Phil and Friends - Halloween
November 2nd, 2007
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]
Phil Lesh, SOB’s
April 11th, 2007
Once upon a time, I was a young grad student with a nascent love for the Grateful Dead and a head full of semiotics; one result was “Fractals of Familiarty and Innovation,” a bit of academic malarkey that was saved from complete embarrassment only by the fact that the great Robert Hunter deemed it worthy of a witty and gracious response. Over a decade later, what stayed with me aren’t the Fischer-Lichte quotes but the basic creative truth at the core of the essay: how do you keep the music playing? By combining just the right amounts of nostalgia and novelty. The tension between what’s familiar and what isn’t lies at the heart of all narrative, including musical narrative.
