot throughout the evening.  To their credit though, they made it through the whole thing, though a few of them had to sit down for stretches in the second set.

And speaking of the second set, the guys came back out in the gloaming and ripped off one of the best live sets I've ever seen performed.  It's not a great setlist, but these songs were played exquisitely:

Dancing In the Street
Help On the Way
Slipknot!
Estimated Prophet
Eyes Of the World
Drums
Space
Eyes Of the World
I Need a Miracle
Standing On the Moon
Franklin's Tower

Oh my Dog, this band just performed those songs so well!  Every one of them showed incredible talent and technique, and as an ensemble they were almost perfect.  I should mention, again, John's leads, Oteil's ability to add funk to anything, and Jeff's presence.  And as has happened before, Bobby raised his vocal game beyond what you might have expected from the first set.  I told Dave later that I couldn't believe I was saying it, but that was the best "I Need a Miracle" I've ever heard (a song I sometimes dismiss as formulaic).  And his emoting on Standing On the Moon brought tears to your eyes, perhaps he was again thinking of Pigpen.

And a note about one the best songs ever, Eyes Of the World.  Oteil makes this so fresh with his runs throughout, and this featured a great solo section by him after the last verse.  They then went into Drums (which Oteil participated in and in which Mickey cranked up The Beam and gleefully shook the bejeezus out of the venerable old ballpark, and then even more gleefully tooted some clown bicycle horns) and a beautiful but short Space and then wham, they were back doing a last chorus of Eyes!!!

And they sandwiched that long, excellent second set with a funky, rocking, rabble-rousing Franklin's that had everyone singing along.  They stretched and stretched the "Roll away the dew" coda and then almost wrapped it up, and then burst right back into another vocal coda with all of Fenway rolling back that dew as hard as we could.  This was beautiful, well-played, and above all cathartic.  Wow!!!

They came back out for an encore pretty quickly and burst right into a small jam which turned into Black Muddy River.  I recognized the song but couldn't believe until John started into the words that they were going to repeat what they'd encored with at their first Fenway show last summer.  But I guess John was reminiscing about his student days, and perhaps back then he spent some time walking beside the Muddy River in the Fens (not too far from Berklee) and dreaming a dream of his own.

And then another encore repeat, but this was expected: closing Saturday night in Summer (actually Spring) with One More Saturday Night.  Short and sweet, and then the guys were gone into the wings.  See you tomorrow!  In fact, I have to get ready to leave for tonight's show.

Sarah and I had a long walk back to Beacon Hill, but we finally made it and were back home by midnight or so.  Will I do this again next year?  Well, of course.