Monday, May 19, 2008
Show 4: Phil Closes the Warfield and I Was There
Mondays are Fundays! They’re the days you get to get paid to sit on your ass and think about all the great stuff you did on your own dime over the previous two days. And for me, that means I can think about having just completed book 4 of the six-book “Adventures through Time, Saw-bonesery, Warfare, Doing It and Scotland” series (Book 3: they traveled through time, treated some gross illnesses, shot and stabbed folk generally, did it, but mostly avoided Scotland), but that’s not why you tuned in. You want details about the Warfield show and I am here to give them to you. Because I care. About talking about myself. So shut up already and let me go on.
The Warfield is an old movie palace that’s been hosting live music for 50 or so years. Many of the truly great rock shows ever played in San Francisco were here, including some amazing String Cheese shows I saw and a Trey concert with Santana sitting in that is still blowing me away five years later. But this isn’t about the dead and distant past (or about Scotland or time travel, technically), it’s about this past weekend, so let’s focus, shall we? SHALL WE?
That is a little better. Let us continue. The Warfield is in the mid-market district of SF – that’s a very scungy, derelict district. There are lots of old theaters up and down the street, closed and shuttered; most of the businesses that remain look very run down and cut-rate. I noticed Kaplan’s Army Surplus and Camping – the shop was empty and dust-draped and the neon box sign in front was missing letters from every word on it except the phrase “since 1938”. Somehow I found that both comforting and sad, but definitely typical of the area. Mid-market is a district waiting for revitalization, biding its time by marinating in untreated biowaste. Makes its own gravy, and smells as good as it tastes.
The Warfield occupies a large part of its block, a block on which many street dwellers have taken up residence or at least maintain skulking privileges. So, surrounding the line of aging hippies and fresh-faced neohippies (there is hope for America yet) there were all these wretched, toothless, grimy people begging for meth money. It reminded me of so many other lines I’ve stood in at the Warfield. Good times, people. By which I mean the television program. You know, Taxi.
The Warfield: Inside were the many amazing mounted photos of great concerts gone by, including the great shot of Neil Young playing with Booker T and the MGs where his hair is standing out from his head as if he were channeling Nicolas Tesla; there’s the shrine to Jerry; there was a nice arrangement of skeletons and roses on the landing of the balcony stairs. The place still had a lot of charisma. That doesn’t mean it’s still be going strong though – my understanding is that the show I saw on Saturday was the penultimate concert to be held there, and it closed down as of last night, the last of the five-concert Phil and Friends series. The Warfield, as we know it, is no more.
Phil and Friends: I’ve seen them a few times but never with this line-up – the band changes every few years. Currently they’ve got a front-man who’s much more like a front-boy – Jackie Green, the rockin’ baby. Okay I just checked and he’s 28 but really, he sounds like he’s been playing since the “old days” but he looks like he’s cutting high school to sit in with the band. It was great to see the age range of the players on stage, and to have a kid like Jackie giving direction and assignments to old hands like Lesh and Molo. He really carried off the very heavy burden of leading that band with style and incisive guitar licks.
Also, it was very exciting to hear some classic old songs played with a totally new feel and style. Neither of the Phil and Friends guitar players sounds at all like the old G.Dead crew. Of course, Phil’s thundering baseline brought it all back to the roots – several times I literally felt my kneecaps shaking and my teeth jangling when he’d level a really solid chord on us – but the guitars were new and different, and I enjoyed the hell out of them. Plus, they brought out a talking drums guy and a freaky electric mandolin guy to chime in on some of the later numbers. There was a lot of music going on, I tell you what.
The show itself: When you hear that P&Fs did a five-concert series, I assume you understand that those were all very different shows – there’s no memorizing the song list and playing it till the tour ends. But this particular series was a little different-er, if you will. The first night was two sets: the first set was the G.Dead’s first album, played beginning to end; the second set was their second album. The second show consisted of their third and fourth albums. The third show was the fifth and sixth albums, but those were acoustic albums and I’ve heard that the show was fairly mellow, not blazing with vast gouts of molten music like I needed. And that left me off at show number four: Album number seven was Skull and Roses, which gave us a first set songlist of: Bertha, Mama Tried, Big Railroad Blues, Playing in the Band (into) That’s it for the Other One, Me & My Uncle, Big Boss Man, Me & Bobby McGee, Johnny B. Goode, Wharf Rat, Not Fade Away, Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad.
That was a two-album LP, completed in one set, brilliantly. BLAZING. Really. Replace-your-fire-alarm hotness. But the night was still young. The second set started around midnight and skipped a whole bunch of albums, picking up the discography in 1981 at album #18: Dead Set. This was an evocative choice because much of that album had been recorded live at the Warfield, and they played it, again, from start to finish:
Samson and Delilah, Friend of the Devil, New Minglewood Blues, Deal, Candyman, Little Red Rooster, Loser, Passenger (completely blew me away), Feel Like a Stranger, Franklin’s Tower, Rhythm Devils, Fire on the Mountain, Greatest Story Ever Told, Brokedown Palace.
That’s another two-record collection, split over the second and third sets. The concert let out around 2 am and, once home, I slept very peacefully indeed. You want photos? They’re attached to the bottom of this set list. See, I come through for you. Even if it kills me. Which this didn’t so I shouldn’t complain. As if that’ll stop me.
The next night, the final night of the series and of the Warfield, didn’t seem to follow the pattern of album re-visitations. Sounded like a good show but I think I caught the best one. Sunday was relaxing and I cooked an excellent pot roast. No not like that you degenerate. Just regular pot roast. But delicious. The end.
Next: something about a dude on the street. Time for me to even out the story karma, I think.