The Starry Plough bar, on the corner of Shattuck and Ashby in Berkeley, stands out on the block as there is not much else around. I arrived a bit early and saw Dead Heads standing outside the bar smoking joints and cigarettes, making me think I was walking down the mythical “Shakedown Street.”

The Pat Nevins Trio was the opening band of the night and their set began at 9:30 pm. The band consisted of vocalist/acoustic guitarist Pat Nevins, mandolinist Mike McKinley, and bassist P.C. The Pat Nevins Trio opened with a stellar acoustic version of Neil Young’s “Oh Lonesome Me,” from Young’s classic After The Goldrush album. Nevins continued to master Young’s third solo album with a slow acoustic strumming “I Believe In You.” You could really feel Nevins lyrics as he sang exactly in the high-pitch wail of Neil Young, “Now that you’ve made yourself love me, do you think that I can change it in a day? How can I place you above me? Am I lying to you when I say I believe in you?”

Pat Nevins would continue to cover his muse Neil Young throughout his opening set, while occasionally complaining to the crowd about the sound of his guitar. The Nevins Trio really nailed down a solid version of the Neil Young and Crazy Horse song “Like A Hurricane”; it sounded completely different as an acoustic version with none of Young’s crazy guitar soloing, which is featured on his album American Stars N’ Bars. Instead, this version of “Like A Hurricane” had a mandolin solo and no drums. One thing sounded the same, which was Nevins’s wonderful voice, which was totally on key with Neil’s voice, and you could have guessed Neil himself was in the house. Nevins’s version of Buffalo Springfield’s “On The Way Home” was a wonderful touch to the set, especially since it was a song written by Young before he went solo. The way Nevins played “On The Way Home,” sounded more like the version on Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young’s Four Way Street album. After the show, I talked to Pat and he said that was his intention to play it more like Crosby Stills, Nash, & Young. “The first time I heard Four Way Street I was sixteen years old and it totally got me into Neil Young, because it had the best acoustic versions of “On The Way Home,” “Cowgirl In The Sand,” and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” said Nevins.

The crowd at The Starry Plough really started getting into Nevins when he played a killer version of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” The dreaminess of the acoustic song and Nevins’s lovely voice brought the crowd into a sort of trance. A woman in the front row danced back and forth while spinning a white scarf in the air and looking like a flower child of the sixties generation. Nevins band also played a spectacular version of “Don’t Cry No Tears,” the lone song they covered off of Neil Young’s Zuma album. One of the last songs Nevins played was another signature Neil Young classic, “Cinnamon Girl,” from Young’s early 70s heyday and his second album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The version of “Cinnamon Girl” sounded much different from the original, also as it was slowed down and had none of the heavy Crazy Horse guitar playing. Overall it was a wonderful set by The Pat Nevins Trio, where they paid their respects to one of the greatest guitarists and songwriting poets in rock n’ roll history, Neil Young.

The Grateful Dead cover band from Santa Cruz, California, The China Cats, were the set everybody had been anticipating with excitement all night. The band hit the stage at around 11:00 pm and opened with a live Grateful Dead standard, “China Cat Sunflower,” into “I Know You Rider.” By this point The Starry Plough was completely packed with young and old hippies dancing everywhere. I was having a tough time snapping photos as some old Dead Head with white curly hair that stood straight up called me an obnoxious person. Just to annoy me he started doing his crazy dance, blocking my view and not only trying to rob me of taking great photos, but also of seeing the show with my own eyes.

Almost immediately after the set began rhythm guitarist and vocalist Scotty Cooper broke his guitar string and had to sit out for the next song on the setlist, “Loser.” “Loser,” is a classic Dead tune about love and gambling, which was sung by The China Cats keyboardist Pat Bizinski. The way Bizinski sang “Loser,” you could hear great hints of Jerry Garcia’s high-pitched, mournful vocal melodies: “Don't you push me baby because I'm moaning low. I know a little something you won't ever know. Don't you touch hard liquor just a cup of cold coffee. Gonna get up in the morning and go.” Later, Bizinski told me his favorite Dead keyboardist was Bruce Hornsby, even though he was never an official member of the band. He also analyzed the rest of The Grateful Dead keyboardists, and said he liked Brent Mydland and Keith Godchaux but wasn’t a big fan of Pigpen’s keyboard playing. “I like Pigpen more as a harmonica player and frontman,” he said.

The rest of The China Cats consisted of vocalist/lead guitarist Theo Winston, bassist Roger Side Man, and drummer Michael Owens. After a playful rendition of Johnny Cash's country-sounding “Big River,” The China Cats returned to better form with the funky beat of “West L.A. Fadeaway.” The China Cats also played “Tennessee Jed,” which was exciting to watch since Mike McKinley from The Pat Nevins Trio came back onstage to play his mandolin with the band.

The first set closed with a bang as The China Cats ripped up “Let It Grow,” with Theo Winston handling the lead vocals and sounding just like Bob Weir as he sang, “The plowman is broad as the back of the land he is sowing. As he dances the circular track of the plow ever knowing, that the work of his day measures more than the planting and growing. Let it grow, let it grow, greatly yield.”  The China Cats really jammed out hard on “Let It Grow,” making it the best song of their performance in the first set. Winston continued to rev up the crowd, which was now dancing all over the place as he sang the chorus: “What shall we say, shall we call it by a name. As well to count the angels dancing on a pin. Water bright as the sky from which it came. And the name is on the earth that takes it in. We will not speak but stand inside the rain. And listen to the thunder shout I am, I am, I am, I am.”

Around midnight just as I was about to leave The Starry Plough to go home for the night, Scotty Cooper came up to me and told me not to leave and that there would be a second set that would go on until 1:00 am. The China Cats opened set two with “Here Comes Sunshine,” their psychedelic-esque, Beatles-sounding song, which was incredibly dynamic. I had never heard a live version of the song, so it was thrilling to hear The China Cats do it, and really capture the vibe of the song. Next came “Shakedown Street,” which has that classic Dead beat that one can boogie down to. Everyone in the house seemed to really like dancing to “Shakedown Street,” and more people flowed in from outside, as they had finished their set break joints and were ready for more psychedelic sounds to come. In the following song, “Eyes Of The World,” both Theo Winston and Scotty Cooper played their guitars perfectly, often trading off lead solos that sounded exactly how Jerry Garcia would have played them live. “Eyes Of The World,” is one of those long jams that can thrust the crowd into another abyss, which has always pleased Dead Heads when they see the song performed live.

Next song was “Terrapin Station,” one of my all-time-favorite songs and a true classic to hear live. The China Cats covered the whole song, unlike “Let It Grow,” where they skipped the Prelude and Part I. They played all seven parts of “Terrapin Station,” beginning with “Lady With A Fan,” where Winston sang Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter’s opening poetic lines with a perfect Garcia pitch, “Let my inspiration flow, in token lines suggesting rhythm. That will not forsake me till my tale is told and done.” The China Cats built “Terrapin Station” to a glowing crescendo towards the end. Their version “Terrapin Station,” incorporated a more symphonic sound than anything else they played that night at The Plough, bordering on progressive rock style that sounded a bit like a mixture between Yes and Genesis. “Terrapin Station,” has a common theme involving love and loss that re-occurs in many of Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow’s lyrics, as the song is a mournful ballad about a sailor who lost the love of his life. Other common themes in Dead songs involve life and death, gambling and murder, beauty and horror, and also chaos and order.

Late into the night The China Cats played a spectacular version of “Morning Dew,” which had a slow guitar opening and Winston singing in a high sweet voice, “Walk me out in the morning dew my honey. Walk me out in the morning dew today. I thought I heard a baby crying this morning. I thought I heard a baby crying today.” Hearing “Morning Dew,” was another highlight of the night as it has always been one of my favorite Dead songs and The China Cats played a outstanding cover of it, with Winston playing his best guitar solo of the night to close out the song.

The band’s encore was “Casey Jones,” a classic Dead tune about driving a train and being high on cocaine. The crowd was entranced with the song right until those final lines, “Trouble ahead, trouble behind, and you know that notion just crossed my mind.”

Overall it was a fantastic set from both The China Cats and The Pat Nevins Trio and by far the best show I have been to all year. It is reassuring to know there are still bands out there dedicated to keeping alive the irreplaceable sounds and spirit of 1960’s bands like The Grateful Dead and Neil Young. The fact that people still love, respect, and fondly remember that music today shows how timeless it truly is, and how bands like The China Cats and The Pat Nevins Trio can continue to keep the spirit alive for audiences in decades to come.

On a cool Berkeley evening I walked into The Starry Plough to catch The Grateful Dead cover band Live Dead. The Plough was once again packed with young and old local “Dead Head” hippies, sporting heavy beards and tie-dye shirts. Others danced wildly by the stage, as Live Dead opened their first set a little after 9:30 pm. The members of Live Dead formed recently out of the ashes of other Dead cover bands such as Workingman’s Ed, Grapefruit Ed, and Crazy Fingers. The members of the band include Steve Fundy on lead guitar and vocals, Barry Erde on rhythm guitar and vocals, Paul Scannell on drums, Mitch Stein on keyboards and vocals, and Stephen Ramirez on bass.

“Cold Rain & Snow,” sung by Steve Fundy opened the show. Fundy is the lone former member of Crazy Fingers, who were considered a premier Dead cover band in New York City during the 1980s. Fundy, with his long white hair and goatee, sang his vocals in that high-pitched, mellifluous Jerry Garcia howl. “She went up to her room and she sang a faithful tune. And I’m going where them chilly winds don’t blow, winds don’t blow.” This opener was followed by Barry Erde singing “Greatest Story Ever Told,” a Bob Weir song that was originally on his solo album Ace.  “Greatest Story Ever Told,” eventually made into heavy rotation at Grateful Dead concerts, as did countless others Weir wrote off Ace. Erde sounded just like Bob Weir with his raspy, deep singing tone, matched by a rougher-edge onstage presence.

For their third song Live Dead played a surprise cover of “Dupree’s Diamond Blues.” Originally off the third Grateful Dead album, 1969’s Aoxomoxoa, and sung by Jerry Garcia, it was rarely played by The Dead live in concert. Steve Fundy handled lead vocals for “Dupree’s Diamond Blues,” and the crowd danced to the song, which sounded much more electric live, as it lacked the banjo that is in the original. Fundy sang the  plaintive opening lines  “When I was just a little young boy, papa said son you’ll never get far, I’ll tell you the reason if you want to know because child of mine there isn’t very far to go”. Next Live Dead launched straight into “West L.A. Fadeaway,” to the joy of the crowd who began dancing everywhere, using their hands to guide their bodies through the motions. Barry Erde, was the frontman for the next two songs, both Weir originals: “Me and My Uncle,” and “Mexicali Blues.” Both songs were more country and less psychedelic sounding then a lot of the other material Live Dead would perform that night. “Me and My Uncle” recalls the tale of a young Texas cowboy and his uncle riding their horses from south Colorado into Santa Fe. With lines like “Went into the barroom, ordered drinks for all. Three days in the saddle you know my body hurt. Indian summer, I took off my shirt and I tried to wash off some of that dusty dirt,” you get a clear view of country rock’s influence on Weir despite his San Francisco origins.

The packed crowd really started dancing to the next song “Here Comes Sunshine,” a Jerry Garcia classic off The Grateful Dead’s Wake of The Flood album. Live Dead were the second band in a matter of weeks to cover this song at The Starry Plough, as The China Cats, another Grateful Dead cover band from Santa Cruz, had done a great job with the song in their mid-April concert. One small, round hippie—who looked like one of The Grateful Dead teddy bears, with a humongous white beard, long hair, and a black top hat started motioning to the sky with his two hands and chanting the chorus of “Here comes sunshine,” as if he were praying or worshiping the music he was hearing. I noticed that another woman standing near the front of the stage was doing the same two-hand motioning towards the ceiling, and I wondered if this was a Dead Heads ritual whenever this particular song was played.

Live Dead closed out their first set with “Deal,” a song that was actually off the first Jerry Garcia Band self-titled album, but like most of the songs off that album eventually made it into heavy rotation at Grateful Dead concerts. “Deal” is a straight up gambling song unlike “Loser,” a similar song off the same Jerry Garcia record, which is mostly about gambling but has hints of a love story as well.  Keyboardist Mitch Stein handled the vocals on “Deal” and sounded mesmerizing while singing the lines, “Since it cost a lot to win and even more to lose, you and me bound to spend some time wondering what to choose. Goes to show you don't ever know. Watch each card you play and play it slow. Wait until your deal come round. Don't you let that deal go down.” This was followed by the second verse, where Stein sang in a sly Jerry voice, “I been gambling here abouts for ten good solid years. If I told you all that went down it would burn off both your ears.”

After a ten-minute break, Live Dead took the stage again for the second set, opening it with “Playing in the Band,” a live jam that had Barry Erde doing his fantastic Bobby Weir voice, while Mitch Stein and Steve Fundy provided excellent backing with the keys and lead guitar. The next song was “Uncle John’s Band,” and the crowd responded enthusiastically as everyone knew they were in for a special treat hearing one of the best songs off Workingman’s Dead, considered by most Dead Heads as one of The Grateful Dead’s finest studio efforts. The soloing by Fundy reached a peak in this song, and then reverted back into the main riff progression as he sang, “It’s the same story the crow told me, it’s the only one he knows. Like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go. Ain’t no time to hate, barely time to wait. Wo-oah, what I want to know, where does the time go?” I had never seen The Dead or any Dead cover band play “Uncle John’s Band” before, so this was the highlight of the night for me. The crowd was in love with it too as you could hear them roaring the lyrics right along with Fundy and Stein, who harmonized brilliantly on the lyrics “Wo-oah what I want to know will you come with me?” “Eyes Of The World,” followed, and always sounds great live with its seemingly endless lead guitar jam that Steve Fundy enjoyed playing alongside Barry Erde.

Drummer Paul Scannell got his strongest applause of the night during his interpretation of The Dead’s “Drums” into “Space” sequence. Scannell’s version was a lot heavier with one drum kit, compared to Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzman’s sound on two separate kits. With the way Scannell was pounding his kit ferociously, people like my friends from Norway, who hardly knew anything by The Dead before, enjoyed a bit of diversity and this drum solo provided just that. Scannell is definitely one of the most talented members in Live Dead as he has played in the past with Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, as well as being a former member of Workingman’s Ed and Grapefruit Ed. He has also played with the Neil Young cover band Ragged Glory with Pat Nevins, while also being a part of a Cream tribute band, Just Cream. Stephen Ramirez, the bassist in Live Dead, also has an impressive musical resume if you look at his bio under Live Dead’s myspace page. He has performed with former Grateful Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick.

After the “Drums” into “Space” interlude, Live Dead launched into “Wharf Rat,” a song Robert Hunter wrote about a man named August West, who is a wino down and out on the streets begging people for a dime to buy some coffee. “Wharf Rat” features some of The Dead’s harshest lines, which Mitch Stein sang in a mournful voice a lot like Jerry Garcia: Everyone said I'd come to no good, I knew I would, Pearly believed them. Half of my life I spent doin' time for some motherfucker’s crime. The other half found me stumbling around drunk on burgundy wine. But I'll get back on my feet someday. The good Lord willing if He says I may 'cause I know the life I'm livin's no good. I'll get a new start, live the life I should. I'll get up and fly away. I'll get up and fly away, fly away.  You could hear a smooth and melodious tone in Stein’s voice as he sang “Wharf Rat,” and the crowd joined in, as two friends by the front of the stage faced each other for a brief moment, singing the lyrics back and fourth to each other, while shaking their index fingers in a scolding fashion, as Stein sang, “I know that the life I’m livin’s no good.”

“Truckin” was the next song, and all the American Beauty fans in the crowd (who had already heard “Box Of Rain,” from the opening band earlier in the night) were excited all over again to hear another timeless tune off The Grateful Dead’s 1970 album. Again the crowd was into it. Even my Norwegian friends knew “Truckin,” and were singing along to The Dead’s autobiographical lyrics about when they were busted on Bourbon Street in New Orleans for marijuana possession. Live Dead members Erde, Fundy, and Stein did a great job harmonizing together in the chorus on the most famous lines The Grateful Dead ever sang, “Sometimes the light's all shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been."

Live Dead followed their brilliant version of “Truckin,” with a quick version “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,” a set closer that The Dead used to play along with “We Bid You Good Night,” at the peak of their touring career.  Once again Erde and Fundy took turns singing back and fourth, as Jerry and Bobby would have done if they were still playing together. Fundy also played a terrific solo in the song, capturing one of Jerry’s most electric-guitar-driven moments in the history of his compositions with The Dead.

By now it was already passed 1:30 am, but the crowd was not ready to go home yet, requesting a final encore after Steve Fundy had already introduced the entire band to the crowd and was bidding them farewell until next time. “So you want one more?” Fundy asked the crowd and with the reaction of cheers he got, he knew the show couldn’t stop there. Live Dead launched into “Don’t Ease Me In,” an iconic song from the Jerry Garcia Band vault that never made it onto a Grateful Dead album, but like the songs “Deal,” “Loser,” and “Bird Song,” it has become a Grateful Dead standard, appearing on countless live albums that have been bootlegged. The crowd loved it and the song itself put me in such a Jerry mood that I couldn’t resist the temptation of buying a tie-dye Jerry Garcia shirt after the show. It had been a wonderful night, especially as my four Norwegian friends, left with smiles on their faces and plans to delve deeper into The Dead’s music catalog, and also to see incredibly talented cover bands like Live Dead, who can capture the essence of The Grateful Dead’s psychedelic jam band music perfectly.

For more information on Live Dead visit their myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/livedeadband

On Friday June 12, at around 9:25 I walked into Ashkenaz on San Pablo Ave, in Berkeley, to the sounds of the Dead Guise playing their opening set of acoustic Grateful Dead covers, in a style similar to the Grateful Dead’s early 80’s acoustic albums Reckoning and Dead Set. The members of Dead Guise include lead guitarist and vocalist Ken Younger, rhythm guitarist and vocalist John Heffernan, bassist and vocalist Mike Marino, and drummer and vocalist Bob Sicotte. When I got into Ashkenaz the Dead Guise had just wrapped up playing their opening song “Midnight Moonlight,” a song Jerry Garcia Band used to play at the Keystone back in the good old days when you could get in to see Jerry for just $3. Dead Guise were into covering some softer Jerry Garcia tunes in the Grateful Dead catalog like “Deep Elem Blues,” “Peggy O,” and “They Love Each Other.” The highlight of Dead Guise’s set was seeing them play “Black Peter,” one of the most painful and yet beautiful songs of The Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead album. The Dead Guise captured the song beautifully with the soft acoustic playing, and the mellifluous Jerry voice sung by rhythm guitarist/ vocalist John Heffernan,  “One more day I find myself alive. Tomorrow maybe go beneath the ground. See here how everything lead up to this day and it's just like any other day that's ever been. Sun goin up and then the sun it goin down. Shine through my window and my friends they. come around. The Dead Guise’s sound as they played “Black Peter” live was similar to the version on History Of The Grateful Dead (Bears Choice), even more acoustic then the version off Workingman’s Dead.

The Dead Guise seemed to enjoy singing songs that were sung by Jerry Garcia a lot more than the Bob Weir ones as “El Paso,” was the only Weir tune the Dead Guise touched upon. This all makes sense when you consider of all the members in the Grateful Dead Jerry Garcia was the one who showed the most affection for his bands folk and country roots, continually reintroducing them either with the band or in his side projects. With the Dead Guise’s selections of songs like "Jack-A-Roe" and "Deep Elem Blues" it is apparent they to are into the more into the folk material as well. The Dead Guise also played “Ripple,” a beautifully poetic Robert Hunter penned and Jerry Garcia sung tune off American Beauty that has always been an acoustic favorite, specifically on the Reckoning album recorded at the Warfield where it was the final encore on the album. The Dead Guise did a final encore of “Jack-A-Roe,” to the delight of the crowd who were demanding more after the captivating “Ripple.” Overall it was a solid performance by the Dead Guise who love doing the acoustic Grateful Dead classics, which serves as an excellent opener for Live Dead who would follow by playing a lot of electric psychedelic Dead songs especially in their second set like “The Other One” and “Viola Lee Blues.”

By performing songs like “Box Of Rain,” which they did at a recent show at the Starry Plough and “Ripple,” which they performed this time around at Ashkenaz, it is quite clear that Dead Guise are really into the 1970 year of the Grateful Dead’s music when they started exploring folk rock roots on albums like American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead, which was a huge change from their previous all out psych records like Live Dead and Anthem Of The Sun.

The Live Dead took the stage next with a burst of electric energy as lead guitarist and vocalist Steve Fundy, drummer Paul Scannell, rhythm guitarist and vocalist Shep Silver, keyboardist James Miller (who also performed with the Dead Guise), and bassist Chuck Stone launched into “Iko Iko” a rare live Grateful Dead cut. Live Dead had made it clear on their website prior to the show to expect the unexpected. The surprises delivered at Ashkenaz and they got that with a totally new set-list, which was completely different than it had been at the Starry Plough and three new band members Silver, Miller and Stone. Instead of focusing on more famous live standard Dead tunes like “Wharf Rat,” “Trucking,” “Uncle John’s Band,” and “Terrapin Station,” as they had at the Starry Plough, Live Dead chose to play some far out jams and rarer material.

The opening song “Iko Iko” was a clear example of this, a rare Dead tune I had never even heard off a live Grateful Dead recording or a studio album. The second song was “Bertha,” a favorite among Dead Heads but a song not any average fan of the Grateful Dead might have picked up on. It was sung by Fundy in a classic Jerry Garcia voice. Shep Silver helped out singing the chorus, “I had to move, really had to move. That's why if you please I am on my bended knees. Bertha don't you come around here anymore.” “Bertha” was followed by “Good Lovin,” which was sung in the style that original Dead keyboardist Ron (Pigpen) McKernan sang in and not the way Bob Weir composed it on the Shakedown Street record. It sounded quite good and had lots of Dead Heads at Ashkenaz singing along and dancing just as they probably had when they saw The Dead play the song themselves last month on May, 10 at the Shoreline Amphitheater. Shep Silver introduced the next song exclaiming it had already been played earlier that night by the opening band the Dead Guise. The song was “They Love Each Other,” a fantastic Jerry Garcia song off his third studio record with The Jerry Garcia Band Reflections. Shep Silver really showed the audience his strong onstage presence with this song and it was incredible as the fact sweat was pouring off his face didn’t seem to bother him in the clubs sweltering-hot atmosphere. Hearing songs like “Good Lovin” and “They Love Each Other,” being played by Live Dead was like being transported into a time warp back into the mid 70's when the Dead did open some of their shows with these two songs in the first set.

Live Dead only continued to get better as the night wore on, as they tore through the first set with some of the best Dead songs to be heard live such as “Jack Straw,” a song I heard the fist time I saw The Dead at Bonnarroo 2004, in Tennessee, which really opened my eyes to how amazing a band The Dead were. Live Dead really tore through song, as Silver, Fundy, and Miller all sang the opening verse in unison, “We can share the wine. We can share what we got of yours' cause we done shared all of mine. Keep a rolling just a mile to go. Keep on rolling, my old buddy you're moving much too slow.”

Live Dead played another Europe 72 classic when Shep Silver also sang “Brown Eyed Women,” which really got the crowd going as they sang along with Shep, “Brown eyed women and red grenadine the bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean. Sound of the thunder with the rain pouring down and it looks like the old man's getting on.” Live Dead repeated only two songs in their set at Ashkenaz from what they had played at the Starry Plough, (“West L.A. Fadeaway,” and “Eyes Of The World.”). West L.A. Fadeaway” came near the end of the first set and got the ladies dancing wildly as Fundy handled the lyrics and his lead guitar quite excellently as he soloed back and fourth with Silver, while new bassist Chuck Stone along with drummer Paul Scannall did a great job keeping the beat. The final song in the first set was “Shakedown Street,” which is a perfect example of the late 70s classic era of the Grateful Dead, at the tail end of the Arista years.

The crowd really responded well to the late 70s material presented by Live Dead, and there was plenty of that to go around as the second set opened with “Scarlet Begonias,” going into “Fire On The Mountain,” even diving back into “Scarlet Begonias” at the end in a great combination of songs This led straight into “Eyes Of The World,” which was one of the highlights of the night as Dead Head ladies utilized the whole Ashkenaz floor to dance all over the place in typical Dead Head fashion. The guys were into it also, and I have begun to see a lot of the same faces at these Live Dead shows; it makes me feel good to be among fellow Dead Heads. Paul Scannell did a superb job on “Drums,” leading into “Space.” Live Dead came back onstage and slowly began jamming into “Bird Song,” an improvisational jazzy-ballad wonder that was originally written by the Grateful Dead about the death of their friend Janis Joplin. The lyrics sung by Fundy were extremely powerful, “All that I know is something like a bird within her sings. All I know she sang a little while and then flew off. Tell me all that you know I’ll show you storm and rain.”

Live Dead saved their biggest psychedelic jams for last as Shep Silver took charge of the set again with a short version of “The Other One,” but with the band pressed for time as it was now getting passed 1:00 AM it made sense to shorten the song. Live Dead followed “The Other One” with “Viola Lee Blues,” a song that is still being played by the Dead forty-two years after it was released off their debut self-titled album in 1967. Live Dead did justice to “Viola Lee Blues,” playing it loud, and in unison, as all the musicians seemed like they had been rehearsing the material for weeks prior to playing it.

Live Dead did a final encore, playing another rarity “Hey Pocket Way,” which was originally sung by Brent Mydland, the third Grateful Dead keyboardist, who died in 1990 of a speedball overdose. The song has never appeared on any Grateful Dead album, yet everyone in the crowd seemed to recognize it, proving how much Live Dead fans really know about the complete history of the Dead’s music. One must also compliment Live Dead’s improvisational playing which they mastered all night, from the opening chords of “Iko Iko” to the closing encore of “Hey Pocket Way.”

For more info on Live Dead go to www.myspace.com/livedeadband

For more info on the Dead Guise go to www.myspace.com/thedeadguise or go check out their website at www.epicdimensions.com/Dead_Guise.shtml

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THE DEAD GUISE Setlist

Midnight Moonlight

Deep Elem Blues

Peggy-O

El Paso

Panama Red

Black Peter

They Love Each Other

Ripple

Encore

Jack A-Roe (Phil Zone Version)

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LIVE DEAD Setlist

SET 1

IKO IKO

Bertha

Good Lovin’

They Love Each Other

Jack Straw

West L.A. Fadeaway

Brown Eyed Women

Shakedown Street

Set 2

Scarlet Begonias

Fire On The Mountain

Scarlet (End)

Eyes Of The World

Drums

Space

Bird Song

The Other One

Viola Lee Blues

Encore

Hey Pocket Way

On Friday, July 3rd, The Dead Guise, one of the Bay Area’s best Grateful Dead cover bands played a wonderful two-set concert at The Starry Plough that drew quite the crowd. The Plough was packed as it always is whenever The Dead Guise play and lots of the same friendly faces I have been seeing around The Plough and Ashkenaz as of late greeted me as we awaited for the set to begin. The Dead Guise consist of lead guitarist vocalist Ken Younger, rhythm guitarist and vocalist John Heffferman, keyboardist James Miller, bassist and vocalist Mike Marino, and drummer and vocalist Bob Sicotte.

Rich Macon a huge fan of The Dead Guise since their existence for the last five years was telling me how glad he was to see these guys headlining two sets. At first I thought that The Dead Guise would be playing one set acoustic and one electric since the first two times I had seen them they had only played acoustic. This time, though, The Dead Guise ripped into an electric “Hell In The Bucket,” with lead guitarist/vocalist John Hefferman doing a great job covering the Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow original off In The Dark. The lyrics sounded excellent as Hefferman sang “You imagine me sipping champagne from your boot for a taste of your elegant pride. I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe, but at least I'm enjoying the ride. At least I'm enjoying the ride.” This was a fantastic opening cut for The Dead Guise to pick and a song I hadn’t heard live in quite sometime off any Grateful Dead live record. It sounded a bit like the version off Dozin At The Knick, with lots of that Weir energy which John Hefferman showcased by banging his guitar up and down while the crowd bounced up and down to the beat. Hefferman proved he had mastered the Pete Townsend "windmill" flailing his arms about and then crashing it into the guitar heavily. The solo Hefferman played with his Les Paul guitar in “Hell Of A Bucket” sounded just like Jerry Garcia would have sounded and it brought a lot of Dead Heads at the show a serene place of memory.

The Dead Guise moved into “Bertha,” which continued to get the crowd dancing and rolling all over the floor. It wasn’t until the third song, though, when The Dead Guise launched into “New Minglewood Blues,” that I realized that it was going to be a fantastic set. James Miller in particular showcased his immense keyboard skills on the keys by pounding them up and down during his solo. Miller sounded incredible just like Brent Mydland on the Grateful Dead’s 1980 live album Dead Set. “Easy Wind” was the following song and The Dead Guise captured the steel miner “stone jack hammer,” feel Ron “Pigpen” Mckernan gave to the song when he first introduced it to Dead fans some thirty-nine years ago. “Easy Wind,” is a classic Robert Hunter penned and Pigpen sung tune that originally appeared off The Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead record.

“Sugaree,” a Jerry Garcia favorite among Dead Heads, from his first solo album Garcia, was played next by The Dead Guise. It was a very enjoyable listen, which had lots of ladies dancing and singing along the lyrics, as guitarist Ken Younger took the lead in this one both with vocals and his guitar. The Dead Guise sounded on key during “Sugaree” and they transitioned well into a more boppier jazzy song from The Grateful Dead’s Blues For Allah record “The Music Never Stopped.” This was undubtedly the highlight of the first set as everyone in the bar was bopping up and down, not just in front of the stage but all over wherever there was space to stand. John Hefferman sang this Bob Weir classic with excellent precision, “There's a band out on the highway. They're high-steppin' into town. They're a rainbow full of sound. It's fireworks, calliopes and clowns. Everybody's dancing. Come on, children. Come on, children, Come on clap your hands. Sun went down in honey. Moon came up in wine. Stars were spinnin' dizzy, Lord, the band kept us so busy. We forgot about the time.”

The Dead Guise continued to tear up the first set with a Brent Mydland classic “Hey Pockey Way,” the same song Live Dead had closed with at Ashkenaz just a few weeks ago. At the time I had thought “Hey Pockey Way,” was a pretty rare cut, but it must have been I just hadn’t heard it much, because speaking with fellow fans of The Dead Guise at The Starry Plough, apparently “Hey Pockey Way,” has been played quite frequently in the past by The Grateful Dead. The next song I must confess I had never heard either titled, “Man Smart, Woman Smarter,” which I was told later by Younger “was a calypso tune written by Harry Belafonte, that The Grateful Dead used to cover, and chicks really dig for some reason.” The first set closer was the Buddy Holly cover of “Not Fade Away,” which The Grateful Dead mastered thanks to Bob Weir’s incredible live energy he possesses. The song originally appeared on The Grateful Dead 1971 self-titled live album, which is now commonly referred to by Dead Heads as Skull and Roses.

The second set opened with a heart throbbing version of “Shakedown Street,” which had the whole crowd chanting, “Nothing shakin’ on Shakedown Street used to be the heart of town. Don’t tell me this town aint got no heart, you just gotta poke around.”

The Dead Guise followed “Shakedown Street,” with one of the most famous Grateful Dead multi-song intertwined jams “Help On The Way,” into “Slipknot,” into “Franklins Tower.” It was an incredible, three-song jam culminating with “Franklins,” which really blew the whole crowd away. It was spectacular to see so many classic cuts off Blues For Allah in one night. The crowd’s excitement remained immense as The Dead Guise launched into “Dancing In The Streets,” which has always been a live favorite of mine, to hear and also of course you can never go wrong hearing it off Terrapin Station. One thing I do believe is it would have been incredible if The Dead Guise had hired somebody for the night to sing Donna Jean Godchaux’s parts in both “Dancing In The Streets,” and “The Music Never Stops,” because Donna plays such a vital role in making those songs sound great with her voice. On the other hand I have met a large number of Dead Heads who do not like Donna Jean Godchaux’s contributions with to The Grateful Dead and were happy once she was gone, so maybe The Dead Guise are right not to hire a female for those songs.

While the highlight of the first set may have been “The Music Never Stopped,” there is no doubt that the peek of the second and really of the whole show combined was when The Dead Guise played “Might As Well,” a Jerry Garcia solo song off his third record, released in the 1970s titled Reflections. The whole crowd danced and sang along at the top of their lungs, just as if they were partying up with The Grateful Dead when they were in the actual caboose traveling across Canada with The Band and Janis Joplin on the Festival Express Tour of 1970. One of the best Jerry Garcia songs ever “The Wheel” was played next. Right on the same lines as “Too Lay Me Down,” “Wheel is a very gripping song with deep emotional lyrics about the perils of life and death. “Wheel is spinning but you can’t slow down. “The wheel is turning and you can't slow down. You can't let go and you can't hold on. You can't go back and you can't stand still. If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.” The Dead Guise allowed the crowd to re-live another Terrapin Station classic cut when they played “Estimated Prophet,” another of the many Bob Weir classics that were scattered around the two set show during the course of the night. The crowd loved “Eyes Of The World,” which has become possibly the biggest live Dead song to hear over the years. There has not been a Dead cover band show I have been to thus far, other than The Dead Guise’s two acoustic sets I have seen, that have not played “Eyes Of The World,” in their set.

The Dead Guise weren’t done busting out some of the greatest Grateful Dead tunes ever to be heard live as they continued on a tirade playing two old 1960s psychedelic era classics, “Morning Dew,” and “Turn On Your Lovelight.” By now it was well past midnight and people were going all out celebrating the beginning of July 4th, Independence Day. Watching all the Dead Heads dance to Turn On Your Lovelight,” was entrancing as it looked like they were really connecting to the 1960s Dead sound as well.

“Turn On Your Lovelight,” was the second Pigpen song The Dead Guise had covered that night, as they had played “Easy Wind,” earlier in the first set. While I have always been a bigger fan of “Easy Wind,” it is obvious to me the crowd was much more into “Turn On Your Lovelight,” which remains one of the best songs off Live Dead, the first Grateful Dead live recording ever to be released on Warner Brothers back in 1969.

As The Dead Guise were about to depart the stage the crowd requested one more. “Well happy Fourth of July!” exclaimed Ken Younger, “We’re going to play you a pretty fitting red, white, and blue song to end the night.” With that The Dead Guise played “U.S. Blues,” the only song they played off the Mars Hotel album the whole night. It was a fantastic set closer to a wonderful night of The Dead Guise’s music. As the Dead Guise’s myspace page states, “The heart of the Grateful Dead is the incredible amount of energy that is exchanged between the band and the audience at a live show... And that's the inspiration of the Dead Guise--to try their best to recreate that energy and share it with audiences who crave it...” This perfectly describes The Dead Guise and what they have done with their music, which is a beautiful thing. Lets hope this band continues to play many more shows to come in the Bay Area.

The Dead Guise Setlist at The Starry Plough 7/3/09

Hell In A Bucket

Bertha

New Minglewood Blues

Easy Wind

Sugaree

The Music Never Stopped

Hey Pocket Way

Man Smart, Woman Smarter

Not Fade Away 

Set 2

Shakedown Street

Help On The Way

Slipknot

Franklin’s Tower

Dancing In The Street

Might As Well

Wheel

Estimated Prophet

Eyes Of The World

Morning Dew

Turn On Your Lovelight 

Encore

U.S. Blues

It was another packed night at The Starry Plough and Live Dead defied all odds by playing three sets in a row, opening with an acoustic and then following with two electric sets. It felt like you really were at a Dead show as these guys didn’t give a hoot about time, they were just there to play music and have a fabulous time with their fans, which is of course what being a Dead Head is all about.

The members of Live Dead include lead guitarist and vocalist Steve Fundy, rhythm guitarist/lead guitarist and vocalist Shep Silver, bassist Chuck Stone, drummer Paul Scannell and keyboardist James Miller. In past shows at The Plough and Ashkenaz I have been witness to Live Dead being some of the best players to interpret Grateful Dead songs. but I had never seen them, put on an acoustic set before so it was exciting to be seeing a different side to their playing.

Live Dead opened their set with “Deep Elem Blues,” which Fundy sang to get things started. “Deep Elem Blues,” is a song that was first performed by The Grateful Dead on April 19, 1970 at The Family Dog at The Great Highway in San Francisco. After the song was performed less than a month later at Alfred University, New York, it completely disappeared from The Grateful Dead’s set-lists for over a decade, before reappearing in late 1980. It was on October 8, 1980, with new keyboardist Brent Mydland on board, that The Grateful Dead opened an acoustic set with “Deep Elem Blues,” at The Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. They also played a similar acoustic show at Radio City Music Hall later that month on October 25, which featured “Deep Elem Blues,” also as the opener. These two shows along with another one at The Warfield were recorded and eventually appeared as The Grateful Dead double acoustic live album Reckoning.

You could compare Live Dead’s first set with that of both periods in Grateful Dead history--1970 or 1980-- as they covered not only “Deep Elem Blues,” but several other Dead Head acoustic standards that go along with it, including the Weir-sung countryish “The Race Is On,” “On The Road Again,” and “Jack-A-Roe,” all of which are on Reckoning. To be completely precise Live Dead even closed the first set with “Ripple,” the American Beauty classic, with which The Dead would always close their acoustic sets. It was n inspiring first set overall with the highlights being a stellar version of “Dire Wolf,” sang by Fundy in a perfect Jerry Garcia mellifluous pitch, “When I awoke the dire wolf six-hundred pounds of sin, was laying at my window all I said was come on in. Don’t murder me. I beg of you don’t murder me. Please don’t murder me.” Shep Silver also did an incredible job singing “Dark Hollow,” just like Bob Weir in perfect pitch.

“I’d rather be in some dark hollow where the sun don’t ever shine. Then to be home alone knowing that you’re gone would cause me to lose my mind. So blow your whistle freight train. Take me on far on down the track. I’m going away, I’m leaving today. I’m going but I aint comin’ back.”

There was also a touching moment when Fundy dedicated “Friend Of The Devil,” in memory of the recent passing of John Dawson, one of the founding members of The New Riders of The Purple Sage who played on American Beauty and also played with Garcia on numerous occasions. I had not yet heard that Dawson had passed away, and so it was a sad moment, but I was glad to be amongst fellow Dead Heads who could enjoy a classic tune and remember those who are not with us anymore.

Set II kicked off with an electric boom with “Mississippi Half Step,” as the crowd got out of their bar seats and started to dance in great numbers. More people had shown up between sets and The Plough was tightly packed, as the crowd sang in unison with Live Dead’s Fundy, Silver and Miller, “Farewell to you old southern skies, I’m on my way well on my way…. Across the Rio Grandio, across the lazy river.” The next song was “Mr. Charlie,” a song that was on the live Europe 72 album and was sung by the original Dead keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. After the country-rocking “Me and My Uncle,” James Miller put on a spectacular performance by playing Brent Mydland’s “Never Trust A Woman.” while he banged his keys while simultaneously stomping from one foot to another like a leap frog, keeping perfect precision. Miller’s keys were not the only thing that sounded outstanding; his voice--which he rarely took the leadin that night--sounded just like Mydland’s rough edge as he sang, “Going to see some good times, going to get to ring that bell. Going to see, some good, good times, to make up for me not feeling well. I must be due some great times because right now I feel like hell.” Miller broke the song down at the end and blurted out just as Mydland does in the “Dozin At The Knick” set, “Come tomorrow I’m going to get my pay and I’m going to leave this town. Come tomorrow I’ll get my pay, I’ll get my pay and I’m going to leave this motherfucking town."

The rest of the second set was highlighted by Live Dead composing another Europe 72 classic “Tennessee Jed,” which really revved the crowd up, along with the Bob Weir tunes Silver and Fundy switched up on including “It’s All Over Now” and the timeless “Cassidy.” During “Cassidy” Fundy showcased some of his best lead guitar of the night, soloing away at a frenetic pace, much faster than anything Jerry would have played, but it sounded amazing and added to the improvisational magic Dead tunes take on live.

The second set culminated in two live Grateful Dead standards “Cumberland Blues” into “Viola Lee Blues, songs The Dead themselves played on their recent Spring 2009 tour across the U.S.

Live Dead began their third and final set with “The Music Never Stopped,” which always gets the crowd dancing and clapping at the Plough. I was in the middle of the crowd near the front, which was starting a train of people grabbing onto each others shoulders and dancing. It was now past midnight but that didn’t matter as lots more music was to be played and the hours meant nothing just the way they hadn’t mattered when The Grateful Dead played back in the Acid Tests in the 1960s and The Fillmore and Winterland in the 1970s. The fans, including myself fall into trance when we attend these Live Dead shows as the music completely blows you away it is so powerful. It was great to hear so many Bob Weir tunes out of Live Dead, not to take away from Jerry Garcia who will always stand as one of the greatest guitarist and singers ever as well the leader of the band. Still I feel Bobby never gets enough credit and a lot of Dead fans I have met haven’t really recognized some of the songs he sings as much as the Jerry ones. So I had a big smile on my face when “Playing In The Band” followed “The Music Never Stopped.”

Live Dead did a great version of “Uncle John’s Band,” which always sounds spectacular live especially when Silver, Fundy and Miller all sang together,  “God damn well I declare have you seen the like. Their walls are built of cannonballs, their motto is don't tread on me. Come hear Uncle John's Band by the riverside. Got some things to talk about here beside the rising tide. The lyrics in “Uncle John’s Band are deeper and more reflective than almost anything the poet and lyricist for The Grateful Dead Robert Hunter ever wrote besides maybe “Box Of Rain”: “It's the same story the crow told me. It's the only one he know-like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go. Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait. Wo-oah, what I want to know, where does the time go?”

I didn’t recognize the next song at first because it was an improv jam Live Dead did leading into “Dark Star.” Live Dead played “Dark Star,” then went into “New Speedway Boogie.” Paul Scannell did a rocking “Drums,” into psychedelic “Space,” leading Live Dead back into “Dark Star,” culminating into a final minute or two of a reverb of “Playing In The Band.”

The encore of the night was “China Cat Sunflower,” into “I Know You Rider,” as Live Dead made sure to pack in two more songs Dead Heads love to see performed. The highlight of the entire night came when the crowd chanted “I wish I was the headlight on a north bound train,” at the top of their lungs. It was a superb night and Live Dead proved to everyone at the Plough that night how incredible they are and why fans should travel the two and a half hours to see them in Tahoe and Truckee this upcoming weekend.  

For more information on Live Dead check them out on myspace http://www.myspace.com/livedeadband

SETLIST 7/25/09

SET 1 ACOUSTIC

Deep Elem Blues

The Race Is On

Dire Wolf

Dark Hollow

Friend Of The Devil

On The Road Again

Jack-A-Roe

Ripple

SET II

Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodello

Mr. Charlie

Me And My Uncle

Never Trust A Woman

Never Trust A Woman

It’s All Over Now

Tennessee Jed

Cassidy

Cumberland Blues

Viola Lee Blues

SET III

The Music Never Stopped

Playing In The Band

Uncle John’s Band

Dark Star I

New Speedway Boogie

Drums

Space

Dark Star II

Playing In The Band II

ENCORE

China Cat Sunflower

I Know You Rider

This article is dedicated to Jerry Garcia who was born on August 1 1942-August 9 1995. Jerry is the reason we will never forget, and the music will never stop for those of us who still listen. 

By far the most anticipated concert of the summer at Shoreline Amphitheater, the gigantic outdoor venue in Mountain View, California, was Phish on August 5. I had been growing out my lengthy beard and counting down the days for most of July it seemed. Finally, on August 5th, I witnessed guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio, bassist/vocalist Mike Gordon, piano/organ/keyboardist/vocalist Page McConnell, and drummer Jonathan Fishman take center stage at Shoreline. I was with a few friends from San Francisco and we set up a few blankets on the right side of the lawn. On the right side, the view of the stage is far better than on the left side of Shoreline because of the way the Amphitheater is built.

The parking lot scene at the Phish show was not quieter than The Dead back in May but it was a similar crowd of hippies buying veggie tostadas with beans and hot sauce or cheese quesadillas. Security guards lurked the premises in packs of ten or more, yelling at any fan who had an open bottle or can of beer, although they didn’t seem to mind if the beer was in a plastic cup. They also paid no heed to the countless amount of people smoking joints in the open.

At the concert, I noticed a large array of fans, young people around my age in their early 20s who probably hadn’t even seen Phish before the second hiatus and were now just beginning to follow them around, (a few were talking about flying up to the next show at The Gorge) It was also interesting to see Dead Heads at the show who were comparing Phish to The Dead in the bathroom line and commenting on how these guys were another great jam band to see. There were also older families bringing their children who couldn’t have been more than ten to the show, and of course, there were the usual Phish heads with long dreads and beards, smoking big joints, and dancing around in circles on the steep hill making up the lawn.

Phish opened their set with “Golgi Apparatus,” a song that dates way back to their debut album Junta and features the lyrics “I saw you with a ticket stub in your hand.” “Golgi” got everybody on their feet and cheering even on the lawn where people had the opportunity to lie down on comfortable blankets and zone out to the music, they rather would stand and see these four incredible musicians perform. I could barely even make out the faces of the band members even with my better positioning on the right but once they turned the TV screen on after sunset I felt a little more connected to what was going on.

Other highlights in the first set included fan favorites “Chalk Dust Torture” which I had originally heard off Phish’s best double live album to date, A Live One. Trey Anastasio got the whole crowd singing along with him on the chorus where he chants “Torture of chalkdust collects on my tongue. Thoughts follow my admission as I dance in the sun. Everything comes slowly undone. Can l I live long enough?” Trey also played his most blistering solo of the first set during “Chalkdust Torture,” making the whole crowd go nuts, as he kept getting the notes to go higher and higher, building to a crescendo that was so powerful it is almost indescribable. Trey just took off on that guitar barely moving a muscle it seemed. Unlike Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton in the old days with Cream, Trey is not a very show-boaty guitarist, although he is very clearly influenced by the likes of Hendrix along with Jerry Garcia, the latter of which he may get the poise of not moving much onstage. Almost nobody these days can play the electric guitar like Trey Anastasio, especially contemporary musicians who are in his age range. You can talk Jimi Page, Santana and Robbie Krieger those guys are all great but way past their prime as musicians! The only guitarists who even come close to being as good as he is right now is Warren Haynes, but even Haynes can’t hit those high notes like Trey.

The closer of the first set was also off Junta “David Bowie,” and is another fan favorite that dates back to when Phish was just a small college band out of Burlington, Vermont trying to build what would become the biggest cult following of any band on the road in the U.S.A. other than The Grateful Dead. “David Bowie,” featured a whole new improvisational section with guitar and Page’s organ at the end of it that the fans really dug and were raving about as I made my way to the bathroom before the second set began.

Set II really took off when Phish played one of their best songs they ever recorded off the timeless Hoist “Down With Disease.” Mike Gordon played a fantastic opening bass line that gets the song geared up which was followed by Trey’s opening lines, “Down with disease three weeks in my bed trying to stop the demons that keep dancing in my head. Down with disease and I’m up before the dawn, one thousand little children outside dancing on my lawn. Followed by an incredible chorus, “Waiting for the time when I can finally say this has all been wonderful and now I’m on my way. When I think it’s time to leave it all behind try to find my way but there is nothing I can say to make it stop.” The crowd sang along with Anastasio at a very loud range so the whole Shoreline Amphitheater echoed with voices. It was just as powerful if not better than “Chalkdust Torture” in the first set, as it is possibly the best song off Hoist, which is one of Phish’s stronger studio efforts that also includes the classic songs “Julias,” “Axilla,” and “If I Could.” This middle part of the second set was by far the best part of the show as Phish followed “Down With Disease,” with “Limb By Limb,” a song that begins with the lines “The shoulder that I leaned on was carved out of stone but when I’m done freezing I want to be alone.” It then picks up steam as one of Phish’s prettier songs that originally was released off another landmark Phish album The Story Of The Ghost. “Limb By Limb” has since become a live favorite and Phish Heads seemed extremely pleased that the band had chosen to include it in their set as they sang along with Trey, “I come unglued when I’m in midair and land to reform limb by limb.” Phish were in the mood for crowd-pleasing at this point as they launched into a cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Oh Sweet Nothin” which they originally covered at the Halloween show in Las Vegas in the year 1998. The crowd was so pleased to hear a good cover by The Velvet Underground and this would have been a better-suited tune to close the show rather than the one Phish would pick later in the night as their encore!

The highlight of the second set was when Phish played “Maze,” the best song off another superb record they recorded in the 1990's Rift. The song opens with Trey singing, “The overhead view is of me in the maze and you’ll see what I’m hunting a few steps away. But I take a wrong turn and I’m on the wrong path and the people all watching enjoying a good laugh. Embarrassment failure I try to reverse the cross of my train had already traversed. Subduing the trauma engulfing my dream. Invaded through what was an unguided scene. The torrent of helplessness swept me away, to the cabin of shade and the hall of dismay. Inside me a voice is repeating the phrase you’ve lost it you’ll never get out of this maze.” This incredible passage of poetic lyricism by Anastasio is followed by his short guitar solo then into a short jam. “Maze” then goes into an incredible piano solo by Page McConnell into the organ. Anastasio then takes back over in guitar solo overdrive making “Maze” possibly the best Phish song in their entire catalog. Again just like in “Chalkdust Torture,” Anastasio is hitting these incredible high notes that no (and I repeat no guitarist today) can come close to hitting. It is breathtaking, it will make the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up and your spine will even twinge in disbelief when you witness what Trey Anastasio can do with that electric guitar in his hand. The song kind of slows down in the end as the band members Anastasio, Gordon and McConnell all chant together in unison “you’ll never get out of this maze” over and over as McConnell hits a final few notes on the keys and the song ends.

The rest of the set wasn’t too memorable in comparison to what had already been played as Phish could not even come close to recapturing the accolades of “Down With Disease,” or “Maze,” even with fan favorites such as “Weekapaug Groove,” there was something lacking in the energy I had seen in the earlier part of the night. I also was a bit frustrated with Phish’s move to cover Jimi Hendrix’s “Bold As Love” from as the final encore of the night. Not to take away from Page McConnell, as he did an alright job singing it and some of the crowd seemed to be into it but I think it would have been nicer to see something a Phish fan can really relate to like “You Enjoy Myself,” or even something as random as “Julius.” It’s just that I feel Jimi Hendrix is one of the ultimate musical gods and nobody can cover a song by him because his music only really sounded good when he played it and it’s not like Bob Dylan where bands like The Byrds, Fairport Convention and even Hendrix himself had the power to make his songs sound better than the originals.  In the case of Hendrix I have only heard two bands that could actually pull off a decent cover; Derek and the Dominoes and of course Stevie Ray Vaughn who both ripped up the same song "Little Wing."

Overall though it was a great set and I am glad I got to see Phish in the perfect setting at the Shoreline Amphitheater. I was very jealous of the folks I met at the Phish show who said they were going for the final tour stop at the Gorge, but I do plan on seeing them in the desert when they come to California for one final time this year to play  a three day show. Ticket prices are around $300 from what I have heard, so it might be worth just driving down there the day of the show and scalping tickets for a cheaper price from some kind Phish head which should not be hard at all. 

Phish Setlist 8/5/09 Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, CA:

Set I

Golgi Apparatus

Halley's Comet

Chalk Dust Torture,

The Divided Sky

When the Circus Comes

Time Turns Elastic

Ya Mar

Stealing Time From The Faulty Plan

Suzy Greenberg

David Bowie 

Set II

Backwards Down the Number Line

Down With Disease

Limb By Limb

Oh Sweet Nothin

Cities

Maze

Mike's Song

Simple

Weekapaug Groove 

Encore

Let Me Lie,

Bold As Love

Day One of August 2009 Outside Lands Festival held in San Francisco in the Golden Gate Park Polo Fields kicked off the unparalleled music weekend with Pearl Jam headlining the bill. Pearl Jam is the only remaining Seattle grunge band from a scene so powerful in Washington State in the early 1990s that it swept across the entire nation and took over popular music. It even seemed like most of the fans on Day One of Outside Lands had come just to see Pearl Jam, Incubus or Tom Jones, and that the rest of the day nobody cared much about the other bands. A lot of the folks whom I met at the Festival were out-of-towners or travelers from Austria and Ireland. I must have met three different groups of people from Austria and they were all backpackers.

The Festival began at noon on August 28th, but I didn’t get there until 2:00 because of the poor public transportation to Golden Gate Park. The BART from Berkeley, combined with the bus ride and then the walk to the polo field, took well over two hours. By the time I made it to Outside Lands I was already exhausted. I bought a Samosa and watched Zap Mama by the side entrance to the Twin Peeks Stage. Zap Mama were a group of female Africopean musicians who sounded a lot like Sly & The Family Stone. They produced great music to get up and dance to and sing Africopean vocalist and songwriter Marie Daulne sang much of the set in French.

The next band I saw--Silversun Pickups on the main stage--was horrible! They represent everything in popular music that I detest today, and make me long for the old days of good old rock n’ roll. I stayed for one or two songs then departed with my Irish friends for the Linsley Meadow Sutro Stage to see The Nationals. The polo field grass was totally uneven, gouged with horse-hoof prints so that walking over to the National set with tired legs gave the sensation that with each step you were walking off the face of the earth. My Irish friend ended up collapsing five minutes into The National set and had to be carted off, and I do blame the ground partially for causing that. you gotta be kidding! The problem was internal not external!

The National’s set was great they sounded like a cross between the late Ian Curtis’s band Joy Division and the latter 1980s Depeche Mode. It was that industrial rock sound that inspired groups like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, except that The Nationals were not nearly as dark as those two bands.

Next I met some local folks from San Francisco: Ronni, Angie and Liz. We headed back to the main stage to catch Incubus’s set, which was a bit. They only played one of their older songs “Wish You Were Here,” from Morning View and everything else was from their newer, less-powerful albums A Crow Left On The Murder and Light Grenades. It was exciting to see one of my past favorite bands but sad to discover how much they have changed since their peak days I used to see them at places like The Patriot Center and Nissan Pavillion in Virginia. At least the festival crowd was really cool on Day One, for Day Two would stun me with what seemed to be a much rowdier and less down to earth bunch.

My new friends and I left Incubus after the final song and rushed back to the Lindley Meadow Sutro stage to see Tom Jones. It was my first time seeing Tom Jones play, and only this year, when I saw a video of him playing as part of the British Invasion, did I learn he was British. I always thought he was from Las Vegas because of all the times he performed there! It was funny walking around the crowd and seeing a few people with Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas t-shirts on and knowing they were referencing it to Jones’s magnificent song “She’s A Lady” on the Soundtrack. Jones must have seen those t-shirts also, as he not only performed “She’s A Lady,” using his colorful voice to its fullest advantage but also whipping out an immaculate cover of Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me Not To Go.” Tom’s audience was not huge, as fans had already begun to leave in the middle of his set to get good positioning for Pearl Jam, the night’s closing set on the Polo Field’s main stage. I stuck around until Tom Jones played “It’s Not Unusual To Be Loved,” and then headed off to get as close as possible to the stage for Pearl Jam.

By the time I got to Pearl Jam the house was packed, and as I cut in front of people, their legs lifted out to trip me because they didn’t want me cutting off their view. I flashed my media badge and a few of them flashed media badges back. I wasn’t alone in this sea of people that were kind of aggressive, in contrast to other Pearl Jam concerts I had been to in the past. This all made sense considering this was Pearl Jam at a Festival and not Pearl Jam headlining a bill out at Merriweather Post Pavilion. When Pearl Jam hit the stage and Eddie Vedder came out wearing his classic flannel shirt and sporting that brown beard he has of late, the crowd went wild. Pearl Jam launched into “Why Go” off their debut alum Ten, which sold more than most of their other albums combined. Still that fact means little to most diehard Pearl Jam fans, as the band has built a fabulous cult following over the years that is similar to that of Phish and The Grateful Dead, and to the extent that the band releases all its live shows online for Ten club members.

“Why Go” was an incredible opener and featured a superb solo by guitarist Mike McCready in the middle. McCready is virtually a Jimi Hendrix prodigy hardly anybody around the music scene in the Bay Area seems to know about…or maybe they have just forgotten. Eddie Vedder’s voice sounded incredibly strained during “Why Go,” as he screamed the lyrics “Why go home, what has gotten me?” He apologized to the crowd after the song and told them he was fighting a bad case of laryngitis saying “The Canadian tour really kicked me in the ass!”

I was still impressed by how Eddie gave it his all. Mike McCready and Stone Gossard proved that they still had plenty of guitar chops as they played together on the next song “Animal,” another hit that dates all the way back to their second album V.S. and proves that Pearl Jam knows just how to get a crowd going hard to this day. The band hit one of their high peaks in the first set when they launched into “Cordoroy”; the sun was still setting as Eddie Vedder sang some of the most significant lyrics he ever wrote, “The waiting drove me mad. You're finally here and I'm a mess. I take your entrance back, can't let you roam inside my head. I don't want to take what you can give. I would rather starve than eat your bread. I would rather run but I can't walk. Guess I'll lie alone just like before.” There was one point in the song where Eddie changed the lyrics, singing “I’m already fucking dead” instead of “I’m already cut up and half-dead,” which did not sit well with me as already he wasn’t performing up to his usual standard, the power of which I had witnessed at previous Pearl Jam shows.

Pearl Jam next went into “Low Light” off Yield, one of the top songs off the record. The lines perfectly fit the still purple glow of the setting sun in Golden Gate Park: “Clouds roll by. Reeling is what they say. Or is it just my way? Wind blows by, low light.” It was one great to see them play “Low Light” for the first time in my life, as I remember buying Yield the year it came out in 1998; it was my second Pearl Jam album after V.S. The band’s next song “The Fixer” from their upcoming album didn’t sound nearly as creative as anything up to Riot Act, unfortunately. I was disenchanted with the new kind of voice Eddie Vedder was putting on—his usual voice has made him one of the most talented musicians out there. I was very happy, though, when Pearl Jam launched into “In My Tree,” one of my favorite songs on possibly their most creatively diverse album No Code. No Code was largely ignored despite debuting at number one when it was first released. Many of the songs were considered too garage-rock sounding for the band, but overall it is just more Neil Young inspired, which is just another form of powerful grunge.

Pearl Jam followed “In My Tree” with what Eddie Vedder used to refer to as “the longest song in the Pearl Jam catalog.” Tonight though he told the crowd he had written the song in California just a little north of San Francisco in a small town, but he did not specify which. The song, of course, is the timeless “Elderly Women Behind The Counter In A Small Town,” one of the slower songs on Side B of V.S. that will forever bring old-school Pearl Jam fans back to a better time and place for music called the 90s. The song itself is extremely sad with Eddie singing “I seem to recognize. Haunting familiar yet I can’t seem to place it. Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name. Lifetimes a catching up with me. All these changes taking place. I wish I’d seen the place but no one has ever taken me. Hearts and thoughts they fade away.” The music behind Vedder’s lyrics were a beautiful folk/country sound with the crowd shouting every lyric back a little extra louder now that they realized Eddie had written the song in California. The saddest part of the song is when Eddie sings, “I changed by not changing at all. Small town predicts my fate perhaps that’s what no one wants to see. I just want to scream hello. By god it’s been so long never dreamed you’d return. But here you are and there I am, hearts and thoughts they fade away.”

The Pearl Jam’s next song dove into the aggressive sounds of “Even Flow,” the second song off Ten that was a huge single and helped cement them as one of the top bands on the charts in the early 90s. I liked the way Pearl Jam played “Even Flow” this time more than in the past. Maybe it was because Eddie’s voice was so strained that they didn’t try to take it as heavy, but it was less harsh and a little more laid back. Everybody enjoyed Mike McCready’s crazy Hendrix-like guitar solo behind his back, and they jumped up and down, pumping their fists in joy. Following another boring song “Got Some” from the upcoming album, Pearl Jam launched into something very good they have done in recent years minus legendary producer Brenden O’ Brian, who had helped guide the band through recording what will forever be remembered as some of the greatest albums of the 1990s. The song “I Am Mine” signifies everything the current Eddie Vedder is all about lyric-wise:

The selfish, they're all standing in line. Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time. Me, I figure as each breath goes by. I only own my mind. The North is to South what the clock is to time. There's east and there's west and there's everywhere life. I know I was born and I know that I'll die. The in-between is mine. I am mine. And the feeling, it gets left behind. All the innocence lost at one time. Significant, behind the eyes. There's no need to hide. We're safe tonight.

To my delight, Pearl Jam followed this song with two more classics from Yield, “Given To Fly,” and “MFC.” “Given To Fly” was the kind of song that put Pearl Jam back on the rock n’ roll map after they had been gone for a few years and refusing to tour, thanks to their lawsuit with Ticketmaster. The surrealistic song is about a man being swept up by a wave and having the gift of being able to fly. It has often being compared to by critics as sounding too much like Led Zeppelin’s “Going To California,” although in my view it is much heavier thus is not at al the same. “MFC” is a good song reminiscent of the earlier hit “Rearview Mirror.” It’s about driving and feeling that freedom you get when you’re out there exploring different towns and cities around this beautiful country.

PJ next dove into “Down,” a rarity from their Lost Dogs B side record released the year after Riot Act came out in 2004. The song had a good beat to it, but was noticeably more sloppy than many of the other songs in the first set; it doesn’t compare in sound to any of the timeless Pearl Jam albums of the 90s and early 2000s, which is exactly why Pearl Jam never released it on any of them. Next, Pearl Jam played not only the best song of the first set but of the entire show: “Black.” I remember the first time I really listened closely to “Black.” It was on a drive to the Grand Canyon with my Dad. I was in middle school at the time, and the song changed my life through the sheer power of the music and Eddie’s lyrics. Despite Eddie’s stretched voice at this show--making it one of the weaker Pearl Jam concerts I have attended in recent history--the band was still able to capture the old magic they have always possessed in their performance of “Black” at the Outside Lands Festival. It was as if Vedder and the rest of Pearl Jam were reaching out to the crowd of San Francisco to show them what they still had left; and judging by the way “Black” sounded, this band has the potential to be the 21st-century version of what the Rolling Stones were to rock n’ roll in the 20th, and just never burn out no matter what happens. Eddie’s lyrics were unbelievably powerful, “Ooh, and all I taught her was everything. Ooh, I know she gave me all that she wore. And now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds of what was everything. Oh, the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything.”

This segment was followed by more brilliant poetry Vedder wrote as a young man that often made him a riddle in the public eye or press, but to the rock n’ roll listening mainstream, his words were like the ultimate messiah: “I take a walk outside. I'm surrounded by some kids at play. I can feel their laughter, so why do I sear? Oh, and twisted thoughts that spin round my head, I'm spinning, oh, I'm spinning. How quick the sun can drop away.”

The solo Mike McCready played followed by the “Doo-doo-do Do-doo-doc” chanting of the crowd in the last few minutes of the song were spectacularly breathtaking. My heart actually skipped beats as I watched in awe a band transform to a whole new peak they had not reached before this moment.

The last three songs of the first set “Save You,” from Riot Act, “Do The Evolution” from Yield, and “Go” from V.S., were all prime examples of Pearl Jam showing off their heavier grunge side that fans may say they have forgotten about in recent years but have no idea what they are talking about. Pearl Jam ripped through “Do The Evolution” straight to the core as Stone Gossard and Mike McCready traded off guitar solos, showing why they are one of the best guitar combinations in rock n’ roll. I only wished Pearl Jam had played “Habbit” off No Code. I dreamt they would play it the night before the show, but have have not seen it performed since Merriweather, September 2000, on the Binaural Tour.

Pearl Jam left the stage for a quick break then came back on for the first set of the encores. Playing the “Wasted Reprise” from their latest 2006 self-titled album, where it is played with a slow intro and Vedder mutters “I faced it a life wasted I’m never going back again. I erased it a life wasted I’m never going back again.” This led into their big single off Vitalogy “Better Man,” which the whole crowd sang the first verse to because Eddie instructed them to, as his voice was so terribly hoarse. He began singing in the second verse, “Talking to herself there’s no one else who needs to know she tells herself. Memories back when she was smooth and surely waiting for the world to come along. Swear she do it now she swears he’s gone.”

Pearl Jam next went into “Daughter,” which sounded good but a bit rushed compared to other times I’ve seen the band play live; also they were playing up against the park’s 10:00 p.m. curfew. There was no improv leading into “Another Brick In The Wall” by Pink Floyd, but a short break into “W.M.A,” which I wished they had played in entirety.

I enjoyed the rest of the encore covers in the first half of the encores from The Who’s “Can You See The Real Me?” off their classic Quadrophenia (that Vedder has constantly cited as his favorite Who record), to a stunningly powerful version of Victoria Williams “Crazy Mary.” All this led into another timeless Ten epic that Pearl Jam had chosen to hold back on all night, “Alive.” As with the other Ten songs they played that night the band proved why they are so timeless and deserved being the headliners on the Outside Lands bill. None of us should care if Pearl Jam produces nothing this decade of the same caliber as “Alive,” For they still create plenty of great music--it’s just that when you’re talking “Alive,” you’re talking about one of the best cuts ever recorded in music history! The lyrics and the music all flow perfectly together, which is hard to believe when you hear the story of how the song was written. Supposedly Vedder heard the tapes sent to him by Pearl Jam when he was surfing down in San Diego and working as a gas station attendant. He wrote the lyrics on the spot, recorded them over the music, sent the tape back to Seattle, and the rest is history. The song tells the dark truth about Vedder’s sometimes mysterious life. He never truly knew his real father and believed his stepfather to be his real father until he was a teenager was and told the truth by his mother. The chorus had the whole crowd chanting with Vedder in harmony, “Oohooh I ohoh I’m still alive!” The solo at the end of “Alive” by Mike McCready was his best of the night, so powerfully moving it made the hair on your back stand straight up.

The final two encores of the night were Neil Young covers, “Throw All Your Hatred Down” and “Keep On Rocking In The Free World,” the latter of which was more of a Pearl Jam standard to cover, as part of their encore set, along with something like “Yellow Ledbetter” or “Indifference” There was a slightly different feel at this Pearl Jam show than at the shows I attended in the past. I’m still wondering if the difference was good or bad; probably it’s best not to compare but take each show as an individual event. More covers were in the mix and the band seemed to like busting them out, which may have hurt hardcore fans who actually want to see the band perform their own music because it means so much to each and every one of us. All in all, it was a solid performance, one that will stick in my mind for years to come just like all their shows in the past.

Anybody hoping for last year’s incredible lineup that featured Tom Petty and Steve Winwood playing on the same day and also sharing the stage for a few tunes was bound to be disappointed with this year’s lineup. Day 1 of the Outside Lands seemed a little small for a festival, but that may have been because there were so many stages with up to five bands performing at once, sometimes in different areas of Golden Gate Park. Then again when Pearl Jam began its final set of the night. the whole Polo Fields were flooding with fans and it was tough to navigate anywhere close to the stage.

Day 2 of the three-day festival was different, as there were a lot more people throughout the whole day, probably because it was Saturday, enhanced by the presence of Dave Matthews Band, who attracts a ton of yuppie stockbroker-types from all over the region. Nevertheless, when I bumped into my buddy Elliot halfway through the day, he also commented on how Outside Lands did not at all feel like your normal festival crowd, and that San Francisco was truly lacking something with this festival. Although I agreed with him, I wondered if it was truly San Francisco’s fault. The lineup could have been better, but are there really that many talented great bands left ready to play the festival circuit? There are a few I can think of who might have been on the bill: Kings Of Leon, Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Queens Of The Stone Age, and Phish (who headlined Bonnaroo 2009 this year). The problem is most of those bands I just mentioned would all want a headlining slot on the bill, and it’s impossible to make that many bands the headliner when you only have three days.

I got to Outside Lands Saturday in time to see Jason Mraz’s set at the Polo Fields (main stage), which made me fall asleep even in the hot sun. The music was extremely stale! Mraz was trying to mix horns with rock, folk, and possibly reggae, but it just came out sounding very boring to me and probably to others since almost everyone was sitting on blankets. After Mraz, I headed to the oyster tent to load up on some of the best raw oysters I have ever eaten, washed down with some delectable Champagne. The one thing I can’t complain about this festival was all the gourmet food they had to offer! Most festivals I grew up while living in D.C. served corn dogs as their specialty, but here in Frisco food capital, you had samosas, BBQ chicken, authentic soft-shell Mexican tacos, and swordfish. On the way back to the main stage I met up with Elliot, who convinced me to turn back towards Twin Peaks for TV On The Radio’s set. TV On The Radio was slightly more interesting then Mraz’s set but still not quite my taste or standards.

I next headed over to Lindsey Meadow Sutro and caught Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band. It was by far the most intimate set I witnessed of the day since the grounds were hardly populated, as most fans were either seeing the end of The Black Eyed Peas set or Deer Hunter.  Oberst--the leader of the successful band Bright Eyes-- has started a solo project with his musician friends from Nebraska, which he’s dubbed Mystic Valley. This band was nothing short of incredible surpassing the sounds of Bright Eyes! Mystic Valley is more “pure country folk” and less of the drunk, or hangover, whiny texture that used to make me get sick of listening to Bright Eyes before an album even finished. Of course, some Oberst fans would argue that the real pain and emotion Oberst captured in Bright Eyes was a rare achievement. Conor Oberst is a creative musician with a lot of potentials to lead his musical explorations into new territory. He could be the next Elliot Smith as he has amazing talent but also that same onstage agitation Smith had. You can perceive Oberst is that somewhat fragile person with deep inner thoughts and feelings but as the set wore on to its climax Oberst wasn’t afraid to run his mouth out to the crowd “That’s Jenny fucking Lewis from L.A.. Holly fucking shit she looks mighty sexy!” Oberst exclaimed as his gorgeous collaborator came onstage and performed the final two songs of the set with Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band. It reminded me a bit of how Johnny Cash would supposedly flaunt over June Carter before they were married on stage. Overall it was a great performance by Oberst and I hope to catch more of his shows in the future be it with The Mystic Valley Band or a return of Bright Eyes, or even another solo endeavor.

After Conor Oberst’s set was over I realized Dave Matthews Band had already begun on the main Polo Field so I hurried over there on the field’s uneven surface, where too many horses have played rough games over the years. On stage Dave was playing a lot of his newer material that I am not too familiar with so I wasn’t that upset I had missed the beginning. It was sad to see the band perform without their saxophone player LeRoi Moore, who died last year after he suffered serious injuries in an RV accident outside his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. Tim Reynolds had joined the band to play lead guitar on this particular night in Frisco.

Reynolds formerly played acoustic guitar with Matthews on the Live at Luther City College album released back in the late 90s. This was a far different Reynolds from then, as he now had long gray hair, large dark sunglasses, and a black leather jacket made him look like a true rock star. Reynolds’ solos permeated Matthews set throughout the night, just as they had when I saw him play with Matthews and Trey Anastasio from Phish, as part of Some Devil, Dave Mathews' solo album band back at Bonnaroo in 2004.

Early in the set Matthews focused on many of his newer tunes from the 2009 album Big Whiskey and the Gro Grux King, which is dedicated in memory of LeRoi Moore. The band then played one of my favorite tunes of theirs “Don’t Drink The Water” from their platinum-plus Grammy smash Before These Crowded Streets. The song starts out in a beautiful majestic jazz style, but with Dave’s deep, sincere lyrics it becomes clear it is far deeper than a lot of other tunes the band has recorded. “Don’t Drink the Water” is one of Dave’s angrier songs where he rasps in a savage tone, “I'll build heaven and call it home, 'cause, you're all dead now. And I’m gonna live with my justice. And I’m gonna live with my greedy need. I want to live with no mercy. And I’m gonna live with my frenzied feeding. And I live with my hatred. And I live with my jealousy. I want to live with the notion that I don't need anyone but me. Don't drink the water…There's blood in the water.” The song sounded so vicious yet it flowed so well and you could tell it really impacted the crowd that was witnessing it who cheered and whistled loudly when the song was over. Hearing “Don’t Drink The Water,” made me also want to hear Matthews play “Crush,” another classic cut off Before These Crowded Streets.

After the song, Matthews told the crowd. “You look beautiful this evening, San Francisco. What’s that scent you’re wearing? Smells like the weed!” The group also played “Tripping Billies” from their phenomenal second studio record Crash, which launched them into superstardom beyond their wildest dreams. Dave has made “Tripping Billies” a live standard in his sets and this night was no exception. The whole revved crowd sang along with him, “Tequila drinking oh our minds will wander to wondrous places. So why would you care to get out of this place? You and me, and all our friends, such a happy human race.” The song features a great drum beat by Carter Beauford, and also exceptional violin soloing by Boyd Tinsley. Beauford and Tinsley are both original members of the Dave Mathews Band along with bassist Stefan Lessard, who joined the band before the age of 20.

“Tripping Billies” continues with the famous lines Dave took straight out of the Bible, “Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Dave was in a crazy, hilarious mood on this particular night, and he made it a point to freak out the crowd with his antics. His strange southern accent was one thing that cracked everyone up, but it was also the way he seemed to flutter with his sentences and also sort of bark like a seal into the microphone in between songs. He also appeared to enjoy being odd at times and totally in his own Daveland. Unfortunately, Dave Matthews did complain about having slight laryngitis that night although it was far less obvious then the vocal troubles Eddie Vedder had suffered the night before.

It was incredible to hear the magnificent “Jimi Thing,” a song I had also heard the band perform in Seattle back in 2006 when they opened for The Rolling Stones at Quest Field. “Jimi Thing” moved the crowd beyond belief, as Dave sang in an extremely high voice:

“Lately I’ve been feeling low.” The song builds up slowly with a catchy acoustic guitar, then Dave begins singing the main verse into the mic, “The day is gone I’m on my back staring up at the ceiling. I take a drink, sit back and relax. Smoke my mind, make me feel better for a short time. What I want is what I’ve not got, and what I need is all around me. Reaching, searching never stop, And I’ll say…If you can keep me floating just for awhile ‘til I get to the end of this tunnel oh-ho, Julie. If you could keep me floating just for a while I’ll get back to you.”

“Jimi Thing” includes Boyd Tinsley’s fantastic violin in the background, but the most impressive sound coming out of “Jimi Thing” is the closing saxophone solo of Leroi Moore, who unfortunately was no longer alive to provide it on this night. As Dave Matthews stated while attending Moore’s funeral in Charlottesville, VA  “Leroi will forever be known as an incredibly talented musician who was blessed with the ability to fluidly traverse jazz, rock, funk, and classical music styles. He would put that horn in his mouth and make the most astonishingly honest music that could knock you over, and it would sink right to the middle of you.”

The current DMB touring saxophonist is Jeff Coffin is not considered an official member of the band, as he is actually a member of The Flecktones, a band featuring bass wizard Victor Wooten, who are often compared to Dave for their jazz influence. Coffin played the tenor saxophone way too fast on the “Jimi Thing,” and didn’t have the slow tempo Leroi could hold, which really made you feel the jazz and tender blues in the music.

Dave Matthews also did “Ants Marching,” the big single from their incredible debut album Under The Table and Dreaming. The song got the crowd going into high gear, as everybody knew the words and sang along with Matthews:

"He wakes up in the morning, does his teeth, bite to eat and is rolling. Never changes a thing. The week ends, the week begins. She thinks we look at each other wondering what the other is thinking, but we never see a thing and these crimes within us grow deeper. Goes to visit his mommy, she feeds him well, has concerns, he forgets them, and remembers being small, playing under the table and dreaming.”

The song builds to a crescendo as Beauford’s drums and Coffin’s saxophone control the beat, “Take these chances. Place them in a box until a quieter time lights down you up and die.”

The highlight and the closing of the first set was the inimitable “Two Step,” which has always sounded incredible live with its mystical intro. Before even going into the intro Dave went into a short guitar and lyrical improv in a similar key singing in a low voice, where it was difficult to decipher his words. Finally, this sequence reached a peak and Dave had visible tears in his eyes. He even began weeping a second into the mic, before screaming between fits of tears, “Let me the fuck out. Let me the motherfucker out.” The intensity experienced in the crowd was at a culminating point. Nobody really knew what Dave meant or what he was talking about. But maybe deep down we all knew he was speaking to those inner demons that constantly haunt and torment his soul, and at the same time spur him to create some of the most beautiful music. “Two Step” is a prime example. “Two Step” was driven by Dave’s fabulous guitar picking and built up to the chorus where Matthews sang with a similar pathos to earlier in the night during “Tripping Billies,” “Celebrate we will, for life is short but sweet for certain. Climb on two by two to. Be sure these days continue. Things we can not change.”

The fans sang along with him and it was an emotional moment that towards the end also featured some cool soloing by Tim Reynolds. After the song, Matthews asked if everyone in the crowd was having a good time. When gleeful cheers responded, Matthews, did his strange barking into the mic.

The encores began with a Dylan song which is possibly one of the most famous songs to cover by numerous bands over the years from The Jimi Hendrix Experience to Dave Mason. Matthews has often closed his sets with “All Along the Watchtower.” Robert Randolph came out from backstage with his classic pedal steel guitar to aid the band. “All Along the Watchtower” starts out annoyingly slow until the line “Let us not start off falsely now the hour is getting late.” From there Dave bursts into a satanic voice howling into the night “yeah, yeah, yeah.” Tim Reynolds lit up his best guitar solo of the night playing harshly back and forth and really putting on a show. Several times during his performance that night he reminded me of Eric Clapton by the way he stood there with the guitar towards the back of the stage when he was in full control of the song and the solo, a typical Clapton move back in his peak days. DMB went into “Stairway to Heaven” in the middle of “Watchtower,” and the soloing of Reynolds sounded immaculately like Jimmy Page: unfortunately Dave’s voice was a far cry from Robert Plant’s. Still, it was cool to see DMB do their own interpretation of “Stairway” and then revert back into “All Along The Watchtower,” driving the crowd into a frenzy near the front of the stage.

Dave Matthews Band went into one final cover to close the night, Sly & The Family Stone’s “Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin.” The song was a terrible way to end the night! Dave barely even picked up a guitar and was dancing around the stage in clown-like fashion half the time, letting the crowd and Robert Randolph sing most of the lyrics.

All in all, though it was one of the best Dave Matthews Band concerts I had ever attended proving why they belonged at the top of Day 2’s billing. Dave could have done something more creative with the final encore, especially with Robert Randolph joining in, but I was glad Tim Reynolds was on electric guitar, as I have mainly seen him on acoustic in the past. It had been a mistake earlier in the set for Dave to bring onstage two members of The Black Eyed Peas, especially Fergie, who tried to get the crowd to chant “San Francisco” along with her. The crowd practically booed her off the stage. She was obviously bummed but deserved such disgrace for trying to share the same stage as Dave Matthews.

Sunday, Day 3 of the festival was looming on the horizon, and even though I despised the headliners Tenacious D, I was excited by the prospect of Ween, Modest Mouse, Calexico, and Robert Randolph and The Family Band.

Dave Matthews Band Setlist

1. Why I Am

2. You Might Die Trying

3. Don't Drink The Water

4. Stay or Leave

5. Spaceman

6. Cornbread

7. Lie In Our Graves

8. Alligator Pie

9. Shake Me Like a Monkey

10. Gravedigger

11. Jimi Thing

12. You & Me

13. Ants Marching

14. Two Step

Encore:

15. All Along The Watchtower into "Stairway to Heaven" back into “All Along The Watchtower (with Robert Randolph on pedal steel guitar)

17. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin. Sly & The Family Stone cover, with Robert Randolph on pedal steel guitar)

Outside Lands Day 3

Day three at The Outside Lands Festival began much better than the first two days because I actually got a ride from Berkeley into the city instead of having to Bart into Frisco, and then take a bus to the park, followed by a long walk to the fields, all in all about 2.5 hours one way! It was a smooth ride into the city in Elliot’s truck despite being packed in the front like sardines with his buddy Dave riding shotgun and me squished in the middle! It was a real San Francisco day—cool--unlike the festival’s first two days of the festival which had been abnormally hot for Fog City. The brisk weather meant nobody was getting dehydrated and thus drunk from beer too early in the day. We arrived just in time for Robert Randolph & The Family Bands set at The Polo Field (main stage). Randolph--the pedal steel master of today’s era--played a fantastic set highlighted by a ravishing cover of Jimi Hendrix's “Purple Haze.” Dressed wearing a black doo-rag over his head with and red button-down shirt, black vest and black pants, Randolph played the pedal steel to create all sorts of crazy scraping sounds; he was the main stages’ best act that day, easily topping the sets of Modest Mouse and obviously Tenacious D.

After Randolph’s show, I ventured over to Lindsey Meadow Presidio to see Calexico, a very unique group from Tuscon, Arizona, led by vocalist/guitarist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino. The set featured plenty of sweeping songs about the band's hometown and chants in Spanish by a backing vocalist--Latin jazz rhythms, mariachi trumpets, and pedal steel guitars. Overall it was a solid set and for me the biggest surprise of the day as I had never heard of Calexico before.

Next up was a bit of Modest Mouse on the Polo Fields, but I couldn’t have been there for more than ten minutes before Elliot dragged me off to Twin Peaks to catch Ween, who were playing from 5:35 to 7:34 PM the longest set by any side-stage band at the festival. Ween was up for the task, as there seemed to have be more Ween heads than any other kinds of fanbody else around on Day 3; overall fewer people turned up on Sunday then had come the previous two days to see sets by the likes of, Pearl Jam, Incubus, Mars Volta, and Dave Matthews. The mere fact that Tenacious D were the headliners of Sunday was beyond even a joke! Whose idea to replace The Beastie Boys--originally slated to headline the bill--with Jack Black’s Tenacious D? This decision was a mockery to rock n’ roll. Ween may also be considered the ultimate cosmic goof of the rock n’ roll era with the way their songs sound with a sardonic fervor. Somehow though, Ween pulled it off a lot better than Tenacious D, because as Allmusic.com has commented, “Ween is a prodigiously talented and deliriously odd duo whose work traveled far beyond the constraints of parody and novelty into the heart of surrealist ecstasy. Despite a mastery for seemingly every mutation of the musical spectrum, the group refused to play it straight; in essence, Ween was bratty deconstructionists, kicking dirt on the pop world around them with demented glee.”

The best thing about Ween is their versatility as a band, they are so talented they never sound the same in any of their songs; they can play everything from heavy metal to Irish folk music with lyrics. There were times in the set where I wondered if it was the same band playing the beautifully textured “Roses Are Free,” to the light jazzy bop “Your Party.” Quoting Allmusic again, “Despite the group’s “occasional frat-boy lapses into misogyny, racism, and homophobia, the band's razor-sharp satire cuts to the inherently silly heart of rock & roll.” Their songs range from titles like the fantastic “Bananas and Blow” to “Baby, Baby, Bitch.” Ween played Bananas and Blow,” on Sunday. The song is about lead vocalist Mickey Melchiondo (aka Dean Ween) being holed up in a Mexican cabana for a week with nothing to eat but bananas and nothing to do but snort copious amounts of cocaine. The fans sang along with Dean Ween, “Now the rainy season reminds me of Maria. The way she danced, the color of her hair. Now I'm locked inside a stall at the cantina. Eating the bananas and the cocaine off the mirror. Looking for a ticket to take me away from here. Bananas and blow (oh-oh), bananas and blow. Stuck in my cabana, living on bananas and blow.” If listeners found that a hard song to swallow, just imagine a song like “Spinal Meningitis” being played live by Ween while a few male fans lifted a young woman up and spun her around in circles while simultaneously slapping her ass. Ween’s show was a spectacle—unlike anything else I have witnessed at a live show. They held the crowd of dedicated Ween-Heads in the palm of their hand. Even the cops couldn’t turn away from the show, as I noted three of them perched on their horses on top of the hill talking over the set and probably thinking “who are these sick and demented people who enjoy listening to a guy talk about having warts on his asshole (in the Irish folk parody “Blarney Song”) or singing, “Realize that the sky's not made of gold. Don't disguise the nature of your soul. Gimme that z, o-l-o-f-t. No longer pissed and you don't bother me. I'm makin' it through, I'm givin' my all,” as they did in “Zoloft.”

Overall it was a solid set by Ween and I give them credit for the vast variety of music they cover, but as far as their lyrics go, I find them often perverse and even childish. Maybe they are trying to make fun of rock n’ roll and all its bravado, but they themselves would be a lot more enjoyable to watch if they weren’t talking about jerking off their own dicks and itching their balls in too many of their songs. I will give them credit though for the songs such as, “Bananas and Blow,” which really was a funny yet depraved song about drug addiction, and also “Your Party,” and “Roses Are Free,” both sounded brilliant with the way they were crafted but songs like the last two they played, “You Fucked Up,” and “The Blarney Song” was not at all my forte.

The sad, sinking feeling after Ween’s set began to set in just as it does when every three-day festival you attend is about to end. Nobody wants the fun to stop. While thousands gathered for the festival’s final set of the festival with Tenacious D performing on the Polo Fields, Elliot and I sat at the oyster tent drinking Champagne and munching on two dozen raw oysters on the half shell.  It was great to close the fun-filled festival with one final splurge before heading home.

One of the most anticipated shows of the Fall was Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s new side project together called Furthur. The lineup also consists Dead keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and Dark Star Orchestra lead guitarist and vocalist John Kadlecik. Dark Star Orchestra is considered the best Grateful Dead cover band in the country because of Kadlecik’s ability to sing in a very similar mellifluous voice like Jerry Garcia is part of his attraction to longtime Dead Heads. Kadlecik’s electric guitar solos also deeply replicate Jerry’s tone back in the golden road era of The Dead when they played shows at The Fillmore, and Winterland…Long before Garcia’s prodigious thirst for drugs debilitated his ability to play his musical career, and ultimately led to his untimely death in 1995 at the age of fifty-three. Now through “all the broken dreams and vanished years,” with nothing much left to see of what remained of the sixties or Dead culture in everyday life in America, it is great to get together at a concert with fellow Deadheads and feel like you can share an intimate concert experience. It is a rare time when you can mob the streets outside the show and not be in fear of police officers despite the fact there may be twenty cop cars; there were so many Deadheads that the men in blue didn’t seem to matter, despite their constant badgering not to overflow onto the Oakland streets. It was the young men and women who ruled this night in their blue denim and long hippie dreds. Even the old timer Deadheads now in their 60s with their Stetsons and berets were going nuts once they were inside snatching up $40 posters of the Further show and also discussing the first two nights of shows in very loud, calculating voices as Deadheads often do. One bearded Deadhead in a tie-dye T-shirt was intent on telling everyone what was up in my desolation row at the top of the Fox, “No they won’t play ‘Terrapin’ or ‘The Other One’ tonight--they played those both Friday! Oh yeah, and don’t count on ‘Help into Slipknot’ into ‘Franklins Tower’-- it’s already been done! Oh yeah they already played ‘China Cat’ into ‘I Know You Rider,’ and ‘Jack Straw’--a lot of the classics have been done already!” This fan was just an example of how much Dead Heads know about the music they come to watch. As Rolling Stone writer Parke Puterbaugh once noted about The Dead while the band was still in existence with Garcia in the mix in the early 1990s:  “The Grateful Dead is one of the longest continuously running rock bands in history, performing under that name since late 1965. They are the only group for which a network of fans, as essential and charismatic as the band members themselves has become recognized subculture in it’s own right. You can not think Dead without thinking Deadheads. From the outset the group attracted a cult following that was involved more than a fan club level. This melding of band and audience had something to do with chemistry, karma, vibes, the mid-Sixties and the city of San Francisco.”

Further hit the stage with Lesh, Chimenti, and Kadlecik minus Weir. About a minute into a jam it became apparent they were playing the intro to “Sampson and Delilah,” a popular Rev. Gary Davis song Bob Weir covers and he sang on The Grateful Dead album Terrapin Station. At this point Bob Weir came strutting on stage wearing a blue tanktop, a pair of much longer raggedy shorts than the short-shorts he used to wear, and sporting his long gray beard and curled-up mustache. Weir took center stage on a psychedelic rug, and it must have felt a lot better playing on that since he was barefoot. The crowd chanted along with Weir as the song built up, and Weir screamed into the microphone with great emotion, “If I had my way, I would tear this whole building down!”

Furthur next launched into “Casey Jones,” playing it extremely well and even speeding it up way more than usual at the end with everything from drums, bass, guitar, and keyboard. Weir and Kadlecik traded off vocals on “Casey Jones,” Kadlecik sounding much more in tune and like Jerry. Lesh helped out on the chorus and sounded pretty good himself.

“Casey Jones” was a fantastic way for Furthur to get the younger part of the audience that was in attendance really into the show, as it is one of those Dead songs that has really transcended itself into the next generation despite it’s simplicity in comparison to other Dead classics that would be scattered in throughout the night. After the heavy closing of “Casey Jones,” Furthur goes into “Mississippi Half Step: Uptown Toodello” a true Grateful Dead classic. The song was originally musically written by Jerry Garcia and penned by Robert Hunter. Listening to “Mississippi Half Step” brought back a lot of thoughts of Jerry just hearing it. The whole crowd must have felt the same way as I could see the emotions of everything to joy, happiness, the bittersweet feelings of everything as they pumped their fists and chanted with Weir and Kadlecik as they sang together “Across the Rio Grandio, across the lazy river.”

Next up for Furthur was “Sugaree” which Bob Weir has managed to capture perfectly even more (since the last time I saw him perform it at Shoreline with The Dead earlier this year) in his own subtle way vocally the soft way he sings, “Just one thing I ask of you, is just one thing for me. Please forget you knew my name my darling Sugaree.” Next up was a Weir/John Perry Barlow song from The Grateful Dead mid 1980s comeback album In The Dark. Weir got the crowd amped for this is one of the only Dead anti-war songs with a nuclear scare and human eradication of the earth type atmosphere to the lyrics, “Picture a bright blue ball, just spinning, spinnin free. Dizzy with eternity. Paint it with a skin of sky, brush in some clouds and sea. Call it home for you and me. A peaceful place or so it looks from space, a closer look reveals the human race. Full of hope, full of grace is the human face, but afraid we may lay our home to waste. There's a fear down here we can't forget. Hasn't got a name just yet. Always awake, always around. Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down. Ashes, ashes, all fall down.” Weir worked the stage moving around well with his guitar and barefeet and Phil controlled the beat of the song standing more in the background.

Next up was a song a Phil Lesh song “Pride Of Cucamonga” I had never seen him before with The Dead or Phil & Friends. Now I can say I have seen the big three Phil Lesh wrote, “Box Of Rain,” “Unbroken Chain” and “Pride Of Cucamonga,” live. The lyrics in Pride Of Cucamonga are so good I got a chill down my spine just listening to Phil sing them and it the straight cowboy western feel of the song just made it one of the straight up highlights of the first set, “Since I came down from Oregon there's a lesson or two I've learned by standing in the road alone, standing watching the fires burn. The northern sky it stinks with greed, You can smell it for miles around. Good old boys in the Graystone Hotel sitting doing that git-on-down. Oh, oh, pride of Cucamonga. Oh, oh, silver apples in the sun. Oh, oh, I had me some loving. And I done some time.”

Furthur closed the first set with “Passenger” another great Bobby tune off Terrapin Station that has became a Dead standard as many of the songs off that album did like the title track, “Sampson and Delilah”, “Dancin In The Streets” and “Estimated Prophet.” Weir sang this one with a lot of heart as the song raced faster then most Dead tunes with the Kadlecik’s guitar and Chimenti’s keyboards going wild. Despite the song not sounding quite as good vocally as it used to live when late Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland used to sing in unison with Weir to it, “Upside in, indside down, false alarm the only game in town, parable the only game in town.” “We’ll be back in just a few moments,” Bobby said just as he always has at every Dead show set-break I had seen him play in the past. I felt really at home!

The second set began with two transitional blues tunes Bob Weir and Phil Lesh have been playing a lot in recent years, so it made sense they ran “Viola Lee Blues” into Cumberland Blues” together. The whole crowd was on their feet again and excited the thirty-minute break was over, they chanted along with Weir and Lesh, “Some got six moths, some got one solid, some got one solid yeah!” in “Viola Lee Blues”. Both songs depict similar stories of the hardships the everyday man has to face be it working hard and barely making wages in “Cumberland Blues” to getting sentenced to jail in “Viola Lee” The next song Further launched into was one neither I nor anyone else at the show could have expected as they played “King Solomon’s Marbles” one of the finest instrumental interludes off the Blues For Allah album which is full of great little jams like “Slipknot” and “Sage & Spirit” but I don’t think anyone could have expected to hear “King Solomon’s Marbles” a song not even The Dead covered too much live back in their touring hey-day. “King Solomon’s Marbles” was dominated by Weir and Kadlecik’s going back and fourth on solos as they played both parts of the song  “Stronger Than Dirt” and “Milkin The Turkey.” They even went several minutes beyond the regular length of the song and it sounded absolutely fantastic. Weir and Lesh have really kept the psychedelic jam spirit of The Dead alive at these shows, as it would be easy just to play the hits like “Casey Jones” which are great but don’t take as much effort as this complex jam did.

The next song was “Cassidy” a song that was originally off Bob Weir’s 1972 debut solo record Ace, a classic that also featured some of his other best tunes and most popular songs he played with The Grateful Dead such as “Looks Like Rain,” “Mexicali Blues,” “Black Throated Wind, “Playing In The Band,” “Greatest Story Ever Told” (and the song he had closed the night with the previous night at the Fox on Saturday and with The Dead on the Thursday show back in May “One More Saturday Night.”) Weir took center stage with his heavy white beard, thick mustache that curls upwards, singing the opening lines, “I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream. I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream. Ah, child of countless trees. Ah, child of boundless seas. What you are, what you're meant to be speaks his name, though you were born to me. Born to me, Cassidy.” The song was originally written about Donna Jean Godchaux and Keith Godchaux’s daughter “Cassidy” they gave birth to while recording the album. Donna and Keith were both members of The Grateful Dead in the 1970s but after Keith became the second Dead keyboardist to die and Donna quit the band and became a born again Christian. After this happened at the culmination of the 1970s a lot of things changed in the The Dead fold. The replacement keyboardist Brent Mydland played a vital role in The Dead’s music for the next decade, sometimes even bigger then Jerry Garcia at certain shows, as Jerry’s addiction to heroin was increasing and his health declining. It was during this time that I think The Dead mastered their version of “Cassidy” with Bobby and Brent singing harmoniously together, “Flight of the seabirds, scattered like lost words. Wheel to the storm and fly.”  Now with Brent dead ever since 1990 from a speedball overdose, it was interesting to not that Jeff Chimenti was using Brent’s old keyboard at this Furthur concert, that Brent had used back in his touring days with The Dead from 1980 through the year of his death 1990.

“Cassidy” still sounds great live, but will never sound the same as it did on some old live albums such as Without A Net. Still it was great to see Furthur play one of my favorite Bob Weir/John Perry Barlow songs, and hearing Weir say plaintively into the mic towards the end of the song, “Faring thee well now. Let your life proceed by its own design. Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I'm done with mine,” re-affirmed even more why people still want to hear this man makes music even if he’s still playing songs he wrote all the way back in 1972 as the main part of the set.

It seems Furthur even realized at this concert that some of the hard core Dead Heads still coming want to hear the spaced out psychedelic jams more than anything else and that is why they played songs like “King Solomon’s Marbles” in the second set, and also “Dark Star” after “Cassidy.” Weir picked up his famous old pink Fender Stratocaster guitar he used back in the 1980s for part of the song, but must have been dissatisfied with the sound it produced as he only plucked it for about a minute before putting it back down near the drum kit and picking up another black guitar. “Dark Star” was filled with swooping long guitar solos by John Kadlecik, and Weir going back and fourth, while Phil Lesh’s bass kept a steady beat in the background and the drums were not too audible. Furthur went into a jam towards the end “Dark Star,” and I and everyone else in the crowd roared in excitement as we could all could immediately tell Weir and Kadlecik were strumming the opening chords to “Uncle John’s Band.” There was nothing like watching the song slowly build up in the first verse with Kadlecik and Weir trading off verses, until they both sang together loudly, and the crowd pumped their fists simultaneously, “GODDAMN, WELL I DECLARE HAVE YOU SEEN THE LIKE? Their walls are built of cannonballs, their motto is don't tread on me. Come hear Uncle John's Band by the riverside. Got some things to talk about here beside the rising tide.” The song went into a long jam and it didn’t matter if you were on the floor, mezzanine or balcony, everybody was dancing and seemed to be in their own sort of heaven. Just as The Dead had done when they came to California in May, Furthur were pushing boundaries that had not been touched upon much since Jerry Garcia’s death. Sure none of us Deadheads have forgotten about The Dead and we still listen to the music nonstop, but to be able to get together as a community and see some of the men who created these incredible sounds live.. To sing and dance as one together is something else in a whole other dimension that Dead Heads have been lacking for quite sometime until this year when Bobby and Phil decided to bury the hatchet and start playing together again.

Furthur closed the second set with “Sugar Magnolia,” a song they often used to close their sets with. Bob Weir took this one over as it was one of the first brilliant songs he wrote on American Beauty allowing him to step out of Jerry Garcia’s shadow a bit, as Garcia had written most of The Grateful Dead’s best music up to that point in time. “Sugar Magnolia” is one of those songs that really gets couples going at Dead shows as it is about a man who has deeply fallen in love with a woman. “She’s got everything delightful, she’s got everything I need. She takes the wheel while I’m seeing double, pays my ticket when I speed.” As I looked in front of me Dead Head couples in their mid 40s or 50s were dancing like they were still in their 20s, this music really keeps you young and in shape I thought to myself. Bobby even looked more alive than he did in the rest of the set during “Sugar Magnolia” as he thrashed his guitar in and out of the air and spun a bit, exerting more physical energy onstage then he had during the almost the whole set at up until this point.

Furthur played one final encore “Cosmic Charlie” a song that dates way back to their third studio album 1969’s Aoxomoxoa. During this song the whole background above the stage was a shape-shifting mirage of psychedelic bright maroon purple and crimson colors. Since I was on desolation row at the top of the balcony I was starring directly at this psychedelic image of colors and could see how somebody on acid would be tripping out of their minds. Even I was starting to feel like everything in theater was moving and I hadn’t even been dosed! The lyrics themselves involved bright colors and seemed to be laced with acid the way Kadlecik, Lesh, and Weir were harmonizing them together in a sort of falsetto, “Calico Kahlia come tell me the news. Calamity's waiting for a way to get to her. Rosy red and electric blue, I bought you a paddle for your paper canoe. Say you'll come back when you can. Whenever your airplane happens to land. Maybe I'll be back here too. It all depends on what's with you.” The crowd sang and danced along until the final lines in the song were all that were left along with the soft strumming of Weir’s guitar as he sang with Lesh and Kaldecik, “Go on home your mama’s calling you.”

It was a fantastic set by Furthur. One can only hope The Dead get back together and tour next year but if that doesn’t end up working out for whatever reason with Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart not being guaranteed in the lineup, (there is now way they should call themselves The Dead without the two original drummers) then Furthur should get back together for another tour. Fans seemed to really enjoy seeing these guys on the side just as they enjoy seeing Bob Weir & Ratdog as well as Phil Lesh & Friends. Of course this was even more special  as you had Weir and Lesh playing together which rarely happens outside of The Dead as well as the addition of John Kadlecik from Dark Star Orchestra, who is arguably the best musician in the world at covering The Grateful Dead’s music.

The atmosphere after the show was a little bit of a downer though no thanks to the Oakland City Police Department who are some of the biggest dicks in the world. I guess they are used to having to deal with a lot of crime but nothing excuses the way they acted at this concert. As I talked to a nice lady and her boyfriend about buying a Bob Weir button and a hemp necklace, the Police were yelling at us, telling us that we were disrupting the peace and to get out of the streets of Oakland. I was so angry I felt like yelling at the Cop, but an older Deadhead somehow told the pig exactly what I was thinking in a much calmer voice then what I was capable of. “What you are doing officer is not the right thing! You are totally messing with the atmosphere of the aftermath of a show. See these people are interacting, possibly making friends, and being brothers and sisters. That is what Dead shows are about, that is what they have always been about, and I don’t know if you are doing this intentionally or not but you are robbing us of our basic freedom.” It couldn’t have been stated more clearly! The large police presence (at least over 30 cop cars parked outside the Fox Theater after the show) damaged any type of after-party on the streets of Oakland. There was a sad, forlorn feeling I felt in the air, walking to the Bart (Metro) to head home and seeing the streets behind me infiltrated with cops as more and more fans, ditched like me, attempting to avoid getting arrested. Hopefully Furthur will never play another show in Oakland and stick to San Francisco next time. The Dead vibes are much stronger in San Francisco (where the whole psychedelic rock movement essentially began), as the Police in Oakland see a crowd like us and all they think of is how much they want to get us off the streets!

Furthur Setlist September 20th Fox Theater, Oakland, CA

SET 1

1. Sampson and Delilah

2. Casey Jones

3. Mississippi Half Step (Uptown Toodleoo)

4. Sugaree

5. Pride Of Cucamonga

6. Throwing Stones

7. Passenger

SET 2

8. Viola Lee Blues into Cumberland Blues back into Viola Lee Blues

9. King Solomons Marbles

10. Cassidy

11. Dark Star

12. Uncle John’s Band

13. Sugar Magnolia

Encore

Cosmic Charlie

Bob Dylan still rocking a place like the Greek Theater in 2009? Anyone who would stated that to be possible in the late sixties would have others thinking it to be very unlikely. By the late sixties Dylan had crashed his motorcycle badly and had turned into a recluse poet, shying away from the claims that he was one of the big “prophets” or “fathers” of the hippie generation. Dylan rejected the notion preferring to be labeled a human being like the rest of us. He changed his harmonica folk blues to a more country tinged rock n’ roll. This still worked well, and despite touring an awful lot less he still managed to record some great albums like Nashville Skyline, New Morning and Blood On The Tracks leading into what is referred to as The Rolling Thunder Years of Dyaln’s career in the mid 70s. After becoming a born-again Christian in the 1980s with a few albums that freaked the entire 60s generation out, Dylan found himself again after years of touring with nothing new to show, Dylan fans must have thought the well had finally run dry by 1996, but Dylan surprised them again with the release of Time Out Of Mind, a huge comeback and quite simply one of his finest albums with such classics as “Cold Iron Bound,” which Dylan performed his first night at The Greek Theater, and the timeless “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven,” which was the fifth song I heard Dylan perform on Sunday.

Folks at the Greek Theater was just as excited to see Dylan a day later on Sunday then they were on Saturday, as huge crowds began lining up outside the Greek four hours before the show even began in the early part of the afternoon with their blankets, warm coats and wool hats, as it had been an abnormally chilly weekend for California, and it really felt like a crisp Autumn Day with many leaves beginning to fall.

I got into the show right in time to see Dylan open with “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat” that dates way back to his timeless 1966 folk classic Blonde on Blonde. If Dylan surprised anyone with “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat,” he got the crowd even more revved when he ripped up another Blonde on Blonde classic “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again,” blending blues, country, rock, and folk into a wild, careening, and dense sound. Dylan’s harmonica ripped it’s way through the Greek Theater as his backing band did a good job especially on guitar and drumming. Dylan was content sitting behind the keys for a lot of the show, although he was a front man and playing harmonica also. It was interesting just seeing him sing without a guitar in hand. It is an image I am unfamiliar seeing when it comes to Bob Dylan and I have never thought of him as an all out front man, more of a folk poet with his guitar singing about “Shakespeare in the alley.”

This was a much different Bob Dylan set than the one I had witnessed in Manchester, Tennessee at Bonnaroo Festival back in the summer of 2004. While seeing Dylan at Bonnaroo I had only recognized, “Highway 61,” and “Like A Rolling Stone,” as the only two songs I knew. This time Dylan seemed poised to give me and other Berkeley folks a taste of his sixties magic as he delighted the crowd with a fantastic rendition of “A Hard Rains A Gonna’ Fall.”

If you could get past the point Bob Dylan’s voice was pretty burned out from lots of years of singing and smoking and he couldn’t hit nearly the same notes he could in the sixties than it should still have been an enjoyable show for most of the crowd.

Also I am more familiar with Dylan’s newer material five years later than I was back in 2004, and Dylan played songs that hadn’t even come out the last time I saw him such as the opening track on 2007’s Modern Times “Thunder On The Mountain,” a song in which Dylan describes himself dreaming of pop vocalist Alecia Keys. Many of Dylan’s songs prior to his newest album Together Through Life seemed to deal with his rolling subconscious which is pitted with love, but tinged with an overall sickness and disgust for life in gems such as “Love Sick,” Standing In The Doorway Crying,” “Dreamin Of You,” or even a song like “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven.”

Dylan also played three songs from Highway 61 Revisted, the title track “Highway 61” “Like A Rolling Stone,” and the fantastic “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” which drew the most reception. With some of the most poetic lyrics Bob Dylan ever wrote, he sang to the Greek Theater crowd, “You've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks. With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks. You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books. You're very well read it's well known. Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

After the Highway 61 classics Dylan left the stage for a few minutes, then came back on and played two encores “Jolene,” and his most famously covered song “All Along The Watchtower,” that has influenced everyone from The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Dave Mason from Traffic, to The Grateful Dead in their late 80s early 90s sets, and in modern times Dave Matthews Band. The lights show was crazy during this last song and it almost seemed like Dylan was trying to go psychedelic a bit like The Grateful Dead. His backing band was heavier than anything I remember Dylan working with in recent years and sounded nice and loud despite playing in an outdoor amphitheater. The crowd sang along with Dylan, “"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief. There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth. None of them along the line know what any of it is worth. No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke. There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late." After the song Dylan bid the crowd at the Greek good night smiling. He seemed to be happy and in a great mood compared to his usual introverted enigmatic personality.

Setlist

1. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat

2.This Dream Of You

3. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

4. Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

5. Tryin' To Get To Heaven

6. High Water (for Charlie Patton)

7. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

8. My Wife's Home Town

9. Honest With Me

10. Forgetful Heart

11. Highway 61 Revisited

12. Workingman's Blues #2

13. Thunder On The Mountain

14. Ballad Of A Thin Man

15. Like A Rolling Stone

Encore

16. Jolene

17. All Along The Watchtower

Live Dead were quite the frequenters of the Starry Plough in the Spring and early parts of the summer of 2009. During a short hiatus away from Berkeley the band toured other parts of California such as South Lake Tahoe, Eureka, and the famous Brookdale Lodge in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was wonderful to see drummer Paul Scannell, guitarist/vocalist Steve Fundy, guitarist/vocalist Shep Sliver, keyboardist/vocalist James Miller, and bassist Chuck Stone return to Berkeley to lay down a majestically and electrifyingly long three set night at the Plough. The show was on the same night of Bob Dylan, who was playing the first of two nights at the Greek Theatre. Much of the Plough crowd arrived after the first acoustic set, updating me on set details of Dylan.

Live Dead opened the set with “Deep Elem Blues”--Fundy with his spectacular rhythm guitar strumming along with Silver. These two make quite a dynamic combo on guitar just as Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir did for The Grateful Dead for so many years. The first set highlighted some of the best songs from The Grateful Dead’s live acoustic Reckoning album recorded at The Warfield, such as Weir’s cover of George Jones' “The Race Is On” and also his spectacularly written “Cassidy,” which Fundy performed his best acoustic solo of the night, ripping into a surrealistic improvisation that sent everybody’s heads spinning and bodies dancing into the night. Another prime moment in the first set was seeing Live Dead play a rare cover of Buffallo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” Later I noticed the song wasn’t even on Live Dead’s set list, so it was a last-second toss in and worked wonderfully. Buffallo Springfield are one of the greatest folk rock bands of the 1960s, and despite their short reign at the top of the sunset strip along bands such as The Byrds, The Doors, and Love, they shall never be forgotten as they paved the way for everything else that was to come. Other highlights of the first set included the final two songs Live Dead played “Jack-A-Roe” and “Ripple,” both timeless tunes that seems to be perfect for the acoustic guitar.

The first electric set began with a surprise Buddy Holly cover “Not Fade Away” (that The Grateful Dead used to be famous for playing in the latter half of the set.) In this first electric set Live Dead covered an large array of The Dead’s material that you could not solidify or pinpoint as reminiscent of a particular era in The Grateful Dead’s history; but more scattered pieces of the puzzle. This is more fun for a fan like myself to watch as I don’t get pinned down to one point in time, but instead can jump through the years in a single span of three sets, recalling different stages of what The Grateful Dead morphed into and sounded like in different eras. After Shep Silver sang “Not Fade Away,” he again took the lead for “All Over Now,” a song that never really appeared on a Grateful Dead album but was a live staple in The Dead’s 1970s touring titan hey-days.

Steve Fundy took center stage for “West L.A. Fadeaway” undoubtedly one of The Grateful Dead’s more poignant and powerful 1980s classics. Fundy spit out the lines “Looking for a chateau twenty four rooms but one will do. I don’t want to buy it just want to stay here a minute or two. West L.A. fadeaway, west L.A. fadeaway. Little redlight on the highway, big green light on the speedway.” The soloing by Fundy and Silver combined with Chuck Stone’s heavy bass and Scannall’s rhymic bashing drums keeping the beat, while James Miller ripped through the keys just like he was Brent Mydland himself. The band’s onstage power reached a peak hear and the audience felt it as they danced fluidly with each electrifying beat of the music. “Hey Pockey Way” followed, which was the one Brent Mydland song the band usually covers with Miller singing other than “Never Trust A Woman,” which is my all time Brent favorite.

The best part of the first electric set is when the band went into “Ramble On Rose,” a Europe 72 classic that Fundy sang, sounding just like Jerry would in the younger days with that sad but innocent tone. The lines written by Hunter kind of describe Jerry who had lost both his parents at a young age, “Goodbye, Mama and Papa. Goodbye, Jack and Jill. The grass ain't greener, the wine ain't sweeter either side of the hill. Did you say your name was Ramblin' Rose? Ramble on, baby. Settle down easy. Ramble on Rose.”

The first set closed with Live Dead returning into “Not Fade Away,” as they came full circle with the Buddy Holly song that was perfected by the band back in their early 70s tour de force times.

The second electric set began with a crowd pleaser “Shakedown Street,” which got everyone in the crowd dancing just as hard as they did for  “West L.A. Fadeaway.” The best song of the set though was the following psychedelic-tinged jazz of “Crazy Fingers” which Steve Fundy perfected on guitar mixed with his stellar vocals, the lines he sang written by Robert Hunter capture the true Grateful Dead spirit. “Beneath the sweet calm face of the sea swift undertow. Life may be sweeter for this, I don't know. See how it feels in the end. May Lady Lullaby sing plainly for you. Soft, strong, sweet and true.”

Live Dead also covered “Estimated Prophet” with Shep Silver taking the lead and singing as he does with all the Bob Weir songs. “Estimated Prophet” is a deep song about a man waiting for his time in the world to come. The song written originally by John Perry Barlow was a classic staple in Grateful Dead live shows beginning in the late 1970s after the release of the album Terrapin Station, which the song was featured on. Silver sang in a Bob Weir like husky masculine voice, “My time coming, any day, don't worry bout me, no. Been so long I felt this way, ain't in no hurry, no. Rainbows end down that highway where ocean breezes blow. My time coming, voices saying, they tell me where to go. Don't worry bout me, no no, don't worry bout me, no. And I'm in no hurry, no no no, I know where to go. California, preaching on the burning shore. California, I'll be knocking on the golden door. Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light. Rising up to paradise, I know I'm gonna shine.”

The band closed the set at around 1:00 AM with “Eyes Of The World” a Grateful Dead live classic that always brings the house down whenever they play it at The Starry Plough. It was a great night for Dead vibes as the autumn chill was rolling in and despite the “summer time come and gone, my oh my,” was it a good time.

LIVE DEAD Setlist:

Acoustic Set

Deep Elem Blues

On The Road Again

The Race Is On

Me & My Uncle

Dupree’s Diamond Blues

Cassidy

For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield cover)

Jack-A Roe

Ripple

Electric Set 1

Not Fade Away

All Over Now

West L.A. Fadeaway

Hey Pockey Way

Big Railroad Blues

Wang Dang Doodle

Ramble On Rose

Feel Like A Stranger

Not Fade Away (Part 2)

Electric Set 2

Shakedown Street

Crazy Fingers

Estimated Prophet

Eyes Of The World

The anticipation outside San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Center was at an all time peak! Dead Heads everywhere with their long hair, dread locks, beards, hemp necklaces and tie-dyed clothing were lined up outside the venue either in line or holding up their pointer finger praying for a miracle ticket. This was the kind of atmosphere I had dreamt about for years! It was beyond a rock n’ roll concert! It was the indescribable coming together of thousands of Dead Heads, who are a tribe, who become joined into one strong force once they step a foot through those auditorium doors.

This magical unity is why Dead Heads have never stopped coming to the shows, and the age range was from 1960s fans who had seen the first stages of The Grateful Dead’s psychedelia, to younger kids who most likely [were born after Jerry Garcia’s death?] had never seen Jerry Garcia live. With John Kadlecik (formerly of Dark Star Orchestra) taking Jerry’s place in the formation of Furthur, with his powerfully evocative voice and his high-pitched lead guitar solo, many fans are now saying this is the best band both Bob Weir and Phil Lesh have played in since Jerry’s death and the official retirement of the Grateful Dead name in 1995. After that the remaining band members resurrected themselves as The Dead, with Weir handling vocals and rhythm guitar, Lesh handling bass and vocals, Warren Haynes (also a member of The Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule) on lead guitar and vocals, Jeff Chimenti (also of Bob Weir & Ratdog) on keyboards, and original Grateful Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart on drums. The Furthur lineup is slightly different from The Dead, as it still has Weir, Lesh, and Chimenti, who have been part of the steady Dead format; the addition of Kadlecik and also drummers Jay Lane (Rat Dog, Primus) and Joe Russo (Benvento Russo Duo) have made it much more youthful and livelier. In fact the way Jay Lane drummed throughout the night, bouncing up and down like a chimpanzee and never sitting down, ramped up the energy vibe in the Civic Center that much more. The people danced harder and harder to the beat of the music, moving their bodies all around in different formations, shaking the hips and wiggling the waist and flailing arms in the air.

The show began about a half hour late at 8:00 PM, but Furthur made a wise decision in delaying, because on this night they had to pace themselves playing a total of three sets plus an encore, which would last until 2 AM. The crowd cheered ecstatically when Bobby and Phil hit the stage with the Furthur crew and launched into their disco Bee Gees-like song “Shakedown Street,” which has a twang in the guitar of making Dead Heads dance harder and harder as the song breaks down. It’s funny to think that Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart, who first conceived of writing the song, had an idea that Dead Heads would dig their version of John Travolta dancing to “Staying Alive,” from Saturday Night Fever, but it worked fabulously and still does.

I was down on the floor for the first set and was near the front on the left side, where I had a great view of Phil Lesh on the far left, who was looking his usual ultra-thin. Bob Weir was in the middle with his bushy beard and pink Stratocaster, and Kadlecik was on the right, but for some reason (probably because there was a stack of amps on the right) he was facing the left side of the crowd. This was the closest I had been to the stage near Bobby and Phil since 2004, when I saw them at Bonnaroo, in Tennessee. Furthur followed “Shakedown Street” with a brilliant live version of “Jack Straw,” a song that I had not seen performed since I saw Bob Weir & Rat Dog on Earth Day in Golden Gate Park 2007, so it was a special treat. The song in general embodies The Grateful Dead spirit in the way it’s crafted lyrically and musically, particularly with the opening verse, sung by Weir, being a powerful segue into the rest of the song, “We can share the women. We can share the wine. We can share what we got of yours, ‘cause we done shared all of mine. Keep a rolling, just a mile to go. Keep on rolling, my old buddy you're moving much too slow.” The song reached its peak right in the middle, where it slows down a bit and Weir sings with a grandeur of passion into the microphone, “Leaving Texas Fourth Day of July. Sun’s so hot, the clouds so low, the eagles fill the sky. Catch the Detroit riding out Santa Fe. The great northern out of Cheyenne from sea to shining sea.”

Bobby continued to ride the wave of the crowd, performing “Mama Tried,” another classic song in The Dead’s constant live repertoire over the years, dating back to the early 1970s. The song is about a young man who is a rebel growing up and disregards the warnings of his mother to lead a cleaner life, and winds up 21 in prison, doing life without parole.

The next song was “Candyman,” which Kadlecik handled beautifully in place of the late Gratefull Dead centerpiece Jerry Garcia. “Candyman” originally appeared on The Grateful Dead’s most successful album American Beauty, released in 1970, which has a much folkier sound than the 60’s psychedelia on albums such as Live Dead and Anthem Of The Sun. The mellifluous soul of Jerry really comes out in the song, and Kadlecik handled his vocal duties well showing why Furthur brought him into the fold in the first place. Kadlecik sang to a mesmerized crowd of Dead Heads “Hand me my old guitar, pass the whiskey round, wont you tell everybody you meet that the Candyman’s in town. Look out, look out the Candyman. Here he comes and he’s gone again. Pretty lady aint got no friends until the Candyman comes along again.”

Bob Weir took center stage again with the fifth song of the set playing “Loose Lucy,” another classic that was originally sung by Jerry on The Mars Hotel record but Bobby has taken it up well. I had seen Weir previously perform “Loose Lucy” with Sammy Hagar at the Rat Dog Earth Day show at the Polo Fields 2007. Weir was just as amped this time, looking fit and leaner than he had earlier this Spring and Fall when I saw him perform. He really got the crowd going on this piece, as they shouted along with him at top volume, “And I say thank you for a real good time.”

Next Furthur went into a long jam of “Viola Lee Blues,” which was rarely played live, back in The Grateful Dead days, even though it was released on the band’s original summer of love 1967 studio album. “Viola Lee” has actually picked up more buzz in the last year, becoming a concert staple of The Dead. “Truckin ,” The Grateful Dead’s national anthem, played next as Bobby and Phil traded off verses back and fourth sounding incredible as the floor went wild with hippie dancers moving all over the place with flashing speed. Bob Weir and Phil Lesh recalled their band’s history in “Truckin,” “Busted down on bourbon street. Set up- like a bowling pin. Knocked down- it gets to wearing thin, they just wont let you be. You’re sick of hanging around and you’d like to travel. Get tired of traveling and you want to settle down. I guess I can’t revoke your soul for trying. Get out of the door-light out and look all around. Sometimes the light’s all shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it’s been.”

By the time the first set ended, I was sweating so hard from dancing my head off for nearly two hours that I had to hike up to where my friends from the Starry Plough-- David, John, and Shea-- had seats. I shed a bunch layers until I was down to just my Grateful Dead live at Radio City Music Hall T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.  Then I drank a ton of water to rehydrate and headed back to the floor for the second set just as Furthur began playing the opening chords of their improvisational triple combination of songs, “Help On The Way” into “Slipknot,” and then the beautifully poetic “Franklin’s Tower.” This time we foolishly tried the right side of the stage, which had the amps blocking a lot of our view even though we got up pretty close to the barricade. Kadlecik who was now the closest to us, and I was craving the ability to see him solo which just wasn’t possible, so I pushed through the crowd, towards the center of the floor where I could get a better glimpse of him as well as the rest of the band. Furthur really amped the crowed up again with “Franklin’s Tower,” which ran into Weir’s “Cassidy,” a song that Weir plays quite often with both The Dead and Rat Dog. He wrote it with Donna Jean Godchaux, and Keith Godchaux, and it’s about a mixture of the birth of their daughter who was named Cassidy and also Weir’s hero Neil Cassady, whom he knew for a brief period in his Electric Kool Aid Acid Test days. “The Wheel” was up next, a song I had never seen either Furthur, The Dead, or any combo involving Weir and Lesh play before. This song really pushed the crowd more into the realm of an abyss, where they contemplated the perils of life as they chanted in unison, “Wheel is spinning but you can’t slow down. You can’t fall back and you can’t hold on. You can’t hold on and you can’t stand still, if the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will. Wont you try just a little bit harder wouldn’t you try just a little bit more.” “Wheel” was originally a Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter composition that appeared on the first Jerry Garcia solo album simply titled Garcia, an album where the majority of the songs such as “Deal,” “Bird Song,” “Loser,” and “Sugaree,” all made it into steady Grateful Dead live repertoire.

After “Wheel,” Furthur dove into an interesting jam which segued its way into the slow electric guitar soloing of “Dark Star,” one of the most renowned Grateful Dead songs to be played over the years, and which has appeared everywhere, including The Dead’s most infuential live record, 1969’s Live Dead, and The Closing Of Winterland. Shea, John and I pushed through the crowd back to the left side of the stage to hear a spectacular version of Pink Floyd’s “Time.” The crowd went wild hearing something that was not in the usual Grateful Dead setlists over the years. From the moment those alarm clock bells blasted, the audience went wild.  Weir and Lesh sang in unison the famous lyrics written by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd: “Digging away the moments that make up the dull day. You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way. Digging around on a piece of ground on your home ground, waiting for someone or something to show you the way. Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain and you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today and then one day you find ten years have got behind you No one showed you how to run, you missed the starting gun.”

Furthur drove the crowd to one of its most frenzied peaks as they erupted full scale during “Uncle John’s Band,” which is along the lines of “Sugar Magnolia,” and “The Other One” as being their biggest concert anthem. The message of the song powerfully connects the flame within Weir and Lesh onstage and the fans, some of whom had undoubtedly seen the bands beginnings in the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco. With powerful lyrics written by Robert Hunter that Lesh, Weir, and Kadlecik all sang together, “Come here Uncle John’s Band by the riverside. Got some things to talk about here behind the rising tide. Come here Uncle John’s Band by the riverside. Come on with me or go alone, he’s come to take his children home, da-da-da-da-da-da.”

The final song of the second set was a cover of  J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight,” which was made more popular by Eric Clapton when it appeared on his debut solo album that he recorded with Delaney And Bramlett, guitarist Leon Russell and members who eventually became Derek and The Domines: keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, drummer Jim Gordon and bassist Carl Radle. The guitar solo was played magnificently by Kadlecik in “After Midnight,” making The Dead Heads in the crowd feel as if they were flying on a journey through the 1970s classic music, which was also present with “Time” played a few songs earlier.

By the time the second set ended Shea, John and myself were exhausted from all the dancing and so retired to our seats to count down to New Years in the set break. The crowd was ecstatic as they counted down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, HAPPY NEW YEAR. Countless colorful balloons were released from the ceiling and Furthur hit the stage again to the sound of “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion,” the first song on the Grateful Dead’s 1967 self-titled debut album. This song, possibly more than any other Dead song ever written brings in the full vibes and energy from the 60s and the summer of love with it’s light psychedelia guitar strumming and the countryish style voices the band members like Lesh and Weir use to sing it together. As David Dodd writes in the Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics, “Because it's the first song on the first album recorded by the Dead, this song has particular significance, deserved or not.”

One of my favorite Dead songs that Bob Weir wrote for the Wake Of The Flood album, “Let It Grow,” with his poetic lyricist John Perry Barlow who was living at his ranch in Wyoming when he wrote the song. “Let It Grow,” is about on the harvesting of the crops, and relating it to the love of woman and man, “So we make what we make since the world began. The birth of women, the work of man.” Even though I was high up on the balcony, it was fun to move around up there and felt rather hazy with the strobe lights shining all sorts of crazy colors at me . Feeling dizzy made me realize how much it would hurt falling down all those seats. Meanwhile I watched in awe as some guy in the front row was banging his head back and fourth full force with his hands on the grate as Weir sang “Morning comes she gathers the path to the river shore. Lightly sung her song is the latch on the morning star. See the sun sparkle in the reeds. Silver beach fasten to the sea.”

Furthur were not nearly done with their pure psychedelic offerings as they topped “Dark Star” with a tremendous effort of “Cryptical Evelopment,” into “Born Cross Eyed,” into “The Other One,” then back into “Cryptical Envelopment.” All these songs were recorded originally in the same combination on Anthem of the Sun, by far The Grateful Dead's most psychedelically experimental album ever recorded in the studio. It was their second album, released in 1968. Lesh and Weir discuss the song widely in the DVD film Anthem to Beauty and according to Lesh, “There was a large part of telepathic communication going on between us when we recorded that album.” The crowd reacted it’s strongest when Weir took the mic at the end of a long jam, and chanted The Grateful Dead anthem, “Spanish lady come to me, she lays on me this robe. It rainbow spirals round and round, it trembles and explode. It left a smoking crater in my mind I like to blow away. But the heat came round and busted me for smiling on a cloudy day.” He was then joined by Kadlecik and Lesh in the chorous “Comin, comin’, comin’ around, comin’ around, comin’ around in a circle.” Weir finished off the song chanting more lines about his idol and the hero of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, Neal Cassady, “Escapin’ through the lily fields I came across an empty space. It trembled and exploded. Left a bus stop in its space. The bus come by and I got on, that’s where it all began. There was cowboy Neal at the wheel, of a bus to never-ever land.”

I didn’t think Furthur could top “The Other One,” but they played something just as memorable when they played “So Many Roads.” The song reminds every Grateful Dead fan of the one member they all really miss, Jerry Garcia, the man who used to sing it live during the last years of his life. The lyrics touched me maybe harder than any other song played that night and sent strange chills down my spine as I heard Kadlecik and Lesh sing in place of Jerry, “So many roads I tell you New York to San Francisco all I want is one to take me home. From the high road to the low road so many roads I know. So many roads, so many roads. From the land of the midnight sun where ice blue roses grow long those roads of gold and silver snow. Howlin wide or moaning low so many roads I know. So many roads to ease my soul.”

Next Furthur dove into more psychedelic-esque Live Dead material, picking up where “Dark Star” had left off earlier in the second set by playing “St. Stephen,” into “The Eleven.” The fans really reacted strongly for these two songs, gathering out some of their last ounces of energy for the night to dance and shake their bodies around on the floor and balcony. Kadlecik composed a loud intro solo leading into harmonious opening chants by Lesh, Weir, Kadlecik in unison, “St. Stephen with a rose, in and out of the garden he goes. Country garland with the wind and the rain. Wherever he goes the people all complain. Stephen prosper in his time. Well he may and he may decline. Did it matter? Does it now? Stephen would answer if he only knew how.” “St. Stephen,” flowed majestically into “The Eleven,” and was another prime example of how Furthur are just as capable as The Grateful Dead playing half their sets into one long jam without ever stopping once.

The final song of the third set was “Not Fade Away,” the old time Buddy Holly cover The Grateful Dead have always mastered at live shows, which Bob Weir sang passionately, “Though our loving not fade away.” There was a short break and Phil Lesh delivered his “everyone please be an organ doner speech.” “Lesh’s life was saved by an organ donor when he needed an instant liver transplant. One was rushed into the hospital he was in, belonging to a young man named Cody, who had died in motorcycle accident that day. The set closed with a spectacular version of Weir’s “Sugar Magnolia” the classic set closer at most Dead shows that was sometimes referred to as “Sunshine Daydream,” which is chanted by the band over and over again as the final part of the song.

It felt so surreal being there at the Bill Graham Civic Center watching Bob and Phil play once again together, with such a good lineup of talented musicians behind them, from Kadlecik’s superlative renditions of Jerry Garcia Grateful Dead songs, to Chimenti banging away hard on the keys. Jay Lane and Joe Russo were both a fantastic combination of drummers because of their different drumming styles. As women in silk white dresses and long golden locks danced away to the sound of Weir singing, “She’s got everything delightful, she’s got everything I need. Crazy in the sunlight yes indeed,” I knew I had come to the right place to spend New Years Eve. This was beyond a blessing to be at this show amongst good hearted people and some of the most fantastic music ever written and created by a group of musicians that were known as The Grateful Dead.

On a cool Saturday night my buddy Dean and I drove down to the Ashkenaz on San Pablo Ave. to catch two outstanding Grateful Dead cover bands I have seen quite frequently in the Bay Area over the last year, The Dead Guise and Play Live Dead (formerly known as Live Dead.) Dean had never been to a show at Ashkenaz, nor had he seen either band, so I was quite excited to introduce him to this incredible live music, especially because he was a big fan of The Dead like myself.

We arrived a bit early at Ashkenaz in time to greet several good friends from the DeadHead community including Tommy, who always sells his inventive Grateful Dead tie-dye T-shirts outside the venue. He had been on the Phish tour on the East Coast recently, and I had not seen him since the last Live Dead show in October at The Starry Plough. He said he was about to head back East to hit the Furthur tour. The Dead shows are not only great for the music, but also for the community of people surrounding them and the friendly warmth their souls bring to the gathering.

The Dead Guise opened their set with a fantastic rendition of “Truckin,” which Ken Younger and John Heffernan strummed away in a vibrant tone with their wooden acoustic guitars, which were plugged into nice booming sounding amplifiers. The other members of The Dead Guise are bassist/vocalist Mike Marino, drummer/vocalist Bob Sicotte and keyboardist/vocalsit James Miller (also of Play Live Dead.) Ashkenaz is an ideal place to see live Grateful Dead bands because there is a huge dance floor, of which most people were taking advantage. An elder Dead Head ex-cabbie with longish hair, sideburns and a green-colored polo shirt tucked into his blue jeans, was leading the dance charge. He had seen lots of shows at The Fillmore in the 70s and was complaining at the set break that “too many people today don’t dance at shows. Back in my day in the 1970’s, everybody knew how to dance. Now listen to me!” he said grabbing me by both shoulders and staring me square in the eye, “It’s a travesty people from your generation have forgotten how to dance."

The Dead Guise followed “Truckin,” with some original Grateful Dead material, “Deep Elem Blues” and “Rosa Lee McFall,” the latter of which I had never heard them play and sounded almost identical to the way The Dead would play it live. Next up was “Peggy-O,” a classic song to hear live. At this point a hippie with long dreadlocks and a beard showed up shirtless and barefoot. He began to dominate the dance floor by jumping up and down and spinning himself and some of the women dancers in countless circles. As the night passed on rumor was it he was from The Rainbow family, and I have to say I have never ever seen anybody in my life with that much energy to dance their heart out, feel so much power from the music being played. His zeal felt larger than life. The Dead Guise continued to bring the house down with a spectacular version of “New Speedway Boogie,” which Heffernan sang: “And I don’t know what I’ve been told if the horse don’t pull you got to carry the load and I don’t know whose backs that strong. Maybe find out before too long.” Then the whole crowd sang along with him in unison, “One way or another this darkness has got to give.”

“New Speedway Boogie” ran right into “Cassidy” and flowed perfectly as Heffernan handled Bob Weir’s parts extremely well, even doing fantastic facial impersonations that matched Bobby’s. Another highlight in The Dead Guise’s set included their own song “Reggae Weed,” with lines about going to Jamaica and South East Asia to find good ganja. The last song The Dead Guise played was a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” from his quintessential album Blood On The Tracks. This song really got the crowd revved, as it brought back memories for some of the crowd of The Dylan and The Dead tour in the mid 1980s.

There was a short set break then Play Live Dead took the stage to open with “Alabama Getaway,” a fast jam from the early 1980s, that became a live favorite soon after its release on Go To Heaven. Fundy handled the Jerry vocals on Alabama Getaway and Shep Silver took over on the second song, Chuck Berry’s “The Promised Land.” Silver sang in a solid Bob Weir pitch that got the crowd dancing wildly, led of course by the Rainbow family hippie who owned the front of the stage. Silver also took over the next song, another classic “It’s All Over Now.” Fundy sang “Sugaree” afterwards, which really got the crowd going. As my friend Dean told me later in the night, “Sugaree” was his favorite song played during the entire two sets of Live Dead’s music. Fundy handled the vocals just right, singing very delicately just like Jerry, “Just one thing I ask of you. It’s just one thing for me. Please forget you knew my name my darling Sugaree. Shake it shake it, Sugaree, just don’t tell tell ‘em that you know me.”

Keyboardist James Miller took over the next song playing one of Brent Mydland’s best songs, “Just A Little Light.” Brent was such a vital part of The Grateful Dead with all the vocal energy in his voice that could be both low and gruff and also quite high at times. He showcases both those sides in “Just A Little Light,” and Miller was right on key as he sang, “Well there ain’t nobody safer than someone who doesn’t care. And it isn’t even lonely when no one’s ever there. I had a lot of dreams once, but some of them came true. The honey’s sometimes bitter when fortune falls on you. So you know I’ve been a soldier in the armies of the night. And I’ll find the fatal error in what’s otherwise alright. But here you’re trembling like a sparrow, I will try with all my might to give you just a little sweetness. Just a little light.” Miller also handled the rolling keyboard solos in the song terrifically banging his fingers back and forth hitting every note just right. Steve Fundy led Play Live Dead through their next song “Ramble On Rose,” the Europe '72 classic, where he showed off all his Jerry emotion both on his powerful electric guitar and in tune vocals, “I'm gonna sing you a hundred verses in ragtime. I know this song it ain't never gonna end. I'm gonna march you up and down the local county line. Take you to the leader of the band.” Shep Silver led Play Live Dead through the next song “On The Road Again,” which he sang again much like Weir would have in the 1980s when the Dead performed it at the Warfield in San Francisco. Cumberland Blues was a nice jam but it was the set closer—Weir’s “The Music Never Stopped,” with guest singer Tie-Dye Steve Anderson—that really got the crowd dancing like crazy as he sang the opening lines, “There's mosquitoes on the river. Fish are rising up like birds. It's been hot for seven weeks now, too hot to even speak now. Did you hear what I just heard? Say, it might have been a fiddle, or it could have been the wind. But there seems to be a beat, now. I can feel it in my feet, now. Listen, here it comes again." As Anderson sang and Play Live Dead worked up an awesome jam, The Rainbow family hippie picked up a girl in the audience and began spinning her around in circles and everyone else just kept on dancing.

The second set began with a “China Cat Sunflower” into “I Know You Rider,” a classic two-song format that is just as big as the Grateful Dead song combinations, such as “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire On The Mountain.” Shep Silver had his highlight of the night rocking out to Bob Weir’s “Playing In The Band.” Similar to Heffernan earlier in the night, Silver knew how to capture the persona of Bobby as well, with his onstage facial expressions, making you know how much he was feeling the music.

Play Live Dead then dove into the most psychedelic part of the show with “Dark Star (Part 1)” into a totally tripped out “Drums” into “Space” segment, dominated by the two new drummers Jim Walsh and Mike Schwartz. Afterwards the rest of the band returned and James Miller sang “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” a Traffic cover The Grateful Dead used to do with Brent Mydland singing. After this “Dark Star” resumed with “Part 2” of the song, which was even more psychedelic as it merged back into a rocking “Playing In The Band” reprise. Play Live Dead closed the second set with beautiful “Morning Dew,” which Fundy sang with a nice high voice just like Jerry would have: “Walk me out in the morning dew my honey. Walk me out in the morning dew today. Can’t walk you out in the morning dew my honey. Can’t walk you out in the morning dew today.”

It was now well past 2:00 AM but the crowd was not ready to let the band to exit the stage, as they called Play Live Dead out for three more encores. First the band played “Sugar Magnolia,” and the crowd danced harder than they had one hour before. Nobody was ready to let go of this magical moment of sunshine daydream. A final shout of “DO SHAKEDOWN STREET!” from a female Dead Head in the crowd, brought Play Live Dead back up once again to perform “Shakedown Street” into “Dancing In The Streets.” “That is my favorite song to perform live,” said new drummer Jim Walsh, “so I’m glad you guys shouted that one out—it gave me extra incentive to play it.”

These encores were a fantastic finale to Play Live Dead’s first official performance in Berkeley since the departure of original drummer Paul Scannell last Fall. Both Walsh and Schwartz proved they have complete ability to fill the void of Scannell; and the fact Play Live Dead have two drummers now fits the Grateful Dead model of what the original live sound should be as it was with The Dead back in their touring hey-day with the two rhythm devils Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart.

It was Jorma Kaukonen’s big San Francisco homecoming on his current tour with G.E. Smith. Kaukonen, who grew up to be an accomplished guitar player in Washington D.C., moved to San Francisco just in time for the psychedelic rock of the sixties, and was one of the founding members of Jefferson Airplane; San Francisco’s golden fleece of psychedelic rock in the 60s. Since Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen’s career has taken a far left turn in another direction. Long gone are the days when Jorma played some of the most electric/psychedelic/acid drenched guitar riffs of all riffs, such as the Jefferson Airplane song he wrote titled “Star Track,” on their 1968 Crown of Creation record. Since the 1960s Kaukonen has shifted his position as a musician, by first forming Hot Tuna with Jack Cassady, his childhood friend from D.C., and former bandmate in Jefferson Airplane. During this period Jorma became almost solely an acoustic guitarist playing mostly folk and bluegrass music. Hot Tuna lasted for decades as a tour de force, known for their fantastic live shows that featured mostly Jorma’s compositions, but also other extremely talented musical showcases such as violinist Papa John Creach, who was also a member of Jefferson Airplane at the very end of their existence as a band.

Now, on this night at the Great American Music Hall, Jorma was playing with the Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania native G.E. Smith, somebody with whom his fans were not all that familiar. Smith’s music dominated both sets just as much as Jorma’s. G.E. Smith, who seemed to resemble the actor Willem Dafoe with his highlighted blonde locks and his deep wrinkled forehead and cheeks, is a former member of Bob Dylan’s touring band back in the late 1980s, but he is probably best known for being the main guitarist of Saturday Night Live Band in the 1980s and the lead guitarist of Hall And Oates in the 1970s. As Allmusic.com writes about Smith, “Most of the millions of people who saw pony-tailed Smith play scorching guitar during a ten-year stint in The Saturday Night Live Band know only a fraction of a brilliant, multi-faceted talent. Musicians are far more familiar with him. The list of world-class players he has performed with is staggering – Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Hall & Oates, Eric Clapton, and David Bowie are only a portion.” Jorma told his Great American Music Hall audience, “G.E. likes to stay a lot overnight at the Chelsea Hotel in New York and write songs, or just jam out with a group of his friends.” This made a lot of sense to me, since his idol Bob Dylan spent twelve whole days in solitude in the Chelsea Hotel writing “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” for his former wife Sara, in what would be the best folk ballads of the 1960s, appearing on the album Blonde On Blonde.

Jorma and Smith’s set began with a lot of old blues tunes not written by Kaukonen I was unfamiliar with, but that didn’t matter as I was having such a fun time watching all the fantastic interplay of guitar picking between the two stellar musicians, who traded acoustic leads and melodies back and fourth, proving what fantastic acoustic virtuoso’s they were. Kaukonen played the first song “Big River Blues,” and Smith took control of the second “Dark As a Dungeon,” and they continued to rotate back and fourth between songs they wrote or specialized in covering. I finally recognized something when Jorma led Smith through “Come Back Baby,” an original he did off the first Hot Tuna album, but the song actually is a jam that dates all the way back to Jefferson Airplane, when Jorma and Jack Cassady used to jam out for ten minutes at a time during live sets. This slower acoustic version of “Come Back Baby,” I actually had heard Jorma Kaukonen play previously at last fall’s Non-Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and thought it was decent but not as good as the original interplay of the song he mastered with Jefferson Airplane.

It was interesting also hearing a song like “True Religion” (the next song Kaukonen sang), since it too, like “Come Back Baby,” sounded so much different on all-out acoustics, lacking the loud violin of Papa John Creach and the harsh bass lines of Cassady. This earlier rendition of “True Religion” first appeared magnificently as the leadoff track on side 1 on the first Hot Tuna first studio album Burgers. Jorma had his deep, Southern-twang singing voice down well in this song as he sang, “Momma take this pillow from under my head Allelu. Said take this pillow from under my head Allelu. Now take this pillow from under my head, Jesus is gonna’ make up my dying bed. Then you’ll need that true religion Allelu.”

It was hard to compare G.E. Smith to Jorma Kaukonen as a musician, besides his excellent guitar picking, with his fingers moving up and down the fret board at a very high speed during songs like “Chicken Blues.” Unfortunately Smith’s vocals were not nearly as powerful and heartfelt as Kaukonen’s, and that is what truly lacked in his performance. For instance, when Jorma sang a song I had never heard before called “Things That Might Have Been,” it stirred emotions in the crowd. “This is a family song,” Kaukonen said, introducing the number, and it was obvious the song was about Jorma and his brother growing up as two very different children, yet spending  a lot of time together, and having a strong family bond. When the boys reach the age of adolescence their differences drive them apart. As more and more years roll on and the brothers change, they slowly drift apart even more, hardly seeing one another for the rest of their lives. Listening you got the feeling that a lot of the songs both Jorma Kaukonen and G.E. Smith were playing had lyrics that were very deep and emotional for them to let out. I could have sworn Jorma was about to break down and shed a few tears when he played “Things That Might Have Been,” as he tenderly strummed the chords, making it  sound more like a lullaby, than the heavier acoustic strumming he had been pounding out on his acoustic for songs like “Come Back Baby,” and “True Religion.”

Another big highlight of the first set was hearing Jorma Kaukonen play “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” originally written by Rev. Gary Davis and popular back in the 1960s psychedelic scene among Dead Heads, when The Grateful Dead played a historic version of it on their 1969 Live Dead album. The lyrics foreshadowed the subject that loomed for both singers throughout the night, especially Jorma, something that seems to have been eating at him his whole music career, but maybe even more now in his mid sixties. Jorma sang in a deep dark blues voice “I said death don't have no mercy in this land. Death will leave you standing and crying in this land. Death will leave you standing and crying in this land, in this land, yeah! Whoa! come to your house, y' know he don't stay long. Y' look in bed this morning, children you find that your brothers and sisters are gone. I said death don't have no mercy in this land. Death will go in any family in this land. Death will go in any family in this land. Come to your house, you know he don't take long. Look in the bed on the morning, children find that your family's gone.”

Jorma pleased the Hot Tuna fans by opening the second set with “Hesitation Blues” Jorma’s plaintive lyrics, “Well if the river was whiskey said I was a duck. You know I’d swim to the bottom and never come up. Tell me how long? Well rocks in the ocean, said fish in the sea. Knows you mean the world to me. Tell me how long do I have to wait?. Can I get to you now, Lord? Do I hesitate.”

Many of G.E. Smith’s songs in the second set also focused on dark subjects such as his former addiction to the narcotic codeine, or his restless wanderings through cowboy nightclubs. Other songs that clearly were not about him but dealt with historic matters such as “Buffalo Skinners,” which talked about how hard it was to be a cowboy out west and remain on the trail of hunting buffalo, despite harsh winter conditions, and never having much to eat. Jorma hit his peak in the second set playing some of his best songs he ever wrote such as “Uncle Sam’s Blues,” which he originally performed with Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock ’69, a version of this appears on the Woodstock DVD. Jorma also played one of his more recent classics “River Of Time,” which he told the audience had “won best folk song of the year on NPR radio.” “River Of Time,” is a very beautiful finger-picking melody, that sounded even better this time around than at the Bluegrass Festival at the Polo Fields last Fall, as G.E. Smith was locked in with Jorma’s guitar picking and sturmming, trading killer riffs back and fourth every step of the way. The lyrics may have been the most powerful part of the song, not only in the brilliant way they were written by Jorma, but also the soft way he sang them compared to the gruffier bluesy voice he had been using most of the show, “The banks were shrouded, in the fog. From the shore, a barkin’ dog, recalled a time, long forgot. The flowers there, Forget-Me-Nots. I saw a wave from, friends of mine. As I rowed down the river of time it might be nice, I could have said to speak to loved ones, long since dead. Lives still flow there, on the shore. And I shan’t see them, anymore. Not on this side, but in dreams. And dreams aren’t always what they seem. The river flows, it’s just begun. My daughter follows, and my son. When my time ends, I’ll rest on land, and while I slumber, they’ll still stand. They’re a part of that endless line. We all still float in a river of time.”

The last great song Jorma played of the night was “I Am the Light of This World,” the one and only song he played all night from his classic debut solo record Quah, released in 1974. Quah is one of those albums that has stood the test of time, and is still considered Jorma’s best solo album by far if you asked most of his diehard fans. It spawned some of his most memorable tunes from, “Genesis, to “Police Dog Blues,” as well as another one of his heart-wrenching songs, “Another Man Done Gone,” and his best instrumental on acoustic guitar without lyrics, “Lord Have Mercy.” When Jorma sang “I Am the Light of This World,” his voice was clearly not as mighty and lacked the depth it had on the original Quah take, but that didn’t matter. It was thrilling just just to watch Jorma give it his all on the guitar and even vocally--he couldn’t hold the notes as long and had to take a deep breaths in at times during the chorus of “Just as long as I am in this world--I am the light --of this world.” Both my friend Henry and I thought “I Am the Light of This World,” was the highpoint of the concert, and the cheers rang on for minutes after the song was completed.

After the set was over, the crowd called Jorma Kaukonen and G.E. Smith back for one final encore, which they were obliged to do, playing Smith’s “Let It Rock,” which may have disappointed some local San Francisco Jorma fans, who wanted to see him play the last song of the night, but with all the other goodies they had been handed, there was no reason to complain.

Set List:

Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA | 2.21.10

Set 1:
Big River Blues 
Dark As A Dungeon 
Come Back Baby 
Plastic Jesus 
True Religion 
Chicken Blues 
Things That Might Have Been 
Trouble 
Death Don't Have No Mercy 
Blind Fiddler 
The Terrible Operation 
Eyesight To The Blind 
Izze's Lullaby 
Great Speckled Bird 

Set 2:
Hesitation Blues 
Comin' Home Someday 
There's A Bright Side Somewhere 
Codine 
River Of Time 
Baby Let Me Follow You down 
Uncle Sam Blues 
Buffalo Skinners 
I Am The Light Of This World 
Guilty 
Another Man Done A Full Go Round 
Hold On 
Nine Pound Hammer 

Encore: Let It Rock

It was another jam-packed night outside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. You would have thought you were seeing Furthur on New Year’s Eve 2009 all over again. It was just about impossible to get into line outside the arena as there were so many people walking up and down the cordons with their pointer fingers in the air hoping for some miracle ticket to gain entry into DeadHeads kingdom; a Furthur show.

I finally made my way inside and met up with my friend Rich, who had showed up two hours early to get front row on the left side of the stage, where Phil Lesh’s bass equipment was set up. It was Phil Lesh’s 70th birthday and everyone was in good spirits as they saw the balloons above attached to the ceiling, ready to drop. These fans knew this was going to be another huge bash that could possibly last nearly as long as the New Year’s show that went until nearly 3:00 am. bringing 2009 to a close in San Francisco. Little did these fans know they were about to get three sets, with an acoustic opener and several high-profile musical guests!

Furthur came out from behind the backstage curtains and hit the stage at around 8 pm. with a lineup that featured guest vocalist/acoustic guitarist Chris Robinson from The Black Crowes, and Jackie Greene from Phil Lesh & Friends. Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and John Kadlecik all joined in the front row of the stage. Meanwhile guest piano player Steve Molitz (of Phil & Friends) sat in along with Jeff Chimenti handling the keyboards and drummer Jay Lane. Furthur’s usual second drummer Joe Russo sat out the first acoustic set, but joined Furthur onstage once the second set was in progress.

This lineup of Furthur opened with a beautiful acoustic “Ripple,” one of the three cuts they would play from The Grateful Dead’s classic 1970 folk rock album American Beauty in their non-electric set. Everyone seemed to be harmonizing perfectly together but Bob Weir’s voice definitely resonated the strongest on “Ripple,” as there is something calm and soothing in the melody of the song that matches his voice, as well as the lines he sang, “If I knew the way, I would take you home, dah-dah-dah-dah.” Weir also did a fine job leading Furthur through “Lazy River Road,” a song The Grateful Dead played quite frequently in the early 90s before Jerry Garcia’s death.

Chris Robinson showcased his highly soulful voice singing, “Peggy-O” with some of his southern harmony vocal dynamite, hitting every low and high pitch perfectly. It was as if part of the show had Black Crowes elements to it with Robinson singing. Even if they were Dead songs, Robinson brought The Black Crowes touches to them with that killer Rod Stewart-like, high-pitched soul in his voice. “Peggy-O” sounded great, but not nearly as brilliant as when Robinson sang former Grateful Dead keyboardist/vocalist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan’s “The Stranger (Two Souls in Communion)” The song features some of Pigpen’s most contemplative and direct personal lyrics of love, and the need to find direction in his life. The way Robinson sang each word with a hanging tinge of lingering soothing emotion, he drew the crowd deep into the song with his chanting.

“What are they seeing, when they look in each other's eyes? What are they feeling, when they see each other smile? Is it love, I never know - or an emotion that I've outgrown? Did I take a wrong turn in on life's winding road? Won't somebody help me find the right way to go? My life need some correction, alteration in and direction. Won't somebody comfort me  for awhile- yes, I'm lost. What is the secret of this tie that binds? Two souls in communion, both body and mind. Is it special magic, or just the nature of things? Conceived of great spirit, not for beggars but kings.”

Furthur’s next fantastic acoustic rendition of another timeless American Beauty live classic, “Brokedown Palace,” stirred memories of The Grateful Dead’s historic 1980 Radio City Music Hall performance of the song that would eventually appear on Dead Set. This was followed by Weir taking the mic again for a cover of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall,” which he belted off with such raw vocal energy-- “And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rains a gonna’ fall,” that you wondered how he would still have a voice left for the third set.

After Kadlecik did a fine Jerry rendition of “They Love Each Other,” Phil Lesh took his first lead vocals of the night singing “Mountains of the Moon,” in a hypnotic psychedelic voice, “20 degrees of solitude, 20 degrees in all. All the dancing kings & wives assembled in the hall. Lost is a long & lonely time, Fairy Sibel flying. All along, the all along, the Mountains of the Moon. Here is feast of solitude. A fiddler grim and tall plays to dancing kings and wives assembled in the hall. Of lost , long. Lonely times Fairy Sibil flying. All along, the all along the mountains of the moon.” It was not only Lesh’s low-pitched booming voice that was so surreal, but also the background psychedelia of light guitar strumming by the likes of Weir, Kadlecik, and Greene, that made “Mountains Of The Moon” not only one of the big highlights of the first set but of the entire night. The first set culminated with Furthur playing their third song of the first set from the American Beauty record, this time doing a fantastic rendition of “Attics Of My Life,” that brought Lesh, Weir, Robinson, and Kadlecik all up to the mic singing harmoniously as the light sounds of the acoustic guitars and Chimenti’s piano serenaded the crowd.

After a rather long break, Furthur returned to the stage to begin the second set opening with a crowd-jumping “Scarlet Begonias.” Everyone went wild, especially my friend Rich Macon, who had just gotten back from the long beer line and was wearing a “Scarlet Begonias” tie-dye t-shirt, with the famous quote of Robert Hunter, “Once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

Bob Weir continued to pump the crowd up with an electric “New Minglewood Blues,” as he chanted with intense fervor into the mic, “I was born in a desert, I was raised in a lions den. And my number one occupation is stealing women from their other man.” Chimenti’s  keyboards went wild, while Kadlecik and Jackie Greene were soloing wildly, as Weir got all the women in San Francisco riled up singing, “Couple shots of whiskey, women here start looking good. Couple shots of whiskey them Frisco girls start looking good. Couple more shots of whiskey I’m headed down to Minglewood.”

Chris Robinson continued to give a tender shout out to Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the first member of The Grateful Dead to pass away in the early 1970s by playing “Easy Wind,” a classic Pigpen tune off Workingman’s Dead, that showcased his heavy living. “Live five years if I take my time, ballin’ that jack and a drinkin' my wine. I been chippin' them rocks from dawn till doom. While my rider hide my bottle in the other room. Doctor say I better stop ballin' that jack. If I live five years gonna bust my back, yes I will.” Robinson was a big presence onstage at the mic not just vocally, but also in terms of his tall, lanky body, and extraordinarily long arms. Robinson with his bushy brown beard and shaggy shoulder-length brown hair covering most of his face looked at least half a foot taller than Bob Weir (who was barefoot on stage), and also a giant compared to Greene (who is short and slender himself).

By this time everybody was dancing and pushing towards the front of the stage as the chords of “New Speedway Boogie” were being strummed by Weir, Kadlecik, and Greene. Bobby was using his famous pink modular guitar (that he used to play on every Dead tour back in the late 80s early 90s). Jackie Greene did a superb job on lead vocals for this song taking center stage with his electric guitar, black open vest, and white Stetson hat. This was just the start of Workingman’s Dead deluxe live. Furthur next played one of Phil and Bobby’s live staples from the past few years “Viola Lee Blues.” In fact “Viola Lee Blues” may be the song you can count on hearing at most shows of Furthur or The Dead in the last half decade! “Viola Lee” melded into “High Time,” where the smell of pot was so intense inside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium that one could get a second-hand buzz just from breathing in the fumes. The slow mellow folk song had a great emotional feel that Dead fans connected with especially in the sorrowful tone in John Kadlecik’s voice that was very similar to Jerry Garcia’s as he sang, “You told me goodbye, how was I to know, you didn’t mean goodbye, you meant please don’t let me go.” There was also immaculate harmonizing with Weir and Greene, who joined Kadlecik in singing lead, “We could have us a high time, living the good life. Well I know.” After a “Caution Jam,” Chris Robinson again took center stage playing “Hard To Handle,” a song originally written by Otis Redding but covered by both The Grateful Dead back in the late 60s/early 70s seventies with Pigpen singing. It was also the first big chart topping hit for Robinson’s band The Black Crowes on their 1990 debut album Shake Your Money Maker. Robinson was very vibrant and did not hold back vocally at all at this point, using all his Southern drenched vocal power to drown the crowd with his lusty howl, “Hey little thing let me light your candles, cause mama I’m sure to handle now.” “Hard To Handle,” ran right back into a second reprise of “Viola Lee Blues” to close out the entire extravaganza. Furthur did a second Bob Dylan cover of the night with “Like A Rolling Stone,” with Bob Weir handling lead vocals with pulsing emotion as he strummed his pink Modular simultaneously. Furthur closed the second set with “Sugaree,” a fan favorite that had everyone in the auditorium dancing and shaking it.

The third set opened with “Not Fade Away,” while red balloons from the ceiling dropped and everybody sang Happy Birthday to a seventy-year-old Phil Lesh. Who could believe that Lesh could still be rocking the stage at such an age, especially after surviving nearly fatal liver failure. Lesh reminded fans as he always does at each concert that the boys name was Cody who saved his life by donating his liver Cody died in a motorcycle wreck, and his rare blood type that they were able to matched with Lesh’s.

Bobby Weir took center stage for set three with “Playing in the Band,” pointing his hand up to the ceiling after he strummed each magical chord as he sang, “Playing, playing in the band, daybreak, daybreak on the land.” Everybody loved dancing and singing along to “Playing in the Band.” As my friend Marty said after the show, “Playing” was the highlight of the night, man! Did you see Bobby, he was on fire man, he hit every vocal note just right. These are the best shows I’ve seen Bobby and Phil play together since they were The Other Ones in the late 90s!”

The other highlights in the third set included “St. Stephen” and “The Other One.” For both songs I was practically standing on the front guardrail next to Phil Lesh. In between songs it was as if fans were having their own heart-to-heart conversations with Phil, or giving him their blessings. One short, middle-aged, Italian-looking guy, with long-stringy black hair standing next to me just shouted out, “Hey Phil!” and Phil nodded. He then burst into the first notes of “Unbroken Chain,” sending the crowd into a frenzy as they had been wondering what the big Phil Lesh song of the night would be that he had written for The Grateful Dead. Some predicted “Box of Rain,” but it turned out to be a long, extended jam of “Unbroken Chain,” the third time I had seen the song performed in the last year and by far the best rendition of it. Lesh was so locked in with his birthday excitement and all he sang with such a deep emotional tone, “Blue light rain, well unbroken chain, looking for familiar faces starring out of any window pane. Looking for the secret, searching for the sound, but I can only hear the bailing of his hounds.” Lesh’s breezy bass effects, with Kadlecik playing Jerry’s masterful chords on the electric guitar, made you feel like you were really out on the mountain listening to the heavy sounds of the wind, as Lesh describes in the song.

Chris Robinson took charge of the next song in a stunning Jerry tribute, belting out “Comes a Time,” at top notch volume. “Comes a Time” is one of the best Jerry Garcia ballads ever written on his Reflections solo record. The lyrics are mind blowing, “Comes a time when the blind man takes your hand, says don’t you see, gotta make it somehow. All the dreams you’re still believing. Don’t give it up, you got an empty cup only love can fill. Only love can fill.” All the Dead Heads were hypnotized as if they were being transported back through time and were hearing such a mellifluously powerful voice like Jerry, that Chris Robinson possesses, except with a louder tinge of southern flavored soul added on to it. After the song I gave a shout out to Chris, and he flashed a peace sign to the crowd as he left the stage for good a bit before Furthur’s third and final set ended.

Furthur next launched into a song that pleased many long-time Dead Heads like Marty, “Cream Puff War,” which originally appeared on The Grateful Dead’s self titled 1967 summer of love debut The Grateful Dead. This was followed by a spectacular “Franklin’s Tower,” which was surprisingly just the first song they had played from Blues for Allah, as I have been used to seeing them do “Help On The Way” into “Slipknot” before going into “Franklin’s Tower,” on the last Fall 2009 tour. My legs were so tired from standing up near the front for three sets, but I continued to dance at a fast pace for “Franklin’s Tower.” Everyone in the crowd chanted in unison, “Roll away the dew, roll away the dew, roll away the dew.”

Furthur left the stage for a moment then came back on at 1:55 am, and played one final cover of the night, choosing Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” which The Grateful Dead also covered on their Skull And Roses record from 1971. There was no farewell bow at this show and the band walked off stage one by one, but nobody really thought the show was over until the overhead lights turned on and it was no longer dark near the stage. Everybody was sad to go home, but happy they had seen such a brilliant show from some of the best performing musicians still alive today from San Francisco’s golden psychedelic 60s rock era.

Mark Knopfler proved he was not too old to rock n' roll, as many old-school Dire Straits fans gathered at the Paramount to catch the former lead guitarist and vocalist of one of the most important bands of the 1980s. Knopfler has also had an illustrious solo career over the last ten years since releasing the highly acclaimed Sailing To Philadelphia, which featured high-profile artists such as Van Morrison and James Taylor. Knopfler is certainly of the same caliber talent as those two musicians, but is widely underrated by many critics and is not as well known in the music world. Knopfler’s Oakland show was one of the first stops on his Get Lucky Tour supporting his newest album of the same title. The song “Get Lucky,” is also a new single with a softer Knopfler touch to it, featuring the line, “You might get lucky now and then, you win some.”

Inside the Paramount many middle-aged couples strolled the vast corridors that lead into the auditorium facing the Orchestra section. Many of the men had on their brown leather jackets and some of the women, like the girl sitting next to me, seemed twenty years younger than her boyfriend (who was turning her on to Knopfler for the first time).

When Knopfler hit the stage the entire crowd started cheering. Some guys near the front even bowed down multiple times as if they were in the company of true royalty. Many of the songs in the earlier part of the set were from either Get Lucky, or Sailing To Philadelphia. The highlight of those songs was “What It Is,” a true gritty song that Knopfler wrote as the leadoff track to Sailing To Philadelphia. “What It Is” sounds like it should be blasted out of a jukebox anytime you are in a downtown bar in London or any part of Ireland, with tough English-bloke lyrics, “The drinking dens are spilling out, there's staggering in the square. There's lads and lasses falling about and a crackling in the air. Down around the dungeon doors the shelters and the queues. Everybody's looking for somebody's arms to fall into, that's what it is. It's what it is now.” The lyrics strike a similar note to the biggest Dire Straits hit of all “Sulatains Of Swing,” with that true London pub-grit of rock n’ roll in the sound.

Knopfler let out a brilliant solo before he sent more haunting and alluringly breathtaking lyrics trickling down my spine, “High up on the parapet a Scottish piper stands alone. And high on the wind, the highland drums begin to roll, and something from the past just comes and stares into my soul.”

Knopfler’s version of “Sailing to Philadelphia” lacked something without James Taylor’s vocal parts, which were filled in by banjo player Tim O’ Brien; but since it is one of his best solo songs it was a joy nonetheless to see him play it.  “Remembrance Day,” struck a sentimental chord and was a very beautiful song from the Get Lucky album, with the lines, “We will remember them.” “Hill Farmer’s Blues" was a heavier and more upbeat song by Knopfler, which featured heavy guitar soloing and the line, “I'm going into tow law for what I need. Chain for the ripsaw, killer of the weed. The dog’s at the back door, leave him be. Don’t feed him jack, and don’t wait up for me.”  

“Romeo and Juliet," the quiet love ballad from Dire Straits Making Movies album, was the first song of the night from Knopfler’s vault of his hugely successful former band, and it came somewhat in the middle of the first set. He followed that with the biggest song in the history of Dire Straits off the first album the band ever released, "Sultans of Swing." Knopfler sputtered out the familiar lyrics, which many Dire Straits fans in the crowd sang along to, “You get a shiver in the dark, it’s been raining in the park but meantime. South of the river you stop and you hold everything. A band is blowing Dixie double four time. You feel all right when you hear that music ring. You step inside but you don't see too many faces. Coming in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down. Competition in all the places. All but the horns keep blowing that sound. Way on down south, way on down south London town.” The crowd would not stop cheering for over three minutes after the song was over and everyone was on their feet, some people were again bowing down to Knopfler, proving he is truly rock-god status!

The final part of the set saw Knopfler playing a stellar version of “Speedway of Nazerath,” chanting “After two thousand came two thousand and one. To be the new champions we were there for two run. From Springtime in Arizona til’ the Fall in Monterey. And the raceways were battlefields and we fought them all the way.” Knopfler also played one more classic cut from Sailing to Philadelphia, “Silvertown Blues,” playing with an actual silver guitar and pointing it off the bright golden yellow stage lights so that beautiful silver beams shone all over the crowd at the Paramount. To close out the set Knopfler played a long Dire Straits song that pleased many California folk, "Telegraph Road,” from the Love Over Gold, album that was also one of their best recordings. The lyrics are some of the best Knopfler has ever written and he sang them with such emotion and clarity that you knew he meant every word, “You know I’d soon you had your head on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair. Now you act a little colder, like you don’t seem to care. But believe in me baby and I’ll take you away from out of this darkness and into the day. From these rivers of headlights these rivers of rain. From the anger that lives on the streets with these names 'cos I've run every red light on memory lane. I've seen desperation explode into flames and I don't want to see it again.  From all of these signs saying sorry but we're closed all the way down the telegraph road.” Knopfler then went onto play a killer, four-minute-plus solo, as “Telegraph Road,” proved to be the long epic song of the night, clocking in well over twelve minutes.

After a short break Mark Knopfler returned to the stage with his band strumming the smooth magical chords of "So Far Away," which is the leadoff track on Dire Straits classic Brothers In Arms album. The background of the stage had a TV screen showing a blue horizon with clouds mimicking the Brothers In Arms cover, and putting you right into that stoner-rock mood as Knopfler chanted in a spacey deep voice, “I’m tired of being in love and being all alone when you’re so far away from me. I’m tired of making out on the telephone when you’re so far away from me. You’re so far away from me, you’re so far I just can’t see.” After the song was over Knopfler played the title track “Brothers In Arms,” another song you can bet the hardcore Dire Straits fans had been waiting for all night. Knopfler put the entire crowd in a mystical trance as he sang, “These mist covered mountains are a home now to me. But my home is the lowlands and it always will be. Some day you’ll return to your valleys and your farms and you’ll no longer burn to be brothers in arms.” More breathtaking lyrics followed at the end of the song that sent shivers down the base of my neck and spine, “Now the sun's gone to hell. And the moon's riding high. Let me bid you farewell. Every man has to die. But it's written in the starlight, and every line on your palm, we're fools to make war  on our brothers in arms.” Hearing this song only whet the audience’s appetite for more material, and after the song was over chants came catapulting down to the stage for songs like "Lady Writer" and "The Last Laugh." Knopfler ignored these requests and played one last solo song, “Piper To The End,” staying true to his English/Scotch-Irish roots and singing the line, “If they don’t have Piper’s in heaven, I’ll have to go below.” The crowd was applauding thunderously as Knopfler strummed his final chords and waved graciously to the crowd he had just blown away with such an incendiary live show. As the last chords were played by his backing band, Knopfler hoisted his red electric guitar well above his head with his back to the audience and his face towards the drummer; he appeared for a moment to be the full mythic figure in the rock n’ roll legends that he is.

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers with Joe Cocker opening rocked a sold out, standing-room-only crowd at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California, on the 5^th of June, as the opening day of their 2010 Summer Tour across America. This was the first Petty tour since 2006, when he was riding high off the success of his solo album Highway Companion. This 2010 tour was just as mind blowing as the one back in 2006, featuring the incredible organist Bermont Tench, and bassist Ron Blair. These fellow Heartbreakers date back all the way to the band’s first self-titled album that featured the hit songs “American Girl” and “Breakdown,” both radio smash hits back in the late 1970s, which launched the band into super stardom. The concert also featured lead guitarist Mike Campbell, who even played in Tom Petty’s pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch with Tench. Campbell’s leads match Petty’s guitar perfectly, even on his solo albums produced by the likes of Jeff Lyne, formerly the leader of Electric Light Orchestra and Rick Ruben.

Joe Cocker opened the set to a enthusiastic applause; his lion like growl was heard echoing though the rafters of the Oracle as he sang, “Give a ticket to an airoplane. Aint got not time to take no fast train. Oh the lonely days are gone, I’ll be back home. My baby just wrote me a letter,” from his hit “The Letter.” Cocker seemed very short from my position and bore no resemblance to his early days of the Woodstock ‘69 era— tye-dye shirt, long curly black hair with sideburns look. Still, the crowd must have seen signs of the former performer, the idiosyncratic, physical intensity Cocker exhibits when he does such things as flailing his arms. Although at this show Cocker jumped up and down more than he played air guitar with his hands, while giving random motion cues to his band like he used to, as if he were an orchestra conductor.

You could smell the pot in the crowd starting to burn when Cocker’s voice hit those extremely tense and beautiful harmonies in his cover of Billy Preston’s “You Are So Beautiful.” The crowd sang along, “You are so beautiful to me. Can’t you see? Can’t you see? You’re everything I hoped for, you’re everything I need.” Cocker was in a crowd-pleasing mood wearing a white shirt and gray suit, and occasionally sipping from a bottle of water he was keeping by one of the amplifiers to keep his voice from burning out. He played all the songs the crowd was craving to hear from his cover of Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright,” originally penned by guitar master Dave Mason. Cocker also played a song written by his old band mate in the 1960s, Leon Russell, called “Delta Lady,” and a spectacular Beatles cover of “She Came in through the Bathroom Window.” He topped that Beatles song by playing another fab four cover “With A Little Help from My Friends,” a crowd favorite that has been a legendary live song ever since he played it with all the ferocious energy he had in him at Woodstock ‘69. Cocker’s rendition of the song is a far cry from the pop rock/psychedelic feel of the original Beatles version, as it features a long organ intro and then heavy lead guitar, to which Cocker has been known to play air guitar. The vocals to the song begin even slower than The Beatles version, when Cocker asks the question, “What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me?” However, once the chorus hits he has his ferocious growl in full gear as he sings, “I can’t tell you but it sure looks like mine! A little help from my friends."

After “A Little Help from My Friends,” Cocker returned to the stage to play a final encore of “You Can Leave Your Hat Off,” before thanking the crowd and an even louder eruption of applause when he announced, “Tom Petty will be playing shortly!”

The lights went down and darkness fell across The Oracle as Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers hit the stage to screams, cries, whistles, and hoots, that echoed as the opening chords of “Kings Highway” were strummed by Petty and Campbell on their electric guitars. Bermont Tench came onstage wearing a black coat and black fedora matching his hair color and started slamming the organ he has mastered these last thirty years as a member of the band. Petty was in full rock n’ roll gear with a purple scarf and the blondish-red beard he has worn the past few years. “It’s sure good to be back in the Bay Area!” Petty stated, which pleased the crowd since Joe Cocker had accidentally erred earlier saying, “Good evening San Francisco, when in fact the show was in the East Bay city of Oakland.) Mark Knopfler at the Paramount Theatre had made the same mistake almost two months ago!) “And now I want to play a song that is almost as old as this band!” Tom Petty exclaimed as The Heartbreakers launched into “Listen To Hear Heart,” from their second studio album You’re Gonna Get It. The crowd sang along with Petty, “You think you’re gonna take her away with your money and your cocaine. You keep thinkin that her mind is gonna change, but I know everything is okay. She’s gonna listen to her heart. It’s gonna tell her what to do. She might need a lot of lovin’ but she don’t need you.”

Petty and The Heartbreakers next focused on some of Petty’s famous solo hits off his album Full Moon Fever playing his unrelenting “I Won’t Back Down” and his country sounding “Free Falling,” a song  “about all the guys out there who cheat on their girlfriends,” he said. The song may not be Petty’s best but somehow it has become his national anthem during his North American tours. Maybe because it appeals to mass radio audiences with lines most Americans can relate to such as, “She’s a good girl, loves her mother, loves Jesus, and her boyfriend too. She’s a good girl, is crazy about Elvis. Loves horses, and America too.”

The set also included a gem that is usually included in performances, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Like “Free Falling,” it’s another small town song about a girl named Mary Jane, who grew up in a small Indiana town, lacking proper parental guidance, thus growing up fast while hanging out with teenage boys late into the night. Petty also brings himself into the song saying, “I dig you baby but I got to keep moving. Last dance with Mary Jane one more time to kill the pain. I feel summer creeping in and I’m tired of this town again.” The song also features a beautiful harmonica solo, an instrument Petty only really used on his Wildflowers solo record. Petty did not play the big hit off that album “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” but that all made sense since that was a Petty solo album and we were now seeing Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers in full action. It did make sense that he chose solo songs off Full Moon Fever such as “I Won’t Back Down,” and “Free Falling,” since those are some of his biggest hits that the millions of fans who saw him at The Superbowl in 2008 expect him to play when they attend his concerts.

Another of the real highlights of the first set was when the band played the Gainesville swamp boogie, “Breakdown,” from their first self titled album released all the way back in 1976. “Breakdown” still stands tall today, and one can be certain that nothing as powerfully sensual is coming out in music today. The way Petty sings with a high croon, “It’s alright if you like me. It’s alright if you don’t. I’m not afraid of you running away honey. I get the feeling you won’t. There is no sense in pretending your eyes give you away. Something inside of you is feeling like I do, we’ve said all there is to say. Baby, breakdown, go ahead and give it to me. Breakdown honey, take me through the night, Breakdown, can’t you see. It’s alright.” The song features a strong hook lead from Mike Campbell that leads back into the verse and ties the song together majestically.

Petty & The Heartbreakers focused a large part of the first set playing songs from their new album Mojo. Some of the songs sounded too poppy and radio friendly, not that Petty has not been radio friendly in the past, but the way he was not even playing guitar in a song like “I Should Have Known It,” and generally trying to be flashy at the mic with his hands, was not too impressive. The song “First Flash Of Freedom,” which Petty told the crowd would be the next Heartbreakers single to be released on Mojo, was far more impressive featuring heavy Campbell guitar soloing, which blew the crowd away. Campbell flung his long black dreadlocks and drew his head down, the sleeves of his black leather jacket were rolled up to his upper elbows so he could stay cool, and he bellowed one of his sweetest solos of the night, hitting every high note perfectly.

The crowd seemed to go to sleep a bit during the new songs, not only because they thought the new material was inferior, but also because they wanted to hear the hits, and Petty knew this, because he responded by closing out the first set with some of his biggest but not his best songs such as, “Learning To Fly” and “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” Petty and The Heartbreakers closed the set with “Refugee,” which is one of their best songs from the early days, off their 1979 smash Damn the Torpedoes, which launched the band into super stardom. Petty sang the words with a reckless fervor, “You know, sometime, somewhere, someone must have kicked you around some. Who knows maybe you were tied up, held up, given for ransom. It don’t make no difference to me, everybody has got to fight to be free. You don’t have to live like a refugee.”

The crowd went wild hollering Tom Petty cries and holding up flashing cigarette lighters. Petty hit the stage for the final encores, playing first “Runnin’ Down A Dream,” another Full Moon Fever classic that has some of his best guitar combo work with Mike Campbell, as he and Petty faced off looking each other straight in the eye as they strummed the hard rock n’ roll chords together. The song is what many of Tom Petty’s songs are about--achieving freedom, often gained through road trips while blasting music on the radio. Petty sang the song with the entire crowd screaming it back with him, “It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down. I had the radio on, I was drivin. The trees went by, me and del were singin. Little runaway, I was flyin’. Yeah I’m runnin’ down a dream that never would come to me, workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads, runnin’ down a dream."

Petty's final encore was unquestionably his biggest hit of all time, “American Girl,” which like “Breakdown,” dates all the way back to the 1976 debut album Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. The crowd went wild once more, singing every word of the song. Petty gave a final bow with original Heartbreakers Mike Campbell, Bermont Tench, and Ron Blair by his side. It was a surreal moment seeing these rock titans delivering a thrilling and nearly flawless three-hour set. It was mind-boggling to think that some thirty years ago they were just another small-time band from Gainesville, Florida, doing the same thing, just on a smaller scale; they were young men runnin’ down big dreams yet to be fulfilled.

It was a night to remember in Oakland, December 3, 2010, the night Roger Waters was slated to play Pink Floyd’s historic album The Wall in its entirety. The Oracle Arena in Oakland was packed to maximum capacity, with standing room only. Fans around me were telling old stories of seeing Roger Waters on the original Wall tour that went so over-budget the Pink Floyd had to call it quits after only a few select shows. A recent article in Rolling Stone pointed out that Waters and the band members were also at each other’s throats and could not stand the sight of each other, which made canceling the gigs all the more necessary. “The shows lost money at every date — tickets were around $12 — and the band was falling apart. They were getting to the point where they couldn't stand the sight of each other," says Mark Fisher, the architect who built both the 1980 and the 2010 versions of the tour (and also worked on the "spaceship" stage for U2's 360U Tour). "It was all too convenient that they got to declare that the whole thing was a turkey and way too expensive and walk away from it on those grounds," reported Rolling Stone.

The show began promptly at 8 pm with Waters stomping onstage wearing all black, and with his silvery hair, large six-foot-three frame, and pale English/Welsh demeanor creating a dominating stage presence. He asked the crowd a question as the music of “In the Flesh” pounded its intro, “So you thought you might like to go to the show Tell me is something alluding you such as: Is this not what you expected to see? If you want to find out what’s behind these cold eyes, you’ll just have to crawl your way through this disguise.” The crowd went completely wild during this segment cheers were so loud you could hear them over the loudspeakers. It almost felt like a Pink Floyd reunion. The fans did not seem to harbor any of their usual Waters contempt, as they did for a long time after Roger attempted to sue Floyd’s vocalist/guitarist David Gilmour, his former best friend and writing contributor during Pink Floyd’s peak years, over the rights to the name Pink Floyd. Waters wanted to win the rights in order to break Floyd up for good, while Gilmour wished to continue the band without Waters in the picture but keeping the original members drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Richard Wright. Maybe the audience mood was enthusiastic because Waters lost the lawsuit and now seems to have temporarily buried the hatchet with Gilmour. Although with the death of Richard Wright in 2008 a Pink Floyd reunion seems rather unlikely.

Waters nailed through the rest of the first set with ease. As he said in a recent Rolling Stone interview, he considers The Wall to be the defining work of his career and was determined to make it the best show he could with his on stage theatrics. The show included the construction of a real 36-foot-high wall that would stand until the end of the show when it would be knocked down. Giant puppets emerged from behind the wall at the Oracle as “Another Brick in the Wall Part 1,” was played, and the incredible digital lighting animation went crazy as schoolgirls dressed in full outfits came out with nuns following them waving little sticks and barking orders. After the song Waters said it represented his life in the British school system, where instead of encouraging him to do whatever he wanted in pursuing his goals, the teachers he had told him he was incapable and would never achieve the things he desired. Waters also dedicated the song “Mother” to his mother, who was a strong presence in his life, especially when he never really knew his Father, who was killed during World War II.

The first set hit its peak around the time of “Young Lust,” as lace dancers came onstage and the original animation of Gerald Scarfe-for The Wall film (1980) that was released at the same time as the album-was available for viewing on the stage’s wall screen. By this point Waters and his band were no longer visible as they were behind the actual wall playing music.

It was not until after “Goodbye Cruel World” and intermission that Waters was visible again. The song was “Hey You,” and despite not being the original singer on most of the track (that was David Gilmour), Waters captured it quite well. Singing with deep passion, “Hey you out there beyond the wall, breaking bottles in the hall can you help me, hey you don’t tell me there is no hope at all. United we stand. Divided we fall.”

The second set highlights were “Comfortably Numb,” which featured the lead guitarist being hoisted above the wall into the rafters on a mechanical stairwell. The solo he played was blistering and reminiscent of David Gilmour’s gem from The Wall album. Waters meanwhile was at the bottom of the wall clawing at it in a crazy maniacal manner as if he was the character Pink in the movie. I sat in my seat and wondered if some of it was theatrics, or was this the real Roger Waters, now an old man but still in the same place trying to crawl his way out of the deepest trenches of the wall, “Comfortably Numb” in the process.

Waters received some of his biggest applause of the night after “Comfortably Numb,” and the show continued with “The Show Must Go On,” a short, mesmerizing passage on the album about the loss of innocence with rock stardom. “Take me down,” Waters pleaded with the crowd “I didn’t mean for them to take my soul, am I too old, is it too late. Where has the feeling gone? Will I remember this song?” This song merged into “In the Flesh Part II,” where the lights shone on people and Waters shouted, “Are there any queers in the house tonight? That one does not look right get him against the wall! Against the wall! And that one is Jewish! And that one is a cool! And that one is smoking a joint! And another with spots! If I’d have my way I’d have you shot!”

Next up came “Run Like Hell,” which set The Oracle ablaze again. Waters snarled into the microphone with his heavy British accent, “This is for all the paranoid people in Oakland.” The song is all about feeling that people are after you, and the only solution for escape is to constantly be on the run like a fugitive.

The heavy animation of “The Trial” brought life to the theatrics of Gerald Scarfe, with his little characters shouting prolific lyrics at each other that symbolize everything about The Wall: “You little shit you’re in it now, I hope they throw away the key. You should have talked to me more often then you did. But no, you had to your own way. Have you broken any homes up lately? Crazy over the rainbow, I’m crazy. Bars in the window. There must have been a door there in the wall.”

The set closed with “Outside The Wall,” as Waters sang the final words in a soft but bitter British intonation, “The bleeding hearts and artists make their stand. And when they’ve given you their all. Some stagger and tether, after all it’s not easy. Banging your head against a wall.” With that Roger Waters thanked everyone in Oakland for attending the show and paying their respects to the historic album The Wall, which after over 30 million albums sold, and crossing over to mainstream, is likely never to be forgotten. At the end of the show Waters pointed out that he is not the man who wrote The Wall. “The man who wrote The Wall, might have been me, but that man no longer exists inside me. That man was bitter, spiteful, and full of hate. I look back on it now and I understand where I was coming from, but with age I have become more of a calm person.”