Monday, May 10, 2004
Late Review: 5/5/77 as of 5/8/04
The first thing was that the show was at the Fillmore, which is just essentially historical, it reeks of rock history like no other building in this town and that covers a lot of territory. There were knots of giggling hippies twirling for a miracle ticket out on the corner and a bucket of crisp red apples at the top of the stairs, and we ran into our friends within a minute of setting foot inside the auditorium for the sold-out show. The Fillmore magic continues to dazzle me and I know I’m not alone. What a great venue, and it’s even cooler because it’s so close to my apartment. So, we started out with certain advantages.
We missed the opening band, which was regrettable but necessary. Then the main event cranked up. DSO is a bizarre phenomenon, one which I would not have fully understood had I not seen one of their shows - one which, by all accounts, was blazing hot: New Haven, May 5 ‘77. DSO isn’t a “tribute” band, a bunch of guys who want to rock it like their rockin’ heroes. They’re re-creationists, as much like those weirdos who stage famous civil war battles as they are like symphonic musicians who scrupulously conform to a composer’s score. DSO picks a classic Grateful Dead concert and plays it again, from start to finish, each riff and solo just as the boys originally played it. The sound is eerily accurate, and the vibe carries a lot more than mere music.
It is a truism, I think, that hearing live music is fundamentally different than recorded music. I’m not sure exactly how to explain that but the life seems to blossom from live music, separate and apart from the musical qualities themselves. I have been listening to Dead boots for years, enjoying the musicianship and tunes and the infectious energy of the players - but I had forgotten what it was like to walk into a beaux-arts dancehall rich with hippie incense (a heady blend of a staggering variety of organic olfactants) to have a Phil Lesh bass line hit the soles of my feet and rumble all the way up my legs and my spine till it exploded out the top of my head. Hearing the music live really made me think about how much more deeply I experienced it this way, and why it was preferable to hear second-generation players do a recreation of an old concert live, than to listen to a recording of the original. These notions got me nicely introspective and receptive during the concert.
The show was sold out. Not only that, but we were among the older people there. The demographics of the crowd were unusually broad. When we last went to the ‘mo to see Hot Tuna, a band I’d have expected would draw a similar crowd, most of the people were men who came of age in the 70s if not the 60s. Grey hair, shiny pates, and a dearth of wimminfolk were the order of the day. I expected DSO to have a similar pull but I was much mistaken: there were probably more people there younger than me than older than me, and the gender mix was significantly less one-sided (though men still predominated). All over the place I was seeing fresh young things dancing their fool heads off to a concert that had been consigned to the ages before they had even been born - and they weren’t dancing in slavish replication of some byegone experience, they were immersing themselves in a newly-synthesized, synesthetic mystical experience older than Sufism and so familiar and dear to my memory that it made me a bit emotional to see it. Who were these kids? How did they get turned on to this freaky scene? Could it be that something I loved at twenty, twenty years ago, is still so valid that today’s twenty-year-olds seek it out? After the show was over, a stumbling womanchild wandered past me saying either that the Lazy Lightnin’ was great, or that it sucked, but that you could tell it had been a good show, even though it had been cool or something.... she seemed really young and really wasted, fully blissed out after a night of communal dancing, and it all seemed exactly as it had been when I had been her age. This gave me a great sense of peace and satisfaction, maybe out of proportion with its significance.
It was, however, as my young and confused friend mentioned, a great first set, and not a bad second set: 1: Promised, Sugaree, Mama Tried> El Paso, Tennessee Jed, L. L. Rain, Deal, Lazy Lightning> Supplication, Peggy-O, Music never stopped; 2: Bertha, Estimated, Scarlet> Fire> Good Lovin, St. Stephen> Sugar Magnolia E: Johnny B. Goode. I figured I’d never see a Lazy Lightning, and I love to hear Deal and MSN live, and of course Estimated-Scarlet-Fire is a nice lineup…
Now, the cognoscienti among you (yeah, you) may have noticed, from this set list and from the website above, that some of these songs involve female backup vocals. DSO has a sturdy and serviceable voice for these parts, but the original Grateful Dead worked with Donna Godchaux, who brought theremin-like intensity to Scarlett Begonias and Music Never Stopped and so many other tunes. Well, in the midst of the DSO concert, we had a show by the Donnas as well. Not The Donnas, though I have nothing against them, but DSO’s own “Fake” Donna vs “Real” Donna G, who was in town with her own band that had opened the night (that was the opening act we’d missed). The two Donnas traded off between songs backing up the band. Real Donna looks phenomenal, silverhaired and wry-eyed, and her voice is as true and pure as ever. It was fun to see Fake Donna twirl and daven and shuffle around while waiting for her cues, but to see Real Donna pumping her fist and her head, burying herself in the cascading notes just as she had done 27 years previously at the very show I was re-experiencing, was inspirational, revivifying. At the end of the show both bands took the stage together, Donna’s Heart of Gold Band and DSO, and fake Donna and real Donna stood side by side harmonizing on one of my favorite old gospel numbers. Fake Donna did fine, but damn, Real Donna was a force of nature, an amazing voice that carried me away even when the stage was full of bouncing, jamming musicians and it was 2 am and I was so tired, so very tired....
After the show, Dave and Kim and Andy and Kel and I went over to Mel’s for shakes and gravy fries. I got home at nearly 3, ran the dog across the street, rubbed my feet with emu oil and fell utterly and rapturously unconscious. Sunday was already upon us and we had a cyborg to build. Details to follow.
