Jam – 2011-06-30 – Carroll’s

01 Jul 2011 15 Comments

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

June 30 was the last day in June, it was the 5th jam in June and I’m sure set a record for the most songs played in one month.  We have been doing many jams where we play a full Grateful Dead show as our setlist for the night.  This keeps us moving and motivated to play many songs without too much wasted time.  Ain’t that the truth?  More King Po, Charlie.  This whole theory really kicks in gear when you start playing some older, classic Dead shows.

June 30, 1973 at the Universal Amphitheater was apparently one such classic show that was ripe to play for the evening.  Although I was unfamiliar with this show there is a lot written about it and seems to have a following based on some of the writing on the net.  See the link below:

http://www.deadlistening.com/2009/08/1973-june-30-universal-amphitheatre.html

That’s a pretty cool write up and gave us a great foundation on which to base our evening.  I listened to the show on my very long trip into the city, G-d I hate the Thursday jam.  I didn’t get in until 8:15 and I bet we didn’t get started until 8:45.  We had a few guests, Rob and Miriam and Rich’s AZ friends, Steve and Eydie, I meanTracy.  It was nice to have an audience.

As I stated, I got there late and we had little hope of playing the entire setlist.  This 1973 show, 38 years ago had a big list of songs including the giant first set.  It was a challenge and we got through the end of the show with out the 2-song encore.  That’s pretty impressive and took us up to about 12:15 to play.  I actually screwed up by playing the Eyes before the Dark Star instead of the other way around.  Short of that faux pas, we were following the show as we were supposed to; we even tried to play certain songs in the 73-styles such as Love Each Other and Greatest Story where we actually got the St. Stephen sounding jam on track. Deal, Jack Straw and the wondering Birdsong were also examples of trying to think 73.

I must remember to change my strings before next week because when I picked up my guitar, the strings felt like they were deep fried.    It was bothersome throughout the night so I won’t get any better.  Looking forward to pick a show from 7-7-11 to play.  In the meantime, enjoy the links to the music from this week, once Rich gets to it.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/06-30-11/

Jam – 2011-06-21 – Carroll’s

22 Jun 2011 7 Comments

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

June 21 represented the summer solstice and it also meant Deadstein could try to play the 6-21-1989 Shoreline show.  This show was broadcast on pay-per-view back in the day, 22 years ago and is a very nice setlist for 1989.  There were a few repeats to be played that we played over the past several weeks, but that is the chance you take when you select an historic setlist to play. Minglewood and Row Jimmy were repeats, but we played them as if they were quality repeats with some confidence that comes with muscle and mental memory.

I had a few mental slips with the setlist such as mixing up the Truckin and the Other One.  Additionally, we did the Weight to satisfy Scott’s The Band urge he was having from attending this past Saturday’s Ramble concert at Levon Helm’s place, but somehow, I forget to play a lead in this one.  I totally messed up the Truckin’ because I thought I had the words memorized, which for the most part I do know, but I messed up the first line (“Arrows of neon …) and never recovered all song.

I was playing well at times but at times I also had real mental distractions that messed me up, I was fighting myself all night long, but I think I won the fight.  Then again, I also lost it.  While we didn’t do the Ship of Fools in the 1989 key we did decide to d the Brokedown in the 1989 key and it felt really comfortable and easy to play in that key.  Maybe we should think about staying in that key?

We haven’t done too many, if any Hell in a Bucket since Alan’s been playing and I’ve been doing Jerry, but this one was fun for me.  I let the few remaining strands of hair I have left down and let loose with some distortion.  Kevin was embarrassed by it, so don’t listen to it.  I’m sure he’s right and it is a total mess and piece of crap, but even a piece of crap can be satisfying as you squeeze it out.  I like the drums space, it’s fun and interesting, give people time to get a soda and candy bar during their break and it keeps us playing once again.  A good technique.

We finished the Brokedown with about 30 minutes to go, and somehow Scott was going strong through the whole night and prepared to continue strong through the 12:00 finish line, which we did.  It was my birthday show for 30 minutes, so I decided to give Scott the aforementioned The Weight.  I also decided to pull the Helter Skelter out of my ass, not having played in for months and it was by far our best version to date.  We got the structure right on and that carried us through the end of the song.  It was fun.

It was a fun, non-lethargic night of music.  The predefined setlist once again proved it propels us through a very full night of music and gets many more songs out of us.   I like the technique.  It has the gravitas to keep us on track and playing as opposed to thinking.  Scott Bayer was bongo-less, the way we like him, and our only guest.  He did transmit our version of The Boxer which was also fun at the end of the night.  All this bonus material after an entire Dead setlist.

One last interesting thing about the night was the fact that we decided to do the 6-21-1989 setlist last week.  In the interim, Clarence Clemmons of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band died and 6-21-1989 was one of the Grateful Dead shows he actually played with the Grateful Dead.  He jammed with them for most of the second set 22 years ago and he happened to show up dead this week.  I’m just saying?  By the way, Springsteen is just another Deadstein cover band.

To hear the music from the night go to the MP3s links listed below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/06-21-11/

Jam – 2011-06-14 – Carroll’s

16 Jun 2011 10 Comments

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

This was another easy night getting to our studio on 55th Street.  Parking was easy and the weather was nice.  The big news of the night was Andy Trister jamming with us for the first half of the evening.  Always great to see him and to raise Deadstein’s competency.

We found a show to do for the evening and it was the big Beacon Theater show from 6-14-76.  This was a show with about 24 songs in it; big ones, small one,short ones and long ones and Deadstein decided to tackle them all.  Alan was at this show way back in the day, so the jam may have had an even more of a special feeling to him than the rest of us.  35 years ago he was at this show and we were playing it at this jam.

We knew it would be a big challenge to get through it and it was.  Likewise, it was a risk to play this setlist with Trister in the room because it was loaded with many potential train-wrecks that has sent many a Deadstein lead guitarist fleeing from the scene.

Before we got to any of that ’76 stuff, we decided to open up the jam session by trying out a Deadstein first, Operator, which I had just charted out a few days earlier.  It went well and was a fun song, should be any easy one to get into and add to our repertoire.

We then plunged head first into the Beacon show and Trister was there for the entire first set.  The cowboy songs starting with Mama Tried had Andy remembering the Deadstein feel of things, which is not a good thing, but with the use of the actual setlist downloaded on my iPhone, I was able to sample the songs in the microphones for everyone’s edification before we played them.  This helped in many an instant.

Following the Playing to end the first set, we played a To Lay Me Down while I played Bass.  This was the only straying we did from the setlist.  The second set was just as ambitious as the first, if not more and we rushed to accomplish it in its entirety, but we did, going just a few minutes past 12:00 p.m.  Quite and feat of endurance.  Well if you saw all the eyeballs rolling in the back of people’s head’s by 11:30, you wouldn’t think endurance would be a word associated with the jam.  Good stuff.  We should be around the solstice by next jam so get set for some sunshine.  So until next time, keep the buffet open, go for seconds and it’s Grateful Said.

To hear what we played, G-d forbid, go to the link below:

 

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/06-14-11/

 

Jam – 2011-06-08 – Carroll’s

09 Jun 2011 3 Comments

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

It seemed like it would be a good jam as there was no Terminal-5 concert, parking was easy and we all got there early and were ready to play at 8:00.  We had no guests for the night but Alan was back so we were back to our 5-man Grateful Dead line-up and away we went.  It started nicely with the Shakedown that had a nice groove. We had no plan or theme for the night and Kevin seemed a little scared about the unknown and we played a 1st set that was typical if not too hot, but a nice chunk of music that was worthy of our attention.

That lead to a break and the second set was a knockout.  We played a big 4-song segment that required another break to get our feet and mind back under ourselves.  We must have played hard because I woke up with a left wrist that was killing me.

Ironically, the last set ended with Scott leading us off to an Other One as if we were going to play for another half hour.  A last gasp burst of energy that came out of his final reserves.  Lets hope we fill our tanks and get set for next week.

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/06-08-11/

Apache/1.3.42 Server at http://www.de

Jam – 2011-06-01 – Carroll’s

02 Jun 2011 3 Comments

by deadstein in Grateful Dead Tags: , , , , ,

Core-4 is what was on tap for Deadstein on this hot first day of June.  We all think about how hot the world is getting today in the 21st century and this June 1 made you feel that way.  The great thing about our Grateful Dead experiences is that communal bond we have from focusing on one thing, the Grateful Dead.  In this instance, I am referencing Jerry Garcia, not the Grateful Dead, but to all intents and purposes, well you know where I am going with this.  Scott, Rich and I all attended the 6-1-83 Garband show at the Roseland Ballroom and the one thing we all remember is how hot of a night that night was.  So when we think it is so hot today, we all had the ability to remember so vividly how hot the temperature was on this day in 1983, 28 years ago.

That Roseland show was hot so we had to commemorate it by playing the 11 song setlist.  Only having Core-4 in the room provided the opportunity to really dig into some Jerry Garcia Band music.  While not seemingly as comfortable as previous weeks dedicated setlist remembering actual shows, we still pulled it off with some aplomb.

After completing the whole Jerry Garcia Band show as a Deadstein 1st set, it seemed to poop out Scotty a bit so as a means to prevent him from slipping into a deep Grateful Dead comma while drumming a second set we ended playing a variety of non-Dead songs, mostly Beatles, but some Stones and a Paul Simon Boxer that felt pretty good.  There was some good and some bad but it was still a fun time.  To close the night we played our only true Grateful Dead, a pretty hot and powerful Feel Like a Stranger. It was, “Ba-Ba-Ba” and we were out of there at midnight.

To hear the songs we played click on the links below:

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/06-01-11/

Jam – 2011-05-24 – Carroll’s

25 May 2011 2 Comments

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

Tuesday night May 24 and we had no dedicated show to play as our guide.  What we did have was the 70th birthday of Bob Dylan.  With both the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band being the pre-eminent Bob Dylan cover bands, we had plenty of familiar material to play in which to have fun with as well as to pay homage to Bob Dylan.  He did provide us with so many great song that we play week in and week out, so from Deadstein, we wish Robert Zimmerman a happy 70th birthday. Now let’s eat.

Alan was sick this week and took it off to rest up and get better.  We were able to get Bayside Mitch to play some of his warm rhythms using that sweet sounding Epiphone semi-hollow body.    I think we sounded pretty good for most of the night, sustaining ourselves through the 12:00 midnight witching hour.  We played a full Dylan first set and went back to the Dead for the second set yet throwing in a few more appropriate Dylan songs.  For as many Dylan songs that we found to do, we could have done so many more.  It shows how prolific of a songwriter he really is.

I thought I was playing well through the night with several leads feeling like I was taking it to the next level.  Hopefully up.  We had a few structural clunky moments, Times They are a Changing and I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight but most of the Dylan stuff was rewarding.  Unlike the Beatles songs we now do, those Dylan songs are pretty long and we didn’t even do a Joey.

As far as guests, we only had Scott Bayer and he may not be coming back as we had to put the k-bash on his bongo playing.  Hopefully he can recoup the investment he made in his percussion setup, but enough was enough and hopefully that will be the end of his bongo-ing.  That was the only neg of the the night, the rest of it was full of pos.  From now on, all you can eat.  Yoink!

http://www.deadstein.com/audio/05-24-11/

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