It was a last-minute sort of thing, but I traveled down to Hampton, Virginia, yesterday to see the band Furthur in concert. They were playing in the distinctive-looking Hampton Coliseum, known variously as the Mothership or the Cosmic Cupcake.
I bought a ticket earlier in the week on a whim; partly to celebrate the new job and partly because I've been following the band's setlists and photos this tour and getting more and more interested.
The band Furthur, named for the Merry Pranksters' psychedelic school bus of that name, is made up of two of the original members of the Grateful Dead -- Bob Weir and Phil Lesh -- along with a talented crew of younger musicians. As a group, they are tight and inventive and having great fun.
There was some fear that this would just be a very good Dead cover band, but they are more than that. In fact, they are a cover band in the same way that the Grateful Dead were; taking classic songs and making them feel new. The setlist for the Hampton Coliseum show includes covers of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin. Their version of Zeppelin's Fool in the Rain was particularly good.
I went alone to this show. It's fun to do that sometimes. It makes you completely free to be anonymous. And it lets me talk to all those around me. At this show, there were fans in a wide range of ages from substantially older than I am to much, much younger.
A large group of college students (from Old Dominion University, I think) were in the row behind me. Though they would have been toddlers when the Grateful Dead last played, in 1995, some of them were were Deadheads in the true sense. One young man had been in New York City for the run of shows at Madison Square Garden during which Furthur covered The Clash (a first, and exciting) and there were guest appearances by Elvis Costello and his wife the jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall (among others).
Furthur, the best of the post-Garcia incarnations of the Grateful Dead, played a cover of Train in Vain, originally by The Clash, last night at Radio City Music Hall, in New York City. They didn't do too bad.
The song was originally sung by Mick Jones, the lead guitarist for The Clash.
I'm a Deadhead and I was a huge Clash fan back when they were active. I've written about this before. I think it's really cool that these two streams of music have come together.
Mickey Hart has written a nice little Huffington Post column on the importance of the arts in education. He argues that the science, technology, engineering and math approach, known as "STEM," won't work as well without the arts.
Neuroscientists also have shown that the brain is hardwired for music, innovation and creativity, all other human activities follow. No human culture known to historians or anthropologists has ever existed without music and dance. The arts are a necessity for insight: the arts make us human.The energy that you acquire from art and music turns inspiration into invention. This allows an inventor to dream up something never envisioned before and creates new industries and good-paying jobs.
This is a couple of years old, but it's new to me. Ann Marie Calhoun and her brother Joe Simpson play the old Grateful Dead tune Ripple. Her performance is remarkable.
I shouldn't be surprised. I'm pretty sure I've seen her work elsewhere. There's been lots of it and it looks like she'll be an interesting artist to watch.
Not least for how musically abandoned she is in her interpretation of what is one of my favorite tunes.
I think it is funny as hell to read this now. Here are some bits:
...the most unreasonable project with which we have ever involved ourselves.
It's apparent that nobody in your organization has enough influence over Phil Lesh to evoke anything resembling normal behavior.
With their attitudes and their inability to take care of business when it's time to do so would lead us to believe that they never will be truly important.
The Dead were certainly weird in those days. Anthem of the Sun is one of their more out-there and experimental efforts. But it has some gems, including attempts to capture their astonishing jamming of that period on pieces such as The Other One (cf. 1968 version and 1989 version).
It's not surprising that music industry folks thought they would fade away. Looking back over the long history of the band (they continued until the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995), it's clear that the Grateful Dead were never going to fit comfortably in the music industry. They didn't make product, they created an atmosphere in which music could come into being. Sometimes it was pretty lame, but mostly is was fabulous.
Letters of Note adds that the producer referred to in the letter eventually quit the project; "apparently the final straw was a request by guitarist Bob Weir to create the illusion of 'thick air' in the recording studio." I remember reading or hearing about this -- I think in Phil Lesh's memoirSearching for the Sound -- as an example of Bob Weir's inventiveness. Lesh says, if I remember who said this, that what Bobby was really going for was the sort of compression that is now a standard tool in all recording studios. It didn't exist in 1967. They hadn't invented it yet. But Weir knew it was needed.
I wear a pin with the Grateful Dead's lightning bolt logo on the lapel of my winter jacket. One of my daughters gave it to me for Christmas a year or so ago and I've been wearing it proudly ever since.
It gets occasional notice, usually from another deadhead passing by (there are a few of us here in Lower Slower Delaware). But sometimes it leads to cool conversations with less likely people.
This morning, as I sat in the waiting room of my eye doctor's office, an elderly woman sitting across from me asked about it. When I told her it was the logo of a rock band, she told me the story of teaching her grandson to play the drums. He's now 25 and delights in announcing who taught him when his rock band plays.
I found an interesting confluence of ideas this week in the separate streams of information from two musicians I follow.
Amanda Palmer, who is touring in Europe right now, performing both her own music and as a part of the music/art project EvelynEvelyn, posted a full quote of a rant from a music commenter named Bob Lefsetz about the Grateful Dead exhibit at the New York Historical Society.
Mr. Lefsetz was not overly impressed with the exhibition, but his brief review of it leads into a lengthy discussion of the approach to music-making that the Dead had and how that approach is lacking in much of today's music business. The Dead, he notes, were "an adventure without a destination." They didn't really have "hits," they weren't all over the radio (at least not in their heyday), and they didn't play a scripted concert. But their approach -- a communal dedication to the idea of music, to trying, to musical experimentation -- could and did pay off:
You’re not waiting for the hit. You’re not amazed by the pyrotechnics. But if the band stands on stage playing long enough, we’re all gonna fall into a groove, you’ll feel it and be transported.
I have not yet seen Amanda Palmer play live. Though I had heard music from her first band, the Dresden dolls, in the past. I found her and started to follow her activities, and listen to recordings, after she became engaged to Neil Gaiman, a favorite author and social media presence who I have been tracking. But I think she lives this approach to music; open, free, experimenting and giving to her audience. And I applaud her for it.
Meanwhile, John Mayer, who is in a break between tours, posted a video and discussion on his site this week that suggests as a similar approach, even if he does come from a much more pop-star and celebrity place.
Mayer is starting work on songs for a next album and has decided to try writing while on tour, working with his band during sound-checks and perhaps adding early versions of tunes to his set to see how they play.
For his last album, Mayor used the internet as a sounding board and posted works in progress, snippets, and thoughts as he went along. This time, he says, he wants to "think like a new artist."
Playing arenas and ampitheatres doesn’t have to mean showing up and doing an end zone dance. What if it were alive and organic and I played new tunes that were constantly changing and growing up each night? It would sure light a fire under my ass to write the best song I could, knowing I’d be bumping a surefire album track for it.
Playing to 20,000 people should feel like playing for 200, just with 19,800 more people looking in.
I think this is promising. I like John Mayer and have since his early light-rock singer-songwriter days.
I knew we were onto something with him when he appeared on a grammy awards show early on as a new artist allowed to play a bit of an early hit, solo, on acoustic guitar. He went off-recording during an instrumental break and added some very tasty, jazzy licks that suggested a jammer was in there somewhere.
His subsequent music has borne that out as Mayer mixes hard rock, pop, and a bit of jam-band aesthetic into what is still a pop star career.
Making music is at its best when it is communication, back and forth, between musician and listener. This can happen live, it can happen in recordings, and it can happen in written music if one stays open to the idea that the music is alive and depends on both playing and hearing.
And to the idea that the musician is as much the audience as the people who paid a promoter to get in the door. The best music often comes as a surprise to the musician playing it.
So, let us support those musicians who embrace this approach -- whoever they are, where ever they are, and whatever they play.
I went up to Asbury Park yesterday to see Furthur, the new band put together by Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, of the Grateful Dead. My golf-buddy Andy came along for the ride. He's not a deadhead, but is not unaware of the music and was open to a new adventure. We had good seats and were well-placed for photography. I had fun with my camera.
The key to this band is the addition of guitarist John Kadlecik, until recently the "Jerry" specialist in the highly-regarded Dark Star Orchestra. Kadlecik plays and sings enough like Jerry Garcia to bring Phil's bass and Bobby's wonderfully complex rhythm guitar into a focus that dead fans will instantly recognize. But he does not come off as a Garcia imitator. That's a good thing.
The setlist is evidence of Kadlecik's influence. I don't think I've ever heard The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion played live, but it was part of last night's show as was Viola Lee Blues. Both were outstanding.
The sound in the Asbury Park Convention Hall was pretty terrible. It's really just a concrete box and probably better-suited to the pro-wrestling and roller-derby that the beer-selling lady told me are common events there. The sound was muddy and the vocals, particularly Bob Weir's, were hard to pick up. In Bobby's case, I think there was a microphone problem.
The short video below (a bit of Althea) will give you some idea of the sound. Though, in fairness, this was taken with my digital camera.
I bought the insta-CD of the show (soundboard?) and listened to some of it today. The sound on that recording is very good (though the Bobby mic is low). There's a version (audience recording?) on the bt.etree archive of the show (thanks to @nemski for the tip). For deadheads wondering what is possible, post-Jerry, this is worth a listen.
I got rather a surprise when I went out to my car at lunchtime today. When I turned it on and started to drive, the song that came on my radio was exactly the same as that that had been playing when I'd parked there in the morning. And it started in right at the point where it had cut-off earlier.
It was the song Black-Throated Wind, performed by the Grateful Dead. It was part of a run of songs from a show (I think in 1977?) featured today on the Today In Grateful Dead History show on Sirius Radio's The Dead channel.
I had tuned in around 7:30 this morning (after listening to news for most of my commute). I came in during the jam between China Cat Sunflower and I Know You Rider (China/Rider to aficionados). The final song in the run was Black Throated Wind, but I had to cut it off during a second time through the chorus:
The black-throated wind keeps on pouring in. And it speaks of a life that passes like dew. It's forced me to see that you've done better by me, Better by me than I've done by you.
That must have been at about 7:36 a.m. As it happened, I came back out just at 11:36 and turned the car on at exactly the same spot in the song. It freaked me out for a moment until I remembered that This Day in Grateful Dead History runs at 7 and 11 in the morning, and at 7 in the evening.
So I got to listen to the rest of the tune, including one of my favorite lines:
You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know.
I have eclectic taste in music. When I try to explain or demonstrate my taste, folks often simplify the discussion to one word "weird." I guess that's fair, my taste buds are spread all over the musical tongue.
I heard a piece on NPR this evening, however, that might help to illustrate what I love about the many different musics I like: an openness.
The story is about a group of Nashville session players who set aside their formulaic day-job playing once each week to play as The Time Jumpers in a regular Monday evening gig at a place called The Station Inn. They play standards from across the American music spectrum; generally as western swing. They play for love, fun, and friendship. They are not trying to be "successful." And they sound great.
The part of the NPR story that caught my ear was toward the end, when guitarist Andy Reiss explained what he likes about playing this way:
The beauty of music is [that] when your ears are wide open, your heart is wide open. You're not even thinking. You're listening and you're part of something, and everybody is doing that. When that happens, it's pure magic. And as a musician, you know how rare that is.
What struck me is how similar this is to the way that the members of the Grateful Dead, who play what would seem an entirely different sort of music, describe what they seek on stage. They talk in very similar terms in their 2009 tour announcement (which I linked to over the week-end).
Mickey Hart calls it the "mind meld." The group describes the process in a video posted on their site as "all about listening. You listen more than you play..." Phil Lesh says that that sense of surprise is why he keeps playing:
For me, it’s the question mark that’s really pulling me in...what’s gonna happen? When you walk out on the stage the possibilities are infinite every time. The musical possibilities are infinite: there is no end to it, there’s no back wall and there’s no ceiling, there’s no floor. It’s infinite and therefore you can still explore it till the day that you die.
So here we have two different sorts of music that bear striking similarities. They both draw from the deep well of American songs, they both exist somewhat outside the main stream, and they both are played by musicians who understand that the beauty of the music is found in the other players.
This is what I like. The genre doesn't really matter; I'm interested in the process and the surprise.
Deadheads take note: The Dead will tour this spring! Bobby Wier, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Billy Kruetzmann will be joined by guitarist Warren Haynes and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. It's the same line-up that toured in 2004.
The group had not gotten together much lately, but a few fund-raising shows for Barack Obama last year seem to have planted a seed among the band-members and they are ready to try on the full Dead thing again.
All four of the remaining original Grateful Dead have been busy on solo projects for years. They have grown and changed and I think want to hear what they'll sound like playing together again.
The tour will start in April in North Carolina and be mostly an east-coast affair, though it will head west, stop in Colorado and end in California in May. There will be five shows near me in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
I just stumbled across a new Delaware blog -- WKNZ - Z88.7fm, Harrington, DE -- which will chronicle the effort of a group of local Christian folk to build and run a "25,000 watt HD Christian radio station."
The blog appeared June 10 after the group got its FCC construction permit. That alone took 10 years; the FCC is a slow beast. How long the next steps will take is uncertain, but the permit itself is a large step forward:
We are humbled, blown-away, and a little over whelmed, but after nearly 10 years, the FCC has finally given us the approval to begin building a very powerful Christian radio station on 88.7fm in Delaware.The tower will be in Harrington and the studios in Milton, DE (at least that was the plan 10 years ago!).We are currently in the process of dusting off those plans.Lots has changed in 10 years!
The blog-writers are Bill, Andy, and Elbert (with an "E"). I think Bill is likely Bill Sammons, who I used to know in conjunction with the Delmarva Poultry Industry and who I recall was leading an effort to found a Christian station some years back. I assume this is he and this will be that station, but I don't always pay as close attention as I should and so may be completely wrong.
There's a survey up now, looking for input on what sorts of things to program. I think I'll take it. I'm not particularly Christian, though the Lovely Karen is a woman of faith and we have friends among the Christians, but I applaud diversity on the airwaves. And I don't think we should automatically assume that a Christian radio station will automatically hew to the worst extremes of the "christian right."
The musical choices could be interesting. I'll make the argument, for example, in favor of playing some of the Grateful Dead catalogue. Seriously. One of the things that fascinates me about the Dead's music is the widespread use of the Bible as lyrical source material and inspiration. And their deep exploration into folk music and folk traditions included mining a vein of moral stories and cautionary tales that could fit in the new station's format.
