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The Grateful
Dead - or three of the four surviving core members, anyway - played together
Monday night for the first time in nearly four years, a three-set show at San Francisco's fabled
Warfield theater to benefit Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. The
band hoped to drive the much sought-after Deadhead vote into Obama's column on
Super Tuesday, when primaries were being held in 22 states, including California.
In a pre-show press conference in the Warfield's dingy basement,
guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummer Mickey Hart sat before a
banner bearing Obama's logo pressed inside the Dead's "Steal Your
Face" skull, and explained their affinity for Obama.
(They also laughed off rumours that drummer Bill Kreutzmann
was absent because he was a closet Republican; he's just in Hawaii.)
Lesh explained that his college-age son, Brian, had been
volunteering for the Obama campaign since last summer, and that the
Obama camp
had approached the band through him. Lesh said he had heard Obama speak
in Brooklyn, and was astounded; the feeling around Obama and
his candidacy was something he had not seen since 1968, when Robert F.
Kennedy
was running for the Democratic nomination.
"When I hear him speak," said Lesh, "it gives
me goosebumps."
That appears to be a pattern among 60s generation parents,
whose children are fueling a familiar groundswell of a social movement for
Obama. Lesh had even worked the phones for the campaign in Nevada.
"He seems like a real statesman to me," said Hart.
"Every few generations, perhaps, this comes along. You just have to
recognize it and see it. This guy, he really has it. I've read his books ...
he's been right on a lot of key things that are really important to me."
Weir didn't remember the Dead playing for a candidate before
(though he and Hart had jammed at a benefit for Al Gore in 1999, and Hart and
Lesh had played for John Kerry in 2004).
Obama told Lesh he had never been to see the Grateful Dead,
but that he had some Dead music on his iPod. Obama's chief of staff,
apparently, is a Deadhead.
Asked about Obama's rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, Lesh
echoed the opinion of many Democrats who support Obama.
"I like Hillary very much. I respect her, and I admire
her. I think she'd make a good president. But Barack is my man."
A reporter from Reuters poked the band members - essentially
asking why the band had so much hope that Obama could bring social change, if
the 60s generation had failed to do so.
Weir suggested that the assassination of Bobby Kennedy had
something to do with it.
But the musicians spoke of spiritual movement, in opposition
to political trends.
"We try to move people," said Hart. "We move
minds and spirits. If someone would have asked me what business I was in then,
I would say I was in the tranportation business. That's the way I've always
thought about what we do. As opposed to setting political trends. This all
comes down to that side for me."
"That seems like what [Obama's] doing, too," Lesh
added. "He's transforming spirits."
"That's right," said Hart. "Something is
happening to him, as well. It's a personal transformation."
Weir, at least, was still hesitant about doing the hard sell
for a political candidate; fans, he said, should still make up their own minds
about whom to vote for.
"We're not about to tell people what to do," said
Weir. "We've been reluctant to do political events all along, because
we've never felt that the stage is a podium or a pulpit. It's a stage. It's for
art."
Likewise, the attempt to wrangle a Grateful Dead concert
into a political rally had mixed results.
The concert, which was webcast live at iclips.com, began an
hour late. All tickets for the last-minute gig were held at will call, so 3,500
fans had to be processed, and the lines stretched down Market Street in either direction. But
activists were out in force, registering people to vote. A small parade of
Obama supporters made its way down the other side of the wide boulevard, while
a few supporters of the Libertarian Republican Ron Paul tried to garner support
for their social movement.
At 8:30, a video screen dropped in front of the curtain, and
Obama appeared, in a pre-shot clip, thanking the band from inside his campaign
airplane. "Hey, everybody, this is Barack Obama, and I just wanted to say
thank you to Phil and Bobby and Mickey. I want to say thank you to
everybody." The grinning candidate laid on his message - focusing
particularly on the importance of energizing young people - and then addressed
the business at hand: "I want you to sit down and enjoy the music ... get
out tomorrow and vote. Peace."
Sit down? Indeed, Obama was not a Deadhead. But the crowd
was tickled by the video.
Weir, Lesh, and Hart were joined by drummer John Molo and
keyboardist Steve Molitz, while pedal steel player Barry Sless, Ratdog
guitarist Mark Karan (looking good and playing sharp after a bout with cancer),
and hipster-troubador Jackie Greene (on guitars and organ) switched off all
night in twos and threes.
The marquee icon from the Dead's 1980 acoustic shows - Uncle
Sam and Skull-n-Rosie, waving from a bed of roses - hung on the back stage
curtain. Lesh and Hart wore Steal-yo-Bama t-shirts.
The band opened with "Playing in the Band," with
Karan (apparently a late addition to the band) on guitar. Greene, dressed all
in black, with an upswept Dylanesque hairdo, sang the late Jerry Garcia's
vocals on "Brown Eyed Women," soloed with dry guitar tone. Molitz
played electric piano, and Sless played slippery leads on the rootsy tune,
melodic and reminiscent at times of the late Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying
Burrito Brothers.
The band tried a few new arrangements, like on the chorus to
"Mississippi Half Step (Uptown Toodleoo)," which made it easier for
the big outfit (which sometimes suffered from too many guitars syndrome) to
stay tight. Weir twisted little riffs, a glass slide on his pinkie, to lead
into "New Minglewood Blues."
Then came the first half-hesitant political message.
"This next tune is of nebulous, but particular
significance," Weir said cryptically - then the band dug a deep pocket for
the Beatles' "Come Together" - a nod to Obama's theme.
Karan pointed to Molitz to take a break, and the young
keyboardist played some poinky Moog synth tones, while Greene played
counterpoint on B3 organ.
That ended the first set, and Lesh came out to deliver a
political speech.
"This is the real deal, you guys," he told the
crowd. "This is our moment, and Barack is our man. After forty years in
the wilderness, it is time to vote our dream into being."
Hart and Weir said their pieces. Meanwhile, a Ron Paul
supporter holding a sign shouted from the floor.
The venue had handed out political signs, again, with the
Steal-yo-Bama logo, and the message "FIRED UP AND READY TO GO!" -
which could have been a sly allusion to the classic Jerry Garcia-Merl Saunders
record, or a winking reference to Deadhead culture, or just simply a rallying
slogan.
Lesh tried to get the crowd to hold up their signs and chant
"Fired up!" "Ready to go!"
But it ain't that easy to turn a Deadshow into a political
rally. Can it be that even Deadheads, who are widely believed to be lost in the
60s, are cynically resistant to earnest politicking?
Well, sure. This is the counterculture, after all. That, and
that the crowd took the signs for the venue's usual souvenir posters, and
rolled them up and checked them, so that they lined the coat check room by the
hundreds.
The band returned for a four-song acoustic set, with Lesh on
standup bass, a new habit he picked up on his recent tour. He watched his left
hand walk around the neck beside him as he played. The scene was reminiscent of
the 1980 acoustic run at the Warfield - especially as the band opened with the
traditional "Deep Elem Blues," a favorite from that period. Weir and
Greene played acoustic guitars, and Sless sat at the pedal steel. The drummers
played with brushes, and Molitz played electric piano. They did "Friend of
the Devil" and "Deal" - with Greene singing - then "Ripple,"
with Greene trilling on mandolin, and Sless just singing out leads on the
steel, really taking advantage of the sparely arranged acoustic sound.
The band came back out electric for the third set, with
"China Cat Sunflower." While some of the first set jams had been
looser and less-focused, Karan stepped up and took the wheel, and drove the
bus. Turns out, this band responds to a lead guitarist.
They let the line out a bit, then a little bit more, into
jazz territory with Molitz on the electric piano again, then brought it down
into "The Wheel," with Sless playing melodic steel glissandos, then
locking in with Karan.
Weir stretched out the verses on "The Other One,"
and Karan now locked in with Greene and cranked him up, the two twinning leads
for a while, while Molitz stood to play some more sproingy synth, threatening
to turn the thing into an acidhouse rave.
Greene sang "Sugaree" with a surprising soul
power. The tune built and built, and Greene belted out the last verse and
repeated "Shake it! Shake it! Sugaree!" That brought the house down.
The you-powered "Eyes of the World" led to
"Throwin' Stones," Weir and John Barlow's political message from the
apathetic 80s. Lesh leaned in to Weir on the latter, clearly happy to be
playing it with him.
And while the band sang of political stone-throwing in a
time with a disaffected youth and an apathetic electorate, the Ron Paul
supporters tried to unfurl a banner in support of their candidate. It didn't
last long - the banner was pulled down.
It was a bizarre moment, and one that spoke to the tension
between naturally subversive rock and roll and political advocacy, especially of
a particular candidate. Pulling down the sign was something you might have seen
at a George Bush rally - perhaps it seemed appropriate in the spirit of
supporting Obama, but it was a disturbing violation of the Paul supporters'
right to be seen, and heard. And so it was oddly antithetical to what is
supposed to be the Obama vibe.
It was also a bit like the old Crumb comic where the
supporters of Mr. Natural and Flakey Foont rumble in the streets. Dueling
revolutions.
The band played “Aiko Aiko,” with Hart rapping out the
verses, then returned to "Playing in the Band." They left the stage,
and Lesh returned with one last exhortation to get the vote out.
And as they played "U.S. Blues" - a song that
almost celebrates the irony of post-60s disillusionment juxtaposed against the
coming bicentennial - a giant graybeard (Ratdog crewman Bill Garbe) strode the
stage waving an oversized Old Glory.
He split and took another lap, standing eight feet tall
behind the amp stacks, all in biker black, with a long gray beard and a longer
gray ponytail, this time waving Old Hippie Glory - the Peace Flag, with the
stars replaced by a peace sign in the field of blue.
Now that was an earnest political moment a rock and roll
subversive could get behind.
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