This Thursday’s jam had us all back together for a jam plus we had Larry Brent playing for most of the night. With all the catching up to get through I didn’t think there was a chance we would get past 20 songs. Apparently I was way wrong as we got in 24. We had a beefy 14 song first set with Larry and then a second set that we played with him for the first five songs, and played with just us Deadsteiners for the last 5 songs of the night.
As far as non-playing guests we had Rob and Heather, who left us with an inspirational good bye like no other as we “let inspiration move us brightly” during the Terrapin. They popped their heads in and both gave a big inspirational good-bye. It was pretty funny. By the end of the night Ryan and Maggie showed up to catch our closing. Once Larry left, I took the opportunity to try the If I had the World to Give, which once again shows improvement.
Closely following the Jewish Holidays, Alan tried to get a biblical theme going and all we got from that was the early Greatest Story and Brothers and Sisters. The PA system was a bit woofy during the first set, and we finally tamed that beast by the end of the second set. Sometimes, it is just like that and you have to play through the friction. Hopefully next week will be a little slicker.
On a Wednesday night following Scott’s birthday we were planning to get together like we typically do for our weekly Deadstein jam. With Scott’s birthday on show tap and the expected absence of Alan this week there was an anticipation of lots of esoteric Jerry Garcia Band music to be placed on the platter. We started the Scarlet Affair with an expected And It Stoned Me. As you can see in the photo, Art Garfunkle was rehearing in our studio a few hours before, so some of his essence and hair must have been left in the studio.
At the end of the Stoned Me in comes Alan walking in as usual which was very surprising to the rest of us. Well, through some type of misinterpretation of a Hebrew New Year’s greeting transmitted through mobile technologies we all thought Alan was a no show for the night. Anyway, that was not to be the case as he ended only missing that first song. A good thing also for the rest of night a nice helping of good night of music selected by Scott for his birthday pleasure.
Until the end of the night when Ryan and Maggie showed up with a couple of friends from Hawaii, we had no guests in the room. Their arrival was good timing for Deadstein as we are more on during the fresh early portion of the evening and moron by the latter part of the evening. It was good we had people to play to at that time of the night as we were jolted into playing a bit more aggressively than otherwise would have been the case. As a result we ended up strong flying through the finish line with 22 songs, not that anyone is counting.
I am happy that we got the If I Had the World to Give in early as it was an improvement from 2 weeks ago and shows great potential. It is such a great song and fun to play. The You Never Can Tell was a quick little fun number which challenged our dexterity much in the same way Maggie’s Farm did.
It was a fun night through and through and if you want to hear any of it, listen to the links below:
With Labor Day behind us, Deadstein forges ahead into autumn with a little momentum from all the songs we played during the summer months. This week found us with everyone present and accounted for and ready to go. Little did we realize that Lee’s birthday was coming up within the week and Scott’s is following closely on its heals. With this in mind we slowly transitioned from having no plan for the evening to it being a Lee than and then a drummer’s birthday show. This came with the requisite responsibility to select the setlist which Lee and Scott essentially did for the majority of the night. The final result was a strong night containing 23 songs and good ones at that.
In comparison to last week, this week I was feeling good and playing well. I replaced those rusty strings on my Strat for the first time in a couple of months and they were shining. When I went to the store to buy strings I also picked up a cheap MXR 90 Phaser which produces a sound close to that which Jerry used on a few songs like Waiting for a Miracle and If I Had the World to Give. This gave me the incentive to practice during the week at home playing the If I Had the World to Give and getting it set for Deadstein to try again. I feel as if we are on the cusp of getting this song under our belts so I had hope with my additional work on it, we could send it from the C list to the B list.
The room was sounding good I think as I was able to hear the vocals and Rich’s Piano easily from the PA system. This always helps us play well and the recordings kind of provide that nice balance. Of course, we all could and should play more within ourselves, formulating a strong foundation before losing patience and control and heading out to the races like Tasmanian Devils leaving the songs we are trying to play as road kill in Deadstein’s wake.
Steve and Lindsey were our only early in the night guests and they got to experience Deadstein butchering their wedding song, If I Had the World to Give. They left for the second set and we were by ourselves until 5-7 people came in during our St. Stephen butchering and watched us from then through the end of the night. Finally, Scott Bayer came in and left pretty quickly after he was denied an opportunity to play bongos with us.
The first set was pretty long, 13 songs in total, and it started with an aggressive Deep Elem Blues and ended with an aggressive Deal. In between there was lots of sweet stuff in between, kind of like a Double Stuff Oreo. Built To Last was the night’s only extreme reach beyond our grasp, so therefore the other 20 or so songs were fun. The middle of the first set is where we were the strongest but for the most part the night was good.
With Scott singing the Box of Rain, Deadstein ended its long night just after midnight. For me the night would just begin for I was successful in keeping the news away from my ears about the Giant game as the reigning Superbowl champions were opening the 2012 football season on a Wednesday night just a few miles west of us at Giants Stadium. I recorded the game and was intending to go home and hopefully watch a Giant’s victory.
On the way home I finally stopped at a halal food truck on Tenth Ave. on the way to the Lincoln Tunnel. I discussed going there with Lee before hand but I wasn’t sure about the safety and he asked me if the food moves. I had know idea if the food moved or not but when I passed it I saw several taxi drivers standing outside their cabs gnawing away at their giros so I decided to pull over and go in for the kill. Little did I know that this time, as should be expected, the hunter got captured by this game. I had never ventured to this type of food truck before, but nothing ventured nothing gained, so I looked over the fairly extensive menu and decided on the “Lamb” sandwich. The guy quickly prepared it for me and I got a Coke and $5 later I was in my car heading home with a “Lamb” sandwich. I just got the white sauce; no lettuce or tomato or hot sauce which was available on request. My communication with the man behind the glass was difficult at best. Squishy piping hot type of pita dough bread surrounded this “Lamb” meat that was highly spiced with little bits of onions in it. I didn’t sense any of the gamy flavor which you expect from lamb, just an overly spiced grilled meat by-product of some sort. I never really had anything like it and I can only assume it truly was grilled dog food that they serve to their non-halal brethren. I assume they save the actual grilled dog for their own. In any case, I woofed it down in the car without looking really looking at it. Amazingly, the way it was wrapped in aluminum foil it did drip one bit.
I finally got home at 1:30 and got through the Giants loss to Dallas which was pretty, but the flow of the game required me to stay up to 3:30 or so to get to the end of the game, even with fast forwarding through the commercials. With a 7:09 wake-up time, Thursday was not an easy day for me. Next week should only be better as I try a new meat by product in a wrap and the Giants go for their first win. You can see the blimp in the photo I took with my iPhone going into the jam which I can only assume was providing areal photography for the game’s broadcast. I was a really nice evening as this photos going into the jam show.
To hear what we did this week, check out the links to the MP3s below:
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 19th 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.
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 2nd 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 7th 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:
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:
This Thursday’s jam had us all back together for a jam plus we had Larry Brent playing for most of the night. With all the catching up to get through I didn’t think there was a chance we would get past 20 songs. Apparently I was way wrong as we got in 24. We had a beefy 14 song first set with Larry and then a second set that we played with him for the first five songs, and played with just us Deadsteiners for the last 5 songs of the night.
my Steal Your Space book 