Grateful Dead – Fare Thee Well – Sunday June 28, 2015 concert review

I was very lucky to be given tickets to one of the Grateful Dead’s final shows, Sunday night at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA. Tried getting tickets through the lottery but was denied, had basically accepted the fact that I wouldn’t get to go. But a 49ers season ticket holder had gotten tickets, only to realize that they were going away on vacation, so we were the grateful recipients.

One of the main reasons I was excited to go was Phil Lesh and his new short-scale 6-string Alembic bass, “Belarion.” I saw it at the “mothership” as it was being built, now I got to hear it played! The low end was deep and clear, not a small feat in a 68,000 seat stadium. There were several times during jams when you could hear the tone of the whole bass – it had a little bit of growl, kind of like a Precision Bass.

Now on to the show! Most of the things I heard people write on Facebook about Saturday night were positive, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. The songs in themselves were ok, but the first set really meandered. It kind of makes sense, the main soloists are not really “band members” so it felt like they were tiptoe-ing around at best, lost at the worst. I almost wanted Bobby to conduct and tell people when to solo and when to stop, but of course that’s not the Dead way. I have played a lot of Dead tunes in my life but there are a bunch that I don’t really know with lots of chord changes, and during the solos it sometimes sounded the way I feel when I don’t really know the song – tentative, blurry and muddled.

Things finally took off in the last song of the first set, “Hell in a Bucket” – there was a moment during Trey’s solo when drummer Bill Kretuzmann was on the screen and lifted his right arm egging Trey on just as the magic was happening! That was awesome, and a great way to close the set.

Set 2 had some amazing jamming between songs, though the people around me all sat down since it wasn’t a “song” but to me it was really really nice, interesting, aggressive improvisation, something I actually didn’t expect, especially given set 1 (though of course set 2 is more the place for that kind of thing to happen).

I was up in the upper section furthest away from the stage – kind of scary, there is only a little railing at the edge of the balcony – in fact, near the end someone in the back row behind me fell, knocked over the guy in front of him, who came down next to me – could have been a tragedy.

Phil came out before the encore and spoke – expressed his gratitude to the crowd – it was pretty amazing for them to play two nights in a 68,000 seat arena – he also encouraged everyone to become an organ donor, given that he is a liver transplant recipient.

All in all a nice show, glad that I went. Phil seemed to have a really good time – one of his comments when thanking all the people who came and made it possible was “who knew?” – maybe they’ll keep playing? 😉

P.S. Today at Trader Joe’s a woman in line behind me (maybe early 60’s?) said to the cashier that she had gone to see the Dead on Saturday and something to the effect that it was a terrible experience. Well, she thought it was wonderful but her boyfriend who had never seen the Dead hated it! I should have stayed and listened to the whole thing, but I can totally picture it. The Dead do not come across as a “professional” band – they don’t nail every song, every solo – instead, they sound like they are just trying to play the songs, maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. Dead heads let them do this – it’s all a big family, and they know that if they just go with the flow, maybe something magical will happen. I was happy to have caught some of the magic on Sunday, but I feel for this woman’s boyfriend too!