It has been becoming increasingly obvious that the old format whereby a band played a fifty-minute spot of their best-known numbers was becoming tiresome and uninspired but the Dead have taken things to the other extreme.
Somehow it seems that there is no beginning or end to their programme and their approach is relaxed to the point of becoming languid.
What they do is often impeccable and their musicians – like bass player Phil Lesh and Garcia himself - play with a refinement in which there is more discretion than valour.
It is a good band which has knit together with the kind of intuitive playing which one would expect from six years on the road but on Thursday they seldom smacked me between the ears even with their more ebullient Chuck Berry-inspired rock and rollers.
It seems pointless to refer to any particular song because they played almost everything which has ever been associated with them and they played it well. Bob Weir is a far better vocalist live than I had expected.
Their reception was excellent from an audience who appreciated every move and cheered all the better-known songs. I can imagine that there are occasions and atmosphere which really 'charge' the Dead with some kind of special magic but it was not conjured on Thursday – perhaps one other night – perhaps you can have too much of a good thing?
The New Riders of the Purple Sage were the support band and they did their job well – easy listening, good time and right down the middle country band in which Buddy Cage excels on pedal guitar and John Dawson handles his own songs with care. Their new album title Powerglide sums them up well.
(by Keith Altham, from the New Musical Express, June 3, 1972)
See also other Lyceum reviews:
Altham found them good but not thrilling..."relaxed to the point of becoming languid." Though the playing was impeccable and refined, it didn't "smack me between the ears."
ReplyDeletePart of this may be since the show's length just wore him out: "too much of a good thing." This was before the Dead had much of a setlist structure (other than having the big jam somewhere in the second set, and ending with a rocker), so his impression that the show was just going on and on for four hours is understandable. And I don't get the feeling he was really into their music.
He had not seen them before; the rest of the audience seemed to appreciate them more than he did. His suspicion that this was not a "magic" night is hard to define, since he didn't have other nights to compare to. But even by E72 standards it was an excellent show.
The date is tricky. He starts by saying that he saw the first show of the run, then says several times that he saw the "Thursday" show. But the first night was Tuesday the 23rd, so it's possible he actually saw Thursday the 25th.