Chicago has the best outdoor concert venue I've ever
been to anywhere: Charter
One Pavilion at Northerly Island, a little gem of a place right
on the lakefront. And it just so happens I witnessed Phil Lesh & Friends play
a MONSTER show there this past Friday night -- check
out the setlist. Founding member of the Grateful Dead, Phil is 68 years
old, still pushing the envelope of rock and roll improvisation -- I
wanna be like him when I grow up ...
I saw Dark Star Orchestra this past Friday night. It was another full-tilt, dance-til-you-drop (no one sits), sing-til-you're-hoarse (my voice sounds like I've been gargling with gravel) jam-band show. DSO channels the Grateful Dead like no one else, getting even better musically as time goes on -- been playing together since '98, started here in Chicago, Saturday 2/2 was their 1,500th performance (sold out, or I might have gone again).
They really capture the spirit of what it was like back in the day -- over 3 hours of music, and I was shakin' it the whole time. A GD/DSO concert absolutely has the same party atmosphere as other rock shows, except the band rarely says a word to the audience -- the strength of the music whips the crowd into a frenzy song after song. It's hard to imagine -- you have to experience it to believe it. If you got familiar with the songs I KNOW you'd become a great DeadHead/DSO fan, twirling 'round and round all night long amid the wafting scent of patchouli-tinged sweat and ganja mon! (What smoking ban?)
In case you think Phil Lesh and Friends are resting on their laurels, guess again:
10/05/07 (Fri) Riviera Theater - Chicago, IL
Set 1: Deal, Mississippi 1/2 Step, Deep Elem Blues, Loose Lucy, When You're Walking Away, Cumberland Blues, Tell Me Baby, Cold Rain & Snow
Set 2: Cosmic Charlie, Chinacat Sunflower, Eyes Of The World, St. Stephen, Millenium Jam, Mountains Of The Moon, Midnight Rider, I Know You Rider, Golden Road, Sugar Magnolia, E: Tom Thumbs Blues
A SMOKIN' show, trust me!
For those of you not keeping score at home, on the evening of
January 4th the Democrats held a little "Pelosi-palooza"
to celebrate Nancy Pelosi's coronation as The Speaker of the House.
One of the headlining acts was called "The House Band," featuring
members of the good ol' Grateful Dead,
of whom Nancy claimed to be a "fan."
Now I don't know about you, but I've attended my share of Dead concerts
-- isn't it comforting to know that the 3rd person in line for
President used to mingle with people whose brains were addled on all
kinds of psychedelics??? (I'm sure Nancy herself never inhaled -- or
maybe never exhaled ...) Wave that flag,
baby!
I got my Grateful Dead fix
in October: First, Bob Weir's group RatDog
played two
stellar sets at the Riv -- as
usual, all the "hits" were reworked to keep them vibrant. A few days
later I checked out The
Rhythm Devils, featuring Bill Kruetzman and Mickey Hart as two
drumming dervishes. They pounded me into submission over the course of
a long dance-a-thon at the ornate Chicago Theatre --
it was hard to sit down all night with that kind of percussive thunder
going on!
I went to see Phil Lesh (bass player extraordinaire from the Grateful Dead) this week with his band. Killer show, great
venue, not too hot, fabulous tailgate party (courtesy of Rock) 'til the
heat came 'round and busted us for grillin' on a sunny day!
Never heard a better rendition of The Star Spangled Banner -- even Dusty Baker approved ...
Moment of silence please for the late, not so great Vince
Welnick ...
He's the 4th Grateful Dead keyboardist to bite the dust since the band's inception in 1965. Doesn't seem like there's a lot of job security at that particular post, is there?
A friend of mine (Young Laura Durava, bless her rockin' little heart!) and I were recently chatting about the rock groups we've seen over the years. I'm a self-confessed Dead Head, and went to about 50 Grateful Dead shows in my time. Not all of them were great, but some were literally
OTHERWORLDLY, depending on what sacraments were available to me ...
Some of my favorites? Springsteen of course -- the first time I saw him in '74 I could
not believe my eyes or ears -- NO ONE HAS THAT MUCH ENERGY! This was
back when I was in college in AusTex at a cool small venue called The
Armadillo World Headquarters. Saw a lot of great shows there,
including ZZ Top (before they were famous they were just a lil' old
band from Texas), Van Morrison, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet
Airmen (absolutely raucous!), and a great bluesman named Freddie King.
I saw a lot of good music in Austin from '70 - '74: My first Dead show
in '71 (I think I liked it, but wasn't totally sure -- it was so different
...), The Moody Blues in their prime, The Allman's with Duane, It's A Beautiful Day, The
Guess Who, Steve Miller Band, the legendary Chuck Berry and even Willie
Nelson before he became a household name.
Saw several great Who shows with their original drummer, Keith Moon --
boy, did HE kick some ass on drums.
Pink Floyd at the Cow Palace in SF -- psycho-delic, baby!
Page and Plant (after Led Zeppelin) still had plenty of swagger.
Bob Dylan rocked splendidly hard a number of times I saw him, despite his aloof stage demeanor. He
was great with Tom Petty at Alpine Valley (East Troy, WI) in the 80's somewhere back there. I
loved all the Alpine Dead shows -- that was where the hard core freaks
REALLY came out of the woodwork and it was always a "twirl-city"
dance-a-ton. (The action in the parking lot was almost as hot as the
concerts, depending on what the vendors were hawking and if there were
any "tanks 'n hoses" out ...) But I also really liked Aerosmith there
too.
Here's a list of other shows I've been to -- in no particular order I've seen: The Band,
Clapton (once in Blind Faith), the Pretenders, Los Lobos, Three Dog
NIght, Grand Funk Railroad, Lou Reed, the Kinks, the Cars, the Police,
The New Riders of the Purple Sage, Jefferson Airplane (not Starship),
Hot Tuna, BoDeans, Jerry Lee Lewis, Deep Purple, Mott the Hoople (All
the Young Dudes), the Ramones, Prince (who could really shake a tail
feather -- great show!), Styx (rather forgettable, since they opened
for the Who), Lynyrd Skynyrd (who were memorable despite opening for
the Who), Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, Mitch Ryder, Buddy Guy (who
taught Jimi Hendrix a thing or two), the Clash, Phil Collins and Jackson Brown. (Forgive me for boring ya -- I'm on a roll here ...)
I was a big Little Feat fan back when their fearless leader Lowell
George was still kickin' -- he died of a heart attack at age 37 --
translation: too much cocaine.
And most Rolling Stones shows were also
outstanding -- I saw them in the '60's, the 70's, the 80"s, the 90's
and last summer at Soldiers Field.
So I know it's only rock'n roll, but I like it like it yes I do.
Now you've REALLY got me thinkin' -- I've also seen the Talking Heads,
Boz Scaggs, Dave
Edmunds with (and without) Rockpile, Traffic w/Steve Winwood, Jimmy
Vaughn (Fabulous Thunderbirds), Ray Charles (while he still had it),
Robert
Palmer, The Jerry
Garcia Band (not the same as the Dead), Phil 'n Friends (Phil Lesh's band), Rat Dog (Bob Weir's band), Dark Star Orchestra (my favorite Dead cover band -- you MUST see 'em if you like the shows from the 70's) Sir Paul McCartney in the 90's, George Harrison solo tour in the mid-70's, BB King,
Cat Stevens, Neil Young, Mountain, Buckwheat Zydeco, JC Mellencamp, Joe Ely, George Thorogood & the Destroyers, The Blasters, Leon
Russell, Dire Straits, Black Sabbath (before
anybody heard of Ozzie!), The Beach
Boys, The Cars, Mink DeVille, Amazing Rhythm Aces ("Third Rate Romance"), John
Mayall, John Prine, Love, String Cheese Incident (a
newer jam band), Pacific Gas
& Electric ("Are You Ready?") and Bonnie Raitt.
When you mention the band Chicago -- in the early 70's they were great
in concert,
but
then sold out to the record industry's standard "hit making" formula
and grew
stale. (Springsteen reportedly opened for them early on, then swore
he'd never take second billing again.)
That's what killed so many
bands, starting with the Beatles,
who stopped doing concerts by the end of 1966 because of the musical
boredom of playing the same songs over and
over again. (Goes to show anything can get boring if it gets
too routine,
even being a Beatle ...)
I guess that explains why I gravitated to the Dead. They held up their
collective middle
finger to Warner Brothers Records, saying to their fans, "Go ahead
people -- you can just
record our music at our concerts FOR FREE. If we release a studio
album,
well -- we may (or may not) play a song from it. We're gonna mix it up
and
improvise at every concert, so each song is a 'work in progress' --
hang
in there with us as we try to make something unique happen. AND --
we'll most likely be at least
as
stoned as you are ..." So you could go to 3
shows in a row and hear about 75 different songs in 3 nights, with
rarely a repeat.
Besides, ya gotta love a group that went on a hippie whim to play at The
Pyramids in Egypt ...
You'd be "dead wrong" -- they were Dead Set on Success.
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