The Dead: Live at Saratoga on Jerry Garcia's birthday

SARATOGA SPRINGS - They brought in The Dead and a crowd of 20,000 braved the driving nightmare to attend Sunday night's concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. It was a day that would have been Jerry Garcia's 62nd birthday.

Performing in front of a blue lava screen framed with purple prisms and oozing groovy green bubbles, the band took turns passing around the microphone during the evening's two sets.
It took awhile before they hit their stride.
The first set, lit by natural light, was leaden by sonic oodling often resembling the sounds
of car trouble.

During the band's second set, beneath the cover of darkness, the crowd settled in to enjoy - from playful toddlers in tiny tie-dyed jammies to hordes of hippy chicks draped hip-to-heel
in rainbow-striped skirts, whirling to the music like broken ballerinas.

On stage, long-time percussionist Mickey Hart sat opposite drummer Bill Kreutzmann; the tall and lanky Phil Lesh plunked away on bass and Bob Weir, wearing cool summer shorts, accompanied on rhythm guitar and vocals. The quartet traces a historic line back to the group's 1960s era of 'happenings.'

Supplemented by guitarist Jimmy Herring and the tasteful keyboards of Jeff Chimenti, the band mixed old and new, delivering classic Dead cuts 'Uncle John's Band' and 'Saint Stephen.' They succumbed however, to the pungent bauble of trippy jams. Once the band's musical bread and butter, the extended jams were rendered obsolete by the 1980s, when Jerry Garcia was alive.

In 2004, the Dead horse has been beaten so long, its skeletal frame has disintegrated to ash, leaving nothing but dry, barren earth in its wake and the lonely sound of tumbleweeds blown by the wind. There was also the return of the dreaded drum solo, and long did it drone.

You got the impression - at that precise moment - that if Jerry Garcia made a special birthday return from the great beyond, the boredom would have surely killed him all over again. Although resident stoners among the faithful would probably disagree.

Revitalizing the set throughout was the appearance of Warren Haynes. Haynes performed double duty, appearing as a soloist in the evening's opening slot.

With The Dead, Haynes performed with the passionate urgency of a man possessed.
He growled through the vocals of Reverend Gary Davis dirge 'Death Don't Have No Mercy'
as if he was conjuring the old blues man himself.
And when given the opportunity to wail, wrung notes from his guitar like he was plucking solar fragments from the remnants of the blue moon hanging in the sky from the previous night. Jerry Garcia would have been proud.

Nearly 40 years down the road, for better or worse, The Dead refuse to die

by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Saratogian, Aug. 3, 2004