I don't understand why they call themselves the Dead. When the remnants first toured without Jerry Garcia, only the next summer, they called themselves the Other Ones, but it might not have been everyone. I once wrote "the other one" as the return address in a letter to my mother, so I understand why, Jerry-less, they were Other. Besides, there was the song. But now, just "the Dead"?
It reminds me of that scene in 1984 when Winston and Julia have been reading Goldstein's book and they say "We are the dead" and the Thought Police reply, "You are the dead."
Anyway. I changed into my paisley tank top and sweatskirt. (Both of these are miracle garments, the latter because it hasn't given out yet and the former because it's the sort of thing that fades after a few washings but I've had it for 11 or 12 years now and the colors are still strong and I wear it all summer long.) And into my Sneetchified Bear's Choice earrings, dime-sized dancing bears punched from silver, dangling below a couple of chunks of polished quartz, Sneetchified because one has a phosporescent star on its belly. I parted my hair diagonally and braided pigtails, which worked surprisingly well on a first attempt.
(Apparently a Dead show is like the opera, where sartorial matters are so vital.)
SPM came over and the three of us zoomed off to Red Rocks, there to meet Alias, whom I have decided to call Begonia. Alias is male, but despite its ending in -a, Begonia is appropriate for another reason than just the song "Scarlet Begonias." A parking lot attendant waved us into place, and what a place: they weren't placing cars immediately next to campers, so we had a car-spot in between to set up coolers and chairs for socializing with the camperfolk, whose vehicle shaded this idyll. We ate and drank and shoved the remaining beers into RDC's and SPM's CamelBaks to sustain us (well, them) in line, which we joined soon enough (Red Rocks is all unassigned seating).
Red Rocks. Hot and dusty, but the shade, once you're in some, by grace of either a camper or the sun's gradually inching behind the monoliths, counts. Plus the view doesn't suck. Swallows and swifts and bats and the city steamrollered flat on the plains below twinkling first in the heat by day and later by artifical light.
My escorts, or whatever you would call it, I guess I was theirs as the built-in designated driver, finished their beers and a bottle of Maker's Mark in line, and criminy, may I never get SPM mad at me. Well likkered up, he told the most hysterically scathing stories. But we're English grad students, or nearly, so occasionally a story would require the right phrase from Yeats' "Second Coming." It was very amusing. Also, since we found out too late that no water containers without a factory seal would be permitted, I got a little shower with the remnants of the drinking water. Damn hot. It was, after all, a lap swim night.
Also, how the scene has changed. I say this so authoritatively, having attended a total of six shows between 1993 and 1995, plus two Jerry concerts. But as we stood in line, we spoke of children, of how brilliant one is and how another just wants blocks and another is such pals with his dad, of houses and maintenance and real estate, of work (managerial, not sustenance) and so forth. I was reminded of when Ruth Anne borrowed Chris-in-the-Morning's motorcycle and fell in with some Hell's Angels-looking bikers, one of whom wore a patch over his eye, and how their conversation bikerishly accepted this 80-year-old woman into its midsts and evolved from "Easy Rider" to having to get home to a child's school recital and how relieved the patched one would be when the stye in his eye cleared up.
So, the show. I was worried about Joan Osbourne. In the summer of 1998, I went to Lilith Fair with Haitch and KMJ, Haitch for Sarah Mclachlan and Natalie Merchant and I for them but less so and primarily the Cowboy Junkies, who were also KMJ's reason. The Junkies' abysmal sound did not further my campaign to convert Haitch, I'm sorry to say. I am also sorry to say that during Joan Osbourne, during "What If God [were] Watching/One of (whichever it is) Us?" I was compelled to make a munchie run. I loathe that song, not only for grammatical reasons.
Begonia had seen them Monday as well, and said they sucked. "Baby Blue" is not an up song for third in the first set. They played Deal, Sugar Magnolia, and Box of Rain, the first one of RDC's absolute favorites besides "The Wheel" and the latter two mine or ours and Sugar Magnolia being one of the two songs RDC is required by marriage articles to dance with me during (the other is the Junkies' "Anniversary Song"). I am willing to believe bad renditions are worse than none. Traditionally their sucking one night should mean a much better show the next night. I wondered, and I wondered more when I saw setlists in front of everyone's microphone and more in front of Osbourne's, or perhaps they were lyrics.
They came out and took their places. I asked who was playing keyboards, and SPM suggested, "Linus?" I thought he was making a PigPen joke--Pigpen died, as do all their keyboardists, and now they're killing off the next Peanut--but he was making a Schroeder joke. Either way was okay. They began to play, and the crowd whooped as it recognized "Friend of the Devil." But then Bobby began to sing, and I buried my face in RDC's Phil Lesh & Friends t-shirt (only one of the four of us wore tie-dye, heretical). So, so, so wrong. Lyle Lovett can sing "Friend of the Devil." Bobby should not.
Throughout the show, Bobby sang less and Joan Osbourne sang more, and that was really good. Not as good as Susan Tedeschi (I would warrant), who could even play guitar and occupy herself thus instead of by twitching her skirt around, which was Osbourne's primary means of entertainment. But good, better than Bobby. Joan was Different But Okay where Bobby Sounded Wrong. I stopped calling Osbourne Donna, anyway. She has a much better voice than Donna Godchaux.
-Jam
-Friend of the Devil
-Mississippi Half-Step ~~>
-New Speedway Boogie (this is when Joan's voice began to assert itself more)
-Night of a Thousand Stars (a Phil Lesh & Friends song we heard last summer)
-Looks Like Rain (sung by Bobby, and a ridiculous choice showing the danger of setlists because there wasn't a damn cloud in the sky. Also Bobby was trying to look like Jerry, having grown a beard and mustache and even a little potbelly. Mostly he looked like Charlton Heston as Taylor in "Planet of the Apes." Scarily enough, they bear a strong mutual resemblance. This was RDC's "What If God Whatever" song and he vamoosed in search of drink.)
-Deep Elum Blues
-Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
-Stagger Lee
-Mr. Charlie
second set:
-Playing in the Van
-Shakedown Street
-Built to Last (another of RDC's unfavorites. He made a beer run.)
-Truckin'
-Reuben and Cherise, a Jerry Garcia Band song (sung by Joan)
-Take It Home by Midnight (?), sung by Mickey. No: Baba Jingo
-Drums. This is a perennial favorite of mine, and this was a great one. I'm not sure that Bill is as cutting edge as Mickey, but he was game. They had drums like the Kodo Drummers', and it was amazing.
-Space, very shortly, and I was glad I peed during the break instead of waiting for Space, as was my habit. Space~~>Happy Birthday to You (with no singing), because it was Joan's birthday. Some kids brought her out a cake and there were flowers.
-Comes a Time (another JGB sung by Joan)
-Uncle John's Band, which made me very happy
~~>Playing in the Band
-Lovelight
encore:
-Brokedown Palace, which made RDC very happy since it wasn't "U.S. Blues."
And then we went home. Home by 1, perversely awake before 6 with a second-hand smoke hangover. I am such a grown-up for being so tired.
I still do not have an emotional connection to this band. Six shows, two Jerry shows, one death, two Furthur Festivals, five years and then Phil Lesh & Friends (with Ratdog, bleah), another year and everybody, but no. I was happy for RDC to have a good show, it was fun to hang out with Begonia and SPM and RDC, but I didn't tear up, as I did when Peter Gabriel began "Here Comes the Flood" or shout with perfect glee, as when he started "Solsbury Hill." I am there for the music, not as a tagger-on wife or lone invasive chick, so I didn't feel like I didn't belong, anyway.
Friday we bought two objets d'art from the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, a photographic print for over the mantel and a covered bowl now on Charlie Walnuts the bookcase.
Saturday we went to Grand Lake and kind of brought Blake. He likes going for rides in the car and we wanted to bring him for a ride that didn't end at camp. He most certainly noticed his surroundings, though if he could comprehend any of the landscape I would not guess. We brought his towels to screen him from scary things like dogs and hot things like sun, but forgot about wind. We used a beach towel as a wind screen and so his crest calmed down, no longer blown to one side by the wind.
Sunday he was glad to stay at home though. As were we, except for my swim and ice-cream date.
Monday RDC spent a long day in Tucson and I--oh yes, the accidentally struck entry--finished the dirt, picked and pitted and froze cherries, and ate an exceptionally unhealthy dinner, even for me, comprising toast with elderberry jam and, instead of or, an apple sliced with the remains of the cheese, species forgotten, I had bought to go with the devoured Granny Smiths. Then the cheese was gone but the apple wasn't, so I added some slices of romano, because why not? And it was good. And a bowl of cherries. And then a bowl-bottom of chocolate chips, which were enough caffeine to keep me up until RDC got home after midnight reading Devil's Larder.
So I started Tuesday tired, which wasn't a good plan.
I recently said to..someone, I forget who, that RDC was required to do whatever it was by marriage articles. The person was surprised and I pointed out that I was kidding.
Mostly.
By marriage articles, which is a fiction in my head, RDC is required to:
- Fasten my necklace or bracelet and then kiss the back of my neck or my wrist
- Dance with me during "Sugar Magnolia" and "Anniversary Song"
- Accept that the car will always have a platypus in it
- Pluck the (so far, solitary) hair that sprouts from my (so far, not yet a) wattle.
I think that's all. So far. I can't think of what I'm required to do. I've become a Deadhead, mostly and by extension. I've learned to like lots of even those Woody Allen movies with lots of Woody Allen in them instead of just "Radio Days" (from which he is mostly absent), some Ernest Hemingway especially For Whom the Bell Tolls, and, heaven help me, I'm beginning to give on the Bob Dylan issue. I should ask him.
Well, it's been almost eleven years. Even if I can't name my obligations I must be fulfilling them.