Dead & Company Back In Mansfield, 2021 ... part 1

 Back when life was a bit less inexplicable, Dead & Company had scheduled a stop in Fenway Park on their 2020 tour.  We all know how that turned out: the world stopped in the Covid-19 pandemic and the concert was cancelled.  With DeadCo, as with any band, there's always the possibility that they'll call it a day at any point and dis-band.  John Mayer had put out a solo album in the meantime, and we wouldn't have been surprised if he continued his solo career, and Bob Weir pursued his jazzier stuff.  An ending to this band would have been another cruel twist, and so we were very excited when instead they announced an *extensive* Summer and Fall tour for 2021, and that it would include two dates at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield MA, and one at the Xfinity Theatre in Hartford.  And we realized we'd be retired at the time, so there was no worry about making it to work the next day!

Well, apparently a lot of people were also very psyched for the concerts and the ticket rush was fierce, but we were able to get decent seats for all three of them with much clicking and recalculating, and waiting for spinny wheels.  We also got parking tickets for Mansfield.

We'd been to the GRF the weekend before, and had tickets to the Willie Nelson show the next week, so this would be a great peak in a late-summer of music.  Unfortunately, Covid-19 has stuck around, people have not been getting vaccinated, and variants of the virus are prowling around, even infecting vaccinated people.  They announced that all concert-goers would have to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test, but this did not calm our fears totally, and we spent most of the concerts masked.  Some other people did too, but most of the attendees were unmasked and who knows if their "proof of vaccination" was real?

Oh well, on Thursday the 2nd of September we got ice, beer, orange juice, water, sandwiches, chips, gummies, chairs, and vaccination cards ready and hit the road for the South!  Picked up Dave in Quincy and then headed down to a shopping center in Mansfield to rendezvous with friend L.  We had had torrential rain from the latest tropical storm the night before, but the weather was great and the sky was maybe going to clear.

Then we got in the traffic jam.  Don't know if you've ever been to the Xfinity Center (previously called Great Woods and the Tweeter Center), but they don't know how to let cars into their lots quickly and pre-concerts become a clusterfuck of cars backed up on 495, on 140, and all local roads.  Whatever, we got in to the Red Lot after spending 30-45 minutes creeping along at slower than a walking pace.  The Tour advertised that they were carbon-neutral, but they must not have been counting all the cars sitting in traffic.

But plenty of time for some beers and sandwiches and then there was no line to get in!  We showed pictures of our vaccination cards, got right through the metal detectors, and then each called up his/her ticket on his/her phone to get scanned.  It would be even easier if they had paper tickets, but no one misses a chance to say, "You have to install our app," these days.

OK, time to stop bitching about the audience experience and to start gushing.  Our seats were pretty far away but the sightlines were great and we could see everything happening on stage, though we sometimes had to look at the big screens for detail.  This was essentially the start of the middle third of the tour, after a break of about a week.  They have a 31-date tour scheduled which started in North Carolina on August 23rd and after another break later this month, will continue on the West coast until Halloween!  The shows so far had been excellent and this one was excellent too:

First Set

• Playing In the Band
• The Wheel
• Iko Iko
• It Hurts Me Too
• Ramble On Rose
• Brown-Eyed Women
• Let It Grow

The opening jam threatened to lurch into The Wheel but instead resolved in PITB, and we were already impressed.  Though they stick to a repetitive repertoire, they mix this up well and still manage to show inventiveness as well as incredible talent.  For me, It Hurts Me Too and Ramble On Rose featured incredibly infective blues playing from the whole ensemble.  Brown-Eyed Women is always great as well, though their long jam on Let It Grow left a little to be desired.

Mobs of people at halftime, but everyone was mellow and eager for the second set.  Bathroom and beer and then I was back in my seat in plenty of time for:

Second Set

• Deal
• Dark Star
• El Paso
• Uncle John's Band
• Drums
• Space
• Casey Jones
• Stella Blue
• Sugar Magnolia

Deal was a bit of a surprise to open the second set, but thankfully this didn't go into Estimated or Sugaree (though Eyes would have been fine).  But when they finished Deal (which was excellent itself), they started into a jam of death that eventually became Dark Star but still was way out in space, parsecs from the lyrics.  How fine is it to hear a Dead band spin out the Dark Star net and catch our minds and souls in it, and then go on and on for 15+ minutes?  Well, we enjoyed it.  They finally did get to the first verse, but after that jammed some more and suddenly found themselves in a soulful El Paso.

Time to bring it back to a beautiful, dainty, UJB.  And after Drums/Space they lit into a riotous Casey Jones!  Again, though the setlist was not daring, the playing was amazingly excellent (especially for a band that must have had very little time to practice during the pandemic), and the range of emotion in the songs was incredible.  And speaking of emotion, Bobby then sang one of the best Stella Blues I've ever heard, one of the Dead's most heartfelt songs.

The closing Sugar Magnolia was a little perfunctory after that, and the encore break was very short (they didn't really leave the stage).  And they got out the acoustics for a lovely Ripple.  Time for curfew in Mansfield!

Whoah, that was good!  There were a few down spots as always in a Dead concert, but the musicianship was incredible and they wound up those songs like a Swiss watch.

Back to the parking lot and set up the chairs again while the exiting traffic clusterfuck slowly died down, and then we were out of there.  Not really any trouble leaving the lot by the back exit, turning back up to where L had left her car, and then cruising up 95 and 128 back home.  Same tomorrow!