jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Reviews on the fan message boards are mixed, but I had a blast at Phil Lesh’s Halloween party on Wednesday night. Halloween’s a major head holiday, and how could you not have fun getting down to Sympathy for the Devil with a room full of hippie witches, blinking aliens, Imperial stormtroopers and the usual assortment of wookies? Phil’s new line-up features the very talented Jackie Greene along with Particle’s Steve Molitz and regulars Larry Campbell and John Molo, and the show was a little heavier on blues jams than on the usual psychedelic freak-outs.

The Werewolves encore was a safe bet, but I don’t think anybody saw the cover of Phish’s Ghost coming. There was an unusual number of first times played (Don’t Let the Devil Take Your Mind, I Put a Spell on You, Boris the Spider, and Sympathy for the Devil) and the second set achieved lift-off with Caution > Voodoo Chile. I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the run, even if my chances of catching any of the rumored sit-ins — there’s talk of Bob, Bob, Ryan, Warren, Levon, and Trey — are pretty slim. I’ll keep adding setlists to this post as we make our way through the Lesh Marathon of 2007.

Phil and Friends, Nokia Theater, NY, NY
Set 1: Shakedown Street> Loose Lucy> Don’t Let the Devil Take Your Mind, Candyman, I Put A Spell on You> Jam> Story of the Ghost> Casey Jones

Set 2: Phil Reads from “The Pit and the Pendulum”, Cryptical Envelopment> Boris the Spider> Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks) > Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)> The Other One> Cryptical Envelopment> New Speedway Boogie> Fire on the Mountain, Sympathy for the Devil> I Know You Rider

E: Werewolves of London

There are no torrents up yet, but here’s the Grateful Dead playing Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London on Halloween ‘91, a show that also featured a truly frightening guest appearance by Ken Kesey, reciting e.e. cumming’s “Buffalo Bill is Defunct” mid-Dark Star to commemorate Bill Graham’s death. You can download the entire show from nugs.net. and archive.org.

[audio:Werewolves of London-Grateful Dead.mp3]

Calendar says it’s been ten years to the day since we told the department head we’d be attending the conference on postmodernism and desire in Atlanta and instead skipped out to see the Phish Halloween show at the Omni. It was the night they covered Remain in Light. Here’s what fellow NYFCO critic Kurt Loder had to say at the time. (There’s no video of my reaction.)

[tags]phish, music, shows, mtv, atlanta, postmodernism, desire, kurt loder, mtv, youtube, talking heads, remain in light, halloween[/tags]

The fruits of procrastination: instead of writing, I threw together a sixty second movie in the spirit of the Vampire Blogathon, featuring the protean acting talents of Marcy Dermansky and Klaus Kinski, with music by Tomas Phusion. Happy Halloween.

[tags]video, youtube, marcy, jurgen, nyc, queens, klaus kinski, nosferatu, halloween, vampires, cc[/tags]

Here at Muckworld Headquarters, there’s a manhunt on for the sneaky hackers who put Monster House on top of the Netflix queue. Our account must have been compromised–how else to explain that this Spielberg-produced CGI kids movie arrived on our doorstep? I suspect the voices of Steve Buscemi and Maggie Gyllenhaal had something to do with it. Either way, Monster House is sorta cute until the popcorn runs out, then it gets boring fast. Good thing it’s over before the lame sidekick characters can kill it altogether. Ho-hum.

Monster House. Gil Kenan, 2006. **

• Monster House on RottenTomatoes

  [tags]steve buscemi, kids, horror, halloween, cgi, animation, steven spielberg, maggie gyllenhaal, film, 2 stars[/tags]