Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful at Soldier Field, July 5, 2015

Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead with Trey Anastasio
2015-07-05
Soldier Field Stadium
1410 Museum Campus Dr, Chicago, IL 60605
7:00 PM, Sunday, July 5, 2015

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

[7:32 PM group bow and hug]

1. [7:35 PM] China Cat Sunflower (Trey/Bruce) »
2. [7:43 PM] I Know You Rider
3. [7:50 PM] Estimated Prophet
4. [8:06 PM] Built to Last (Bruce)
5. [8:13 PM] Samson and Delilah
6. [8:21 PM] Mountains of the Moon
7. [8:35 PM] Throwin' Stones
   [set ends 8:48 PM]

[9:35 PM lights down, fireworks; 9:41 PM ready to rumble]

1. [9:41 PM] Truckin' »
2. [9:54 PM] Cassidy
3. [10:09 PM] Althea (Trey)
4. [10:17 PM] Terrapin Station »
5. [10:32 PM] Drums » [10:38 PM] Billy off for a minute or two to fetch mallets » [10:44 PM] BK off again » beam space, train horns »
6. [10:47 PM] Space »
7. [10:54 PM] Unbroken Chain
8. [11:06 PM] Days Between
9. [11:20 PM] Not Fade Away
10. [11:28 PM] drums and crowd NFA chant
    [set ends 11:29 PM]
     
    Encores
11. [11:31 PM Donor rap; 11:34 PM; BW wearing a “let Trey sing” t-shirt] Touch of Grey (Trey/Bruce/Weir)
    [First encore ends 11:41 PM; pause for a few min]
12. [11:45 PM] Attics of My Life
    [11:51 PM bows and group hug]

• Trey Anastasio: guitar, lead and harmony vox;
• Jeff Chimenti: Hammond B-3 organ, keyboards, harmony vox;
• Mickey Hart: drums, percussion;
• Bruce Hornsby: piano, lead and harmony vox;
• Bill Kreutzmann: drums;
• Phil Lesh: bass, lead and harmony vox;
• Bob Weir: guitar, lead and harmony vox.

Up at the crack of noon and rallying for 1 pm lunch at the Spoke and Bird with the gathered Wheelies and friends. It's good to see folks again, and to trade tall tales of good times past, and share critiques and highlights of the last few shows. It's BROILING hot today, dang! But we have two tables in the tree-shaded courtyard, and every now and then a wisp of a breeze off the lake comes whispering by. Too soon it's time to run, and so we head out, taking the long route around clockwise to stop at Trader Joe's for water before continuing our circumambulation of Soldier Field to join the rest of our crew in line duty. In line kinda late today, we don't arrive until 3:47 PM. But the scene is even mellower than the past couple days, and except for momentary drama when we first squeeze in, there are no hassles at all. Just the continuous exercise of grace and patience. My buddy Jeff finds us in line just as things are starting to get hectic. Perfect! Jeff was one of the instigators in my Grateful Dead journey – I learned about the GDTS mail order through him, in 1983 or 1984 – before that, I'd been at the not-so-tender mercies of Ticketmaster in securing my ducats. Way fun to have time to hang out and reconnect!

5:20 PM in the doors, down to the field 7:20 PM still waiting…

Of course plenty of reviews have been posted of the event; I'll limit myself to sharing this one from Lee Ranaldo, the best that I've read to date.

Here's a postscript, edited from a post I made online Monday after the weekend ended:

I preferred the first show (of the five) – I like my Dead as weird as possible, and based on song selection (3/4 of Live/Dead, oh yeah!), that night was about as weird as I could possibly hope for. Musically, I think the last 3 shows were somewhat stronger than the first two, though as I mentioned in another post, turbulent internal dynamics seemed ready to burst out and derail things at pretty much every moment. I'd go so far as to argue that some of the “flubs” you might hear upon relistening were the result of one or more band member f#@king around with the others, to the detriment of the overall level of musical presentation. So much for professionalism; still, whaddaya expect? There's a reason that the band flew apart as soon as the centerpiece was removed. I was surprised that they opened the last show with a group bow (unity!), and even more surprised that they reprised the bow/hug at the end.

It's true that the “pit” consisted of half the football field (certainly not very intimate!). And it was crowded, but not nearly as unruly as I'd been expecting. Turns out that old hippies are even less aggressive than they used to be, and they're very very good at maintaining proper dead-show decorum amongst the uninitiated. I'd say we had fewer than half dozen “incidents” per show, despite being in the center of the maelstrom. And now that I think of it, things were craziest of all on night one at Santa Clara – even though we weren't even in the pit, but instead at the front of the regular GA section, about at the 20 or 30 yard line on the field there.

I thought that the Let Trey Sing shirt was hilarious, and that Bobby showed his wacky sense of humor by wearing one for the encore on the last night: Bob comes out wearing the shirt. The band begins playing Touch of Grey (not one of my favorites, but as Catphish wrote, not a bad listen when they rip into it). Trey sings verse one (yay!). Bruce sings verse two (yay!). Bobby sings the rest (hmmn… so LTS is just a joke, eh?)

Finally, to try and summarize my weekend, here's a crack at outlining the schedule we followed (give or take an hour either way, F-Sa-Su): * 2 pm to 5 pm wait in line outside the stadium, nervously hoping to get THE spot required for achieving oneness with the universe * 5 to 8 pm wait inside the stadium at the spot we earn, relaxing until the show gets started * 8 to 11 pm bliss * 11 pm to 1 am navigate the unmanageable throng of humanity, walking back to hotel * 1 am to 3 am decompress/party at hotel * 3 am to 11 am sleep * 11 am to 2 pm daily rituals and a single meal

not really any time for properly reflecting on the events, or writing reviews, though I guess it's always just a matter of prioritization – sure, I could have taken time for making more notes while I was enduring any of the waiting periods, but then I would have been dodging the moment rather than enjoying it! The whole experience felt a lot like going surfing. You know the big wave is coming to crush you, but there's not much to do before it arrives except be chill. When you feel the swell, you begin to paddle like made, then hop on and do your best to ride the wave fast and far, then hold your breath and dive for the bottom once it breaks over you. Soon enough, you pop up again. Yay! Alive! And just like that, you feel yourself bobbing in the ocean, waiting for the next swell to come rolling in…

I'm ready for the Diamond Jubilee tour in 2025…

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!