my Steal Your Space book

Kev is smoking

At the end of last week Kevin asked for a standard set list nothing new to learn, no practice just good ol’ Grateful Dead songs.  Just out of nowhere I decided let’s play the 11-5-1977 show as a way to appease Kevin.  It makes sense since 1977 equated to good old standard material.  Amazingly enough, it contained the 4 songs we worked on last week, Jack Straw, Dire Wolf, Looks Like Rain and Sugar Magnolia.  A pretty amazing coincidence when you come to think about it.  I didn’t try to do that but it just turned out that way. It gave us some good reinforcement practice on those  songs.  In addition, we worked on Samson quite a bit which taught us the proper groove on that song which have have been hacking away at for the past 19 years.  All these new improvements to existing material have to compete with years of ingrained misplaying of songs but it all makes it better.  In addition, when you play it correctly, it is easier.  I found that true with the Samson last night.

Scott is thinking about something

This was historic for Deadstein, we played the entire setlist from the 11-5-1977 show in the spirit of the show itself.  The Minglewood opener was to the period.  I didn’t play any slide all night and Jasonbrought the Travis Beam.   Scott survived the big, never-ending second set Estimated –> He’s Gone –> Drums –> Other One –> Peter –> Sugar Mag combo without getting up.  Pretty enduric of him.  Speakng of Scott, Scott Bayer was our only guest and was only there for the pre-show mischagaus.  He seemed impressed with our level of intelligence and provockative discussions in the early hours of the jam compared to what it descends to later on.  In addition, we got to Carroll by cell phone during the encore for the show the One More Saturday Night,  Lots of great jamming.  It’s easier when it familiar.

No, but thanks for asking.

A cool cloud formation I found last week 10-18-2008

It is a crazy week, with the Dow going up 900 points yesterday after a week of tumbling.  Gas prices keep going down and global warming seems to have taken a Canadian vacation.  Yesterday, remnants of a noreaster hit my area hard.  Highways were closed due to ice, winds tore down trees and brought down power-lines and parts of Morris County had over 10 inches of snow.  It’s October may I remind you?  I live in the center of Morris County not in the mountainous west and therefore we the snow didn’t stick and it was mainly rain.  This meant a cold, windy bike ride through the woods on the way home that included peddling through flooded river at 10 inches deep at some parts.  I got soaked and wasn’t ready to ride to work this morning.  One of the first times in a long time that I pussied out of riding due to weather.  The only thing that seems to be normal is the abnormal and that is Deadstein.   At least I am ready to play tonight.

10-29-2008 Scott and Rich at the end of the night.

Maybe the world is reaching it’s equilibrium somewhere around the abnormality of Deadstein.  It’s not normal that the abnormal becomes normal but welcome to the future.  I think it is going to include me, Kevin, Scott, Rich and Jason, but when you open that door to Studio 2, you never know who or what you are going to see.

I got to 55th Street by 7:30 and found a spot easily.  I made my way upstairs to find Scott and Rich in the room and Kevin arrived shortly thereafter.  We hung, kibitzed for a bit and then got the instruments on.  We knew Jason was coming but he wasn’t there yet so we decided to play a couple of Garband songs until he arrived.  Rich sang a “Stop That Train” and I labored through a “Simple Twist of Fate” that seemed like it would never end.  Jason arrived at the beginning of that thing and had to endure through 85% of it without being a part of it.

The might neck of Jasons guitar

When he got there Jason discussed a little about dynamics and volume and then Rich enlightened us with his analogy about playing to fill the roomhalf way so we have plenty of air space to work with when we want to.   It seemed to work for a song or 2 at most, but we were not really too quiet thereafter.  Scott was recovering from a cold so he didn’t sing all night but he seem to play well and drummed through the 12:00 finish line.  So did we as the midnight hour hit us unexpectingly early.  We threw down a solid “Hey Pocky 
Way” and bolted out of there with me chiding the band about being lemmings following the masses into the new  Obamanation.  At least now our plate of life has personal variety and isn’t government provided soylent green. The future’s here, we are it and we are on our own.  Actually we will have Barak looking over our shoulders to make sure everything is okay as provided by the Obamanation.  It is all so comforting.  You still have an opportunity not to be a party to all of this.  The future’s here, we are it and we can be on our own if you all help.  So back off the soap box.

What is this? Scott probably knows

We worked on a few of the songs we updated last week and most notibably Sugar Magnolia and the ending of the singing part.  We went over that many times and my explanation to Kevin that the first half of the last line is the same as the ending “Sunshine Daydream” jam until you hit the “D” finally hit him when we played the whole song and he played it in context.  We then did it again.  We also practiced the groove of the Suuplication jam with me outwardly counting the 7 beat.  That really worked well.  Maybe some day we can conquer the entire song.  As long as we have that 7 grove entrenched, the rest should be easy.  We worked on and failed with the IF I had the World to Give and The Eleven.  We weren’t on the same pages with those two.  While I didn’t play it all that well, we did a nice Help on the Way.  With Merl Sauders’ passing Scott got us to play the “Like a Road.  That was marginal, I didn’t feel we were on the same page on that thing either.

On a side note, this week I joined Facebook.com and have had a great time with it.  It tookmuch time from me working on the new Deadbook revision but I recommend it.  An amazing concept and do you think I should start a Deadstein group on it?  Is there any point?

On the prior Sunday (10-26-2008) there was still some beautiful autumn color to be had around the streams of Morristown, NJ