Jam – 2012-02-02 – Montana’s

05 Feb 2012 2 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

Larry, Kathy, Scraps and Rags show their Giants pride at the beginning of this season at dog camp.

Just one last week for me to superstitiously wait until Sunday morning to write about the week’s Deadstein jam.  Much like Deadstein’s monumental run of over 20 decade of playing Grateful Dead music, the New York Giants are on their own run which finds them in Indianapolis, playing on this Superbowl on this Super Sunday.  Deadstein and the Giants have been riding this wave of “pos” all the way from the bowls of defeat in Dallas to a chance to bring the Lombardi trophy home tonight.  Let’s Go Giants!

The first time the Giants won a Superbowl in 1986 they defeated the Denver Broncos and that is where I think Brotpen was for the week.  Without Rich in the area means a slightly discombobulated Deadstein and that is what we had this week.  We reached out for a keyboardist but couldn’t find any.  Scott reached out to an old high school friend of his, Rob from Seaford, who he hasn’t seen in 30 years but they are friends on Facebook.  Rob was in town and agreed to take Scott’s offer to jam and he showed around 9:30, about an hour into the jam.

The jam was different because we were at Montana’s with all of it’s goodness, as Carroll’s didn’t have any room for us this week.  We started with a little, not so Core-4, with Alan who was back with us after missing 2 weeks jamming with some other band.  He arrived with his shiny new VG-Strat with guitar modeling and blue light.  For me, I am still actively trying to complete release 8 of the Jerry Garcia Song Book and brought in with me a loose-leaf binder containing the draft of the new book.  This got me to try a Money Honey as a new Deadstein song, which was really good.  The new book is going to be a nice addition to our jams once it comes out, I can’t wait.

When Rob arrived, I realized he was a guitar player and not a keyboardist.  Additionally, Rob played in a Paul McCartney cover band back at his home by Albany, so he was well versed in some of our packet.  Since we didn’t have anyone playing piano and we had 3 guitarists and a vacant keyboard, I decided to play keys for the remainder of the night and let Rob do what he does so well.  I think it was a good decision, I was challenging for me and a lot of fun.  I haven’t touched any keys in months and I was very rusty.  Nevertheless, I was able to grove and add to the experience of the music, so I think.

Without having Rich there with his MP3 recorder, we don’t  have MP3 to listed to but the setlist is provided below.  Fortunately, Scott is a crazy video taper these days and had his camera and used that to capture the jam.  A few songs are available as the embedded YouTube video.  Enjoy and go Giant’s!

  • Fire
  • Money Honey
  • Twist Of Fate
  • Loser
  • Uncle Johns
  • Shakedown
  • Taxman
  • Bulldog
  • 909
  • Comet Together
  • After Midnight
  • Till There Was You
  • Red Rooster
  • Watchtowe
  •  You Can Never Can Tell
  • JBG

Jam – 2012-01-25 – Carroll’s

29 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

With the Giants beating San Francisco last week in overtime and heading to the Superbowl last week, I decided to keep up the superstitious tradition of writing the weekly Deadstein  jam posting on Sunday morning.  It has worked for the last several weeks and I hoping it bring me the Lombardi Trophy home next Sunday.

For this week at Deadstein, Alan was once again not available so Larry Brent decided t0o join us and play the Jerry parts, leaving me with Bob for the night.  It was a fun positive night filled with good and bad moments.  I think we half-assed ourselves into several songs, which didn’t help anything along.  I think we need to focus on playing a song  with gusto and purpose when we play it and not rely so much on the non-existent vibe to propel us forward.  We all have to remember that vibe live within us and with paying it’s due respect to the vibe, it’s no going to help you.

I don’t recall any guests in the room for the night, so it was just us 5 chickens but once again, it was good to play with LLB.  In the world, I have been trying really hard to get the new version of the book done.  As of last night, I think I finalized the song list, adding 3 new songs yesterday. 2 by request and 1 by maturity.  I added King Bee, Money Honey and Far From Me as the last 3 songs of the book, so these new songs combined with the other new songs added, combined with the the sections of music added (end of Eyes, Terrapin, etc.), combined with improvement in many songs’ tablature, combined with  size increases where possible in font size, combined with improved look by print and copy publishing (thanks to Kevin and his HP 5L), combined with greatness of the existing book, combined with new online individual PDFs of each song (coming soon), will all make Jerry Garcia Songbook, Version 8 the best yet.  Look at the online whole PDF here: (Song Page)

If you just want the songs, which isn’t the best yet, you can find them below.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-24-12/

Jam – 2011-01-18 – Carroll’s

22 Jan 2012 4 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

For the 3rd or 4th week in a row, I find myself on Sunday morning blogging about the week’s Deadstein jam with the Giants on my mind making their way to and through the post season.  Today we tackle the San Francisco 49ers for the NFC Championship.

In the previous weeks, I had postponed the jam posting for one reason or another, this week I was ready to post early in the week, but I thought I would try to take some of the Sunday morning postng luck and apply it to this week.  By 9:30 tonight, we should know if it works.  What I do know did work this week was Deadstein.  With Alan rehearsing with someone else, Trister filled in my shoes and I filled in Alan’s and we had some of that old school Deadstein for the night.

While it was old-school, it felt more polished than old-school Deadstein.  I thought our tempos, melodies and tones were nice and comfortable.  Playing Bobby guitar seems so easy and effortless, compared to what I had been playing especially with Andy serving up some real sweet Jerry runs.

Andy was with us for half the night through the Brokedown then it was up to the Core-4 to run the table.  One thing we don’t have is unlimited energy and we began to fade through the second set.  Some how the Things We Said Today to close the night was lively and funky which gave us a nice boost going into the elevator to say good-bye once again to Carroll’s

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-18-12/

Jam – 2012-01-11 – Carroll’s

15 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

For another week, I find myself here on a Sunday morning reflecting and writing about the Deadstein jam that occurred a few days ago.  Like the previous two weeks, I sit here writing with the Giants and playoff football on my mind.  Today, they are up in Green Bay for a very difficult challenge against the Packers at their home field, but after beating the Falcons last week at home, the Giants have with a little bit of hope.  I need a miracle; we will see at 4:30.

If there is ever hope it is with the Giants and Deadstein.  Last week, we were mired in our suckiness.  This week we pulled ourselves out of that morass, put on those rusty strings one more time, and we made them shine. Yeah!.

Earlier in the week Alan suggested playing the anniversary show for the night from Nassau Coliseum, 1979.  It was the night after the infamous 1-10-79 show with the Dark Star et. al. and 1-11-79 is often forgotten, but with its stella Jack Straw, it must be reckoned with.  It is one of the greatest Jack Straws I know of.  Check out the show on Live Music Archives

With that inspiration before us we tackled the set list.  For the record, we did skip For the Heart of Me.  Pretty much from the first few songs, we knew we weren’t going to suck as much as the previous week.   Things felt pretty good.  I was focusing on my 15% volume limitation and it sounds about right I think on the recording.  Didn’t matter from an amp perspective as by the end of the night my amp was tired and electrically crackling.  We finished the long first set by 10 and were in fine shape to finish the entire show.

With the second set, we relaxed a bit then dove right into it with the Miracle.  That gets you going.  The Ship of Fools done in a authentic yet less familiar key, had use confused and twisted a bit, but we got by.  I joined Scott for the drums, pounding the bass drum and even though Kevin said that whole thing stunk, it gave us the mid seat break that keeps it all interesting and moving.  I wasn’t feeling to good about the space, Truckin’ Other One jams, maybe my hands didn’t recover from the drumming, but I found I was battling those as I played them.  Fortunately, Scott was pretty focused for most of the night and kept us going strong.  I am not familiar with the 1-11-79 Stella Blue, but Alan endorsed it so we tried to make that sweet.  At this moment, without hearing it, I have no recollection of it.  I guess I have to listen to both the Deadstein and Grateful Dead versions and compare them.  Finally were crossed the finish line a few minutes early with a nice Casey Jones and we played a Brokedown and a Hard to Handle as extras.  It was a big night with no guests which gave us a little bit of confidence to think that we don’t totally suck.  Now it’s time for the Giants to have the same revelation and beat the Packers.  Go Giants.

To hear what we did, access the MP3s at the links below.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-11-12/

Jam – 2012-01-04 – Carroll’s

08 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , ,

Well, with all the hullabaloo of the 2011 holiday season behind us, we were heading for a let down at the beginning of 2012. It’s just simple destiny.  Kevin started the night with a conversation about his realization about how terrible Deadstein is.  I think this is a good thing, not that we suck, but that we realize it.  So 2012 starts with unlimited doubt, but at least it gives us a target for the year to  come, which is not to suck so much.  That’s the ticket.

We were in our comfortable Studio #2 at the newly painted Carroll’s and it looked as though nothing was moved from the previous week.  Kevin was trying to stabilize his rig with a plea from Jules not to blow a Vox every week.  I got a shock on my nose from my mike and Alan suggested turning the AC adapter to my peddle board around in its power strip, I didn’t get shocked for the rest of the night, but that zinging sensation was in my mind all night long.  I have to remember to orientation of that adapter because I’ve encountered this issue before.

There were some terrible things that went on this night like the Cumberland that I couldn’t get into my head and an attempt to learn a small part of Bucket that went no where.  It would be funny if we went back to the music and it sounded okay from this night, but I would have to rate the the musicality of the evening as a below average night for sure.  Rich did an admirable job in trying to piece together or efforts, so please give it a listen if you are strong enough to take on even more doubt.  As I am writing this early Sunday morning with nothing to do till 1pm. all I can do is to get practicing and let’s not forget, Go Giants!

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/01-04-12/

Jam 2011-12-28 – Carroll’s

31 Dec 2011 5 Comments

by deadstein in Jams Tags: , , , , , , ,

Wow, what a crazy year 2011 was and what a way to end it on this Wednesday night, December 28, 2011, the last jam of the year.  Jamming in 2011 was a steady weekly endeavor resulting in exactly 52 jams for the year.  This is pretty good stuff considering everything that is involved with everyone.  It’s not easy jamming over 200 hundred hours for the year as it takes its toll.  The last quarter of 2011 seemed a bit difficult to sustain physically, but we kept pushing and conditioning ourselves to the point that we should be in fine shape to plow through 2012 in a seemingly effortless style.  This year marked the year we began taking on actual Dead shows which has positive side effect of getting us to play many songs in a evening.  Twenty songs a night was unheard of in old Deadstein but the introduction of historic set lists and Beatles songs has made playing over 20 songs more commonplace in recent months.  This is a good thing.  More music for your money and your effort.

With many of us off for the remainder of the year, this mid-week jam seemed to have a festive atmosphere to it.  While it seemed as if Alan wasn’t going to play for the night, needing to rest his weary bones, he got up the energy and excitement to bring a lime-green celebratory brightness to the jam with a bottle of Patron, limes and ice to share with all.  A very nice touch to get us going for the final jam of the year.

Scott, of course was in the middle a a series of concerts including the Fab Faux from the previous evening at the City Winery.  His video shooting is on a roll now so he brought his setup to the jam a shot a few songs.  Helping on the video duties was Scott’s friend from Calgary, CAN Jules, I think I got that right, and he hung and enjoyed us for almost the entire evening.  My bother Jay and niece Rachel were seeing the Fab Faux tonight and with the show ending at 9:30, they headed over to Deadstein to check us out for a few songs songs.  They had their friends David and Zak, who goes to Miami Univ. with Scott’s kids, in tow.    They hung out during most of the Gino segments but I did manage to wrestle a Wharf Rat out of it to play for Rachel who used to listen to the version on Deadicated as a child.

Speaking of Gino, Kevin’s friend Gene with his friend Ken came and Gene sang a few songs out of the non-Dead packet that were a venture and fun to play.  To set the stage, before anyone got there, as the second song of the night, we decided to try 4 Beatles songs out which I had charted previously in the week for everyone.  For the most part, this little 4-song Bealte packet was fun and jammier than most Beatle jams, so it was a cool part of the night.  This got us prepared for Gene when we would repeat several of these songs.  We also played some Pink Floyd with him, which was more in his element.

During the Stranger and at the end of it I was letting go a bit, with my distortion pedal on the “all the way to the right” setting and we blew the ending in a cacophonous cloud of noise.  At that point Rich commented on the leads being played 15% too loud at parts over the past several months and we should focus to tame that.  I guess it was the year of going to 11, and 2012 will be the year to shelve, but I do understand Rich’s comments about those levels and I will make a concerted effort to address them as we go forward.  I think 2012 will find me a much more maturing place with respect to leads than 2011.  This year I started using new effects, playing and learning  and getting comfortable with more leads and jams, and I also switched over to the Les Paul.  Hopefully, I should be more focused on the song this year instead playing to survive which is coming with time and it is getting better all the time.  Anyway, I agree with Rich’s volume issues and I do see a more in controlled year a head of us.

Speaking of going from year to year, we transitioned an Eleven into a Hard to Handle, where the word “dozen” is used several times, to commemorate the passing of 2011 to 2012.  I thought that was one of the better moments of the celebration.

Some how we went out strong, a 28-song set list and Scott feeling up-and-at-em, all night long.  Maybe it was the nap; maybe it was the company; maybe it was the season; maybe it was the music but  it was probably a freaky meld of it all that helped us leave the year on a strong note.  Music Never Stopped After Midnight told us all to get set for another strong year of Deadstein in 2012.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/12-28-11/

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