Days of the Dead, Part 4: Ships, Skeletons, Drums and Dizziness
There is an entire second half of Dead Forever: Day 2 Stripstack didn't get to yet
Saw an Xtweet by OG MTV VJ Martha Quinn this morning reacting to a post of a Haight-Ashbury sequence during Dead & Company’s Dead Forever show at Sphere. “Wow how very fascinating. So this is what a @SphereVegas experience is like. I haven't been there yet have you??”
You gotta go Martha. Yes the band looks tiny from the upper audience levels, but there’s no shortage of visuals of them being projected into scenes of sailing ships and star-filled galaxies. There is no need for a real life wall of sound due to the Sphere’s state-of-the-art sound system taking care of all aural needs, but the emergence of the mythological Wall of Sound as part of the animated spectacle more than makes up for its physical absence.
On our night the first set ran as follows:
The second set ran way longer:
Old News Broadcast of the Grateful Dead
I am a casual Grateful Dead fan and did not know the first seven songs of the second set, but the music was far better than I would have imagined. I get restless during just about any concert two-thirds of the way in unless the show is something really special. Usually those shows have been in small clubs. It was so chill sitting in those comfortable Sphere seats though, and the sound filled space perfectly. People could talk to each other without yelling. By the second set neighbors had started getting to know each other, joints were being passed around, bodies were moving more.
You had to stay in your section, so the spinners made sure they bought seats close to where there was room to dance on the floor. There was so much to take in. Capturing video at concerts detracts from most live music experiences, but here the clips were as much memories and souvenirs as the imagery of tickets, posters and backstage passes that floated behind the band at one point.
The response on social media was overwhelmingly positive, although there were plenty of old-schoolers pointing out how this can’t be Dead on any level without Jerry Garcia. I don’t know about that. I mean, Dead & Company are both a tribute band and stewards of an institution that was never supposed to happen. Garcia, Bob Weir, Pigpen, Bill Kreutzmann and Phil Lesh got together at the right time and became essentially became the house band for the embryonic psychedelic culture. They had positive experiences on LSD, took their music in a bold direction while playing Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, then moved on into becoming the musical leaders of their own tribe
That part Garcia was probably into. Becoming a messiah-like figure, not so much. Backed by their patron Owsley Stanley, they had security and tech support most bands didn’t have as they went onto play the Avalon Ballroom, Fillmores West and East, festivals and student demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
Mickey Hart joined the band in September 1967 after making Kreutzmann’s acquaintance. I’ve always considered this generous and egoless on Kreutzmann’s part. He wasn't threatened at all, it seems. Hart would depart the band in 1971 after an embezzlement scandal involving his father but returned several years later as the Wall of Sound’s brief but legendary tenure as the Dead’s audio system ended.
Pigpen’s health deteriorated quickly as the ’60s gave way to the ’70s. For awhile keyboardist Tom Constanten became part of the band, then after Pigpen’s passing Keith and Donna Goodchaux came on board. The 1970s The Music Never Stopped era was about constant touring and a series of albums that never reached the heights of 1970s Workingman’s Dead or 1973’s Wake of the Flood in terms of popularity or critical acclaim but are like books of the Bible to Deadheads.
They know every song. The know “Help Is on the Way/Slipknot! is on 1975’s Blues of Allah. They’ve owned Shakedown Street in vinyl, 8-track, cassette and CD formats. They know Dick from the Dick’s Picks live tape archive refers to the late Dick Latvala, and can discuss and debate concert highlights going decades back like they happened yesterday.
They made Garcia into the messiah figure who found his public persona more and more difficult to cope with as time went on. Drugs were abundant and a convenient escape, causing the death of keyboardist Brent Mydland in 1990, but also a way to maintain as the Dead’s dependents grew. There was the live crew, the staff of Grateful Dead records, band members’ families, the caravan of underground entrepreneurs that went from show to show, and the fans who more and more made Grateful Dead concerts their only live music priority.
I got interested in the Dead as a teenager reading about the evolving post hardcore scene that included the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and Black Flag. It was changing, becoming less dogmatic. As evidence they described Black Flag’s road crew preferring to listen to Workingman’s Dead or Aoxomoxoa while working rather than Suicidal Tendencies.
What was happening here? What was the connection between Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins growing his hair long and these roadies listening to hippie music during load in? I knew “Truckin’” and “Casey Jones” of course, but now I was intrigued and had to know more. I bought Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty and was reintroduced to songs that I used to hear coming from my brother’s bedrooms and headphones a decade earlier such as “Bob of Rain,” “Ripple” and, most significantly, “Friend of the Devil.”
I played those albums until they were worn out, bought the Grateful Dead Anthology music book and started learning songs. I read books. I began to romanticize the culture, pinned a Grateful Dead button to my apron at the record store I worked at, got fewer haircuts, smoke weed, tried acid.
I was not a Deadhead though. Deadheads told you the Grateful Dead was all about the live experience. Live bootlegs captured the spirit far more than Aoxomoxoa did, which is a good album but may remind people of the generic Summer of Love bands featured in '60s exploitation movies and early Clint Eastwood cop films.
I appreciate the album a lot more now, as it sounds more like a time capsule today than the dated music it sounded like against the backdrop of emerging ’80s music styles. I love opening track “St. Stephen,” which kicked off the second set of the June 13 show.
Then came Garcia’s 1985 arrest for drug possession while passed out in his car at Golden Gate Park, which raised the band’s profile. The Grateful Dead was a mostly underground phenomenon by that time, constantly ranking as a top-earning concert draw but ignored by most music press. Garcia’s health had gone into sharp decline and the band had an intervention that seems to have worked to some degree.
It worked well enough to Garcia to get his act together enough to record the songs that would go into 1987’s In the Dark and its massive MTV hit “Touch of Grey.” It was a gentle song that came out as the Cold War was beginning to thaw and a lot of factions in pop music began to crossover. Suddenly teenagers were exposed to this subculture that had been hiding in plain sight for years, and the Grateful Dead’s fanbase increased exponentially.
This did not go over well with many established Deadheads who were suddenly spinning alongside newbies who didn’t know the score, the etiquettes, the tapes archive. Some would catch up and become the next generation of superfans, others would just go to partake in the experience. There was definitely a different breed of Grateful Dead followers emerging that were more materialistic that the established orthodoxy, but whether they could be all be characterized as frat boys is debatable.
One of the real tests it whether one finds Mickey Hart’s “Drums” sequence engrossing or a reason to hit the snack bar. It’s not a drum solo, it’s a series of rhythmic movements generated by Hart and Jay Lane, who stands in for an ailing Kreutzmann. Hart, in white gloves and looking like a wizard, attends to an arsenal of percussive instruments collected over the years and successfully makes the segment compelling.
Hart had his time with hard drugs in the early ’70s but became a progenitor of what would become known as “world beat.” His interest came to full fruition on 1991 album Planet Drum, and Hart’s musicological enthusiasm was a counterpoint to Garcia’s increasingly weary bearing as the band moved into the 1990s.
Garcia lived long enough to see the rise of bands that wouldn’t exist without the Grateful Dead. Widespread Panic and Phish rose to the top of the jam band heap by 1993, with the latter essentially filling the gap left by the Dead’s absence after Garcia passed in 1995. The legions of indie merchants, dealers, drum circle participants and whirling dervishes had a place to go, needed a place to go. Now Phish is big enough to have had their own residency at Sphere.
That’s why there is talk of Dead & Company carrying on should there be no more members of the Grateful Dead performing onstage. Dead & Company has a four-year contract with Sphere, and Weir looks pretty fit for a rock ‘n’ roller about to turn 79.
Time will tell. I would definitely recommend seeing the show to Martha Quinn. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to check out Sphere. My favorite part of the visuals was the top-hatted skeleton riding a motorcycle. I did get vertigo at one point. A starry sky moving made it feel like the Sphere itself was rotating, that planetarium effect. The show ended shortly after and we got to our feet to leave, but I felt dizzy as I climbed the stairs. My guest complained of being cold and booked up the steps and didn’t see my legs give way after climbing the third flight of steps. I leaned right so I didn’t fall backward, but the guy behind me leapt to my aid and helped me recover my balance. I didn't know until I got home that the barometer had dropped to the lowest level of the year to that point and my body was reacting to the extreme change in pressure that air conditioning doesn't affect.
Luckily a kind soul was behind me and stepped up to help me regain my balance. A stranger looked out for me. Not everyone in the audience tonight was cool, but there was enough good vibe to serve as an antidote to the transgressive energy that’s infected society and awaited us beyond Sphere’s exit doors. Whatever it took to make Dead Forever happen was worth it, and was worth continuing to make happen and give people a few hours of sanctuary in a Box of Rain that eases pain, where love will see us though.