my PHIL 12/2 PICS, SETLISTS & REVIEW...PIX [Archive]

deadhook1

12-03-2005, 07:58 AM

Here's the setlist, my apologies if I missed anything

March 2, 2005
Patriot Center
Fairfax, VA

Set I:
Here comes Sunshine > Jam > Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodoloo, Alabama Getaway > Tumbleweed in Eden, Hurricane, Box of Rain, Not Fade Away

Set II:
Viola Lee Blues > Operator > Jam > Viola Lee Blues > Jam Feedback > Jamace > Caution Jam > Viola Lee Blues, Brown Sugar, Eight Miles High, Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion

Encore:
Donor Rap, Don't Let Me Down, Sugaree

I have a ton of pics but i'm tired and have to work tomorrow so just uploaded a bunch at random and any that looked half-way decent at first glance without really looking for the best.

Like i said, it was a terrific show, one of the best Phil shows I've seen. Great variety, a TON of energy. Far more energy and just balls out rockin' than I've seen in a while. Very little mellow vibes. Highlights...hell, the whole show was hot! I definately miss Jimmy, but Larry Campbell is good and Chris Robinson, IMO, is a great asset on lead vocals. All around fun, fun PHUN!!!!

Really, if you go, be prepared to dance your ass off. There were VERY few moments when you could sit for more than a few minutes until you just had to get up to get down.

Viola through Set II was unreal. That's a personal favorite, and having them use it in and out of the 2nd set was tight.

Help > Slip > Golden Road was dynamite!!!
Box of Rain is a Phil must and didn't disappoint.
HURRICANE!!! I've heard this before, but Chris Robinson opens this up. Someone was saying this on DH earlier.
Brown Sugar real treat.
Here Comes Sunshine was really fun and really jammed out. Brings back Red Rox Sunshine in the rain memories from The Dead last summer.

enjoy!

Like i mentioned, sorry for the picture quality, i haven't gone thru them, i just wanted to get something up before i pass out. I'll go through them all tomorrow and get some decent ones up.

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Corporate Boy

12-08-2005, 07:33 PM

According to the Lizard Brain, my "future-self" wanted me to know that I would enjoy this night. Occasionally my future-self travels back to converse with the Lizard Brain. My future-self and the Lizard Brain like to steer me down what seems to be the wrong path sometimes, but they were Dead-on this time. I did enjoy December 2nd, 2005 at the The Patriot Center. Phil Lesh was on tour with a new batch of friends, something that should never be passed up. You never know what to expect. What my future-self forgot to mention was that this show will be one heck of a wild ride that will cause the meltdown of the audience and the venue structure; causing the formation of group concisouseness gue that would be fused together into a giant bouncy ball that would ricochet around the room until an epic colission of sorts would occur during the closing of SlipKnot, instigating a ruporte that would not be put back together until the healings sounds of Don't Let Me Down would glue us back to our normal state to enjoy the double encore of Sugaree. Nope...my future-self did not mention this at all. Shows like this are meant to be approached like riding a bucking horse. You just hang on for the ride and until it is safe to come dpwn. Occassionally you get a horse that really bucks good and that is what keeps us coming back for more. No one else has been in the business of this type of transportion for a longer and more consistent period of time than Phil Lesh. Lots of gossip was floating around the Dead world leading up to this show. It was nice to forget all that and come together and just enjoy the music. It was much needed.

The pre-show for us (Lizard Brain, the Morris, Yav, and Legal Mind) kicked off at Fat Tuesdays. Apparently a lot of people had this idea too. Fats, located in a strip mall across the street from the Patriot Center, is an unassuming establishment that has played host to it's own fair share of epic performances by bands like the Ordinary Way and Laidback. After a few rounds of beer, a sandwich and plenty of hello..how are ya's and a few hugs, the pre-show was complete. For the last 10 years or so I was part of this community who has been seeing shows in the DC area. It was great to see them all under 1 roof sharing the energy that has been building in all of us for the weeks leading up to the show. Phil was finally back on the east coast with his band, which consists of Barry Sless, Mookie Seigel, Chris Robinson, Larry Campbell, and John Molo. Wait a second who are these guys and where is Warren, Jimmy, and Rob???? One might think at least we got Molo from the steady quintet of 2001, but in Phil was trust. We got something new and genious on our hands. Molo the steady backbone drummer for most of Phil's band was familiar and oh yeah...Chris Robison...he is that guy from the Black Crowes with that great southern soul voice. Larry campbell...yeah he is that dude who laid it down for an extremely extended stint on Dylan's never ending tour and Barry and Mookie? That team was drafted from the classic hippie country rocker Dave Nelson. (You all should go see Dave Nelson...he is a living legend and one of the best out there!). Wonder how all these guys will fit into the Phil Lesh methodology of driving right towards a cliff at full speed with intention of sprouting wings at the last minute. Will these guys have the cahonies to take this journey? Always expect the unexpected....they passed with flying colors. I honestly think that seeing this line-up is a more complete experience then the old quintet. The old band would dive deep quickly, where this line-up eases you in and takes you around the musical landsacpe and before you know it you have left all regonizable land marks and our lost within the music for a couple hours only to return you gently from where you come from in the first place. Basically the old quintet was a 6-Flags Great Adventure Roller Coast with no brakes and the new band starts like a sunday afternoon drive in the country that eventually passes through a bizzaro world that drop you on a NASCAR track during the final 5 laps of a race. You got to put the pedal to medal to keep up.

We had general admission floor tickets. Don't expect to stub down at the Patriot Center. They got that place on lock down. They take your ticket and issue wrist bands. You can pick up your ticket at the end of the show if you would like. The show openned with an excellent Here Comes Sunshine. The last 3 DC Phil Lesh and Bob Weir shows I have seen openned with Sunshine. Weird man...weird. In typical Lesh form it sequed it into a sprawling free form jam that modulated and dropped nicely into Missisippi Half-step. PHil was on vocals for this one. Don't care what people say...let Phil sing. It ain't ruining my life. He usually gets one or two songs a night and I say why not? The jam continued on with a somewhat awkward transition as they got the tempo just exactly perfect for Alabama Getaway which had the place reelin' and rockin'. Upon completion there was a breif pause in the action as Phil left the stage for a little bit. The band eventually got restless and started a spacely little jam that lasted a couple minutes and served as the intro to A Tumbleweed in Eden.

Through out most of the night Sless was on lap steel, while Larry switch between a large array of folk instruments and electric guitar. By far this is the most Working Man's Dead sounding arrangement of Lesh and friends, but they were burning it up like it was Europe '72 all over again.

Tumbleweed was a great ballad song with soul by Chris. At this point i think Larry was playing one of those bass mandolin things..very peaceful...the calm before the storm or really the Hurricane. Man....they tear-up this song up with as much energy and sincerity as Dylan's Rolling Thunder band. They even got the fiddle to go with it. The story of the Hurricane should not be forgotten. At one point he could have been the champion of the World. In my 4 year stint at JMU one of my regrets was not making it to hear Rubin Carter speek on campus when he visited. Definitely a missed opportunity.

Set one ended up closing out with a great Box of Rain/NFA. The first set was worth the ticket price by itself. It was one of those shows where everything was just flowing perfectly. We boogied hard through the set right next to the soundboard. During setbreak we ran into more friends including Bret and Alicia the creators of deadhook, along with a bunch of friends from my home town.

Back on the floor for the start of the second set... Viola Lee Blues groove to kick it off. I know this is one of Phil's favorite songs...,but the jams out of it just don't do it for me. This is the only downside of the show for me because he built the second set around Viola Lee,sequeing after the first verse into another Pigpen tune operator back into the second verse into a cool little jam. This is when the Legal Mind turned to me and said this is your favorite part of the show. (She would be correct, but Phil always tops himself, so no it wasn't my favorite part of the show.) At this point Phil breaks out Big Brown. At the time it was built it was the most saficisticated electric bass built. A gorgeous Guild Starfire hollowbody with the first ever active electronics and an EQ system that allows Phil tweek any frequency he wants. Consequenty the bass is less a Hollowbody and morre any electical box with around 20 knobs scattered all over it. Magnifcient...and of course what did Phil do with it (and why my girlfriend said it was my favorite part of the show) he crankd up his mini-wall of sound and began to demolish the building with a waves of feedback by climbing over his speakers, practically rubbing the bass up and down the cabinet. This continued for about 5 minutes...yep he is genious. Then whipping it round like a madman he began shredding the dum, dum, dum, dum train-like bassline Caution (Don't Step on the Tracks). Chris was in full Pigpen mode. We might as well have been beamed back to 2/13/70 at the Fillmore east. Just a touch of mojo hand....thats all we need! Being a shortscale bass Phil was rippin' it up. Throughout the long jam Phil and Molo kept a blistering pace that crashed and burned into another feedback session and the last verse of Viola Lee. Next up was a double shot of classic rock with the Stone's Brown Sugar and the Byrds 8-Miles high. The place was boogieing.

The show had been going on a long time. I hadn't dance the long in a long time. My body might hurt the next day, but the music was carrying us though. Somebody has got to save the universe. A friend has got a theory that when the freaks stop gathering to dance then the darkness wins. So when we are called to duty we need to gather and dance like the universe is on the line. I would say so far the mission has been pretty successful. I had know clue what to expect next, but wait a second....the jam coming out of 8-miles is churning and morphing into a familiar rythmic hit...wait it couldn't be, but it is... dun-it....daaahh. Help on the Way. Mind melting. REality is lost. Onboard computer reports..."At an Improbability Factor of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight to one against...Normalcy will be returned shortly." Most dance harder. The Help->Slip sequence was executed flawlessly. Sless was playing guitar at this point and was taking full command of the stage and the room. Words cannot describe the peak that was reached at the end of the jam. This is how shows should always end. I haven't felt that much energy in a long time. It hit me just right, but it ain't over yet. Skipping on the stereotypical Franklins, they launched right into Golden Road. Souls of our shoes were litterally melting at this point.

Wow...that was it...two sets. Awesome fun, as Fluff would say. But we still got one more for the road. Phil was the first to come out and reminded us on the importance of donating blood and becoming an organ donor. He then introduced the band.... A lot of local boys (Molo -South east, Sless/Mookie - Baltimore). Don't Let Me Down a great way to close it. We were all back together. Normalcy was returned. A great way to end the show, but wait a second...after a brief pause after the final "Don't Let Me Down" the band didn't leave the stage. Chris then starts up "When they come to take you down..." Yep...double encore. We were feelin' it tonight.

Two thumbs up. Find the tapes. You will enjoy it. Don't pass on Phil. His shows are important.