Grateful Dead Showdown: Phil Lesh vs. Bob Weir

Posted on June 27, 2016 by McPhedran

The two remaining pillars of The Grateful Dead – Phil Lesh and Bobby Weir – don’t play together anymore, which is an odd turn of events given the success of last summer’s reunion in Chicago.

Grateful Dead Showdown: Phil Lesh vs. Bob Weir

Grateful Dead play Soldier Field in Chicago on July 4, 2015

Phil tours with “Friends” and Weir plays with “Company”, leading to the question not why are they apart but which band is better?

Band members: Dead and Company appears to have this in spades, given the inclusion of original Grateful Dead drummers, Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, along with John Mayer and, of course, Bob Weir.

Dead and Company play Citi Field, Queens, New York on June 25, 2016

That said, the focus of Phil Lesh’s bands has always been the quality of the music, with Warren Haynes, John Scofield, John Medeski as regulars, and noted guests including Melvin Seals (longtime member of the Jerry Garcia Band) and Chris Robinson from The Black Crowes. Further, given the fact that John Mayer isn’t as great as he thinks and Kretzmann and Hart are mailing it in, the Friends have it here. Advantage: Phil Lesh and Friends

Venues: Dead and Company are going for the big, fast bucks and have booked the largest venues possible; in other words, it’s all hockey arenas and baseball stadiums.

Jerry Garcia’s ghostly projection during Phil Lesh and Friends at the Capital Theater, Port Chester, New York on May 29, 2016

Phil Lesh plays almost exclusively at The Capital Theater (outside New York City) and Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael, California, with capacities of 1800 and 350 respectively.The question is only getting there. Advantage: Phil Lesh and Friends

Song Selection: Dead and Company draw from across The Grateful Dead catalog, showing favor to the early 1970’s, including Weir’s Country and Western gems. Phil and Friends have a similar bent, more in the 1960’s. Advantage: Draw

Phil Lesh and Friends play the Capital Theater on November 7, 2015

Overall Sound and Experience: While it’s true that Bobby is losing his touch and Phil should stop singing, both know the music. However when it comes to getting inside the sound, being carried away by the interplay between musicians – the jams, man! – Phil plays and leads best. Advantage: Phil Lesh and Friends

Why I Love Gord Downie

Posted on June 7, 2016 by McPhedran

With all of this emotional outpouring toward Gord Downie, the musician, I thought I might give a few reasons to love the guy for things other than his music.

1. He’s got a lot of fingers scratching on his hull. I once made the mistake of telling him he’s a very sensitive guy, to which he replied, “I’m not sensitive. Why would you say that?”2. What’s this river that I’m in? I doubt he would admit to being funny, but it’s actually his reactions that are the funniest, falling over silently, choking a laugh into himself.

3. We’d climb a tree and then maybe we’d talk. Late, after a party, Gord was getting ready to go to bed and was being followed around by Bill, all through the house, up the stairs, into his bedroom, talking all the time, story after story. Gord never told him to leave, instead just turned off the light, laughing here and there, and let Bill talk on in the dark.

4. There’s nowhere that he’s really been. His dream of dreams is not to be on stage, but to be sprawled out on the ground, his children crawling all over.

5. He’s not from downtown. He knows what he knows. Not what he doesn’t.6. He worked it in to look like that. He does the work, a fourth line player, the guy you want on the ice with a few seconds on the clock.

Yeah, Gord’s a good guy, all right. Angst on the planks, spittin’ from a bridge.

Bowie’s Greatness in Songs You Don’t Know

Posted on February 15, 2016 by McPhedran

You know about Ziggy Stardust, Rebel Rebel and poor old Major Tom, but there is so much you don’t of the sound of David Bowie. These are the songs that you should:5. Sound and Vision (Low, 1976) Actually a song you probably do know but didn’t know you knew, sharp and compelling as anything you’ve heard..

4. Bewlay Brothers (Hunky Dory, 1971) Climbing out of earnestness with pain and delight, knowing something but not knowing what.

3. V-2 Schneider (Heroes, 1976) Space-age, new-age from a distant planet, words so close and so far.

2. Fascination (Young Americans, 1975) The rhythm and groove which every disco artist dreamed they might find.

1. Big Brother (Diamond Dogs, 1974) Magnificent, poignant and magnificent again, what the conceptual album and song are dreamed upon.

Low’s Perfect Sound in Birmingham

Posted on February 8, 2016 by McPhedran

Low entranced a Birmingham, Alabama audience on Friday evening with a set of music spanning their 16-year history. The set list was magical, the sound full and melodious, the visuals, the drinks, the venue, all of it so right that I thought about how great it was to be alive. It was like childhood contentment, almost knowing something to be true, turning ahead, out of nothing, more real than metal, naked, science and math and art and language, all of that in their sound. (Click here or on the picture below to hear for yourself) And so, I was pretty excited after the show and tracked all of the band members down – Alan Sparhawk, Mimi Parker and Steve Garrington – and tried to explain it all to them.
I admit that I did go on and on and my wife tried to pull me away, realizing that I was acting like John Steinbeck’s Lenny, squeezing the beauty and truth out of a thing, but none of them seemed to mind too much. And then I wanted to thank them for that too.

Low Plays Anchorage, Alaska

Posted on January 19, 2016 by McPhedran

We went to see Low play in Anchorage, Alaska, and hoped for the Northern Lights too. We had never been to The Last Frontier; neither had Low. The flight from New York was long – 14 hours with a change in Seattle – and we were verging on collapse by the 10 pm showtime (2 am our EDT). But the venue was great – an intimate bar, Taproot – and there with only a hundred others in attendance, all of whom were bushy and rough.

“We waited for twenty years!” Someone called out.

Allan Sparhawk gazed back. “Actually it’s been 22.” The band looked tired – or were we projecting? – starting slow with Gentle and other lullaby-like songs from their remarkably listenable 2015 release Ones and Sixes, before gradually picking up with Sparhawk’s characteristic distortion and intensity in No Comprehende and Pissing. The light show was understated – 90’s style mandalas blooming and transforming behind Mimi Parker, making her look like a weary Madonna – as was the sound, lilting in and amongst the non-stop chatter from all corners.

“Yeah, I saw you there, but I was talking with RJ!” His beard puffed out like a cartoon character’s. “I haven’t talked with him in months!”

The only exception to the swirl of drink-inspired banter was a young couple in front of us, she with short blonde hair, he with a blond streaked beard, sitting side by side at a wooden table, gazing into each other’s eyes every 15 seconds, talking quietly and mysteriously, consuming a beer with stoic regularity, not once looking at the stage.

A woman looked at my wife and asked if she was a mail order bride. “There’s a lot of them here!”

I imagined that many of these people had come in from distant logging camps and moose hunts for this magical night, and tried to forgive them their boisterous manner. The PA was louder the second night – although the feedback from some songs seemed at times beyond system’s capacity, enveloped in white noise. Sparhawk, Parker and bassist Steve Garrington were more upright and clear, and so was the crowd, almost twice as large as the night before, drunker, louder, crashing into one another, spinning my chair to and fro as they went back and forth to the bar.

“I’ve got four bands now, man!” A heavy man stroked down at his scraggly greying beard as he yelled out to his friend. “Our shortest song is seven minutes! We got one that goes over 40!”

“It was a family event!” The woman’s eyes were sharp, her hair wild. “What do you want from me?!”

I was more tired this night, so damned tired that I just stared stupidly at the spinning mandalas and let them coax me to sleep. I switched to water and then Coke, and counted the bearded men yell with their dates, while Low played on, their subtlety lost in the tumult, until Sparhawk played his guitar like Hendrix which quieted everyone for a moment.

Sparhawk announced that there would be no encore, just one more song. The band had a flight in four hours.

“Don’t wait another 20 years!” Someone pleaded.

We went out into the cold night, looking into the sky, deep and empty, searching the horizon, seeing nothing but the haze of the city lights, not knowing yet that the only Northern Lights we would see were those in Taproot, both they and Low at the center of the madding crowd.

Ratdog and Mayer

Posted on September 14, 2015 by McPhedran

The hype on Dead and Company, the latest Grateful Dead side project, is befuddling to say the least, although the success of 50^th anniversary shows have certainly led us hereThe truth is, however, that the fall tour of this hodgepodge and questionably-named band has little to do with the concerts in Chicago. Not only is founding member Phil Lesh nowhere to be seen – indeed he is concurrently playing in his eponymous band – but neither were Bruce Hornsby and Trey Anastasio included.

This group lacks the soul of earlier post-Jerry Garcia incarnations, The Dead and Furthur, neither of which were bedazzled by all the hype.This band, headlined by pop guitarist John Mayer who has nothing whatsoever to do with the music of the Grateful Dead, is a dubious path for Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann and, if they are not careful, could lead to moments they might regret.

The Ecstastic Soul of The Grateful Dead

Posted on July 6, 2015 by McPhedran

And so we went to the July 4th Fare Thee Well concert. The Grateful Dead, even without Jerry Garcia, played with heart and inspiration.The sound was almost as great as was the feeling of being back at a show, that feeling of ecstatic calm, where it seems there is nowhere else ever to be, just in the music, surrounded, like a child, soothed, where everything else turns off, except thinking about what they might play next. It is a precious, precarious thing that, now gone, has left me melancholy, thinking that they have to do it again – just one more, man – where they just yet might get into a Lazy Lightning-El Paso-Supplication jam.

The Grateful Dead Is The Drug

Posted on June 30, 2015 by McPhedran

I’m off to see The Grateful Dead this weekend in Chicago. Although tickets for the Fare Thee Well concerts were too expensive and The Dead’s marketing branch is selling 70-CD box sets for $700, the music remains the thing.

Santa Clara, CA – June 27: performs on Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years Of Grateful Dead at Levi Stadium on June 27, 2015 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

I was so wound up during my workout today – listening to The Dead – that I went through a series of adrenaline rushes, each one almost ending in tears, until I finally started to settle down after an hour and then had to do another hour to get my energy out. I saw my first Grateful Dead concert in Hampton, Virginia on March 9, 1983 and went on to follow the band over 12 years, seeing 48 concerts in such places as Lake Placid, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Boulder, Providence, Eugene, San Francisco, Miami and, yes, Chicago. Known for a wide range of rock genres, The Grateful Dead will likely play much of their Americana at Saturday’s July 4th concert, including covers such as Me and My Uncle (John Phillips), Big River (Johnny Cash), El Paso (Marty Robbins), Me and Bobby McGee (Kris Kristoferson) and I Know Your Rider (traditional) as well as their own true America standards Jack Straw, Going Down the Road Feeling Bad, and US Blues. Damn it, I’m getting worked up again.I need to breathe.

Kubrick and Weir: The Laudatory Human Condition

Posted on May 24, 2015 by McPhedran

Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has been praised as a great filmmaker and artist, one who probes the shades of humanity in such great films as Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon. Bob Weir, not as highly praised, is certainly recognized for “chasing the music” as he says, on his 50-year journey as rhythm guitarist with The Grateful Dead. And so I was intrigued to watch documentaries on each man this weekend to perhaps gain an insight or two through understanding their trials and tribulations.

It was not to be.Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2007) offers brief moments of filmic analysis amidst a tidal wave of laudatory praise, Steven Spielberg gushing, “He was a conceptual illustrator of the human condition”. And so despite a 50-year career, we are left with the trite summation that Mr. Kubrick worked terribly hard and loved his family, little else.

The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir (2013) is worse. While some fellow musicians offer comments on Bob Weir’s work, the documentary is almost solely guided by bland recollections by Weir – “Here’s my Jerry Bobbblehead” – occasionally, boyishly and evasively hinting toward his notorious off-stage reputation. His band mates are only briefly interviewed, likewise alluding, saying little else. It’s a shame that both of these these documentaries offered so little, not that they should focus on personal scandal, but that they veered so very far from the very same human condition that these men had endeavored to understand and instead settled on empty praise.

Jane Says, “Sex and Violence!”

Posted on May 14, 2015 by McPhedran

Jane’s Addiction is back on tour, playing their critically acclaimed Nothing’s Shocking from start to finish. As Perry Farrell asked the crowd last night at the Brooklyn Bowl, “Is it shocking that Nothing’s Shocking is having its 25th anniversary?” Meant to be rhetorical, it wasn’t. Because it is, shocking that is. Dave Navarro remains as tattooed and rocking’ out as ever while Farrell maintains his crackhead je ne sais crois. But even with the bra-and-pantied girls swinging above the stage, the music isn’t as raw, nor as overwhelming, but has deteriorated into more of a burlesque. All of which was made worse by the Williamsburghians, in their hats and beards, chanting “Let’s Go Rangers” at the bar.

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