Dead & Company at Moon Palace Beach Stage, January 16, 2020

CID Entertainment presents Playing in the Sand 2020 featuring Dead & Company
Moon Palace Beach Stage
Carretera Cancun - Chetumal KM 36.5, Cancún, QROO 77500 MEX
7:30 PM, Thursday, January 16, 2020

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2020 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2020 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

PITS20 poster

[7:50 PM lights down, band out and teasing]

1. [7:51 PM] Not Fade Away >
2. [7:59 PM] Hell in a Bucket (BW)
3. [8:09 PM] Row Jimmy (JM)
   [Weir swaps to acoustic guitar]
4. [8:18 PM] Peggy-O (BW)
   [BW swaps back to guitar]
5. [8:26 PM] Brown-eyed Women (JM) >
6. [8:34 PM] Ramble On Rose (BW) >
7. [8:43 PM] Bird Song: jam » [8:50 PM] v1 (BW) » chorus » [8:52 PM] v2 (JM) » chorus » heckuva jam » [8:58 PM] chorus » [9:00 PM] v3 (BW/JM) »
8. [9:01 PM] Let it Grow (BW)
   [set ends 9:15 PM]

[9:56 PM lights down, band out, teasing]

1. [9:57 PM] Deal (JM) »
2. [10:09 PM] Dark Star: jam » [10:15 PM] v1 (BW) » jam »
3. [10:22 PM] Estimated Prophet (BW) » jam » [10:35 PM] Get Up, Stand Up teases »
4. [10:36 PM] Eyes of the World (BW) » [10:48 PM] rain showers »
5. [10:50 PM] Drumspace: front line off, OB to the back drums then OB; more rain » [10:55 PM] MH to beam, drop BK, then OB » [10:58 PM] add BW, JM; drop MH » [11:00 PM] OB seated, JC emerges from the man cave as the tarps get pulled off; rain has stopped » [11:04 PM] drummers back »
6. [11:05 PM] the Wheel » [11:12 PM] reggae jam »
   [One wheel in the ditch for the transition; more rain drops]
7. [11:16 PM] Standing on the Moon (BW) » [11:22 PM] OB stands up for the finale > Weir throws the switch
8. [11:25 PM] Casey Jones
   [11:33 PM set ends: all off; back in a minute]
   
   Encore
9. [11:34 PM] Casey Jones finale, “And you know that notion…” » [11:35 PM] the Weight (BW/JM/OB/JC/BW)
   [11:45 PM show ends: all off, BK last, after giving us a wave and two thumbs up

setlist_photo

Dead & Company

• Oteil Burbridge: bass, drums, lead and harmony vox;
• Jeff Chimenti: piano, Hammond B-3 organ, keyboards, harmony vox;
• Mickey Hart: drums, beam, electronics, lead and harmony vox;
• Bill Kreutzmann: drums;
• John Mayer: guitar, acoustic guitar, lead and harmony vox;
• Bob Weir: guitar, acoustic guitar, lead and harmony vox.

Another PITS20 poster

We join the lottery wristband line around 3:50 PM… even though the official lineup time is 4 PM, there are already a couple hundred folks queued up and waiting: eager beavers! Ting connects up with friends about half way down the line, and I tack myself onto the end. The weather is sunny and breezy: I'm comfy as long as the direct radiation does last too long. Hiding in the shade of people standing up helps a lot, as do the small clouds that float by.

4:15 PM sound check for the bass or beam? Hard to tell exactly what it is beyond very low tones. After a few more minutes, the tones have climbed higher. Must be bass eh? Can't tell if it's a song or just tuning the PA. Maybe it's regular sound check, now I'm getting a hint of drums. Dang, seems odd to be close enough to see the stage but not hear it. Too far away, not enough volume, way too much wind!

4:30 PM line compression! I quickly move up about 20 feet: just enough to get a seat on the next closer set of steps. Another convenient seat works good for me. 4:50 PM ain't no more sound coming from that direction, must be all finished. Meanwhile, the line is scrunching forward slowly, as folks get tagged for entry. Progress continues very slowly…

Finally get my tag around 5 PM… Now seated and chilling on the grass with other rail peeps.

6 PM, in the zig zag queue, waiting to be escorted inside. Moses says, “Let my people go!”

6:35 PM and I'm seated at the rail with Ting and Tracy Trepagnier – Tracy lucked into #4 in today's lottery, so we're happy campers for now. The scrum is holding tight, so very few folks are piercing through to the front. Gonna be a good ride!

7:47 PM the crush is think, but our little bubble has stayed very calm. The anticipation is palpable: a few of the extra juiced patrons are howling in the distance. Ready to rock, yeah!

As I alluded to earlier, it's very breezy tonight, and it's mildly alarming to look up and see the refrigerator-sized Meyer monitor speakers facing in from hanging positions at Stage left and right twisting and pulling against the safety tethers. Happily, the cables hold fast, but the constant motion in my peripheral vision is VERY distracting, all night long.

Not Fade Away is a great way to start off this weekend's party, but things go awry as the jam winds down, and we witness a horrible train wreck of a transition: how do we get from A to C boys? Sad! There's nothing too remarkable about the middle of the set, but the ending pair is certainly worth a half hour of your time for a listen. That's the band I'm following!

looking out into the crowd … can you spot Ting?!

The band comes out for set two just before 10 PM and play for nearly two hours: a heaping portion of Grateful Dead classics tonight. Dark Star is appropriately spacey, and for some reason, they leave it unfinished, segueing reasonably nicely into Estimated Prophet. The jam out of Estimated heads into reggae-territory, spiced up at the end by repeated piano riffs of Get Up, Stand Up from Chimenti: would have been nice to witness the band break from the planned set for that, but that sort of spontaneity seems to be off the table these days. Gotta stick to the plan!

wind and rain!

It starts to rain as Eyes of the World runs down, and after the front line heads offstage for their break during drums, the roadies quickly pull out tarps to cover the keyboards, stage monitors, and other pieces of exposed gear. Fortunately, the air is relatively warm, and from our position up front, the stage blocks a considerable fraction of the rain, so we get wet, but not soaked. Fifteen minutes later, the worst has blown through, and as Chimenti begins making spacey rain tinkle sounds on his keyboards, the roadies uncover him for the rest of the show.

the Wheel is always fun to hear, and we get a little more rain during the reggae outro jam before Weir leads the band through a wonky segue into Standing on the Moon (another tune with a beach/Mexico reference!). Casey Jones is a good choice to wind things up, but somehow the guys get out of sync on the final vocals, and the band stops before the ultimate couplet. That seems to be how things go these days: details, schmetails!

The band is offstage less than a minute before returning for the encore, and they surprise us by starting with the missing line of Casey Jones – effectively reprising the ending – before sliding smartly into the Weight. Guess that means it all works out OK in the end.

Now that I've had a bit of time for reflection, it seems to me that the overall performance trajectory has continued to improve from December – each show reaching a little higher than before. Maybe it's that Wheel spirit in action! I'm happy to have witnessed tonight's big spin. Yay, we're on vacation with the Dead!!

Big thanks to Ting for the photo gallery!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2020 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2020 event list! ☸ On to the next event!