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ZONE
OUT with the ROLLING RIDER
This
Week: Sun and Phun
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4-14-01
Sunrise Music Theatre - Ft. Lauderdale
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'only love can phil...'
Kudos to the Sunrise Music Theatre for providing camping in the lot to the phaithful. Not only did it extend our Friday the 13th phun, it generated even more excitement for Saturday night -- and, Phil and Friends certainly did not disappoint.
Saturday night was easily the hidden treasure of our three night journey in Phlorida. Our friends sauntered onstage like apparitions, and at once the strings of the golden lyre seemed to play all alone.
Within a few moments, the Garcia intro of 'Comes a Time' penetrated our brains, and it was apparent that those on hand were in for a surreal experience. Although rare, those first bars are our own...'from day to day, just lettin' it ride, you get so far away, from how it feels inside...' rang so very true.
The dreamy version of 'Comes-a', sung by Warren, was followed by a confident and resplendent version of 'Eyes of the World'. Liquid and silvery, wings a mile long carried us into the completion of one of the best 'triples' I've ever enjoyed: Warren's impeccable rendition of Brent Mydland's classic, 'Just a Little Light'. Perhaps no song brings as much heart and soul to the table as this number, a showcase for Warren's knack at conjuring up Brent's essence. A working class hero...literally, 'a soldier, in the armies of the night'.
Rob Barracco led us into a rollicking 'Help on the Way', and the Florida heads revelled in it. 'Slipknot' melted into a spacey jam, sending us out onto the periphery of even psychedelic rock, and closer to intergalactic languages being exchanged and woven into our psyche. Suddenly, and without warning, Phil led the troops back down the cascading notes of 'Slipknot', and into the surging winds blowing through 'Franklin's Tower'. 'Wildflower seed in the sand and wind...'
After a brilliant first set, Phil and his Friends did not let up. Teeming with anticipation, the crowd was blasted into 'Viola Lee Blues', a song that somehow is at once dripping with nostalgia, and yet rife with tantalizingly fresh licks. Phil may have found it's sister song in 'Golden Road', and the Phlorida crowd was bouncing off the very walls as they echoed the sentiments, 'everybody's dancin' in a ring around the sun, nobody's finished, we ain't even begun...'; of course, after some impressive guitar work by Mr. Jimmy Herring, we revisted viola blues to the delight of the phans.
Slowing things down a to a pin-drop, Warren gave all he had to a much-appreciated rendition of 'Wharf Rat'. It can't be disputed that Warren got the green light time after time in Florida, called on to sing as Jer, Brent, Warren, and more -- a sometimes daunting task. Although I love Warren, and credit him with navigating the ship of the sun through some unsteady waters as well as some dark storms, it felt an awful lot like 'Warren and Friends'.
Personally, it left me at times hoping for more Rob Barracco, and always more Phil. Also, wouldn't brother Bruce Hornsby, recently departed from the Other Ones, make a nice addition of the accordian and baby grand singing his faves like 'Rat', 'Black Muddy', 'Scarlet', etc. If it wasn't for Barracco's consistently amazing piano riffs...
Reading my mind, Rob led the band into a booming version of 'I Know you Rider'. Although there wasn't even a trickle of Colorado rain anywhere near the sweltering state of Phlorida, the crowd reached a state of bliss. The band, reciprocally on a high, collapsed into the only possible tune they could play: 'Dark Star'. They had reached that point in a show, like Jerry and the Dead had many times, that simply called for 'Dark Star'.
Within the 'transitive nightfall', Warren showed us a 'thousand stars', another Hunter tune, which segued flawlessly back into 'Dark Star'. All that was left for a basically perfect Saturday night was the arrow through the heart: the coveted 'Box of Rain' encore, a glorious way to end the two-night opening run.
'...It's just a box of rain I don't know who put it there, believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare...'
yours truely,
Rolling Rider .....
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