LeBron Anastasio
Quick note of apology for all of the typos... I haven't had my editor-fact checker//bullshit detector/tour wife and most of all dear friend Jaclyn reviewing these. I'm also banging them out on my phone at less than optimal capacity. Regardless mea culpa for all the grammatical errors. Mrs. Piper would be pissed at me.
Advance apology part duex. With an extra day in Chicago to fuck around, there is a lot more about my happenings relative to show review. So for those uninterested in the preamble, skip ahead to the music section. Thanks to my 6 readers for caring or at a minimum clicking like even if it was TL;DR.
Jedi and the boys (the Jake Dog, Finn and Jackson trinity together for the weekend - nothing makes them happier) dropped me off at the airport Thursday afternoon after a busy (for me) day of getting shit done. Met JW (always a great time, one of my best buddies, last adventures together jazzfest) featuring a big San Diego five/fist bump combo with extra umph due to the excitement for the pending run. At the gate we ran into Ryan and Jeremiah, always fun to see phamily on the road sharing in the groove. JW boards in A group, texts me to find him in the "Walton aisle" (will always be that to me from now on) where he has done a masterful job of holding down the row for three of us. Contrast that with my boy Jar (San Diego BFF, has a lot of Larry David in him) texts on his flight from Vegas...
Somebody will land in middle seat of my row and looking up at candidates it ain't pretty...lots of big folk in Windy City
Fuck! Giant landed
Why do people have to be so large. It's not good for anyone other than fast food
Figured any size in middle would be squeezed. Now next to 300lbs and a screaming baby. I generally love SWA. This is not one of those time
Jesus. He needs a seatbelt extender
Not nearly as many heads on this flight but a few and all have friends looking for tickets. One of the highlights of the flight was chatting up the flight attendants and convincing them to let me play some Grateful Dead music as we taxied. They even let me pick the song so I went with Dancing in the Streets from 1977 Pembroke Pines (upbeat, features the Dancing in Chicago line). I don't think they expected a 15 minute song but that was fun and the heads on the plane enjoyed it almost as much as I did....being the dj (uber, after show, even occasionally on my jammy fanny pack) brings me much joy and pleasure.
So much so I am adding a new feature: DJ Phunky Finks recommended post show jam of the column. Today I give you one of the greatest post show keep the dance party going funk albums of all time. Prince, 1977 Loring Park Sessions. Just three dudes jamming including a 19 year old prince on keys. $$$
Discrediting one of my go to sayings (passed on to me from my pops) "I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken" it appears I misjudged the market for tickets. After the rerelease and subsequent dip and Santa Clara showing I thought tickets would be ubiquitous but they are hard to find and prices in the secondary market seem to be rising significantly. The overall excitement of the last time the core four are together (potentially), the amount of young and hold heads, the buzz being created by these events and a huge FOMO (fear of missing out) seems to have grabbed many people in the community causing them to make huge efforts, many looking for miracles to venture to Chicago this weekend. This was later confirmed with hundreds of fingers in the air outside soldier and the cheapest ticket I heard was being offered at $450. Nuts.
I love Chicago. I have had some of the best experiences of my life here. For my high school graduation gift, my father flew me out to game 5 of Knicks Bulls (1992) where I saw Jordan in the playoffs in old Chicago stadium. Was J. Bradley's guest for his brothers wedding where I skipped the ceremony for the Chicago blues festival (thought I would get shit from other guests, instead was a hero) and then got down to the wedding band...the Radiators. During college flew out with McG and he brought me to the NBA finals where we saw Rodman have the best game of his career when the Bulls beat Seattle in game 5 (I think? maybe 3) of the finals. I worked with Erik Karros' brother in San Diego and when Erik was playing for the Cubs we flew out and stayed with him and partied with the team. Most importantly during that trip I met Bethany and Anna leading to the subsequent wedding of the only couple I have ever had a significant hand in introducing, the McGs. Was the third wheel for an early date watching Brad and Katie full on fall in love. Saw the fourth of July fireworks from the roof of an office building on Michigan avenue during that visit. Their romance eventually led to the incredible Spirrison wedding weekend where a dozen+ of us showed up to the rehearsal dinner shwilly as can be after my first wrigley bleacher experience. Great bands, the traditional Rosalita w my pledge bros and singing Ali G at the top of our lungs at Dublin at 4 am. While I kick myself for missing UIC, Phish at Northerly Island last year included post game on a yacht looking at Soldier Field. With a few exceptions including Northerly 2013 (the worst rain I have ever experienced in my life) and one winter when I might have been the coldest I have ever been, the weather has always worked out. When the weather is nice, there may not be a better city in the country.
Landed in Chicago. Maybe because it's a holiday weekend or just locals running from the old hippie takeover but the security lines for people leaving and taxi lines into the city were long. JW and I headed over to our hotel at the Sheraton (dope suite) and then met up with Jar, Pingel, Lance and Adi at Chicago Cut for a ridiculous meal. It might be our last chance at a super phat meal this weekend so we went large. Bone in rib eyes, salmon, pork chops, scallops, mini sliders, oysters, dessert, flowing alcohol...epic meal. The the bill came. We opened it up and our entire meal was comped by the restaurant because of Jar's relationship with Rick Sutcliffe. Charmed life indeed.
The city is alive with energy and the weather is going to be perfect (maybe even a bit cold). Couldn't wait to get the party started.
We woke up after a good nights sleep. For Friday's t-shirt I went with one of my favorites in the collection - a blue fall 2013 Phish tour official merch shirt. Favorite for many reasons....I think that up until this summer (oh wow oh wow oh wow am I excited for this summer) that was the best tour of 3.0. It fits great, holds up and has these colors that perfectly match my checkered blue shorts that I enjoy wearing to shows due to all of the extra pocket space. I also have a general rule against wearing Phish shirts to Phish shows so being able to flaunt my fanaticism on this special occasion for Rabi Trey meant a lot to me and was hoping to summon some of that fall tour magic.
We went to the Cubs day game and got settled in some great seats third base line a few rows up of the field - in pay attention foul ball territory. During the game Rizzo (San Diego throw away, Cubs legend) smokes a foul ball into the section a few over from us don't see exactly what happens but notice a guy pick up the ball on the sly. When looking back it turns out a kid got hit hard on the arm and then after it hit him it glanced of a lady behind him. Recognizing what had happened, I got up and went to the guy that had the ball and asked for it to give to the kid. He gave me then ball and I walked it over to the kid performing a nice mitzvah. Ran into the father and son and snapped a picture. I owe the world a ton of karma and it was nice to give back. Saw some friends and the friendly combine and then it was time to bounce after a few hours.
Chicago has put the area surrounding soldier field on lock down so you needed a ticket to even get into the tailgate area. It was the biggest sea of people I have ever seen pre-show and yet somehow even less ethnically diverse than a Phish crowd. It was also extremely noticeable how much older the crowd skewed here vs Santa Clara. I think the ease of the tickets to SC enabled anyone that wanted to go to get in cheaply (including young folk that weren't making the pilgrimage as much as going to check out something fun to do). Conversely Chicago was a ticket and destination planned much more for the heads. If you had extras they were more likely to go to your deadhead (white, old, male) buddies.
Pingel set up a dope spot in the south parking lot to tailgate. Try and find us there if you can, pm or text and I will have a better idea later of where we spot up. Would love to see as many people as possible.
It was a bit of a clusterfuck getting in but we finally got settled in the club level and was able to give dancing mike, Chachi, Sharon and Jaclyn a huge preshow hug. Time to head to our seats....section 209, row 1. Big shout out of thanks and gratitude to Gregor for the huge hook up. I think we have the best seats in the stadium for this run. Love you Ali!!!
At big stadium shows it's important to be surrounded by cool folks. We especially enjoyed the company of Roger and his wife and their friend - New York phish heads. Their friends husband was battling cancer but asked Roger to take his wife to GD50 for them and show them a good time. The one song she really wanted to hear was ripple...
The stadium was packed with people. I don't think I have ever been to a single show with that many people. It was crazy how many people had congregated at Soldier Field for this historic run. Also noticeable was the pit - it must've been at least 3x bigger than Santa Clara. Initially I wanted pit tickets but was so stoked to end up where we ended up. Honestly the pit and floor just looked like a clusterfuck.
Music (for those that skipped ahead here are my thoughts about the show)...
First set opens with Box of Rain, the final song ever played by the true Grateful Dead at Soldier Field in 1995. While a fitting way to open the show up, either the band is in a complete bubble, they are throwing a giant FU or they just don't give a care because they opened with Phil singing. I'm sorry but it's like awful karaoke night at the Lamp Lighter. Dudes vocals are atrocious. Not the best tone setter for the set. However they quickly recovered and threw down for me what I thought was a very solid set of music. In Jack Straw the band (read: Trey) started to find their groove and then big red took the lead and crushed (even singing - thank goodness) Bertha. You could feel the entire 200 level section moving up and down like old school MSG. It was awesome. The Wheel was a crowd favorite sing along (and the number one song JW wanted to hear) then Crazy Fingers!!! Which was awesome and the first time all night I noticed the keyboards. The Music Never Stopped closed out the set absolutely hosed by trey. Epic performance by the best in the business.... Trey Anastasio. You would have to be deaf, dumb, blind or just a hater to ignore how special a performer Trey is right now. A Jedi at the absolute peak of his game. The best in the business. Makes everyone better. Providing triple doubles (shredding, jamming, singing) night after night. So happy and proud of Trey.
During yet another long ass set break I wandered the halls of the club level bumping into many friends from all over the world. Good times to catch a breath, take a piss and talk story with friends and pham.
Set break music was again incredible - in Santa Clara we were trying to shazzam it but nothing came up. Last week I read that Neil Casal specifically wrote new material just for the set break music. It was awesome. Neil is currently a top 5 favorite guitar player of mine. Loved his work with the Cardinals for Ryan Adams, truly love his playing for The Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Hard Working Americans. Anyway really enjoyable set break music set to lots of cool videos including some Scuba videos.
Set break music: https://m.soundcloud.com/sam-boos-2/sets/gd50-intermission
Side bar cool story: my pops retired to hawaii 20 years ago and got an advanced scuba masters or something at one of only two certified "Grateful Diver" dive shops. After Jerry kicked the drugs for the last time he chased that high by diving. Anyway the divers at Jacks in Kona told a story about taking 5 guys out diving and they had never seen anything like it - wherever one guy moved, the others followed right in line. When the dive was over the guys commented that they had never seen anything like that and asked what they did for a living. It was Jerry leading the boys on a journey in the deep ether of the ocean. Makes total sense now of course. And too bad the guys in the band don't give trey the same respect...but I digress.
Second set started. Now this is where if you don't have anything nice to say you should keep your mouth shut. But as you can see from the previous 555,555 words that isn't my style. Another train wreck Phil on lead vocals of just a weird and IMO horrible call to open the second set. They were losing the crowd quickly. Scarlet -> Fire had potential to bring it back with Trey again taking the lead and crushing the song. The crowd sing along was the highlight of the set for me (anything to not hear Phil again please) and the energy was back in the building. All things considered not a bad segue into fire but then an absolute disaster of an ending preceding drums - the energy left the stadium quickly. The band doesn't have a leader (Bobby and Phil can't get along, Trey is being so respectful and not stepping on anyone's toes) and therefore no one to call the songs end and thus the fire disaster at the end of the tune. And then Drums. Not grandpa deadheads drums at all again, more modern sounding. However as typical with Drums -> Space they lost most of the crowd, Jar said they should just take another actual intermission because that's basically what this was. Then an extra long space (back to no leader - even the guys in the band didn't know what to do) eventually morphing into a very underwhelming New Potato. Then back into Space. It takes years and years of practicing and listening to be successful at jamming. These guys have only played together a few times and last night that was evident when they tried to jam. Maybe it was cool but they had lost the crowd at Drums and this wasn't helping. At one point Roger said "Play a song. Any song will do!" And then they continued to "jam". At this point I sent a text to a friend, and I quote, "Sorry but this set is fucking terrible." The fact I was checking my phone during an actual show - usually a cardinal sin, something I never do for many reasons including Chachi red carding me - shows how much they had lost me during this part of the show.
Let it grow, then the Help/Slipknot/Franklins brought some of the "fire" back featuring great work by Trey and Chimenti but for me it was too little too late. During that set I kept thinking that this was like watching LeBron in the most recent NBA finals. (Note: early Jordan also a good comp but my recent memory is much better than my later memory). Trey, like LeBron, carried a team of guys who just don't have IT anymore to within a few games of greatness. He gave his all to this team for these performances but while the players on stage around him are legends they just aren't that good anymore. And they really aren't a team. Thank water he is about to get back to playing with his dream team line-up.
However what Trey is doing is absolutely incredible and without him these shows would be an absolute train wreck. I have ZERO interest in seeing the core four with anyone other than Trey. And based on the crowds reaction - anytime Trey was shredding, you could feel the vibe of the room change entirely - I am not alone. Sorry not sorry for being a Phish phluffer.
However what Trey is doing is absolutely incredible and without him these shows would be an absolute train wreck. I have ZERO interest in seeing the core four with anyone other than Trey. And based on the crowds reaction - anytime Trey was shredding, you could feel the vibe of the room change entirely - I am not alone. Sorry not sorry for being a Phish phluffer.
We had a good view of stage right and after putting their instruments down I saw Phil and Trey embrace with a huge hug. This made me happy. The Ripple closer was very special for the people next to us but more than anything made me miss Jerry. Overall I had a great time but musically - in my not so humble opinion, MEH.
Post show was chaos trying to leave soldier although I managed to find a quick exit by accident. I got split up from everyone and eventually rented one of those bikes to ride to house of blues. Was quite enjoyable actually. At House of Blues we had a blast, foundation room for drinks and then moe. (who generally I can take or leave) threw down a great two set late night show. Outside of being gay for Trey and the energy at Soldier Field, moe. was a better show than GD50. The clock struck 4:00 and it was time to call it a night, although the guy lighting fireworks outside the hotel didn't think so.
Peace and love and Happy 4th of July!!!
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