Cripsy Duck's view from Charlottesville - 4.25.01

Did you know that the Grateful Dead broke up? And I don't mean just because of that business about Jerry Garcia dying back in 1995-- the loss of their chief protagonist only derailed 'em momentarily. Most of the band quickly got back up and began jamming again. But somewhere in transition a rift occurred between bassman Phil Lesh and the remaining bandmembers over commercializing "the Vault"-- the band's master stash of soundboard tapes from their 30-year run of almost continuous touring. Lesh decided the other guys were entertaining horribly greedy ideas and bailed.

So now there are two Deads (or is it three... or four?): the Other Ones, composed of the remaining members minus Lesh, and Phil Lesh and Friends, a powerful psychedelic combo built around Lesh's subsonic bottom continuing in the spirit of deep musical exploration that was the Grateful Dead's defining trademark ever since its earliest days as Ken Kesey's acid party house band.

Phil Lesh always had a somewhat cultish following back in the Dead's "living" days. Jerry Garcia-- being the lead guitar player-- was the most visible (and, of course, the loudest), so he garnered the largest discipleship, but there was always a certain section of Deadheads that held Phil Lesh-- the bass player-- in highest regard, yelling for him to sing the Dead classics he wrote or co-wrote, and forever migrating to "The Phil Zone," the section of the floor directly in front of his massive bass rig.

It's hard to describe to someone not familiar with the heart of the Dead's music exactly what it is that Phil Lesh does in a jam situation that makes him so special. It's not that he's the most mind-numbing technical bass player-- guys like Otiel Burbridge, Victor Wooten or Stanley Clarke (the god) can pull out bigger, faster, sicker solos. Lesh is an excellent, classically trained musician, but hot-dogging is not his forté.

Phil Lesh is a space maker and a team player. In an electric jam, he can solidly define the bottom while still leaving it wide open to interpretation and new musical direction. That's not normally a bass player's job. Normal bass players play what's called "repeated figures"-- they lay down a recurring theme that the band can rely on as a foundation and they stick with that. Lesh plays no repeated figures-- that's his signature. He's always pushing out different pieces of the rhythm and melody, creating a fluid backdrop, occasionally surging to the surface to mock the guitar lead or participate in a cascade of group arpeggios, but always moving subterraneously, rebuilding and reinventing the musical landscape.

This is true psychedelia-- essentially free-jazz with a rock vocabulary-- and Lesh's contribution to its original formulation is massive. He's the original NASA astronaut of psychedelic rock-- some kind of professor, scientist and scholar-laureate, hunting for the inspiring hunks of chaos lurking behind the order of music. And he still rocks like it's the apocalypse.

I rolled down to Richmond on a Monday night (April 23) to check him out at the Mosque, er... the Landmark Theater, and boy am I glad I went. Real Dead-heads-- like the ones that used to regularly pilgrimage in days of yore-- were out en masse doing what Deadheads do: selling beer out of coolers on skateboards, cooking up "kind veggie burritos," etc. and distributing tye-dies, stickers, glass pipes and other memorabilia. It was like going home again: several hundred patchoulli-stinking unwashed hippies dancing around drum circles and openly drinking in Byrd Park.

The cops were shockingly cool, which was... shocking. Way cool. At one point, my travelin' buddy, Tye High, was brazenly chugging a beer when an officer strode within arm's reach of him-- and never said a word. It kind of freaked me out-- I'm not used to that type of rampant... tolerance. Usually "The Man" is trying to keep me down-- you know: the angry hippy and all that.

Anyway, Phil and Friends were absolutely blissful-- a return to the open-discussion psychedelic free-for-all that made the Dead eminent lucid trip-fodder, peppered with a collection of Deadhead dream tunes-- stuff fans always wanted but the band had been neglecting for years. Not only did they pull out obscure Dead classics like "Doin' That Rag," "Cosmic Charlie," "New Potato Caboose," "Crazy Fingers," and (the ultimate showstopper), "Passenger," with suprising attention to detail (several vocal sequences were notably better than the Dead's renditions), but they sewed them together with the improvisational intensity of a crew of test pilots on speed.

The band is manned by former Allman Brother/Gov't Mule guitarist Warren Haynes, former Allman Brother/Aquarium Recue Unit guitarist Jimmy Herring, Zen Trickster keyboardist Rob Barraco (who travels with one of founding Dead vocalist Pigpen McKernan's original organs), and jazz drummer John Molo, whose mose recent project, Modereco, contains local legends Bobby Read and John D'earth.

It is an unstoppable combo. Garcia's absence from signature tunes only became obvious when Herring and Haynes seemed reticent to "Jerry it up"-- psychically debating who would fill the appropriate spaces with patented Garcia noodles. But the confusion generated by the dueling leadsmen and their cosmic musical jockeying was in many ways more refreshing than many Dead jams I recall, and I left thinking Phil and Friends was better than the last ten Dead shows I witnessed. And with the help of veteran lightwoman Candance Brightman filling the room with her mindblowing light sculptures (the best in the biz-- absolutely blew Dave Matthews' Scott Stadium light show away), a genuinely psychedelic be-in was successfully staged.

Long live Phil.

--Cripsy Duck

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