Category Archives: Grateful Dead

In the old days, What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. Nowadays, what happens in Vegas is seen by everybody sooner or later. Dead & Company kicked off Summer at the Smorgasbord of tomorrow’s regrets to the delight of thousands and the disgust of a few dozen. While those few dozen will be vocal, at least they have the ’77 Box Set to listen to while still living in their dead parent’s basement.

John, fresh off of playing less satisfying music for the past few months, took a little while to shake the Pop off his rocks. The Music Never Stopped opener was sluggish and fairly uninspired but the joy of Dead & Company embarking on another journey across the country was far too exciting to be overly concerned about how things are sounding on night one. Dire Wolf and Jack Straw were OK but the most satisfying event that was apparent early on was Jeff’s volume. After 2 years, Chimenti was finally prominent in the mix. During his solo on Dire Wolf, it seemed like he finally was where he should be in the soundscape. I sure hope it stays that way! Contrary to most other songs, FOTD got a boost in tempo. If you ask me, Weir singing FOTD sounds like listening to people that post themselves playing on FB. Sounds awkward and shitty most of the time. The faster tempo made it pass quicker at least.

Oteil was wearing a beautiful shirt! Whoever got that for him must love him very much…

Brown eyed women was decent but I was feeling a bit unimpressed early on. Then they took their first trip below the surface during Birdsong. Oteil’s runs through the chaos portions of that were outstanding. I’m certain his heart was incredibly heavy after the loss of Gregg and a couple of other partners in crime over the last few months. I’m grateful that Oteil and our community have a month’s worth of solid live shows to help us move through the feelings associated with those losses. May their passing be fuel to the creative fire that we’ll be gathering around for the next few weeks.

Intermission involved people smoking a ton of pot and having conversations that were most likely interesting to them but sounded dumber than shit on the streams. While I’m mentioning streams, If Nugs is there, why the hell isn’t the entire show streamed? I’m grateful they gave us an extra couple of tunes but WTF? If much shittier bands can stream every show of their tour, why can’t Dead & Company? I’m grateful they’re streaming 8 but they should be streaming 20. Really no excuse for that.

The Playin that started the second set began the process of healing. Before healing takes place, one must confront all wounds head on and deal with the reality and impact of challenging and painful events. The jam that commenced during Playin got sticky as thoughts that would attempt to be shaken seemed to be covered in glue and unable to escape the process. I found myself in this spinning vortex where images and faces, both past and present, passed through my visual fields. They passed by slow enough that I could clearly see who they were and how they felt but fast enough that I couldn’t spend too much time analyzing them either way. Some moments and faces were filled with joy, some faces projected feelings toward me that were hostile or unloving, some showed empathetic concern while others wished me ill. Either way, the conveyor belt kept the thoughts and images moving along, teaching me to not to attach myself to anyone else’s experience but to continue living my own. As a layer of my emotional onion was peeling off, I was able to welcome the process, knowing it was for my benefit. While at times painful, experience has shown me what’s available on the other side.  I ultimately found balance and peace and joy within the complex and confusing jams that surrounded me. Those are the moments that are still available through Dead & Company that I haven’t found with any other project since The Grateful Dead. I was beginning to remember why flights and hotels are booked in several areas of the country…

Deal is always better in Vegas or on an Indian Reservation but since the band doesn’t play Indian Reservations, Vegas is best. Last night was no exception. The band was beginning its familiar ascent as the internal turmoil that was kicked up by Playin was quickly swept away by the soul building experience of Deal. Chinacat is always welcomed by me and the jams between verses seemed to be fresh and unique. John was taking great liberties finding his way through that one and while I was busy trying process whether or not I liked it, I realized that the jams continuously forced me to examine that question. It was different. Maybe too different. Maybe different but really good. Maybe not good. As it pushed me to keep searching for an answer to my own question, I realized that it was doing exactly what Dead Music has done for me for decades. It was throwing resistance against my comforts and my mind, forcing me to process all of them and refusing to let me get away with indifference. That made it a total success and once again showed me that the music would continue to push my mind, my soul and my thoughts much further along the path. I Know You Rider showed me that life is fast and the day will come when all of this will be missed when it’s gone. The Stage that supplies this experience is in the final innings of its game and the opportunity to hear this music in a setting this large is fleeting. The ingredients required to create what is being created have an expiration date that is much closer to where we are now than where we were before. While the music will carry on forever, I’m not certain the size and power of it will exist after any more of the original developers are gone. I hope I’m wrong about that…

From Drums came Space, from Space came The Other One.  The Other One takes all the thoughts you figured you were done dealing with and brings them right back to the forefront of the experience. As it moves through its course, stray and wayward emotions pass by like cats stuck in a tornado. It moves along fast enough to keep insanity at bay but intensely enough that the same insanity can’t be ignored. Black Peter provided the appropriate setting for looking at the loss of Gregg. As we sat by his spiritual bedside, as best as we could in the factories of our earthly consciousness, we collectively felt the emotions dressed in heaviness and sorrow take center stage. We gathered as a family whether in attendance or in our living rooms and experienced the process together. It was delightfully uncomfortable yet entirely mandatory. Emotions rose like flood waters as Black Peter roamed painfully across the canvas of our lives. One More Saturday night was a tissue and a hug and helped US realize we would always find a smile on our darkest days. We will continue to rejoice through pain and suffering and The Lord’s Grace will always give US refuge, albeit brief and temporary at times, to keep dancing through it all.

Knockin was a perfect choice and Gregg was appropriately memorialized on the screens. Once again, the Cosmic Rollercoaster of Emotional Music Development submerged US, completely wrung US out and repeated. In moments like those, we find comfort in  community as much as we find the intensity multiplied enormously by the togetherness. If it wasn’t for the Playin Reprise, everybody would’ve shuffled out of the building in the depths of despair. The show closed with a reminder that we’re ALL just playing a part in the band of life that keeps moving through time. The screen that held an image of Gregg will one day hold the image of every single one of US. I couldn’t be more grateful than I am today for the quality of people I’m walking through life with. The blessings are too abundant to entertain the voices of any of the folks that curse you along the way. We’re extremely fortunate to have US! May the feeling, dealing and healing be abundant as we embark on this sacred tour… Love you forever!!! Photo credit goes to Secret Agent Bader, the Austin Powers of Dead & Co Tour.

Dead To The Core,
Dean Sottile (pronounced So Tilly)

@gd50th on Twitter

Grateful Dean on Facebook

It’s been an interesting week here at The Official Home of Unofficial Grateful Dead and Music News. Apparently, I’m either a decent writer or a good actor. Maybe I just cuss too much… It seems like the bulk of the readers were under the impression that I’d waste my vital life energy being mad about something that someone said about somebody else. I don’t get mad about shit like that. Truth is, I saw all the headlines and weighed in on it. I did my best Don Rickles impression. While perched on the toilet, I took 10 minutes to make up a rant and send it out. I was totally free from any real feelings of anger and just thought a rebuttal was appropriate given the situation.

Like my parents with me, I had very limited expectations for it… In another case of, “If it bleeds, it leads!” the blog set new records for circulation. That doesn’t mean much since my blog isn’t monetized in any way but it’s interesting that in our community of endless love, the most circulated pieces have been the most unloving. Regardless, while I relaxed on a hammock, visualizing pleasant shit wrapped in 100 dollar bills, with absolutely no anger in my glowing spiritual center, I caught a vision. I was sitting there with Jesus and he had the CRB’s new album in one hand and John Mayer’s in the other. He said he was considering sending me to an Island like Patmos, as he did with John the Apostle, and I could only take one album with me. In my vision, he seemed to lean forward a little more with the hand that held “The Search For Everything”. I thought about being stuck on an island with nothing to hear but “Still Feel Like Your Man” and “Love On The Weekend”. I began to feel slightly withdrawn like one might feel if they were standing naked in front of the Dallas Cowboy’s Cheerleaders immediately after exiting an ice cold lake. Then the Lord said to me, “Why you gotta cuss so much?” I was starting to realize I had no good answers for anything…  As I reached out for the album I chose, the vision blacked out…

Once I regained full consciousness, I realized I might be the biggest ass of them all. I was just having a laugh and it turned into something much larger than planned or expected. Mayer won’t have anything to say about any of it because he’s more like Garcia than Chris Robinson. I should probably shut up because I was more like Stern than I was David Gans. Before you’re too quick to agree with me calling myself an ass, realize that you’re an ass too. If you agree with me, you’re an ass. If you don’t agree with me, you’re an ass. If you didn’t care either way, you’re a lukewarm ass. If you left a comment anywhere, regardless of what you said, you might be an ass too. Regardless of who you are, someone thinks you’re an ass. Once we accept that we’re all asses to someone we can move on peacefully and in harmony without caring much about it.

Then I had this revelation… When it comes to the giant nipple that is the Legacy of The Grateful Dead, it’s like a nipple with a million nipples on it. There’s one for everybody so there’s no need to fight about a particular nipple. Folks will always fight about the nipple that seems to be getting sucked on more than the others. There’s a lot of jealous nipples out there. Some folks prefer the $15 nipples. Some folks only want the free nipples and are pissed that there are other nipples that charge people at all. The nipple they suck on is usually the one that tastes like a lemon and has a big black hair coming right out of the center of it. Regardless, there’s a nipple for everyone…

When we walk through life, we should do so like a beautiful, productive, perky nipple. Just like The Grateful Dead, the nipple is the delivery system for the substance of life. It’s not the substance of life itself, it’s simply the vehicle that the substance of life passes through. Not all nipples are capable of that. Without some great and productive nipples, there would be no life in nature. Nipples represent the beginning of a tremendous time of growth and development. For some of the species, once they have matured and grown and developed, they will then possess the nipples that carry the substance of life to a new generation. Once again, they’re not the substance, merely a way to deliver it to the next generation. When you grow up, you start to see nipples differently. While you can acknowledge that they provided for your growth as a baby, they eventually become a form of entertainment more so than nourishment. Some bands are like man nipples. They seem to be of little use and certainly don’t provide any life for those that feed on them. Nothing is produced by them and other than being a personal thermostat, they provide nothing. I’m thankful that the substance of life I was raised on came from the giant nipple that The Grateful Dead provided. Through that experience, my life took shape and I developed from the inside-> out. As I’ve grown older, nipples provide me with more entertainment than they do the substance of life. I still take joy in knowing that the same nipple and the millions of nipples that exist as a result of it are feeding and providing for the growth and development of the next generation.  In my own life, I hope that I can be a conduit through which the substance of life occasionally flows. Just another nipple passing on what’s required for the growth and nourishment of the next wave of folks. In that sense, we should all aspire to be nipples!

I don’t know who to credit with the Stealie but, here’s to ya!

Dead To The Core,
Dean Sottile (pronounced So Tilly)

@gd50th on Twitter

Grateful Dean on Facebook