Playa Luna Presents' PITS '23! featuring Dead & Company
Moon Palace Beach Stage
Carretera Cancun - Chetumal KM 36.5, Cancún, QROO 77500 MEX
7:30 PM, Saturday, January 14, 2023

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2023 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2023 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

PITS 23 promo poster

[7:39 PM] {performers out}

1. [7:40 PM] Sugar Magnolia (BW)
   {full stop!}
2. [7:46 PM] Deal (JM) >
3. [7:58 PM] Shakedown Street (JM/BW) >
   {Add Wynona Judd: acoustic guitar, vox}
4. [8:12 PM] Ramble on Rose (BW+WJ)
   [8:21 PM] {The tune ends, Oteil steps over to greet or thank WJ, and she hands her guitar to him as if he's “the help”. Awkward!!!}
5. [8:22 PM] They Love Each Other (JM)
6. [8:34 PM] Tennessee Jed (BW)
7. [8:44 PM] Jack Straw (JM/BW)
8. [8:55 PM] Casey Jones (JM)
   [9:m PM] {set ends. I forget to make note of the time because I'm busy being aggravated by the drunk idiot immediately in front of me. Doh! Sucked in by the cosmic lizard brain again!}

[9:44 PM] {lights down, performers out}

1. [9:44 PM] St. Stephen (BW) » [9:55 PM] {new jam after Bobby numeric hand signal to Chimenti} » [9:58 PM] {finale Jay Lane swaps in for MH}
2. [9:59 PM] Dear Mr. Fantasy (JM) » [10:02 PM] {MH back, playing behind JL}
   [10:09 PM] {JL off, MH back in the saddle}
3. [10:09 PM] Estimated Prophet (BW) >
4. [10:22 PM] Eyes of the World (BW) » jam » [10:36 PM] {OB bass solo} » [10:40 PM] Eyes finale.
   {JL jumps up into the drum rig as soon as Eyes ends … before the front line is done taking off their instruments or heading off stage}
5. [10:41 PM] Drums » {add Wally and ?unidentified tall black guy with medium length dreads} » [10:43 PM] {add OB} » [10:48 PM] {MH at beam} » [10:50 PM] {drop BK} » [10:51 PM] {drop OB} » [MH flutter striking the beam} » [10:53 PM] {guests off, MH alone: healing tones tonight?} » [10:58 PM] {drop MH, the beam drone continues, front four out within forty seconds} » Space » [10:59 PM] {BK back behind his kit} » [11:01 PM] {MH plugged in and ready} » {dissolution of the groove; It's anyone's guess where the spinner's gonna land next…} »
6. [11:03 PM] Cumberland Blues (JM/BW)
7. [11:15 PM] Stella Blue (BW)
8. [11:26 PM] One More Saturday Night
   [11:32 PM] {set ends}
   
   Encore
   {JM and BW enter and both pick up acoustic guitars: Can't be too hard guessing what's next, can it?}
9. [11:33 PM] Ripple
   [11:38 PM] {show ends; supposedly After Midnight was next on the setlist. Wonder why it got scratched – maybe show ended too early?}

Dead & Company

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

We arrive at the early entry lottery line on Sunrise Beach a little after 4 PM, walking up it until we find the rail crew. Yay! Ten minutes later we're tagged and free to waste time for an hour until the lottery winner is announced.

Soundcheck of drums is rumbling down the beach – cool background music! It's fun to run into friendly peeps that we haven't seen yet. We walk south down the beach, heading away from the venue, and stop in for Casey Jones at the jam tent. It's interesting, but not as much of a draw as the Dead & Company sound check: now they're running through China Cat Sunflower, yay!

More soundcheck tunes: Mr. Fantasy, nice! Ripple too! Can't argue against those choices!!

[5:22 PM] Lottery time! A total of 621 wristbands are handed out today: more than twice what they planned on. For today's lottery draw, #027 wins, so at 115 and 123, we're darn good today. But where's Ting? Wandered off somewhere instead of paying attention, hah!

[5:38 PM] We've now passed through entry scanners and safety scrutiny by venue security, only to be held up on the sand outside the venue. Drat! Soundcheck is over. Little by little the line is moving forward. Maybe they're walking in small groups? Nope. More like 100 yard slow walk segments in order to accommodate the slowly growing entry line.

[5:52 PM] The final entry walk begins. It starts orderly, then devolves seconds later into mild chaos: Playa Luna has not assigned enough personnel to this task. Oops! Despite the instant randomization of the entrance order, we end up about 10 feet from the rail, between Bobby and Oteil: good enough! Amazingly, our friends Dave and Kayla have weaseled there way through the line, joining us just as we're setting ourselves down on the sand. It's always easier to join up at the SPOT when you're close together in the first place! Good job everyone!!

[6:20 PM] Strangely, the scene is slightly less crowded now than when we first entered. Packing people in tight at the start seems like a stupid idea to me: the physical press among folks with easy access to too much alcohol is bound to cause trouble. Loose packing is so much better for establishing a friendly vibe. Not that I have any control over the matter… Just whining about it!

[6:44 PM] Time is crawling. Must be the weather.

[7:19 PM] Roadies plunking on gear get the crowd riled up, but nothing much more happens than random noise from the stage. I make friends with our immediate neighbors: Luigi, Moira & Alex are here from Italy, what a trip! At first Moira seems to be the instigator – you gotta travel if you want to see this band, she says. I have a long talk with Alex from Italy about guitar and music and Garcia and so on: making friends is a great way to pass the time!

[7:33 PM] The crowd is ready, but no band yet. Time to pound sand again.

First set is pretty fun, but the press of the crowd is distracting: it's hard to really dance when you crash into someone no matter which way you try to weave or bob. I'm sure it will get better sooner or later: a percentage of folks bothered the most by it will leave, and the remaining die hard fans will reap the benefit of more dancing room. The trick is to stay cool until that outcome is realized.

Sugar Magnolia is a good way to start the party, but it screeches to a halt just before Sunshine Daydream would begin. I can't quite tell if this intentional or just a totally blown transition. Weird! Deal is a fine way to continue, but as Alex or another fan pointed out later, it's totally confusing, because your memory of Grateful Dead shows tells you that Deal signals the end of a set, not the second song. My sarcastic reply is “don't overthink thinks grasshopper, you must cast aside much of the baggage that you've acquired previously on this journey.”

Shakedown Street is epic: another tune to launch the party higher. That ends with a full stop however, and soon Bobby is telling us to welcome Wynonna Judd. She's greeted warmly by the crowd, and does a pretty good job trading verses and lines with Bobby. It's not bad, but I can't help thinking it would be better if they'd practiced a bit more – just enough to smooth out those bumps where they trade glances trying to guess who's going to sing next. Don't do it like this kids: keep practicing until you don't need to think about it!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Big thanks to Ting for the photo gallery!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2023 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2023 event list! ☸ On to the next event!