1: Bertha, Beat It On Down The Line, Don't Ease Me In, The Race Is On, Cumberland Blues, Box Of Rain, Row Jimmy, Jack Straw, They Love Each Other, Mexicali, Tennessee Jed, Looks Like Rain, Wave That Flag, El Paso, Here Comes Sunshine, Me & Bobby McGee, Loser, Playing In The Band
2: Promised Land, China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, Big River, Stella Blue, Me & My Uncle, He's Gone>Truckin'>Spanish Jam>Space>Dark Star>Sing Me Back Home>Sugar Magnolia
E: Johnny B. Goode
gd73-03-24.sbd.hamilton.1216.sbeok.flac16
And after these things I heard a great voice of many people in heaven saying, Alleluia!
Revealed are notes not played and liquefied time painted an aural landscape hanging in the gallery of the American dream. Here, the Grateful Dead make a bid for immortality.
The first set begins as mortals walk the earth singing songs by forgotten authors (Beat It On Down the Line…Don’t Ease Me In) and country folk (The Race Is On….El Paso). Sitting round the American campfire, sharing songs about people we seem to know, lovers, cheaters, loners, even our minstrels' new songs weave themselves into a folk tradition pulled down from Francis Child’s attic (Cumberland Blues….Tennessee Jed). But soon enough, after the kids have trundled off to bed and we’ve run out of apple cider, there is something new. What’s changing?
The rhythm section seems bigger but the swing is the same. Here Comes Sunshine is an Oregon flood story, one thinks maybe a folk song, but the melodic lines expand and notes are bending. The singers' eyes gleam as they begin to call forth, in the words of poets old and new, sinuous rills of gorgeousness and gorgeosity, ice blue water spilling out from a fountain not made by the hands of men. Playin’ In the Band is so sweetly rendered we hardly notice we’re no longer in hip waders or running off to Salinas. We’ve crossed over to the frontier where time signatures loosen and the melody scatters like spilt marbles. Tenuous lines hold it together; a signpost reads, “Population: Everyone”.
The second set reassuringly tugs on the anchor chain with Chuck Berry, a latter-day Joseph Smith, leading us in Promised Land from the old world to the new. Once there, China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider walks us up Mount Nebo to see the glory of neon stars and asteroids swirling in a sea of milk and honey. This is one of the sweetest of the oft-played paired forces in the Dead universe: chemically subverted consciousness of nonsense rhymes set cheek by jowl with a timeless American folk tale of yearning for a better place out beyond this dry hill. We may die here, but we dreamed a dream and saw visions. Still, we’re being kept close to the campfire as the show vacillates between then and there, found and lost, home and away: Big River’s Mark Twain travelogue to Stella Blue’s weird T.S. Eliot scene; Me & My Uncle’s Louis L’Amour mesa tale to stolen face in He’s Gone. The fabric is still there but it’s being pulled. Now, another American travelogue, Truckin’, suggesting the boys don’t just play Cash, they absorbed his meaning. But, wholly unlike Cash, matters take a left turn just up ahead.
At about 8:22 of Truckin’, it's no longer all the same street. It is very quiet. Delicate tremolos and hushed high hats awaken strange jazz. The bass percolates happily beneath an alto lead of assertive runs and crescendos. The camp fire is dead. Our faces are now lit by joyful alchemists creating new worlds far from our same-old-used-to-be. One cannot help but feel anxiety in the strangeness of this turn, wondering if anyone will safely get home. Will we again see things we recognize?
The players respond to the anxiety by escalating it, at 8:25. If you’re falling too fast, they seem to say, raise up your arms and scream! Ghostly piano strains then herald solea sounds. Well, I’ve never been to Spain, but I kind of like the music. The Iberian digression resolves itself before the space odyssey continues. It’s cold outside the capsule, freezing the petals on the flowers while our narrator returns. The formlessness gathers around itself the warm pashmina of Dark Star’s edifying chords, while the rhythm section returns to drag order back into the proceedings.
In yet another segue that glides as if across melted butter on wax paper, we return home to a daunting place – death row. Haggard’s Sing Me Back Home, however, feels like an apt reentry vehicle, with a lilting lament for the dues man pays for his worst crime, all bathed in the glow of a sweet gospel choir. Then and there, found and lost, home and away. Yes, it was all a dream. A glorious, mysterious dream of everything we ever wanted but are too afraid to grasp. Go home friends and dance your familiar happy dances (Sugar Magnolia and Johnny B. Goode) because, with a smile and a wink, these gospelers made your old memories come alive.
Comments