Sept. 27, 1973 Review: The Grateful Dead at the Aud again

 

This was my third dalliance with The Dead in 1973. They previously played the Aud on March 31. That was the better concert. They also were at the Watkins Glen racetrack at the end of July. I was at the Glen, but that was more of a news assignment than a reviewing gig. 

Sept. 27, 1973

Chill Prevails Despite the Grateful Dead 

          It was as if the hot, glorious summer of ’73 had come back Wednesday to plant a farewell kiss on Buffalo.

          And here were the darlings of that summer – the Grateful Dead – winding up the tour that took them through the Watkins Glen festival, ready to share that sweet recollection, summer ’73 one last time in Memorial Auditorium.

          For that, one could willingly wait too long for the doors to open with some 14,000 other souls, be wary of the plainclothes police checks in the men’s rooms, stare at a couple of Hell’s Angels and endure the sticky, psychedelic, sweating anarchy of settling in while Doug Sahm’s Band opened the show.

          Sahm, the Texan of Sir Douglas Quintet fame, slicked over some blues and puffed “Mendocino” into a marshmallow. Big tours, big backup bands sometimes can blind a man to the essentials.

* * *

BY THE TIME The Dead came on, there were three options left for anyone who hadn’t settled in yet – standing at the rear of the floor, squeezing in with other hordes in the box seats (the reserved section was chaos) or sprawling in the high seats at the far end.

          This reviewer took the latter and was rewarded with two discoveries – the first being a leak in the ceiling (it stopped) and the second being the wonderful intricacies of The Dead’s lighting (continuous).

          The bandstand was bathed in all the fascinating hues of a mistuned color TV – red musicians and purple stage, orange stage and green musicians, iridescents glowing on silhouettes in the darkness.

          The Dead cast its first numbers onto the throng quietly, as if to invoke a special flame from a sacred lamp. After 45 minutes or so, it started to glow, round about when the lights came down low for the first Bob Weir solo. A red rose on black velvet.

* * *

IT GREW to the familiar strains of the old Marty Robbins gunfighter ballad, “El Paso,” and the go-for-broke gumption of “The Race Is On (And Here Comes Heartache),” ending the first set with a righteous early ‘60s rocker, “The Joint Was A-Rockin’.” (Actually, Chuck Berry's "Around and Around" from 1958.)

          The first level of awareness having come so easily, leading off the second set with “Playing in the Band” was a deft stroke of universal intimacy, bring the crowd into THAT trip so soon. It was ready.

          Then things got weird. The dark electronics in that ectoplasmic break, the sudden sinister turn into The Dead’s darkest depth – the void, the void that chases them through all those songs about gambling and being on the road at sunrise.

          Nobody recovered from that look into the void. The Dead, realizing they’d have to put the roses back on that grinning skeleton they use as a symbol, turned into the picaresque “Me and My Uncle,” but it turned out to be a stopgap, like government officials playing for time in front of Watergate.

* * *

THE SUDDEN sobriety lifted temporarily for “Truckin’,” it had to for that Buffalo verse (cheers again), and the stage turned green and orange and the glittering ball came on to fill the hall with a whirling shimmer of tiny spotlights – the first high point of their concert here last March.

          But it fell again as The Dead previewed new material with two hornmen who, when they didn’t sound like stray mariachi players, added a brassy edge to the tawny slink of the group’s expensively electronic sound.

          The new tunes were minor-keyed and harsh. One spoke of the end of summer and the coming of autumn. It didn’t set well after the void. One wondered if this superannuated Dead has become too big and unwieldy.

          There were boredom, discouragement and defections from the ranks long before a final swing into the delights of “Sugar Magnolia,” one more try to rescue a farewell that got too heavy, that got out of their hands. But that old standby couldn’t quite mend things together.

          And so they went off at 12:55 – an hour before everyone knew they’d have to quit. Called back by stubborn applause for an encore, they pulled out “One More Saturday Night,” a neat little good-night bow. Outside, there was a chill in the air, an autumn chill.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Thanks to setlist.fm, here’s the way they played it on Sept. 26. 

Here Comes Sunshine

Beat It on Down the Line

Deal

Looks Like Rain

Tennessee Jed

Mexicali Blues

Loser

Big River

Brown Eyed Woman

The Race Is On

Row Jimmy

El Paso

China Cat Sunflower

I Know You Rider

Around and Around

(intermission)

Playing in the Band

Sing Me Back Home

Me and My Uncle

He’s Gone

Truckin’

Eyes of the World

WRS (Weather Report Suite) Prelude

WRS Part 1

Let It Grow

Sugar Magnolia

(encore)

One More Saturday Night

          This review was flanked by a separate story that listed the names of 21 people arrested at the Aud on marijuana charges. 

It was the end of 10-date jaunt around the East that began Sept. 7 in Nassau Coliseum on Long Island and was known as “The Horn Tour,” since eight of the dates featured two members of Doug Sahm’s band – saxophone and flute player Martin Fierro and trumpeter Joe Ellis. The rest of the lineup was Garcia, Weir and Lesh, along with Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux on keyboards and vocals, respectively, and Bill Kreutzmann on drums.

Although both sets ended with the same cluster of songs two nights earlier in Pittsburgh, there were a dozen differences in the other numbers they played. And in Pittsburgh, no encore. When they returned to the road Oct. 19 in Oklahoma City, the horns were gone and the song list was shorter.