He has assumed his ideal final form: Stevie Ray Vaughan for millennials.īut Weir is the nucleus. He gets the tone correct, but infuses the performances with the sensibility of someone who spent their adolescence wanting to be Buddy Guy and B.B. To his lasting credit, Mayer plays with a rich fidelity to the original body of work, but isn’t content merely to imitate Garcia. It’s a symbiotic pact: Mayer gets enshrined in the posthumous legacy of one of the greatest rock groups of all time, a co-sign and cred boost that allows him to shake off the final vestiges of “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and the lingering phrase, “Sexual Napalm.” In return, he helps make it a multi-generational congregation, a scene extending far beyond what could’ve become a sad scenario of wealthy Boomers and motley burnouts vainly grasping for a vanished heyday. To the right of Weir, inheriting the role of ersatz Jerry, stands John Mayer, bringing a vibrancy and star power that elevate the band beyond the nostalgia circuit into something modern (yet still timeless enough.) By mid-2019, Dead & Company tours had grossed $200 million, a figure now likely approaching another hundred more. He’s joined by the two other remaining stalwarts, drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (who was replaced by Jay Lane on Sunday after calling in sick), bass maestro, Oteil Burbridge (part of the Allman Brothers resurrection in the first part of the century), and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti (a veteran of various permutations of the surviving Dead members since 2002.) Bassist Phil Lesh remains among the exhaling, but has semi-retired to the Terrapin Crossroads in the sky (Marin County). Tamalpais declaiming outlaw epics about bloody shootouts in El Paso corrals, estimated prophets on burning shores, and lightning trains that haven’t run since long before half the audience were hatched. Depending on your vantage point, it’s either a mutation or evolution, but with Bob Weir still handling most of the vocals and rhythm guitar, there remains an oracular presence. We are now a half-dozen years deep into the Dead & Company epoch of the longest and strangest trip ever recorded. To the converted, the Grateful Dead have created a natural history of unlikely survival and spontaneous miracles gunslinger lore, astral journeys, and psychedelic fables – the band beyond description, Jehovah’s favorite choir, the music that never stops – even if the jams of “Drums/Space” could stand for a little more brevity. These mantras may be recycled, but they acquire a simplistic profundity in the context of broader testament. Over the course of several generations, the songs became mystic canticles, complete with their own affirmations of durability: “No, our love will not fade away ” “I will get by ” “Get back truckin’ on.” These are bumper stickers and favored tattoos, a skull and roses iconography, and a condition of being. But that has been beside the point for a very long time. Yes, I am aware that The Grateful Dead, the inimitable, cosmically ordained, and tie-dyed jamboree, has ceased to be The Grateful Dead since Jerry Garcia’s final Saturday night in 1995. A psychedelic entrée into ekstasis, by virtue of watching Walton and the skeletons shimmy in the aisles of Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl, sold out all three nights of Halloween weekend. The big man, still throwing it down in this year of the devil’s friend, 2021.Īmidst a depressive cycle of recriminations and outrage, permanent cynicism and Roman cruelty, this is as close as you can get to observing pure joy, apart from maybe watching puppy loops on TikTok or whatever. The ancient Buddhists called this state “the divine abode.” Modernity might consider the NBA Hall of Famer as having fallen into the zone – a serotonin-rich wonderland where time is suspended, every shot is all net, and no lifelong synapse destruction can impair one’s flawless recollection of the lyrics to “Scarlet Begonias/Fire on the Mountain.” For three hours, Walton’s fists pump, his head bobbles a groovy “amen,” his smile beams with such incandescent rapture that he might as well be a 7-foot tall, 68-year-old, ginger glow stick. To understand the slippery nature of bliss, to glimpse a stress-free manifestation of fleeting euphoria, I would direct your attention to Bill Walton at a Grateful Dead concert.
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