I just moved to Chicago. After years fighting my way through kitchens until the point I’m at. I’ve listened to a lot of Dead. Billy and the kids moved me during the pandemic. So, with Anthony Hamilton at the helm things are always very tight. Russo can drum a beat like a mother fucker.
This entire show has extreme energy. You can hear it come through in their playing. The same spirit that generates the dead’s soul. Hamilton knows how to reign it in. The transitions are smooth and give you time to reflect.
New Speedway was especially memorable with the smooth spacey transition into Bird Song. It’s funny as a dead head that grew up after Jerry’s death, my one critique is always bird song. I think it lacks at times in the sense of creativity. The lyrics of Robert Hunter are almost always beautiful. They make you reflect on your time here in the spatial confines of perception. And that’s beautiful but often times Jerry loses me in Bird Song. This version is so well timed and done with such rhythmic harmony that I was entranced.
And to end with an encore like Born to Run. Unexpected and truly capturing the moments when a band can transform even if they are only covering jams. It’s the delivery and motive that counts here and how much fun it would of been to be there.
EI
