That wasthe Week that Was

[chuckvegas]

With a little help from my friends...

I think most of you can appreciate that the differences between ennui, apathy, and simple mind-numbing boredom are subtle but real. The last is rarely a problem for me; I am perfectly happy to spend large amounts of time doing flat-damn nothing. And to quote Peter Gibbons from that greatest of all millennial movies, Office Space, "It's not that I'm lazy, I just don't care."

But world-weary lassitude is dangerous. It can stem from missing what you truly love, when that missing is protracted and the lack of it shades into wondering if the pursuit is worth the trouble. The longer one does without, the more the deprivation becomes a grudging part of you. And then getting off your ass and doing something about it simply doesn't seem to have a point. The view from a rut is pretty limited but it is familiar.

That was my state from last October to this past April; I may have mentioned that once or twice to a couple of you. Well. The shows on that WC tour reminded me of why I have followed this band with a pretty single-minded determination for a decade now. And it definitely whetted my appetite to head back to the east coast.

For once I chose wisely.

When you absolutely, positively have to get there overnight, a redeye is your only choice.Tthat doesn't make it fun, but the inevitability does lend itself to zen acceptance. And knowing that Herd and Brian with pick you up at that point when "very late" becomes "bright and early" gets your mind right like nothing else can. The long Week of Bliss really had only one way to go from there - onward, through the fog.

I loved the old Vasa Park setting of the Mighty High. It was small, intimate, beautiful, and quickly outgrown. Tuxedo and the hill are larger, still intimate, beautiful (except maybe for the terrain right in front of the stage) and has room for growth. The weather can be a crap shoot, as the difference between last year and this year demonstrated. This time around it could not have been better. And while I am a mosquito magnet, the little fucks left even me pretty much alone.

The lineup at this year's MH was incredible; many others have given kudos to Eli and I am happy to join that list. If I went into every performance by every band then this would reach novella status. No one wants that, especially since I'm not being paid by the word. So I will stick to DSO and give what I know is short shrift to other favs. God knows how I feel about Cornmeal, and RRE too. Plus, The Machine was genius in their time slot. More on that, later...

The Friday show at MH was such an affirmation that it truly was if I had never left my old habits. Part of that was knowing that I had 10 days of music and friends ahead, and part was that my 'tude, all in my head, was showing itself out the door from the start of Iko. I love that song for how it sets a bouncy almost calypso, Creole beat. Fun to dance to, and with a feel that seems a lot older than the song really is. Outside, in the late day, with the mountain rising up behind and folks I hadn't seen in way to long - just exactly perfect. Set the flag on fire, for sure.

Silver Threads is such a beautiful song, and one that I am eternally grateful to see played live by DSO. I think most of us can say we would never have seen it performed live, at least the way we'd want it to be, but for this band. Of course it is a country song, and at least not a kicker one, and the way that DSO does it is true to the roots and spirit (at least as I feel it). It probably isn't something to listen to alone and down in your cups - and that certainly wasn't the mood that evening. Oh yeah - good clue about the elective!

Nothing like FOTD to kick it into gear in a traditional style! By now I was really glad that I had kept the shoes on and cleared away some of the larger pieces of debris in my roomy space. The crowd had gotten pretty large but stage left had enough for several of us to share as right up front filled in. The familar groove this song always brings did a good job of bringing on the permagrin and the recommended 125% of resting heartrate that signals the start of a good workout.

Now came the tug on the heartstrings that I can't get enough of (probably a good thing). Bobby McGee is not the most perfect expression of letting love slide through your fingers, although I can't right now what is, but it has to come pretty damn close. And it shows, as does Dylan, how some feelings are so universal that when they are pulled out of the soul and shown for all their pain and hurt, the artist and the audience are the better for it. I tend to wallow in the self-induced romance of catharsis, but when it comes to a few songs I am utterly unapologetic about it. This is one of those songs and that was one of those nights. I think that this is when it really hit me. Home.

Big Boss Man was a good grounding followup. Not necessarily a standout tune in its own right as far as I'm concerned, but a good down and dirty change of pace that helped me get over myself and just go where the beat took me. Which was round and round

Back into paradise! Limbo!! Oh thank you God, for letting me be there for that! Thank you, mom, for bringing me into this world and for you and dad giving me an appreciation of music and the freedom to find what I love. Thank you Jimmy Cliff and Jerry Garcia for writing and perfecting this song, and thank you DSO for playing it right then and there! Seems pretty self-indulgent, but for me the force of this song transcends any notions of that and goes into the place where loss turns into peace. It showed how excellent Mattson is with the vocals, and talk about set and setting! They may be putting up resistance, but sometimes they just don't matter. It is a lesson easy to forget in the grind of day after day, but better to wait for the tide to roll when you feel like all there is in life is beating your head against a brick wall. Our faith will...

Some say some songs are best electric rather that acoustic. This is true. Probably most anything by Pantera would be a good example. Nothing in this set proved the point, and the closest possible contender (aside from Big Boss) is one of my early GD favs, MAMU. The tune and lyrics were an early example (to the teenage me) of cowboy story-telling that drew me into this circus. If there are some songs that maybe are best if not indulged in everyday, this one could be the antithesis. It just plain rocks, and adds a good backbone to any unplugged set when it follows a navel gazer. The timing here couldn't have been better.

And then back to old school GD roots. When I lived in Dallas there was a nice night scene on Elm Street downtown, and there was some joy in knowing about the song. Deep Elem Blues is such a classic and dancing to it draws upon a tradition that reaches back a century. Hard to beat for connecting with this music's roots...

The Monkey and the Engineer is proof that fun is like beauty - its own excuse for being. Bobby at his clever and prankster best; I love this song because it just is a good time to disengage all the higher faculties and just be. That can be hard sometimes and help is always welcome.

The best songs do tell a story, or at least paint a picture. "Out on a lonely hillside in a cabin low and small..." What a beautiful start! Rosalie McFall is another tale of love, loss, and yearning in the old lonesome tradition. The song goes back a ways and has several different verses (some I'd like to hear coming from up on a stage) but the purity of it as a vehicle for what Mattson does now is fine as it is. Thank you for bringing it to life after too long a hiatus.

Time to rock, and On the Road Again does that! A nice dip into the deep cuts world, with perfect lyrics for young and old alike - outdoor dancing with everyone on the same page. As sure as your born, is there anyplace else to be?

By this time the physical kinks had long been worked out and the soul was at peace. There is a whole body of work, literary and performance, devoted to the sad theme that "you can't go home again." And depending on where home is and how much you may have pissed off everyone there when you stormed out, that can be true on several different levels. But when you try to just open up and fucking be at peace without projecting too God damn much, it is possible. Rock and roll never forgets, I heard, and the people that make up this family are the best I have ever found at simply caring. Or at least so I see every time I start whining again and again, on and on, especially when someone tells me to shut up and give them a break. If you have read this far, you are one of them and I appreciate it.

Lisa Mackey is the secret weapon. We've all said it enough that really it shouldn't be a secret anymore, except that every time she does You Ain't Woman Enough (or Strange Man or Sunrise), it is a revelation all over again. There is so much power there and so much joy that it is a blessing to be able to witness it. And witnessing it is a sharing. The best art is communal, I believe, and the performer is also a testifier. Being there for this was like that. Sometimes you just have to stop and open up to what is coming down from on high, be that elevated point your idea of where a Power resides, or be it a stage in front of you. And sometimes there isn't all that much of a difference between them.

The close of this show was like that. One of the best single acoustic efforts I have ever seen by DSO, the Bird Song>Ripple was sure, stirring, and a meditation in motion. I had spend a little time grooming my space as a physical connection with where I was going during the music, yet by now I could have been on hot coals and it would have been just fine. The realm of a hill in New York was a launching pad for something that I need.

Like I said, ennui is dangerous. Don't listen to that voice telling you that airports suck, toting a pack is a drag, and sleep is fun (well, it is, but there will be more some other night). Don't listen when it tells you that you may as well stay at home and sit on your ass because travel isn't worth the effort and the cost. Listen to the voice that tells you if it knew the way, it would take you home. Because when that voice is coming from on high and the people you love are there sharing it with you, you are home.

[August West]

Train wheels are running through the back of my memory.................

[Mango]

nice chuck! more please

[gr8fulpair]

en·nui

   [ahn-wee, ahn-wee; Fr. ahn-nwee]

noun

a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom: The endless lecture produced an unbearable ennui.

Hey Chuck, that sample sentence was in the definition, I swear..... thanks for sharing (and helping me learn yet another word).

[chuckvegas]

Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call

Some would say that a week in Jersey is like a year in hell - hectic, interminable, and your own damn fault. For me, the first and last part were true, but it flew by way too fast. That is what happens when you're having fun, and this was definitely the best of times. Not enough good things can be said about the kindness shown by my host/keeper Brian, so a "thank you" from the bottom of my heart will have to do for now. Ask him about his kick-ass deal on the world's most comfortable air matress, because it really was and is.

You know what they say about all good things, and what they say it is true. They are in all good time, and they must pass. The Mighty High, the Colonial, Bergen PAC, the McCarter, all flew by. We didn't make it up to Tarrytown so I don't know what happened with the head-hunter vandal there; I'd really like to believe it was an accident.

After the Princeton show I was passed off to Greg for several days at the shore and the last show of the week. While there are enough Bennie types in LV, and even our share of Philly expats, we don't have much of a beach scene here (the pools at the Palms, Hard Rock, etc. cater to a more transient demographic from those areas) so I was really excited to share the sun and sand with genuine city folks. Plus, last time I was in their OC neighborhood was during the record heat wave that turned Bergen into a sauna and the atmosphere into an oven, so there really wasn't much beach time.

This was wonderfully different. I think the south Jersey shore is a little slice of Yankee paradise, and I say that with all the fervor you'd expect of a Southern boy who loves the water and doesn't get out much. All thanks to the Stout clan and friends who put me up in Deadhead splendor: 1400 square feet of awesome beach house complete with decor by Dupree's Diamond News and a family of tourhead Stout brothers, cousins, plus tween daughters who graciously endured it all. Sand in the toes and knowing Snooki was way up the shore could not have been better. And Greg is Bob Weir, bitch. He proclaimed it out loud in the dead of night while profoundly asleep. I heard it all and will never forget. I fear for his psyche.

Tearing ourselves away from that for the short ride to Philly was not easy. Again, it was better weather than the last time DSO played Penn's Landing. That time they played mid-afternoon and it was so damn humid the lines for the mist tents were't much shorter than for the beer. But it is east coast summer without any nice microclimates, so whaddaya want? Parking went well, with a nice tip from the attendant of the first place we pulled into, and this turned out to be key after the show.

In we went, right as Keller was winding up - damn. It was obvious that even with the sun getting a bit lower in the sky the space down front in the concrete bowl would be hot, crowded, and rough. Time to take the high ground, which was just adjacent to Cotter's tent and in front of some good stairs/steps space. Looking around as the crowd filled in, it was a good move by Bix to have set up some chairs to guard the front and a blanket to hold down the flank. The rear was protected by the steps. The perimeter was secured. And the easties showed the courtesy and respect I have come to expect over the years - no blundering intrusions until well into the show, and even then it was folks just passing through.

It was that time. Let the Good Times Roll is always an easy opener to get in the groove with. No heavy vibe, no soul-searing existential weighing and found wanting, just happy dance to get the blood and sweat flowing. (Time enough for tears later.) I started out pretty much alone in the space but as the song went on there was a slow and steady influx of refugees from other spots, and wouldn't you know it - I seemed to know them all! The current cast of tour types had followed me all week without rest or remorse, and here they kept showing up again in ones and twos. WTF?

Neatly into Passenger. The sun was a little lower, the crowd moving around was a lot bigger, and the growing family of folks to whom I owe a lot was filing in. For me the week was running down but my cup was running over. "Shine on, glowing, brief and brightly..." was how I was feeling. It had been a trip of time spent well and truly out of myself, and that is a happy state I don't usually reach when left to my own devices. Except for those blessed people with a plan and a touchstone to keep them on their true path, it seems that for a lot of us the destination is seen unclearly. But if there is joy in learning, and the road is the teacher, then isn't clarity in whatever surprise lies up ahead, just around the bend? Be on your way...

I don't know now, I just don't know...by now the dance party was in full swing and the energy was all you could want down by the river. Cumberland Blues dates from the time and body of work that helped get me into this music a few years after Workingman's Dead came out; before the full flowering of my psychedelia appreciation the harmonies and boot-scooting beat of songs like this and Bobby's cowboy tunes roped me in. And your first love is usually the one you turn to to keep you grounded. So it was with Cumberland - if I'd had the breath to spare I'd have sung along, but my (and everone else's) grin said it all. You never stop paying the union dues, but the benefits can be pretty good.

Then the Dylan! I love Masterpiece and Eaton absolutely nailed it! This is one I can listen to every day, and thanks to the Postcards album there have been times when that's happened. I think this one started tipping my emotional scale toward the out-of-body,since our crew had pretty much filled in and the evening was settling down to a good night spent running on the hilltop with the pack of wild geese. Don't know that I can really speak for anyone else there, but to me the optimism underlying this song has always been a comfort when the train wheels get to running too long and too loud, even if some might say it is just a joker's wishful thinking. Aside from the lyrical palette with which Dylan always paints, the flow and meter of the song as played in the GD/DSO style perfectly suits the release that it brings in a show when the mind wants to dwell on its own inner fodder. There may be a time and a place for such ruminations but then and there isn't it. Better to believe everything's going to be different, and keep that faith.

Stagger Lee in one form or another is over a century old, has as many variations as Jack-a-Row, and both are just so damn much fun to dance to that in the joy of the now the story doesn't matter. Unless of course, your head is turned to thoughts of love, blood, violence, vengeance, and maybe reconciliation and a happy ending. But if that's the case you are bringing a fuckload of baggage to a show. That shit needs to be checked at the door or you need to find a nice dark corner. But there wasn't any such place this night; the evening was perfect (so far, although clouds were literally starting to loom) and the company was the best. The blanket had long since been rolled up and the chairs were performing barricade duty. It was so cool watching the ebb and flow of the crowd. I usually don't get a view like that and sensory perception was tuned just right - stone cold sober with the perfect natural endorphin cocktail. Not that I usually experience actual lucidity, but coherence can be fun sometimes.

And it can help with the appreciation of perception without overload...near my God, to Thee...

Then was the short beat BIODTL...another one I have loved with all my heart. One I sing along to in the car where I can crank it so I can't hear myself, and one that always wrings me out in a thorough way. This one goes back to the original GD album (funny how so many off that record are still in regular rotation these days) and DSO has it mastered. This set seemed to flow as well as any I have heard, and to me it proved the power of the electives. The pacing was perfect and the crowd could not seem to have been more into it. The reality of facing the coal mine in two days might have been weighing heavy but there was no way that was happening with the shee rexuberance of the Landing that night. Each song was a culmination of the promise of the preceding one and a foretaste of the beat of the next; that is the gift such artists playing this body of work give us.

Some folks don't care for TLEO but I'm a sucker for love songs. It is why humans do a lot of what they do - call it the premise of the eternal "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" storyline, study it as the yearning for merging with and redemption through something pure and true, call it being fucking horny. Whatever, it is what makes the world go around and to me, TLEO captures it beautifully. Nothing that you need

to add or do saysit better than a thousand plays and novels. On that concrete hill, sun low, everyone I could have possibly wanted to share it all with (but for a few very important exceptions) there in perfect harmony, was pretty much the first set melt for me. It was just the embodiment, the culmination, of a week that could not have been better, except that I didn't buy any Powerball tickets and win.

This song is another where I am always overwhelmed anew, every time I hear it, by the marriage of lyrics as poetry and tune as evocation of spirit. The GD certainly have no monopoly on that but somehow their body of work has taken it to such a soaring level that revisiting it never, ever gets old no matter how many times one is blessed with the chance to go there again. It never wears thin, it never feels banal, and it is always there for you when you need it. The beat of TLEO is one of those for me - simple message beautifully said and dancably played. Another part of a moving first set.

Of course there did come a fly in the ointment. That would be the picture from TWC on Cotter's phone showing a big red blob of anger coming from the northwest and bringing with it the specter of Dark Cloud Orchestra big time. The venue crew and a couple of us went into standby crew mode and helped to get the board covered up and the hatches ready to be battened down, but other than that there wasn't much to do but keep an eye on the sky. As it turned out, the power of positive thinking payed off and while things looked bleak I don't think a single drop fell.

DSO playing The Race is On will always be measured in my mind against the perfection of 5-19-07. If you were there, you know. If you weren't, I can't do anything other than say you need to download that show ASAFP. Once again a country classic (hard to believe it is almost 50 years old) says it all so well and GD/DSO puts it together so beautifully. The race methaphor for love's labor lost is a clever one from the old school; Now the race is on and here comes pride up the back stretch... You can't win 'em all and that lesson is always a bitch for me to learn. Pride certainly goeth before a fall, and the way down can make you wonder if it is worth it to try and get back up. But how else are you going to see a little further? The juxtaposition of this one with TLEO helped cement this set in my soul. Sometimes as a first set is winding down I am ready for a break but this could have gone on forever.

Well, I'll be...did not see Easy Wind coming. And I'm glad I was there for it - one of the absolute highlights! Damn, Baracco more than does the vocals justice, and what he lays down with his organ playing both does Pigpen's memory proud and brings it into the 21st century while staying in perfect harmony with the late 60's - early '70s. The roots of this one go way back and the older I get the more I appreciate, even relish, how this music taps into the deep well of Americana and how yet another generation is a part of it. No reason for this to stop, and it is a joy to keep going on.

Time to wrap it up, and Might as Well is the perfect closer for a ride like this set. The musical train, the Festival Express, can serve as a fitting vehicle for the notion of getting back on the horse and taking the trip one more time. It isn't the only song to offer a "rock and roll never forgets" motif but as a show opener or set closer Might as Well sums up the feeling of the itch nicely. Things aren't always elegant, but when you're dancing there's nothing else shaking anyway...

[Tea]

What a beautifully-insightful description of how this music is woven into the fabric of our lives. Each song speaks to us for reasons that are our own but with beautiful intersections that cross the paths of those we care about who share the same experience.

When you can take a week to let this music seep into our souls, very few 'stones' are left unturned whether we want the rocks turned over or not. Sometimes we find the dirty things that we try to hide from the light of day. In the same spot we find new things we have never seen before and life that thrives even in a dark place. Maybe not the metaphorical eliquence of Chuck > but you get the point.

What a great read Chuck! I look forward to your next installment....

[chuckvegas]

I think appreciation of music as an art form is one of those rare activities that can be engaged in both as a very private experience and as a group or communal celebration. And the beauty is that it can operate on both levels at the same time; the ego gets immersed in the message while also surrendering to the mass joy of union with your friends and loved ones. Or something. It is what I live for, anyway.