Wooah-ooooh What I want to know
David Steinberg
2005-06-07
Many people - myself among them - are going to take some time to reflect on August 9th this year. While the tenth anniversary of Jerry's death will be an important date for our community, I preferred to focus my nostalgic energy on the 26th of May. I don't know where you were on May 26, 1995, but I can tell you where I was. It was about a week after I moved to Seattle, it was sunny and 85 degrees, and the Grateful Dead were playing a three show run in town. I had bought tickets largely out of an obligation. I didn't really enjoy the shows I saw in 1994, but after living in a musical wasteland, how could I blow off a run in my own town? The first two nights don't really stand out that much. It was nice to have my first song in a new town after surviving three hellish years be "Touch of Grey." "Foolish Heart" on the 25th had a nice extended middle jam. Other than that, the main thing I will always remember is that I walked home from the second night. I didn't quite know how the buses worked yet - let alone know my secret free parking location near Seattle Center - so it didn't take me that much longer to do that. After three years of living in a town where a "local show" was defined as an event where I could leave right afterwards and get home before sunrise, it felt so good to have the Dead within walking distance. The third night was different though. One of the great things about the Dead is that any night had the possibility of being a life changing event. I wasn't sure it was still possible (which was the reason I blew off the Dead for Phish in 94) but this night stays with me today. Everything worked out just perfectly. The weather was stunning. The setlist - other than the post-"Space" call of "Easy Answers" has no holes; how can anyone complain about a show that has a "Help->Slip!->Franklin's," "Scarlet->Fire," and a "Playin' ->Uncle John's?" More than the song selection, the surprisingly strong playing, or the views of the Space Needle and the Fun Forest's roller coaster, one thing will always come to mind whenever I go to Memorial Stadium. During "Stella Blue," a flock of seagulls in a perfect V formation flew over the entire length of the stadium right as Jerry was singing, "It seems like all this life was just a dream." Don't get me wrong, I love Phish with a passion, but only the Grateful Dead had those moments. I couldn't quite tell you why that moment seemed so fraught with significance but I knew that it was. Before the Seattle run, I had pretty much given up on the Dead, but this concert reminded me why I cared in the first place. I had some friends from New Mexico staying with me, and I just kept raving to them after the show. "I'm back on the bus!" I would never see the Grateful Dead again. In so many ways, I got lucky. The Portland shows that followed the Seattle run were pretty mediocre. If I hadn't just moved to a new town and was focusing my energy on finding a new job, I easily could have found myself experiencing some of that Summer Tour of Doom. My final show could have involve the gate crashings of Highgate or Deer Creek. Instead, I have a day that I want to celebrate and commemorate. In honor of my last perfect day with the Grateful Dead, I have been running my own personal Operation Every Show. This has been a project that I have been working on off and on ever since archive.org added the Grateful Dead's catalog, but seeing 5/26/x5 come up again inspired some haste. The goal was to download, burn, and listen to every show I saw. I had about 20 of them already, but some of the others I hadn't heard since the show itself. Listening to the Dead in order like that becomes interesting. Song combinations go through stages. I had forgotten about the "Feel Like a Stranger > Franklin's Tower" opening duo until I listened to the shows before the return of "Help on the Way." Even in the seven years I was seeing the band, obvious eras appear. There's the pre-Warlocks/post-Warlocks divide, shows change again after Brent dies, and there's a third difference when Bruce leaves the band in 92. While that obviously makes sense if you think about it, listening to the shows in an accelerated format really drives home the changes. Shows were no longer discrete events, but rather told part of a story. There's a difference between putting in a disc because you remembered that it had a nice "Jack Straw," and playing it as part of a series. Songs get debuted, others fall through the wayside. Brent's vocals in "Let the Good Times Roll" get replaced by Bruce, and then Bruce's are sung by Vince. "Throwing Stones" first loses its vocal jam, then the final "Dizzying, the possibilities," then it even loses the song that comes after it. The song rotation becomes more apparent. "Mississippi Half Step" comes on and I marvel over how long it had been since I had heard one. On the flip side, the memory of just why I got annoyed at "Lazy River Road" in 1993 was one that was more fun as an amusing anecdote of the summer. Listening to the 13 shows I saw didn't just remind me of why I came up with the nickname "Lazy Repeat Road," it caused me to recreate it. The one thing that most surprised me about the relistening project was how few surprises there were. Shows that I remembered as being subpar turned out to be just that. Concerts that blew me away still sounded good on disc; the post-"Terrapin" jam on 6/23/93 was just as impressive as I remembered it being. The only real exception was October of 1989. I saw all five shows of the Meadowlands run. The first four nights had the misfortune of being sandwiched between the Hampton run and the Nightfall of Diamonds concert. The middle night did have the second "Help > Slip" - not to mention the tragedy of Adam Katz - but the other three seemingly had little to suggest revisiting them. I was stunned to find that all of them were well above average concerts. Those shows will remain in my disc changer after the project ends. In two months the focus will be on what we lost. While I do intend to join in then, this month has been about what I had. On eighty-one different nights in my life, I walked into a building and got to see the Grateful Dead play. That's worthy of some celebration. David Steinberg got his Masters Degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1994. He first discovered the power of live music at the Capitol Centre in 1988 and never has been the same. His Phish stats website is at www.ihoz.com/PhishStats.html He is the stats section editor for The Phish Companion and is on the board of directors for the Netspace Foundation. You can read more of his thoughts at http://www.livejournal.com/users/thezzyzx.
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