Every song this night was an original Grateful Dead song.
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| My Pal Evan Moore with your Pal Bobby Weir |
Night one was my favorite. After the 1968-69ish show and the 1972-73ish show in Santa Clara, opening night in Chicago had 1977ish written all over it. The Playing In The Band->Jam->Let It Grow->Help on the Way->Slipknot->Franklin's Tower was my favorite sequence at a Dead related show since Jerry Garcia's death. The Box of Rain opening dovetailing the last Grateful Dead song ever in the same venue 20 years earlier made me cry. And The Ripple was the icing on the cake.
This show did remind me in feel of a Dead show circa 1977 with the unusual song list, second set songs in the first set, and the very strong second set. I had never seen Trey before live and he was great. He practiced alot, I can tell.
The opening of the show with Box of Rain, a more typical encore song followed by Jack Straw and Bertha felt right, like the 1970s shows. I feel that the boys thought about the song selection over the course of the first four shows and made the shows somewhat sequential. Passenger coming next was the "newest" song the Dead played in the three shows to date and brought us chronologically to exactly May 1977.
Then the guys moved into an excellent ending triad of The Wheel>Crazy Fingers>The Music Never Stopped. I saw all of these songs at my first two shows in 1976, Crazy Fingers and The Music Never Stopped were the 5th and 4th songs I ever heard at my first show on June 9, 1976, and a standalone The Wheel was the opening song of the second show I saw on June 12, 1976. Because U only sae "The Dead" once in 2004 and once in 2009 and Furthur once in 2010, the never-stop, never-stop Bobby rap on Music was fresh and interesting to me.
The second set had the feel of 1977 in it for me as the Scarlet>Fire was certainly a highlight of the weekend and the jam after the drums described at the top was my very favorite part of the whole weekend. I like to guess what comes after Playing and since they had already played the often-paired The Wheel, I was curious how they would continue. For a while it sounded like West LA Fade Away but when Let It Grow grew out of the chaos (which never happened at a Dead show), I was impressed with the transaction and inspired song choice. When they followed with Help on the Way, I was elated. A fine show.
My Twitter Comments from the Show:
These images are from my iPhone on that night. Hi Gary, Hi David Hi Trixie, Hi Evan. Hi Naomi.
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