Lola and I hop in the Jeep for the short ride downtown to the Orpheum Theater where Bob Weir and Ratdog are playing tonight. A journey not exactly like the time Jim Rose and I hitchhiked from Appleton, Wisconsin to Philadelphia to catch the Grateful Dead at the Spectrum. Tonight we arrive on State Street an hour before the theater doors open and pass the time talking about music with folks who have traveled into Madison for this second night of the band’s spring tour.
When the doors open, Fat Maw Rooney is playing from the second floor landing overlooking the entrance lobby. We walk past them as we head up the stairs to claim front row balcony seats. The Orpheum opened in 1927 and the balcony hangs close to the stage with perfect sight lines. Lola holds our spot while I go back to observe the crowd arrive and experience the music. I saw this Milwaukee band for the first time two weeks ago, so this second time around the sounds have an enjoyable tinge of familiarity. When they finish I grab a beer and head back to Lola in the concert hall.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 8 pm, Bob Weir takes the stage in a blue t-shirt, shorts, sandals and guitar, and the band begins playing while two thousand fans listen and responded back with our own sounds appreciation. "Tennessee Jed" is the third song on the set list and as the music finishes the spirit of the Grateful Dead is completely established in the auditorium. The airwaves bounce and blend with each other into the unique and intensely layered complexity of live music.
Jamie and her husband sit next to us, and at set break Rick and I start drifting into the type of esoteric conceptual conversation that occasionally develops between strangers without any pretense to guard. It begins with the usual stuff about the weirdness of quantum mechanics and somehow drifts into the difference between numbers and words.
There is this reality we experience and there are two ways that people attempt to describe it. I’m inside a huge ornate old building with old red fabric on the chairs and floor, and intricate plaster molding on the walls behind the stage drapes and speakers and wires and lights, trying to explain how math is good for refining the validity of the words we choose, but useless for capturing the essence of our understanding of life.
Ratdog begins the second set with Weir singing “Me and Bobby McGee” which is forever about Janis, and he follows shortly thereafter with “Come Together” by John Lennon. I don’t know if it is tribute or adoration, but it is the first time Ratdog performed this old Beatles classic and the crowd is awestruck at the brilliance. What is the smallest aspect of a continuum? It is not perfection. It may be the optimum, the point where a wave reaches it highest deviation above the norm before returning back towards the whole. The show closes with “Sugar Magnolia” which is absolutely appropriate.
Afterwards Lola and I eat Gyros and Fries at the Parthenon because it is tradition when closing down State Street and with that act another Tuesday night concludes in Wisconsin.
When the doors open, Fat Maw Rooney is playing from the second floor landing overlooking the entrance lobby. We walk past them as we head up the stairs to claim front row balcony seats. The Orpheum opened in 1927 and the balcony hangs close to the stage with perfect sight lines. Lola holds our spot while I go back to observe the crowd arrive and experience the music. I saw this Milwaukee band for the first time two weeks ago, so this second time around the sounds have an enjoyable tinge of familiarity. When they finish I grab a beer and head back to Lola in the concert hall.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 8 pm, Bob Weir takes the stage in a blue t-shirt, shorts, sandals and guitar, and the band begins playing while two thousand fans listen and responded back with our own sounds appreciation. "Tennessee Jed" is the third song on the set list and as the music finishes the spirit of the Grateful Dead is completely established in the auditorium. The airwaves bounce and blend with each other into the unique and intensely layered complexity of live music.
Jamie and her husband sit next to us, and at set break Rick and I start drifting into the type of esoteric conceptual conversation that occasionally develops between strangers without any pretense to guard. It begins with the usual stuff about the weirdness of quantum mechanics and somehow drifts into the difference between numbers and words.
There is this reality we experience and there are two ways that people attempt to describe it. I’m inside a huge ornate old building with old red fabric on the chairs and floor, and intricate plaster molding on the walls behind the stage drapes and speakers and wires and lights, trying to explain how math is good for refining the validity of the words we choose, but useless for capturing the essence of our understanding of life.
Ratdog begins the second set with Weir singing “Me and Bobby McGee” which is forever about Janis, and he follows shortly thereafter with “Come Together” by John Lennon. I don’t know if it is tribute or adoration, but it is the first time Ratdog performed this old Beatles classic and the crowd is awestruck at the brilliance. What is the smallest aspect of a continuum? It is not perfection. It may be the optimum, the point where a wave reaches it highest deviation above the norm before returning back towards the whole. The show closes with “Sugar Magnolia” which is absolutely appropriate.
Afterwards Lola and I eat Gyros and Fries at the Parthenon because it is tradition when closing down State Street and with that act another Tuesday night concludes in Wisconsin.
