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Jam – 2012-08-22 – Carroll’s

25 Aug 2012 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, StaggerLee, Wikler

The Wednesday found us all together again for a standard 6-man Deadstein jam; ’twas good to be. Well at least that was for the the first part of the night as Alan had to tend to some family matters and wasn’t able to stay for the end of the second set. That gave us some time to catch up on some overly neglected Jerry Garcia Band tunes.

Regarding the first set, we didn’t have an agenda for the night, so we were wondering what should we start with that has neglected itself from the starting position. Here Comes Sunshine came to the fore and got us moving down the freaky avenue we call Deadstein. That lead us into a rousing Viola Lee Blues which was slammed to a merciless halt when I forced us into a Me and My Uncle. We got into the groove by the time it was time to go into the Mexicali Blues. While maybe not one of the shining moments our lives, the Uncle Mexicali definitely grounds you back to the Grateful Dead and prepares you for the rest of the night.

When we finished the opener, Lindsey commented, wow, that was a half hour, that’s crazy. She and Steve were our only guests for the night. She was right it is crazy, but it does help secure the beefiness of the evening with a long, strong opener. It was a help to me because I am on a very rusty set of string that 4 jams ago I was totally disgusted by when I took the guitar out of its bag. Fast forward another 4 weeks, these ultra-rusty strings are even more gnarly making me want to just grab the thing and start sweating to dissolve the dry bumpy residue that I left from a week ago. It got me in an “I don’t care, just jam and make music” type of attitude. There will be no pussy-footing around.

The wackiness of the first set continued and we stretched the boundaries of what we do, what should be done and what goes in a first set. This was all very good because it presented us with quite a bit of variety, but in a good way. From old to new, easy to hard, familiar to “what?” the first set song selection was one of our most interesting, ending in a weird way, on an Estimated Prophet. Which was ultra relaxed.

Alan did join us for the Scarlet, Sugaree opener of the second set but when he got the call to duty, we headed to the GarBand. This was all pretty good, including the long, drawn out Lucky Ol’ Sun. This has never been a easy one for Deadstein as it usually occurs late at night and it has a tendency to put you to sleep. Fortunately we did have Lee there to keep the momentum going when Scott eventually drifted in and out of rolling ‘round heaven.

The Midnight Moonlight was a good cap for the evening; crisp and fun following the lucky ol’ dirge. Too bad it was a couple of minutes too short, because it left us the need for one more quickie to get past the 12 o’clock finishing line. That lead to a One More Saturday Night, seemed to be a mistake with only one guitar. I felt naked out there for some reason. Whatever, the song is only 3 minutes so we grabbed it, spun it and tossed it around like a flimsy rag doll. It was our 19^th song, one short of the 20-song high water mark but a great effort nevertheless. 19 songs is nothing to sneeze at. G-d bless you.

With Kevin and Scott scheduled to be out of town, next week is looking sketchy at this point, but hope is eternal and Deadstein will hopefully rise like a phoenix.

Until that time happens, you can listen to the crap we played this week at the links provided below.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/08-22-12/

1990-10-09 – First Deadstein Jam – MP3s Posted

11 Aug 2012 2 Comments

by deadstein in Deadstein Forums, Jams, Music Tags: 162Perry, CraigJ, DaveS, Jam, Kevin, Larry, LLBrent, Menaker

Deadstein’s first jam occurred on October 9, 1990, 22 and a half years ago. We played at Richie Haven’s/Dennis’ rehearsal studio/home at 162 Perry Street, NY, NY. Up to now, the music from this historic jam was only available on the few original cassette tapes that may be floating around. I found mine floating around and decided to digitize the music, master it and post the subsequent MP3s on the original web page for this jam. Click here to view the webpage and and read about the jam as written several years after it happened.

This first tape is a soundboard mixed for us live by Dennis in his studio. There is so much to understand about the evolution of Deadstein by listening to this first jam. You can hear the strong foundation that would eventually be the Deadstein sound. In many respects, we were better back then. We were much closer to the Grateful Dead as they were still creating music and the hope of the Grateful Dead was alive in all of us, well maybe not Dave. It was great listening to this jam for me while making it, and it may be fun for you also. Enjoy.

Jam – 2012-08-06 – Carroll’s

10 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, StaggerLee, Wikler

To accommodate Rich’s ever increasing busy schedule, Deadstein played on Monday this week, leaving a large gap, or a gultch, between this Monday jam and next week’s Thursday jam. What this week also represented was a celebration of Alan’s birthday which is scheduled to occur on August 11; Happy Birthday Alan, Freak Out! With that day looming, Alan had the privilege and more importantly, the obligation to select the night’s setlist as it unfurled right in front of us.

He picked a nice setlist, jam, show, to get Deadstein flowing in the right direction. As is typical for Deadstein in 2012, we had our 2 drummer setup, including Scott and Stagger Lee. I think Steve was our only guest for the night until Scott Bayer came later on in the evening. He whipped out his bongo and I told him “no way” and he was soon out of the room. No bongos and not Scott Bayer, a win-win.

Alan was under a lot of pressure to keep up the grueling pace of recent Deadstein and he did a great job of it. We got 20 songs on tape and that with Rich missing a few of the songs at the beginning of the night. I do not recall what we did early on, but Rich placed the Getaway –> Promised Land at the beginning of the first set, when in actuality they were played somewhere in the middle of the first set.

It was a nice long beefy first set ending right at 10pm. We took a standard break and seem to have energy going into the 2^nd set. Alan seem to pull songs out of his ass at the last second on several occurrences to keep the set going. When a song didn’t come to air at the end of the Eyes of the World, the second set took a nice, easy natural turn into Drums Space. This was a real good thing as it did set us up to finish the night up with gusto. The drums space is like the 7^th inning stretch of a baseball game and is a nice last final break.

The final segment of the night featured two combos; Other One à Speedway Booggie and Wharf Rat Comes a Time. Looking at it now, it would have been cooler to put the Speedway Boogie after the Wharf Rat, but the whole thing was a lot of fun. Playing in the Band reprise was just a quick nice capper. Werewolve of London for the Olympics (?),, is that why it was selected, was straight on and powerful. It was a complete evening that never died down, running the finish line like Usain Bolt in world record time.

To hear any of this gold medal playing, go to the Olympics, to hear what Deadstein did, use the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/08-06-12/

Jam – 2012-07-31 – Carroll’s

06 Aug 2012 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, StaggerLee, Trister, Wikler

Wow what a big month of July and what a big night to end it all, just in time to commemorate what would have been Jerry’s 70th birthday. First let me talk a little about this prolific month of July we just finished. If you count up the songs, we played 112 songs in the 5 jams in July 2012, by far, this has to be a record. We have a “take no prisoners” attitude these days, leaving nothing on the table or at least trying to get our monies worth.

The reason we chose to play on this Tuesday night instead on Jerry’s birthday on the next night was the fact that Ollablle was playing a free one-hour concert at the City Winery between 6:30 and 7:30. Perfect timing to enjoy a super-dooper cool scene filled with free phenomenal music and then take a nice easy 60-block or so trip up to Deadstein. First of all I must mention that Ollabelle has such a great positive vibe and you couple that with the same vibe provided by the City Winery and the weather and you have the makings of a perfect evening. They played an hour, there was a great crowd with lots of friends, taping, close viewing and just great music. I suggest you check out Scott’, Rich’s or my videos. What an up-lifting experience to get you psyched to play your own music.

After the Ollablle show I drove Rich and Scott up to the jam, enabling Scott to leave his car at home. By the time we got there just minutes after 8:00 o’clock, everyone was there waiting to play, including Andy Trister who accompanied us for the first half of the night during one of his all too infrequent jams with us. We played some great music during this set.

For some reason I guess like to start jams with Trister on an Uncle John’s Band, I think I hope it is at a tempo and energy level that gets us underway in a controlled manner considering we have 3 guitars in the room. Out of the Uncle John’s I tried to segue us into a Hey Pocky Way, but the train wasn’t going to that town. It was bee-lining to Aiko-Aikoville and we ended up there, which wasn’t a bad thing. As we forged through the first set most of the stuff was good and a lot of fun. I don’ think Andy wanted to leave, but a full night with him just isn’t in the cards. We formulated a nice 12-song first set with lots of good moments. I gave Stagger the Same Thing he asked for, a first for him with us. We tried the Bucket once again, but this time with Andy, it gave it a lot more legitimacy. After that the rest of the first set just kept getting better and better.

With Andy gone for the second set, we decided to get back to business and focus on Jerry’s 70th birthday. This was not until we played the I Shall be Released which we saw Ollabelle play a few hours earlier, which we have never seen them play before. They did it a lot better than we. Out of the Terrapin I entered into the Stephen without the standard intro, I thought that would get us going, and it helped, but we struggled a bit. We don’t do the Stephen enough. Our 12 o’clock quitting time reared its ugly head at the end of the Going Down the Road but that meant we were into August 1. This meant it was the big guy’s birthday, so we stayed a little later to play one additional Black Muddy River in honor of Jerry. This was 21st song capper on a long and great night, so I thought.

Since I drove Scott and Rich uptown from Ollabelle, I decided to give them a lift home, downtown, and take the Holland Tunnel home myself. We all walked to my Honda Fit parked in Scott’s secret spot on 54th street and I hit the button on my key-fab to open the trunk, but it didn’t unlock. I don’t think there is even a key hole on my trunk to manually open the truck. I used the key to enter the driver’s side and to my dismay, the car was deader than we were. Lee drove around the block to go home and saw us standing there and had jumper cables, so we tried jumping the car, but we are 4-Jews and I guess car maintenance is not in our DNA. We couldn’t get it jumped and Lee almost shocked himself to death in the process. I’m sure we did something wrong. Scott then whipped out his AAA Card and a service call from a 54th street station was dispatched. It probably took them a half hour to get there and 5 minutes to jump the car. Just after 1am, I was driving Rich and Scott downtown as my alternator was charging my battery. I was praying I didn’t stall my car out, which I didn’t. After some bad maneuvering to get out of Scott’s neighborhood to the Holland Tunnel coupled with some tunnel traffic meant I wasn’t in NJ until just before 2am and didn’t get home until around 2:45. I long happy ending to a great night, that’s what she said.

When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.

To hear any of the music we played, go to the MP3 provided below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/07-31-12/

Jam – 2012-07-25 – Carroll’s

27 Jul 2012 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, LLBrent, Scott, StaggerLee

Deadstein has been on a real roll recently, a rock and roll, where we play hard a generate a lot of music. I’m sure July 2012 will end up being the month that Deadstein played more songs than any other month of the past 22 years. That’s the type of roll we have been on but we had to keep our eye on the ball this week. With both Rich and Alan out of town this week we called in the help of Larry Brent to take over the Jerry role blues. With that we would be tempted to slip into the old ways of Deadstein when a second set was a monumental effort to mount.

This is not classic, old Deadstein and in 2012, we play hard and and we are prolific, no matter who is in the room. I’m a music pusher and I make no bones about it, so I did my best to keep the music rolling. In the end we almost, arguably reached the 20-song level as China/Rider really is 2 songs, yet we split the Dark Star in 2. In any case, 19 or 20 songs is laudable for the night. In classic Deadstein times in the past, it would have been a record. Even the big, famous 3-set first jam in October 1990 only had 17 songs.

We had a pretty good sounds for most of the night which I borrowed an MP3 recorder to capture, then I mastered it a bit and posted it below. Sounds pretty good, a bit woofy and loud for most of it, but a pretty good effort. The Stranger got us going for the night in the right direction.

For the first part of the night we had our only guests LeeJ and Arlene. They haven’t been around in ages, so it was good to see them. LeeJ may have even taken a video or 2, who would a thunk? The first set was straight forward in proper order and gave use some good focus during it. Ten quality songs without a clunker, gotta be happy about that.

We did the second set with the Eyes of the World with the 1974 ending, and that didn’t go over too well but the rest of it before hand was good. Dark Star Uncle Dark Star was a trip and a serious endeavor, a good reason for not getting to 20 songs. We never got to the Wharf Rat I was trying for as it was preempted by Larry with a Stella Blue. That was a bit busier than it had to be, Larry wasn’t thrill with Kevin’s heavy-hand during it. We then ended it with a really hot Music. Somehow we pulled of the Beautifully Broken. Playing it was probably a tremendous surprise to everyone. The Attics to close was as Deadstein does to Attics. It ain’t pretty Freak out!

Next week we play following the free Ollabelle show at 5:30 at City Winery, I’m looking forward to that whole experience.

To hear the songs from this week, go to the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/07-25-12/

Jam – 07-19-2012 – Carroll’s

22 Jul 2012 Leave a comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: Carroll's, Jam, Kevin, Larry, Rich, Scott, StaggerLee, Wikler

After the July 12, 2012 Deadstein marathon, this week was expected to be a letdown since we could never live up to the energy we had last week for the Dead/Dylan Giant’s Stadium tribute. There was no plan or a theme for the night which sometimes results in a bunch of nothing being played. For this week, nothing could be further from the truth as this isn’t Deadstein from 15 years ago, but this is a re-”Jew”-vinated band that can’t be held back.

With little traffic to deal with all of us, with the exception of Alan, were at the jam at least 30 minutes early. We decided to get going, get warmed up and get a few songs under our belts before the 8 o’clock hour. This got us a 2-song appetizer, Mississippi Halfstep and the Cats Down Under the Stars, and set the tone for the night, which was we were taking no prisoners.

When Alan got there we started into our six-man assault, starting with a pretty good Shakedown Street which I moved right into a C.C. Rider. This prevented us from taking a break and taking time to reflect on what just happened. This is a good technique to keep us moving forward in a positive fashion.

Eventually, a few of our guests showed up including Steve and Willow and for the second set, Ryan and Maggie showed up. It was toward the end of the night when they were there but we still had a little fire in our bellies and give it to them big. As Scott’s fire was dissipating a bit at that hour, he handed the sticks over to Ryan for a song toward the end of the night. We ended pretty strong considering all the distractions and once again, ran through the 12 o’clock finish-line past the end the night with power yet fully exhausted when we finally left. Leaving everything on the strings realizing there is a week to replenish what was depleted. It is the way you want to pace yourself.

One cool thing about this week’s write up and blog posting is that I am using the new Office 365 Home Premium Preview which was just made available to test drive for free at Microsoft.com. I am testing it out on my consumer preview of Windows 8 and all I can say is this isn’t your grand-daddy’s operating system and office suite. On October 26, 2012, all this stuff should be released for real and Microsoft should be moving us into their vision of the future, which has lots of new cool stuff in it. Stuff is now fast and agile, such as downloading, installing and using a new office suite which just takes minutes.

Back to Deadstein, which hasn’t quite been pushing forward at the break-neck speeds of technology, but we still move forward, react and adapt. The firsts et continued with some nice normal firsts et material, pounding away at playing the songs, and they were good. I think the Birdsong turned into the highlight of the first set as we took it to all different far-off Birdsong lands. That was an interesting jam. We finished the 1^st set just after 10 with a repeat of the Bucket we have done a few time recently. It still needs a lot of work. With lots of songs under our belts we were able to relax with a halftime break. Not rushing through it like we have been doing.

We opened the 2^nd set easily with an Aiko and headed to an Estimated to start our journey. We didn’t do a drums space this week, but the second set had the feel of a second set with a first half, a second half and one last song to end the night.

It was another full filling Deadstein jam night with lots of good music and fun that made leaving a bummer and making you want for more. With more to come, it looks like this week will be a non-core-4 jam with Rich and Alan out of town. Nevertheless, I’m sure it will be something short of spectacular so stay tuned and freak out.