• It is now completely dark.
  • It looks like this.
  • black-color-block
  • Luckily, the Grateful Dead has arranged for lights, so it also looks like this.
  • lens flare
  • A lot of the sets and songs began with loosey-goosey jams to ease their way into the tune; this is because otherwise, they would have had to rehearse.
  • Once you get the song rolling, you can fake your way through it.
  • Intros and endings need a run-through.
  • Phil Song.
  • Okay, we have been dancing around a point and I will here resort to honest reportage.
  • When Phil started singing Bird Song, a man in our row cried, “Oh, not Bird Song!” as if his favorite child had been trampled by the cow.
  • This fellow was prepared to hear a China Phil Sunflower or a Ramble On Phil, but Phil Song staggered him; he was not prepared for it.
  • Y’know, if these guys got three or four tours under their belt, they’d be tight.
  • Dead, but tight.
  • Top o’ the World, Ma: Treblinka, who is sending the same spacey, large-intervalled cascades of notes over the jam’s bow.
  • “The jam is taking on water, captain!”
  • “I’m sorry: who’s the captain? At least two guys on this stage who look like they hire our their schooners to tourists.”
  • No: I was mistaken: Mickey has not changed shirts.
  • I repeat: Mickey is wearing the same, non-Dead, shirt as the first set.
  • Jeff Chimenti seems to have to fuck with his own gear between songs.
  • Does Jeff Chimenti not get a Benjy?
  • Everybody else got a Benjy, so that sucks if Jeff Chimenti is just kinda floating around by himself and carrying things.
  • Temporary though his Grateful Deadness was, he was fully-carded and bonded as a Grateful Dead.
  • Grateful Deads get Benjys.
  • Tropicana and Bruce are now singing Golden Road, which is a good rocker, and on the close-up, Bruce looks adorable.
  • He is twinkly-eyed and having a blast, but he is also clearly reading the lyrics from a pad in front of him.
  • Like this was Megalomaniacal Karaoke Night at a Bond villain’s place.
  • There are four Grateful Deads singing this little coda bit and if you asked them what the exact words to the song were, you would get four different answers.
  • Do not get me wrong: they all pretty much know the words.
  • Each of them honestly believes that his is the correct version.
  • Another thing ten minutes of rehearsal could have nipped in the bud.
  • Although in the several tours worth of the disco version of Dancin’ in the Streets, they never all knew the same words, either.
  • This might be an inbred trait.
  • Top o’ the World, Ma: Jeff Chimenti, who is straining like a stallion with the smell a mare in his nose.
  • Jeff Chimenti has a prettier mane than any horse, though.
  • Garcia always had long hair, and Bobby would go back and forth, but other than that, the Dead wasn’t a longhair band.
  • Wait.
  • Brent.
  • I abandon my thesis.
  • Lost Sailor now and Bobby is acting shit out for some reason and I hit the bathroom and beer stand.
  • (Sorry, Bobby.)
  • I got a bit lost, and might have been hit on: it was an odd bathroom and beer stand run.
  • Except right now all I want to do is watch the Dead TV show instead of being back in the stadium; there is weirdly little emotional resonance between the event and the show on the screen and I cannot put myself back in Section 226, Row 7, Seat 6.
  • It’s just TV, and not even particularly good TV by the standards of the medium.
  • But apparently this is how it happened.
  • Can’t argue with it, no room to slide around it: small triumphs and dragging lags and mistimed close-ups.
  • I seem to recall having fun.
  • But I’ve now locked myself into not re-experiencing the show, as one can do with closed eyes and audio, but experiencing for the first time something vaguely related but of a completely different genus.
  • Like how horses and cows kinda look alike, but really have zip to do with one another.
  • On the upside: I totally did this to myself.
  • On the upperside: I threw a little tantrum while I did it.
  • Yay, me.
  • Bobby’s hair and beard looks very fluffy.
  • Bobby looks like this a little:
  • TB55cover
  • Who’s a good Bobby? Who is?
  • When Bobby saing the bit about how he’s still walking and sure that he can dance, he almost broke down; he tried to cover it up, but I saw it.
  • Jeff Chimenti has been allowed to sing backing vocals on Saint and it makes me sad Jeff Chimenti was not allowed to sing more.
  • That’s fuckin’ Dead hipster, man: a t-shirt with Let Jeff Sing on it.
  • If you wore that shirt, you should get a medal and a kick to the shin.
  • There was a moment in Saint, at the end, when Bobby told us to go for it: was it my moment?
  • I had been promised a transcendent moment, you see.
  • If it was, it was gone now – replaced by the television’s version.
  • TV doesn’t do transcendent moments.
  • Lot of close-ups of fingers.
  • Not as much transcendence.
  • Bruce is singing West LA Fadeaway and fucking that shit up; if you don’t like West LA Fadeaway, then I’ll never be able to figure you out.
  • Disliking this song is alien to me; I spit it from my mouth like tepid water; get the fuck out of here with your foolishness.
  • Later on, I called this song West L Trey Trey-da-Trey and my companions neither struck me with cause nor left me (in a tunnel we somehow had wandered into) to be eaten by the Death Bunnies of Chicagoland.
  • But, now I don’t feel friendship or excitement or joy: just watching TV.
  • All television that’s not Archer can suck my ass.
  • Ooh, I forgot they played Foolish Heart.
  • I love me some Foolish Heart.
  • I love it more played faster than this.
  • We quickly reach a point of diminishing returns, obviously: I would not love a Foolish Heart played at speed-metal tempos.
  • Now, I want to hear that.
  • With the growly, Cookie Monster vocals.
  • Let’s take this bright and shiny Triskadekaphobia solo to note Bobby’s jeans and remind ourselves that they “were advertised and sold as a lengthy short.”
  • Sometimes Jeff Chimenti will be playing one ridiculously heavy and finicky keyboard over here and then all of a sudden he HAS TO PLAY THAT ONE THERE.
  • It’s like when a cat decides it needs to be in the next room.
  • Brobediah Stane?
  • Brohammed Ali?
  • BroJ Simpson?
  • What?
  • NOTHING FOOLISH ABOUT THIS FOOLISH HEART JAM, YO.
  • Fine. Drums.