One huge reason was thinking that you could really not have a "concert" in such a setting, because it would be too difficult to get the sound anywhere near as good as in a theater or a club. I remember making an exception to this rule for Dawes opening for Bob Dylan in Lowell in 2013. Though they got the sound pretty good by the end of Dylan's set, it had been like wet cardboard for Dawes, and my prejudice was upheld.
But then I made another exception for the Fare Thee Well concerts in Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara in 2015 ... this was one concert event that attracted me as an event itself. And the sound for it was really much better than I'd imagined it would be. We were about at the opposite 40 yard line from the stage and 20-30 rows up from the field, and I enjoyed the concert immensely, stunned at the quality sound from all the instruments on stage.
Since then we'd seen Dead & Company in a variety of hockey rinks and the sound was excellent each time, and it was very good when seeing them in Fenway. But even so, I hesitated when they announced that they'd be playing Gillette Stadium on June 22nd in their 2019 Summer tour (which started in Spring, though it was (barely) Summer by the time they got to Massachusetts). I said, "Well, maybe we shouldn't go this year." Dave did not hesitate, "Oh, we're going," he said.
Well yeah, he had a good point. They've been so great for their almost 4 years as a band that it would be foolish to miss them this Summer. It's not like they'd been going downhill, quite the opposite! We even thought that we should go for the whole experience, and we got field tickets. We weren't going to crowd up to the stage, but we wanted to get reasonably close.
The tour opened on the West Coast this year ... in the past they've gone East to West ... and the stop in Foxborough was their 12th of the tour. We'd heard and seen a good number of the preceding shows as they slowly made their way East, and they'd been stunningly good. Though they hadn't played as a band since their three shows in Mexico in January, and before that the 2018 Summer tour, they only showed a little rust in their first show, and after that showed absolutely no sign of the plodding, formulaic shows they've been accused of in the past.
In fact, they'd been uniformly inventive and maybe even a little daring. They'd mixed in riffs from Miles and Coltrane here and there, pulled out Iko Iko to commemorate Dr. John's death, and opened shows and second sets with very non-formulaic stuff, like a standalone FOTM in Indiana, The Other One and Terrapin Station as show openers in Chicago, and an incredible Spanish Jam theme through their whole last set in Wrigley Field. And though they'd not strayed from the second set Drums > Space routine, the drummers had an absence of gimmicks (ok, we saw Mickey knocking some shoes together at one point). In short, they had set the bar very high by the time they got to New England, and we were psyched.
That Saturday had been forecast as sunny, hot, and windy all week, but we were a bit dismayed that possible showers and thunderstorms had entered into the fray by the time we left. We did get a few showers on the way down there, picking up Dave in Quincy on the way and leaving our new kittens to woman the fort. When we got to Gillette they had closed the huge Northbound-side lot and so we had to settle for the huge South-bound side lot after some twisting around.
We just had time to get out our chairs and crack a beer and then who should show up but Scott and Michelle? We'd been hoping to get together with them and voila, there they were pulling in 20 or so cars after us, what great serendipity! They had their chairs out and beers cracked (or whatever) right away and we had a great time hanging in the lot, and talking non-stop. There were still huge white thunderclouds circling around us and we had seen some lightning and heard some thunder to the South. And there was a HUGE turkey vulture flying low overhead. But the thunderclouds passed, the vulture took off for some other site, and before we knew it it was time to go in. We had to be there when the gates opened for the field!
We had had to switch our tickets to Will Call for reasons I won't go into, but picking them up was painless and then we had a chance to catch the end of soundcheck while waiting with a hundred or so others for the field to open. When it did, most of the people rushed to the front but we had other plans. We wanted something to lean against (and to protect us from crowd back and forth), and we were delighted to find that in front of the soundboard was close enough for our standards, and that this meant not only was there a fence right behind us, there was one to our right and so we had a mellow little backwater, close to the stage and with excellent sound. We got beers and sat down. Sarah got a great long sleeve t-shirt at the merch tent too (for $60!).
Gillette was nowhere near sold out as one might expect, but visually pretty full by the time the concert started. They had originally tried to sell some of the top bowl, but ended up closing that off and mostly filling the middle bowl, as well as the bottom one. The crowd was kind of late arriving, but the guys came on just a bit past 7 and warmed up. OMG, it was Dead & Company again, we'd been seeing them get closer and closer across the country and they were finally back in town, ready to rock our heads off.
Wasn't soon before they hit us with another inventive opener, and this was the start to a few hours of what seemed at the time to be close to perfection ... and seems like it on reflection too. Here's the first set:
Eyes Of the World
Deal
Black-Throated Wind
Easy Wind
Loser
Big Railroad Blues
Bird Song
Box Of Rain
Again, Dave's blog contains a lot of great detail about the songs and the ways in which they were played. But besides that these elicited several strong impressions:
- I realized in a moment that they were opening with Eyes, and that this was a continuation of their adventurous openers. But I feel this is one of the greatest songs ever written and was afraid it would take a feat of concentration to enjoy it to its utmost from a standing start. No such delay though, I was immediately thrown into a state of bliss, like jumping into the deep end and finding it warm and fuzzy rather than cold and shocking.
- Oteil was playing his new bass, which had not impressed me earlier in the tour, but sure was fantastic live. And John was playing as well as ever, effortlessly turning out astounding lead after astounding lead. And that's not to mention the others. This was as good or better playing and singing from everyone on stage than I'd ever seen from them before. For them to all be at their peak at the same time was one of the reasons this show was so excellent.
- And the sound was incredible in front of the board! We had some great neighbors and everyone was dancing and only a few people tried to barge past and then realize they had nowhere to go. This was like being in a little living room in the middle of Gillette Stadium. There were no flags.
- John started off with Big Boss Man when everyone else on stage knew that the setlist said Easy Wind, but he recovered and sang it with panache. Loser is such a great song and to follow it with Big RR Blues really spoke deep down to the country fan in me.
- I thought the set might end after Bird Song, but then suddenly they were playing that intro and I was knocked flat. I hadn't realized they had revived Box Of Rain and this was the third time I'd heard it in a few months, Port Chester in March, Bangor a week ago, and then here. Once again, who are the Grateful Dead and why are they following my life so closely? Yes, John blew the words and they had to do a "take 2," but that made it even easier to digest.
Ack! Time for set break and they switched on the glaring football lights, then realized they didn't need to do that and mellowed them out just enough. It was already almost dark and we needed just a bit of light. I took off for the bathrooms (way up on the concourse) and the long wait for good beer. There was only one stand nearby with the good stuff and they ran out halfway through filling my cup with ale! I told her not to dump it, to top it off with some pretty good witbier that was still on, and the result was palatable.
Almost time for the second set by the time I struggled back and again, they came on without much delay ... just about a 40-minute break. The tuning was purposeful and Dave called it, a powerful beginning to another amazing set:
Help On the Way
Slipknot!
Franklin's Tower
He's Gone
Dark Star
Drums
Space
Stella Blue
Not Fade Away
Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad
Not Fade Away
As wonderful as many DeadCo concerts we've been to have been, this very likely would have to be at the top of the list. So many things about it were great:
- I can't emphasize enough how fantastic the sound was. I had to turn around several times to verify that yes, I was in the middle of a huge football stadium, but the harmonics and echoes were tuned just right, like in a concert hall, and the power blasting from the stage was just perfect.
- Slipknot! was remarkable for its inventiveness, length, and democracy. Everyone on stage had something to say about it. And He's Gone was sung as beautifully as I've ever heard it, and with an incredibly infectious pace.
- During the jam after He's Gone I turned to Dave and commented that Dreamflower was out of luck. Dave's friend had never heard a live Dark Star and was there that evening. They hadn't played it since the 7th in Washington and we anticipated they would that night, but by that point in the set I figured it was too late for them to start it. And then ... Jeff tinkled the first inkling of it and they all fell into place. Again, see Dave's blog for more details, but this was one of the best Dark Stars I've ever heard ... and this song is at its best when filling a large space.
- And I have to comment on this Drums > Space segment, which was just fantastic. Oteil joined Mickey and Billy in a furious attack on the tom-toms, and later Mickey did some amazing things on the beam. When the band joined them for Space it was a soundscape you could float on.
- I'd predicted either Stella Blue or Morning Dew for the after-Space song, and when they started up Stella Blue it was more perfection. Bobby's voice was at its strongest and most emotive.
- Crowd pleaser at the end, and this was the full thing, though the transition to GDTRFB could have been a bit more gradual. Oh well, NFA had the whole stadium on its feet.
We were just gaping with open jaws and stunned expressions at each other and at our neighbors. In our little living room in front of the soundboard this had been one of the best concerts I'd ever experienced, maybe the best. Who cares how far away we were from anywhere else, we were where we should have been at that moment.
Very short break before they came back out and lined up for the encore. They did The Weight and the only regret of the night was that Oteil and Jeff only had their verses on this to shine at lead vocals. Bobby got the crowd going again with the vocal coda, and this was a great ending to a great night of music. They waved and namasted and were gone. We'll see more of the tour from the couch, but we'd just had a great one.
Headed up to the concourse for the bathrooms, and then down the long pedestrian ramp to get out, then up the huge stairway to traverse the shopping area. But it actually wasn't very far back across route 1 to our car. And just before we got there, we ran into Dreamflower and friend, and had some company. The line out of the parking lot wasn't going anywhere, so we pulled out the chairs and had another beer and sandwich. It had gotten kind of chilly by then. It had been windy all day and the temperature had now dropped to sweatshirt level, not bad for a late June night.
Finally got on the road and, as expected, they made us go South out of the parking lot! JFC, this was a pain but we got turned around safely after a while, made it back up past the Stadium, and then finally onto 95, 128, and back home where the kitties were waiting anxiously. Got to bed around 2:00 or so, not bad for a Saturday night. Hey, they didn't play that!
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