It was a standard Wednesday night of Deadstein, with nothing much to be expected but the 6 of us. Though the Rockefeller Christmas Tree was slated to be lit right about the same time as our arrival, it didn’t seem to impact our plans. Kevin had appointments in the city earlier and when I arrived I found him sleeping on the floor. That startled me a bit. Rich thought we were playing the night before and went to Carroll’s on Tuesday night only to find no one the play with. When he arrived at this jam, he was psyched because he has been prepping Donna D. with some good listening music and she was going to be joining us later in the night.
Waking up from his stupor, Kevin wanted to play something mellow and surprising suggested that we play Breathe from Pink Floyd. We don’t do it often but it is in the supplemental portion of the book so we gave it a go. It was a lot of fun and got us off to a good start for the night. We even pulled off the Time pretty well and got back into the Breathe reprise to end this Pink Floyd endeavor. It was cool and fun while it lasted. We then headed into out Deadstein music and we were primed to play.
Staring with the slow Floyd gave me a good foundation of tone to work with for the rest of the night and I felt really comfortable within myself and the music; a great place to be. The band and I were playing well which also helped when Donna D. showed up to sing a the second part of the first set with us. She had been listening to a lot of Grateful Dead music provided by Rich. She pleasantly shocked us when she said she wanted to play Comes a Time and that she had been listening to several versions from several eras and thought she had a good handle on it. Unfortunately she did great but her mic was turned off for the first half of the son; my bad. After we fixed that, she was good to go. She kept surprising us by pulling songs out of her ass that were classics Jerry ballads and would be fun to play, such as the Morning Dew, Stella Blue and St. Stephen. Well maybe the Stephen wouldn’t be too much fun to play since we don’t do it well, but we sure gave it the Deadstein try. I on the other hand, pulled a Stephen –> Dancin’ combo out of my ass which proved to be a great choice for Donna D and the rest of us. She was able to let loose on that one.
Additionally, Donna’s Dew and Stella Blue were really well sung and phrased, and impressive feat while trying to survive the vortex that is Deadstein. The ending jam of the Dew showed the true weakness of Deadstein in our inability of seeing the big picture of a song. Not knowing what a song is about, not knowing where you are and playing a Morning Dew without any of the respect it deserves. It was a travesty to witness the lack of patience of not letting Donna D sing out the final few “guess it doesn’t matter anyway’s” in a serene blossom of tonal petals coated in dew. This would obviously be followed by the guitar lead/jam that peaks out over a couple of minutes like a Morning Dew is designed. It was just such a shame, because the rest of the Dew was so good, why fumble the ball with victory in sight? A little patience, maturity and focus is all we need. Come on people! Anyway, short of that, there was a lot of fun to be had with Donna D.
Our guests were for the night Steve and Lindsey as well as the aforementioned Donna D and a less than stellar showing of Scott Bayer. We ended the Donna D. segment with halftime for some and time for Rich and I to play a couple of Jerry acoustic type numbers with Donna D. The Amazing Grace took me half the song to click in with the 3, but once I did, it was really cool. Too bad about that lost opportunity. The Swing Low was a lot of fun also. After that everyone else left and it was back to standard Deadstein.
We were playing well and time was going slowly. The second set provided a lot of time to play and we continue to play well. We migrated to songs typically associated with the first set, but it was a nice assortment of songs. It also felt like a good second set. I guess we will have to give it a listen. Thanks to Rich for providing the recordings.
To hear what we did, go to the MP3 links below:
http://www.deadstein.com/audio/11-28-12/
Set 1
Set 2
my Steal Your Space book 