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Greg from Chestertown

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Posts posted by Greg from Chestertown

  1. You’re living the dream. Agreed on looks like rain, a bit mushy for a Grateful Dead concert but can’t live without Bobby letting loose with the vocals towards the end of the song and Jerry noodling away on his guitar. I don’t love the beginning but love the end. 

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  2. Oh, one more thing that we learned about those acoustic shows. That was the first time in ten years and they said they would never play acoustic again. Time proved that to be true outside of a couple of shows. 82?

  3. So, one week after my first Grateful Dead concert, I go back to college for my second year. My shroom mate has a friend who went to college in San Fran just so he could go to Dead shows. He calls my roommate to say Bill Graham bought the Warfield theatre so that the Dead could play there for two weeks straight. They’re playing acoustic sets, plus two electric sets to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary. With a few more phone calls over that time, we learn that every acoustic set is being closed with Ripple, and that they’re making a double acoustic and a double electric album from those shows. They asked everyone to not do too much hootin’ and hollerin’, as the shows were being recorded for the albums. We also learned that they were doing similar shows at Radio City. That got us cutting class and riding up to Radio City the Monday before Halloween. We ride into New York with his Buddy and try to scalp tickets. We get robbed by ‘scalpers’, and now we’re penniless outside of Radio City while our ride is inside the show. Pretty disappointed for about an hour when someone walks up to us wearing a ski mask and asks, ‘who wants to get snuck in?’ We tell him our hard luck story, and he says, ‘ stand right here, let me find three more people’. We end up walking right through the front doors of Radio City without a ticket. This guys neighbor was a ticket taker at the door. Once inside, we got free doses, red dragons two weeks old from Berkeley. Absolutely amazing night. Acoustic set was precious. Five and a half hour show. Life changing. That’s all, thanks for letting me share. 

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  4. No, see,it’s like this, he’ll in a bucket was the encore but they ran out of time. That’s why you didn’t get a touch of grey filler. No time. Yea, see, it was an elective set

    list with an eighties theme but you couldn’t tell cuz they ran out of time. 

  5. How sweet! Yea, I found a piece of a pipe (no pun intended) at the native site I discovered on the farm. It’s where a spring flows into the river. I’ve found some nice artifacts there, about 300 arrowheads. (They aren’t actually arrowheads, they’re knives or spear points.) be careful with the tobacco. I’ve read that it is a blend that is psychoactive. When natives tried to negotiate trade with white man, the different languages made it difficult so the natives just got them high. Hence, let’s smoke the peace pipe. Enjoy your birthday tomorrow.  I’m enjoying mine today.

  6. That point makes a greater point. DSO puts a lot of effort in their set list choices. Recreation, original, preannounced, fillers, era, venue, geographic location, it doesn’t matter. You could go to every show they play in a year and there’s something special about every night. ....smile, smile, smile!

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  7. Grateful Dead music is an experiment. Always has been. Improvisation. I think electives are an ingenious way for Dark Star Orchestra to keep the music moving forward. (Yea, I said it again) if they are not improvising, pioneering, then they are stagnating. I don’t think they are recreating the Grateful Dead experience so much as they are taking the concept that the Grateful Dead is rooted in and growing it, evolving it. Dark Star Orchestra are the only ones who do what they do. Oh by the way, cosmic Charlie, throwing stones, visions. Self explanatory. Wow. Is anyone keeping track, noticing if the band has taken songs out of the line up, maybe on purpose? Are there certain songs that are noticeably absent from the set lists? Curious.  Should we be preparing for them bringing stuff off the shelf and reintroducing it, or have they been doing that all along and I just haven’t been doing my homework. 

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  8. Remember, the last Grateful Dead tour was known as the tour from hell. Gate crashes, a porch collapsed killing or hurting a bunch of deadheads, etc. Phil had said in an interview, not sure when, that the last five years weren’t that much fun for him. Jerry was having more fun, I think, doing what he was with David Grisman. After Bruce Hornsby passed on joining the Grateful Dead full time, the only thing that kept me going was that somewhere in the show, even if it was just one song, Jerry would simply blow me away. That, and the fact that it was Obvious  he was dying and then we wouldn’t be able to see him play. The Grateful Dead was running on fumes and inertia after Brent died. I’m not so sure they would have continued in their current form. They may have needed to evolve some more, maybe they had run their course.  Maybe they would have gone their separate ways, doing their own thing with the music. Jerry told somebody in 1995, ‘I ‘m not going to make it through the year’. After the tour, he laid down and died. He gave the best he had to give. Everything in this world has a life span. A few years of mourning and uncertainty, the right group of people got together, and the time is right for the music to be born again and move forward again. Dark Star Orchestra picked up the torch and proceeded to learn and love and grow once more. They have the benefit of a bit of a road map, to be able to learn from the mistakes of the ones who went before them. They do have that indescribable intangible that makes them so special, just as the Grateful Dead was. This reincarnation of the music that is Dark Star Orchestra seems to be a healthier, more vibrant, longer lasting version. I intend to keep this oasis as part of my life’s style, for the long haul. Thank you, entire band, for your sacrifice, deadication, and commitment. You are, oh, so appreciated.

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  9. Great question. Hard to say. Things would have been different but I think the cover bands would still be around. Some were there when Jer Bear was alive. Local bar bands. Would they thrive like nowadays? Probably not. Heck, if you ask me, Dead and company is a dead cover band. Dark Star Orchestra has captured that intangible that the he Dead had. Experimental group music moving forward into uncharted waters. That’s what separates them from all of the others. What was your original question?

  10. I saw Dead Reckoning play the night after I caught Dark Star in Atlantic City this summer. Not perfect, not polished, but a great night of music nonetheless. Two guys on acoustic guitars and a keyboardist. Nothing but Dead. A small crowd that all seemed to know each other well. I was the new guy they welcomed with open arms. Beautiful music that is still stuck in my head, wonderful people, great conversation with perfect strangers. The next morning, I took myself out to breakfast at the airport diner in Ocean City, New Jersey. When I was leaving, an older fella was setting up out front to play for the people waiting to be seated. He was strumming a ukulele, playing songs from the twenties and thirties. He opened with ‘ in the jailhouse now’. Most of what he played either Jerry had played or sounded like something they could have but never got around to it. I listen to him for about an hour. ....in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.

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  11. Yea, you heard $15 bill too? I commented on that in an earlier thread about lyrics changes, someone said they heard $50 bill. $15 bill is more funner. I heard Jerry sing in ship of fools once, forty years upon my head.....

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