Dead and Company
2015-12-30
the Forum
3900 W Manchester Blvd, Inglewood, CA 90305
7:00 PM, Wednesday, December 30, 2015

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

[7:43 PM lights down, band out]

1. [7:45 PM] Minglewood Blues (B)
2. [7:52 PM] Here Comes Sunshine (J) »
3. [8:04 PM] West LA Fadeaway (J)
4. [8:13 PM] Althea (J) »
5. [8:22 PM] Loser (B) »
6. [8:30 PM] Bertha (J) »
7. [8:40 PM] Bird Song (B/J)
   [set ends 8:52 PM]

[9:40 PM lights down, musicians onstage]

1. [9:41 PM] Playing in the Band (B) »
2. [9:54 PM] Viola Lee Blues
3. [10:03 PM] Shakedown Street (B) »
4. [10:14 PM] China Cat Sunflower (J/B) »
5. [10:20 PM] I Know You Rider »
6. [10:28 PM] drums (Mickey to the beam right away) » [10:29 PM] loop space + big drums » [10:33 PM] add OB on Billy's kit » [10:36 PM] all 3 on back line » [10:38 PM] (-OB, BK) beam space » [10:40 PM] (add OB, JC, JM, BW) space jam » [10:42 PM] drop MH » [10:44 PM] add BK, sounds like the Last Time » [10:44 PM] add MH » jam » [10:46 PM] JM guitar swap; sounds like modal Miles Davis jam » [10:49 PM] the Other One jam »
7. [10:51 PM] the Other One (B) »
8. [10:58 PM] Wharf Rat (J/B) »
9. [11:07 PM] (Turn On Your) Lovelight (B/J)
   [set ends 11:16 PM]
    
   Encore (acoustic front line)
10. [11:18 PM] Friend of the Devil (J)
    [show ends 11:24 PM]

Dead and Company

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

Walked four blocks from our hotel to Casa Gamino for a terrific feast. Ting got the Sopa Sietes Mares: Half a crab, salmon chunks, octopus, scallops, mussels, clams, shrimp and who knows what else in a thin red broth. Needless to say, she slurped it all up. I ordered Enchiladas de Jaibaand was happily surprised with the generous allotment of crab. Much more food than I needed, so I opted to ignore most of the sides and gorge on the good stuff. Yum Yum Yum!

With dinner over, Ting put in an Uber request, and not two minutes later we we're cruising to the venue. $5 later we're queued up to pass through a perfunctory security check and head on inside. Seems like everything's going our way! Ting makes a poster-buying stop at the first merchandise booth we come across, and while waiting, I immediately run into a crowd of TXR peeps – nice to have the Terrapin Nation crowd out in force! Eventually Ting and I make our way inside, only to find out that we're on the opposite side of the arena from our seats. Oh well, just another little hike!

We make it about half-way around to section 125 – directly to stage right, at a 3 o'clock position if looking out from the center – and settle in there with our friends Paul and Lori. Big thanks to Paul for arranging things tonight! More familiar faces trickle in as the venue fills up, and by showtime, it appears that the house is pretty well packed. Not quite a sell out, given the open seats behind the stage, but respectably full indeed! And happily, there are a lot of NorCal folks around us. Good to feel that vibe!

From the opening lines of Minglewood, it's apparent that Bobby is suffering voice issues…it seems like he can hardly get a single line out without rasping like Tom Waits. This is going to be interesting…. Thankfully, John picked up the slack in admirable fashion, treating us to a first set full of Garcia-Hunter classics. I was a bit surprised that Bobby decided to croak his way through Loser, but maybe that was his idea of a joke? Bertha was a good choice to bring the energy back up, but the way that Bobby cut things off to segue into Bird Song on the last line ought to be a crime. Bozo! You'd think that after a half century of playing this music he'd know how to make such changes more seamless, but maybe it just doesn't occur to him how jarring it is to the audience? Hard to know…

The second set was full of classics from the back catalog, and as before, Bobby seemed to step back just a little on vocal duties. Smart to be saving his voice – wouldn't want to blow things out on the penultimate night, right? Viola Lee Blues was super fun, but I Know You Rider seemed strangely discombobulated … as if the guys were a bit out of synch? More shambling and perfunctory than the majestic renditions committed to tape for Europe 72 and other commercial offerings. Drums was pretty fun tonight, and being in the NorCal zone, there were plenty of other folks shaking their bones like me throughout this segment. The following jam seemed to wander through a few distinct musical zones before eventually settling into the Spanish jam that plays three against two to lead into the Other One. Yay! The bus came by, and I got on…

Ending the show with Friend of the Devil was a pretty inspired choice – different, but it worked just fine. And while the front line guys all played acoustic instruments, the rendition was upbeat and energetic instead of slow and snoozy. Deadlists tells me that song never appeared as an encore with the Grateful Dead despite being performed at over 300 shows. Further research reveals that Dead & Company ended the November 14 and 21 shows that way too. Guess I should have spent more time studying my pre-show tour statistics!

Armando Brown posted a review of the show for the Orange County Register; Mikael Wood posted his review for the L.A. Times.

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