As mentioned in the last post, Dead & Company announced a second Boston show (Sunday, 11/19) after we'd already gotten tickets to the first show and to Hartford. Well, who were we to skip that? And I was able to get floor tickets so things were looking good! After the fantastic sound and light in the second balcony on Friday, having the whole arena laid out in front of us, we were eager to see them from up close.
Well, not *really* up close, but a lot closer. We met Dave at Kinsale after parking in our normal space and had another nice late-afternoon dinner with a few beers. What did they have left to play? The Philadelphia and first Boston shows on the tour had been extraordinary (and the others had been very good) ... maybe time for them to repeat some of their mega-songs like Dark Star, TOO, Terrapin Station, etc. Or maybe they'd be rolling out more new songs. Whatever, we were ready for anything.
Got down to the Garden and found our seats: take a right just after you get in and we were out on the floor, about at the opposing blue line near the boards. They have a long, narrow enclosed area set up on the floor in this arena tour with amazing banks of soundboards at the front, the light show guys with amazing banks of computers behind them and on a small riser, and the cameras behind them on another riser. We were parallel with the middle of that setup, over on the right. I thought a few times while Bobby was playing that maybe I'd scoop the puck off the boards, be across the red line and into the zone in a few strides, fake right and go left and tuck it 5-hole on him. He wouldn't stand a chance!
Settled down, met some neighbors (the guy in front of us who'd brought his wife and son was a dancing fool who drove the ushers crazy), got a beer or two, and watched the crowd fill in. The place seemed sold out to me ... didn't see one empty seat, and before you knew it the guys came on, maybe 7:20 or so which isn't bad.
So how do I describe this show? At the time I was captivated by the experience and thought it was musically one of the best shows of the tour. On reflection and on listening to the tape I'd have to knock it down to the middle of the pack, but it sure was fun! This was closer than I'd ever been to Dead & Company performing and I was able to see some mannerisms from these great musicians that weren't as obvious from farther away. Sure, I'd seen them on video many times, but seeing, hearing, and whatever sensing you may want to include (Mickey licked The Beam!) from 100-150 feet away was just awesome. And it was nice to be on flat ground rather than up in the vertiginous balcony and to have people all around me dancing and roaring. After our great experience up in the balcony on Friday, this was a fantastic change of pace and was as good or better in its own way.
And the music was great too, though perhaps technically not as good as other times we've seen them (quick note, Dave pointed out that this was our 8th time seeing Dead & Company, as opposed to 7 times seeing Furthur). Anyway, enough scene-setting. The guys came out and did the song we knew they were going to do that Sunday ... not the hammering, frantic, dual-drum, got-to-testify attack we've seen them do before, but a loping, spiritual rendition. Here's the first set:
Samson and Delilah
Dire Wolf
Cold Rain and Snow
Loser
Corrina
Here Comes Sunshine
Greatest Story Ever Told
Then John took over the mike for a quintessential Jerry song, and he sure does these things proud. As I and others have said many times before (and hope to say many times again), he's not a Jerry clone but rather someone who can play with the same ineffable quality that Jerry used to bring, not to mention his skill, which sometimes seems to exceed what Jerry could do and sometimes falls short ... who really cares when you get to this level?
And Jeff deserves his own paragraph and much more. As good as all the guys have been playing on this tour, when they give him a chance he leaves everyone in the dirt. And it's not just "Dead" songs, perhaps his best moment on the last tour was his jamming glue into Days Between and perhaps his best moment in the early part of this tour was his strong-as-a-skeleton backbone to Milestones. But when he needs to rock or play the country blues and his piano or organ gets warmed up, watch the fuck out!
They did one of the repeats I most wanted next. I adore Cold Rain, I think it represents such a great amalgam of folk music, primal Dead, and jungle rock, and gives the guitars and keyboards a platform on which to go nuts. Next a song Dave had predicted as a definite, Loser, maybe not as haunting as at its best, and then they started into a beat we didn't recognize as first. It was Corrina, and a very good version of this quasi-post-Dead Bobby song (he's performed it much more with RatDog and Further than he did with the originals). I have a hard time believing this is a Hunter lyric, since it's over-the-top obtuse and doesn't flow. The song almost comes to an awkward stop several times, which is perhaps the effect Hunter was looking for. Bobby loves weird time signatures and maybe this was Hunter enabling him.
[Just saw this note from David Dodd about Corrina: "'There is no fear that lovers born will ever fail to meet.' Hunter notes in A Box of Rain that these two lines were lifted from the portion of the 'Terrapin Station' suite which was never set to music, as he despaired of otherwise hearing them sung."]
But the rest of the first set was music to our ears. Here Comes Sunshine is, at its least, a beautiful exercise in optimism and at its best, as it was that night, a power ballad disguised as a hippy anthem. They had all four singers (including Oteil and Jeff that is) singing as loud as possible, and the harmony rang through the old barn, probably reverberating through the train platforms below. This was as good as it gets.
The set close was another song I hoped they'd repeat. Greatest Story Ever Told is one of my favorites and they hadn't knocked it out of the park when they debuted it a week before in MSG, but they sure got the timing right that night, including transcendent leads by Jeff and John.
Oh boy, what a first set! Our local usher hadn't killed the guy in front of me, though he'd been tempted. I told him several times that he was doing as good a job as he could. The house lights came up and it was suddenly bright on the floor and the arena was a mass of joyous people. Luckily, the bathroom was as convenient to our seats as could be. I took advantage of that and then wandered around the opposite concourse, looking for the best beer and enjoying the scene. Young and old people in funky jackets and wild t-shirts and crazy hair and colorful makeup wandering up and down the concourse of the Garden and smiling like the world was about to begin. Lovely.
OK, back to our seats with beer and a little water and it was time for the second set. Again, in retrospect this wasn't consistently top-of-the-heap stuff, but at the time it was wonderful. Bobby had played four guitars in Friday and this night stuck almost exclusively to his Strat with the big pick-guard. And the opener was him picking one of his best riffs on it. Here's the list:
China Cat Sunflower
I Know You Rider
Comes a Time
Playing In the Band
Drums
Space
Morning Dew
I Need A Miracle
Casey Jones
This was an interesting transition to Rider, driven by noodling on the lead guitar more than by the rhythm. We were very glad to get Oteil excelling on the vocals on Comes a Time, an essential Dead song to me. This was a gem on the bootlegs we traded long before it was ever released. And then they went into a song everyone would agree is seminal, PITB. Who has time for Dark Star or TOO when they roll this out in the key slot of the second set?
PITB got really spacey and degenerated into a nice compact little Drums and Space, and then they came out of it with another essential song, Dew, which featured some great spots and some great John/Jeff leads but didn't really take off the way this song can. They made up for that with Miracle, which featured Bob at his utmost. It's hard to say who'd been playing most great this tour, because as soon as you do you think, "Yeah but what about...." Bobby has always been a sneakily good singer and with Dead & Company (and Fare Thee Well before that) he seems to have upped his game. He's letting it all hang out (you thought he did before!?!) and this was him just being Bobby all over our consciousnesses.
Then another set closer with Casey Jones. I was very glad to hear several songs from Workingman's in person on this tour, perhaps their artistic pinnacle and at the least one of the clearest, distinctive musical/artistic statements ever made.
Whoah! We were a little tired and a lot enervated and tingling. I'd been dancing with the guy in front of me to Casey Jones and we were one big happy family. Even the usher was grinning his pants off, seeing how much fun everybody was having and having his own fun of course. How could you not be crazy about this music?
Time to towel off for a bit, but as mentioned they haven't been taking much of a break before rolling out an encore this tour. Dave was barely holding back his hope for a PITB reprise ... in fact, he wasn't. They'd cut it short to go into Drums but they'd cut Playing short on him before and never come back to it. This time they were in the mood for a soft landing and gave us a beautiful Brokedown with some nice slow-tempo leads in it.
But then ... wait, they weren't leaving the stage. And the drummers were setting down a weird beat, and then it resolved into 10, and before we really had comprehended what they were doing, they were in the middle of the PITB reprise of death! Dave grabbed my arm and tattoed it. They crested a wave, and then another one, and then dipped down into the valley, and then were coming out of it and John mosied a little closer to the mike, and then a little closer. He wasn't going to ... yes he was, he did the Donna Scream!!!!! This was a John Mayer interpretation of a Donna Scream of course, but was distinctly an homage to one of the most distinctive moments of Grateful Dead music ever, and at the same time his own creation. That was the moment of the decade for me.
OMG, this had been a fantastic experience. As mentioned, perhaps a bit up and down technically, but in all a superior experience. I wonder what the king is doing tonight? Couldn't be as good as this.
Quick exit from the Garden and back onto Causeway, where we lingered for half a second but then headed back up the hill toward our car. Got things to do on Monday morning, but this was a great Sunday night!
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