TL-DR Dept. - Rob Goes To A Grateful Dead Concert

COLLECT TH' SET!

Four Or Five Guy© Rob [SWELL TRADING CARD at left - Ed.] delivers this timely and provocative think-piece in a futile attempt to pick up broads:

Last Time with the Grateful Dead - Wembley Arena, Hallowe'en 1990

The show kicks off with a tight and exhilarating Help-Slipknot!-Franklin’s and it’s immediately apparent how much Garcia’s playing has been revitalised by Bruce Hornsby’s presence. His voice is definitely showing signs of strain, but the cracked weariness brings real pathos to the lost dreams of Must Have Been The Roses - ‘Faded is the crimson from the ribbons that she wore…’

The first set highlight is Bird Song. Garcia’s voice is shot, but his guitar sings for him. It’s mesmerising. You stop what you’re doing. You forget where you are. You listen. Hornsby underpins it all – the sonic thermals that lift Garcia up, sending the guitar soaring. You take flight along with it.

Scarlet-Fire launches the second set with a carefree energy – it sounds like kids in a playground having fun - ‘The wind in the willows playing tea for two’. The bright strands of the Fire riff are woven into place in a jam that’s infectious and irresistible. When the world’s greatest ever dance band, which of course is what they are, hit the groove you dance in your head, in your heart and with your feet.

Truckin’ is their anthem and they come at it like the world’s greatest ever bar band, which of course is what they are. Another effortless gear change and they’re into an ethereally sublime He’s Gone. Garcia’s timeless, timeworn vocals remind us again that he’s rolled down the track a time or two, and it’s no wonder a cylinder or two has cracked, but you still better not get in his way.

Space starts out quietly, meditative and mysterious, before taking a darker, scarier turn. ‘There must be some way out of here…’ All Along the Watchtower explodes in a passion of urgency and warning. Garcia’s heraldic guitar rings out that ‘The hour is getting late…’ And then … Stella Blue.

This is just sublime. A fitting finale encapsulating strength and vulnerability, regret and reconciliation, accepting the inevitability of the end, and the inevitably of facing the end alone. ‘It seems like all this life/was just a dream/Stella Blue.’

You can’t really follow that, but at least the world’s greatest ever rock’n’roll band, which of course is what they are, will bounce you smiling into the night. Garcia is more of sad old hound dog than a ravening beast on the Werewolves of London encore. But you still love him.

Damn it, you still love him.