5/19/2010

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 brought us nice weather, little traffic and a Grateful Dead anniversary that is worth playing. Yup, 33 years ago Jerry and the boys played their phenomenally interesting show at the Fox Theater in Atlanta with one of the great post space portions of a show I know of. While it would have been nice to play the entire show it wasn't gonna happen. We had played a couple of the first set songs over the past couple of weeks and didn't want to repeat them. Additionally, Alan had somewhere to go in the middle of the jam for 45 minutes or so and that broke the jam into three distinct segments.

The first part of the night we played a few of the first set songs including the opening Promised Land Sugaree. We were having PZM mic issues during the first songs and PA-EQ for a song thereafter so the night got off to a slow start with lots of warble in the room. These issues eventually corrected themselves, we got a new PZM and tweaked the EQ and by the end of the night the system sounded pretty good. We also played the El Paso and Loser from the 1st set before Alan left. During Alan's departure we played a few Garband songs including That What Love Will Make You Do, When the Hunter Gets Captured by the Game and the Dear Prudence. When Alan got back we played a Row Jimmy from the first set. I think we worked out the structural issues and got it right for what may be the first time. Following that we tried the seldom pulled out, You Ain't Going No Where which had a nice beat to it. Since we didn't have lyrics to that song I used my iPad to look up the lyrics and ironically and unbeknown to me I found a website that had mock lyrics set to that song which I sang for the first two verses until I realized I was reading and singing fake lyrics. Fortunately, I was able to quickly use the iPad on my music-stand and Safari's backspace to find a different site with the correct lyrics during a keyboard lead. That was crazy stuff that was circulating my mind as I was going through all of this.

For the rest of the night beginning at 10:30 p.m. we figured we would tackle the entire second set of the Fox show. We did the opening Samson and Ramble on Rose and then embarked on the combination of Playing, Uncle Johns, Terrapin, Drums, Space, Wheel China Doll and closing with Playing. We did this combination of songs for the most part without stopping and even transitioning nicely between tunes. We got done with the whole thing by 11:45, just enough time for me to sing a closing It's All Over Now Baby Blue. This was a nice night-cap on the evening. I have always loved the Fox 5-19-77 show and this night was an opportunity to pay it the homage it so richly deserves. Until the next time we play-to-pay homage to the Grateful Dead and on behalf of all the folks from Deadstein, "Freak Out!"