I hope you finally found your “thick air,”, Bobby.
ETA: Heavy air??
“Sugar Magnolia” is an all-time favorite.
No deadhead I, but I got to see them once when I got back to campus from a downtown Jefferson Airplane concert and found that the group had taken the same journey and joined the Dead on stage. It went late.
I never saw the Dead live but I did see Bob Weir perform. It was at Jorma Kaukonen’s 70th birthday bash at the Beacon Theatre in New York. It was a two-night affair, I was there on the second night and Bob was one of many special guests (of course Jack Casady was there). The concert was over four hours long and Bob was out there for at least half of it, just jamming along. I can’t remember all the songs they played but it was a pretty good show.
Fare thee well, fare thee well, I love you more than words can tell.
The story in What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been is likewise, that they were fired but it was approached in such a roundabout, conflict-avoidant way that they either didn’t realize it or pretended not to and just kept showing up.
Good thing; without those two, the Dead could have a been a critically acclaimed avant-garde ensemble, but they wouldn’t have been a great rock band.
Weir was a unusual but excellent rhythm guitarist, deftly bridging the gap between Garcia’s busy riffing and bassist Phil Lesh’s weirdly wide-ranging basslines. And he was a great singer in his prime.
When I was a youngster, I was lucky enough to be schooled in the finer points of Deadhead-ness by this one dude, a drummer/surfer/acidnaut in California—what better teacher could you ask for? Once, I confessed to him that I liked Bobby’s tunes better than Jerry’s. He just laughed and said, “Don’t worry, everyone gets through that phase!”
I guess Weir was just less prolific a songwriter than Garcia, so—given that the Dead generally alternated Garcia and Weir tunes in concert—you heard the same Weir tunes more often. And especially the later Weir tunes—e.g., Hell In A Bucket, Victim Or The Crime, etc—were not that well suited to re-interpretation or springboards to improvisation, and so one night’s version would be much the same as any other. Which in the context of a Grateful Dead concert was not always ideal.
Nevertheless, Weir was a singular artist who contributed a lot to my musical upbringing. RIP Bobby!
Very well said. I hadn’t thought about it that way.
I think that Weir excelled with his interpretation of Dylan songs and I was a huge Dylan fan before I was a Deadhead. They played three Dylan songs at my first show.
I fear my last post came off as negative, especially on the occasion of Weir’s death.
Here are some songs Weir wrote that the Dead performed:
Playin’ In The Band. Cassidy. Jack Straw. Black Throated Wind. Sugar Magnolia. Estimated Prophet. Let It Grow. The Music Never Stopped. Greatest Story Ever Told. Truckin’. Mexicali Blues. Feel Like A Stranger.
A remarkable catalog, and all of them essential Grateful Dead tunes.
The Grateful Dead were the first and best Dylan cover band.
Damn it really has been a Long Strange Trip. My first show Feb 79 St Louis at the Keil.
“One More Saturday Night” is probably my favorite Dead tune. It’s not as experimental or funky or out-there as some of their other numbers, but it’s a fun little party song. I guess it’s appropriate that he died on a Saturday.
God way up in Heaven, for whatever it was worth
Thought He’d have a big old party, thought He’d call it Planet Earth
Don’t worry about tomorrow, Lord, you’ll know it when it comes
When the rock and roll music meets the risin’ Planet Sun