Dead & Company Concert Recap at Wrigley Field Larry Mishkin gives a solo recap of the Dead and Company show at Wrigley Field. Larry praises the band's performance, particularly highlighting John Mayer's guitar skills. He discusses the setlist and the energetic atmosphere among Deadheads at the show, emphasizing the joy of being among fellow fans. Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-show Larry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin Jay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesberg Recorded on Squadcast
Dead & Company Concert Recap at Wrigley Field
Larry Mishkin gives a solo recap of the Dead and Company show at Wrigley Field. Larry praises the band's performance, particularly highlighting John Mayer's guitar skills. He discusses the setlist and the energetic atmosphere among Deadheads at the show, emphasizing the joy of being among fellow fans.
Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-show
Larry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin
Jay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesberg
Larry:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Deadhead Cannabis Show. I'm Larry Mishkin of Mishkin Law in Chicago. Coming to you solo today from lovely Chicago in a rare break of tradition. We are taping on Saturday this week, which means I get to tell you all about the Dead and Company show last night at Wrigley Field, night one of a two-night run. Lots to talk about, but whenever I see Dead and Company as good as they may be, it always makes me hungry for the Grateful Dead. So I was happy to come home from the show last night and spend an hour or two spinning some dead tunes and finally came up with a show for this week from June 12th, 1992, Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, New York. And, uh, from the Grateful Dead 31 years ago today, Dan, let's hit the intro. Well, that is of course Sugary, one of my favorite Grateful Dead tunes and I know it was always one of the dead's favorite tunes and everybody likes a good sugary, shake it sugary and I'm going to try and track as closely as I can some of the tunes that I heard Dead and Company play last night. Sugary, they opened the second set with and was certainly one of the highlights of the evening as John Mayer showed us his real guitar chops on that one. sang it with a lot of energy. The band I thought came out strong, both sets and we'll get into the specifics of that in a minute. But this is of course Sugaria as I say from 1992 at the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, New York. Summer of 92 was some great shows that you've heard Rob and I probably had nauseam talk about having seen the dead in Las Vegas in May of 92. Me with the infamous Alex Batchelor party and Rob just because he knows a good Dead show when he sees one with Steve Miller and we've talked about that show a lot but this was right after that one and the boys were still hot and really moving and in this instance the Sugary comes in as the second song of the show but last night they opened up the second set with it and you know that's a fun place to see Sugary. I did the Grateful Dead, never played it to open up the second set and they may have played it once or twice to open up the show. I'm just trying to think like a half step sugary or something like that maybe feels like a stranger sugary. But I always kind of like it at the end of a set because they really jam and jam and jam it out on the end and it's a great tune to hear in that position and it was really just a lot of fun last night. As I say they were really hot on sugary and they did a really good job. Circling back around to the top of the show. uh... and you know i gotta give these guys credit there they're starting right on time right this ticket said six thirty six forty they're out there playing uh... they basically played for an hour and fifteen or twenty minutes right up till eight o'clock took a very short set break any musicians these days let alone the grateful dead who are infamous for their hour plus set breaks and this one was just about thirty five minutes long And so, you know, then they came back out and played all the way till 10.30, actually with the encore, till about 10.35 or so. And you know, with a curfew of 11 o'clock, they managed to give us a four-hour concert and still come in well ahead of the deadline. I like to think that the Dead and the Good Old Days would have jammed right up to that deadline. But, you know, this is not that band. This is a dead cover band, one of the better ones out there. And I say that half-jokingly, but I think people who listen to Jay Rad and have seen them live would certainly feel strongly about including them in the discussion. Phil, when joined by the right people on stage, I think has to be part of that discussion as well. But certainly when you have Bob and Mickey playing in the same band, unfortunately, again, no Billy, still no word on why, what about the creative differences or why he wasn't there. But you know, you're going to it with the right expectations and why not Oteal Burberry is a legendary jam band based player. He's played with the very best. you know, never disappoints when he's up there. He's always got his Prince shaped, Prince symbol shaped guitar, uh, bass, which always kind of cracks me up a little bit, but he, he brings it to the table so he can, he can use whatever he wants. And of course, Jeff Commenty and, um, you know, Commenty is just, is really, really great. Um, it's, you know, had the dead found him a little bit sooner, uh, you know, it, maybe it's, you know, it's possible to think that he might've, uh, been, Brent's replacement instead of Vince, who by the way is playing on this show and I think plays very, very well on that sugary and we'll hear a couple of other spots where Vince really lays it down well too. But Jeff Commenti is just an exceptional, exceptional keyboardist and he never disappoints and now he sings a little bit even and you know just very well rounded, very evenly balanced and I was talking to my good buddy Joel at the show last night and we were agreeing that but he does definitely remind us of Brent and does it the same way. So, yeah, this is a debtting company doing their thing. Everybody rocking and rolling, big crowds ahead of time, a local Uncle Blotto band played right outside of the stadium. They've got Wrigley Field built up now with all these little family attractions and stuff, which on dead weekends, the deadheads take over. It's kind of fun, like I've talked about in the past, to be down at Wrigley Field. The emphasis is not on baseball. It's on the grateful, dead and fun. So everybody can come together, whether you're a Cardinals fan or a Cubs fan, whoever they might be. And, you know, just a beautiful evening and started at 73 by the time the show ended. It was 68. It was clear. It was lovely. We went back to our good friends, John and Marnie's, afterwards. They live nearby. And as always, they were gracious and wonderful hosts. The hospitality never stopped. And we had a great, great time. I was at the show last night with my very good buddy, Chris, and his good buddy, Ken, who's now one of my good buddies. And my aforementioned buddy Joel, who we often see at shows from time to time, got to spend some time with my buddy John and my buddy JT. So it's always kind of nice, these hometown shows, and you get a chance to really hang out with your friends at these things and much more relaxed and laid back. By the end of the night, you can drive home and be in your own bed, even if that works out to be about 4, 30, or 5 o'clock in the morning. But if you're going to go see Dead and Company, I think it's in... Well, I don't even know what the word is. It's necessary sometimes to be in the right frame of mind. The only problem with the right frame of mind is then sometimes it's a little more difficult to fall asleep in bed at the end of the evening. But eventually, after some late night show planning and everything for today, I managed to kick back and knock out. So. The boys came right out of the box last night playing in the band, which is just a great opener for this band in my opinion. It's a Bobby song. It's a traditional Bobby song. Everyone knows it. Everyone loves it. There's very few ways that Bobby can change it enough to make it not as much fun as it used to be. And it's just a great opening jam to really stretch out on for about the first 10, 12 minutes of the show. And they did not disappoint on that, I thought, with the sun shining. Bobby with his tan looking like a 75 year old rock star up on stage with his well trimmed body from his infamous, or famous I suppose, workouts that he always posts on YouTube with other great rock and rollers who he corrals in to do that kind of stuff with. But he came out really jamming on it and it was a great plane in the band and then a real treat they went straight into Deal with John singing. And of course Deal is a traditional set closer. It's an original Jerry Garcia tune. The Dead have played it forever and I would say 99.9% of the times I heard it, it was closing out the first set. I suppose it's possible I heard it somewhere else in the set list once or twice, although I don't have any clear recollection of that. Back in the day when they first started playing it, it wasn't uncommon to see it bouncing around in the set list. But I would assume that for most of the people who were at that show last night, especially the ones who were old enough like me to have actually seen The Grateful Dead. To us, it's such a strange place to see this song, and yet so fun and creative and inventive. John was really sailing along on that one too. I thought his guitar playing all night was exceptional. Bobby having fun with it. Mickey back there drumming. Like I say, in the 70s, everybody's in their shorts and this and that. Bobby's wearing sporting the capris like he always does. They show Mickey and he's wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and gloves. I felt bad, I'm like, I hope, definitely, I've got an older dad, I know how it can be, everybody's boiling hot and they're freezing cold. But give Mickey credit, he was out there all night, he was a heavy, heavy participant in drums where he remains the master in terms of percussion and all of the studying and experimenting that he's done over the years. And it's wonderful to see Mickey up there, still banging away. He's got the gloves and the rubber sticks, I think, to help avoid the vibrations so much in the arms. Then if he was accompanied on the other drum kit by Jay Lane. Jay Lane has obviously played with these guys a lot. He's very, very talented. It's nice to have Jay Lane there because when they flash him on the screen, he looks like the scruffy, kind of long-haired drummer who you envision as a rock and roll band drummer and even somebody for... like that in company, the way Mickey used to look 30 years ago. And so J. Lane is always a welcomed addition and really made a point of letting the fans know that he was there. Deal spilled into Tennessee Jed, very lively, very upbeat, great sing-along tune. And then I thought one of the real treasures of the night was the song, It Hurts Me Too, a Jerry song. This time sung by again John Mayer and he did a great time and actually I should say Pig Pen sang it originally. Jerry picked it up for a while. It didn't get played very much in the regular rotations and it's a nice kind of back catalog tune for those guys to pull out and play a lot of good blues in of course the city of Chicago, a blues town and very well received by the crowd. Again, just another crowd pleaser. Everybody knows it. Everybody can sing along with it. Bobby doing all the appropriate emphasis and all that, although my buddy Joel and I did remarked it on the goodbye mama and papa line when Jerry would always give it that really deep growl. Bobby just doesn't quite get there. But that's the Jerry part of it. So the rest of the tune was fun, played well. And then they went in to this next one, which I have a clip from 1992. So let's play it and then we'll go back and talk about it in the show I saw. Brown Eyed Woman, another one of those real crowd pleasers. And in this version that we just hear Jerry on the top of his game, really sounding great, good guitar licks. And the Brown Eyed Woman, I think that deadheads expect to hear when the boys hop into that tune. Contrasting with the Brown Eyed Woman last night, very good song, very well played, not quite the same. A lot of good energy. And I'm just going to throw this out there now because it's the proverbial elephant in the room with a lot of our deadhead friends. And that's the real question of, you know, how seriously do we take dead and co in terms of, um, when they're playing songs or do we, do we judge their songs in any kind of context? Do we say, well, it's good for dead and co, not good for the grateful dead. And here's the best answer that I can give to anybody. Um, It's one step up from throwing starving bone, a starving tiger rubber bone, right? It's what you're looking for. Being back in Wrigley Field last night with 40,000 deadheads was wonderful. Waiting in line to get in and everybody talking and laughing and reminiscing and inside all night everybody hugging, fist bumping. It was a love fest. People were just happy to be among other deadheads. with original Grateful Dead band members up on the stage playing their hearts out. And that to me is good enough. That's why I go. I love that atmosphere. I love that crowd. I love the people I bump into. I love the people I can see from afar. I love to find a few twirlers just to watch them like the good old days. Love to watch the younger people there who are having their first experiences. And oh my God, they just played this song that I've been waiting to hear forever. We all know that feeling, we're all there at one time, and it's nice to see people, especially folks who come in who never had a chance to see The Grateful Dead and therefore find this music in some ways much more relevant, like all of us saw the Allman Brothers without Dwayne Allman forever, or any of the guys from the band who didn't quite make it out of the 1970s. I never apologized to anybody for loving a newer version of the Allman Brothers. It wasn't the same, right? I'm sure people who saw Dwayne would tell you, well, Derek Trucks is great and Warren Haynes is great, but Dwayne was Dwayne. I'm sure he was. I have no doubt about it, but he wasn't around for me to see. Lowell George died before I could see Little Feet, but every Little Feet show that I saw I loved and had a great time at. So it should be for... people who never had a chance to see the Grateful Dead versions with Jerry and all of that. This is their opportunity to see Dead shows. This is their Dead band. The guys up on stage are playing their hearts out and really giving it their all. You can see this, that everyone is having a good time and happy to be up there just one note and the entire crowd recognizes it and goes wild. I think it's good feedback like it always is, the interaction and the interplay between the two. band and the crowd and the crowd of the band. And it's just at the end of the day, it's a great experience. We were sitting in a baseball stadium on a beautiful summer night watching guys from a band that was so influential on all of our lives. And here they are coming back to town to give us one more little taste of it as they shuffle off to wherever Den and Company is shuffling off to after this tour is done. But it was just, it was great to see them. And we'll dive back into that in a minute. But the other thing I wanna do is I wanna talk now. Last week, our strain of the week was pre-98 Bubba Kush. This week it's Jack Carrere. And at the show last night, I had the opportunity to sample some very, very good Jack Carrere. We've talked about Jack on the show before, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, his book on everybody's. illogical attack on the marijuana industry and on marijuana and why, you know, when we stop and like the emperor is not wearing clothes and we all look at it, you know, in the light of day in reality, we see what most of us see, which is that it's a substance, any substance can be abused, but at least if you abuse this substance, it won't kill you. And you know, Jack was a real leader in the industry and in the legalization movement. And he's always worked very, very hard towards that goal. And it was only appropriate that he should get a strain named after him. And Jack Carrere is typically a sativa dominant hybrid strain that is wonderful for creativity, for some energy, stimulates appetite very well. And I can say was a wonderful choice for Denningco last night in beautiful Wrigley field to kind of help monitor things. keep us all on the straight and narrow. But it's fun to talk about strains because sometimes we just kind of take them for granted. They all have deep, deep histories or some of them are just brand new, but like I say, Jack Herrera has been around forever. And we'll talk about Jack on the show again sometime in the future. But for right now, it's just important to know that if you can get your hands on some Jack Herrera, I highly recommend it. It's really, really fun. Pre-98 Bubba Kush, it's one of the old guards, right? It's one of the ones that's been around for a while and is really, really well known. And sometimes, even like Blue Dream, it's just nice to get back to the basics. Or as my good buddy, One-Armed Larry would say, back to the roots and taste it again for the first time. So, Jack Herrera really made the scene last night. Everybody around me, at least, was very happy with it. And now I just have to go see. whether there's enough of a supply in the Illinois dispensaries or not to keep it going. Because once you start finding a new strain that you like, it's hard to just put it down and roll on to the next one. You like to play that one out for a little while until you're ready to find a new one in a couple of weeks or whatever it might be. But certainly to go see a debting company show, Jack Carrera was the call for the day and one that I would, again, strongly recommend for anyone who is interested. in that kind of thing. Before I forget, I would like to also take this opportunity to give a nice, loud, happy birthday shout out to our producer, Dan Humiston, who probably turns like 29 or 30 today, although he's probably laughing in its much larger number, but I don't really know what that number is. So I'm just going to be polite and say 29 or 30. But Dan, of course, is the force that makes this whole show move. So we can't thank him enough. And it's always nice to be able to recognize his birthday. and let all of our listeners be able to celebrate with him from wherever they might be at 420 or whatever time is appropriate for you. Also wanna give a shout out to my wife, Judy, my good friend, Andy. The two of them are traveling with Amy and Lori and they're all out in George Washington at the Gorge. Last night they saw Brandy Carlisle, the first night of a Brandy Carlisle. And quite honestly, it's not that I have or have not been a big Brandi Carlile fan. I happen to like Brandi Carlile and my wife has certainly gotten me into her a lot more. But what I like about Brandi Carlile is when she does a show, she really does a show. They were all going out primarily spurred on by the fact that tonight, this Saturday night, June 10th, Brandi will be playing with legendary Joni Mitchell. really is just an amazing and amazing, really. Can't say enough great things about Joanie Mitchell as a musician and as a personality in the rock and roll industry. She's been around forever. She's had her hookups with some of the famous band, some of the famous rock and rollers, or maybe they've been able to have a hookup with her, depending on how you want to look at it. But either way, she's an integral part of this industry and has some of the... legendary albums and very legendary songs and Brandi Carlile really has taken an interest in Joni and Has played with her a few times and it was a big Presentation for Joni. I believe this year at the Grammy Awards that Brandi Carlile helped organize her at least I get her out on stage So we'll all want to be hearing and it'll be our show not be our show next week Where I'll be able to give everyone a quick update of that, but I can't tell you that the show on Friday night Brandi was joined on stage by Sarah McLachlan, Solis, Marcus Mumford, Open, Taylor Goldschmidt was there, Luscious was there, and Annie Lennox. Now, I was a big Eurythmics fan and really, really like Annie Lennox and think she's just another amazing talent, just a tremendous voice and a great rock and roll mojo. And that's just so cool that Brandi is so respected in the industry that she can get all these different talents to come join her. up in George Washington, which is what, I don't know, two, three hours east, I believe, of Seattle. So not necessarily the easiest place to get to, and even for Joni for that matter. But Brandy's got the energy and she's got the drive, and it's just great that my wife and Andy and Amy and Lori all get to go out there and see this and experience it firsthand, and would be very interested to hear the stories afterwards. find out just how special it was. So shout out to them as well. So going through the show from last night then, we'll get back to that here. And we left off with The Brown Eyed Woman. So then after Brown Eyed Woman, I thought was the most interesting part of the night because they played Crazy Fingers. And to me, Crazy Fingers is one of those tunes that's kind of like almost a back catalog tune for them. And it wasn't that The Dead never played it. but they didn't play it with the same frequency that they played other songs and you could hear it once or twice and never know for sure whether it was back in the repertoire for that tour or not or just an inspiration for Jerry. But I can tell you that whenever they played it, it was always well received by the crowd. Everybody loved it. Jerry kind of tells his own little story in it and the voice gets cracking and emotional in all the right way. And the music itself is just... very, very impressive. Jerry plays it so well. And they played it last night. And Bobby did the singing, which was fine. You know, it's not Jerry, but it was certainly good enough. And John was doing the guitar. And he did a very admirable job. But what amazed me, and I know that I'm just old fashioned when I say this, so forgive me, but people complain all the time about folks who go to rock and roll concerts and sit and talk, right? They're all talking, talking. They're not watching the show, but they are bothering everybody else because the other people are there to listen. And if they wanted talking, they could have gone to a bar and listened to the show on the radio. But look, that's just the way it is. And we're never going to be able to change that. But what I found striking was that on a lot of these songs, there was not a lot of talking because everybody was singing and joining in and cheering and having a great time. And on this one, it was like the entire place tuned out. It was like whatever that song is, they tuned out. And again, you know, my buddy Joel and I were talking about it. We were like, look, if this was the Grateful Dead playing this song and Jerry was up there singing, the entire place would be quiet and everybody would be listening to Jerry because it's such a great tune. But I would say for newer attendees and more recent bus boarders and all of that other kind of stuff, if you don't really have that history, I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to it. I believe it's on Wake of the Flood. And it's just... such a great song and on the album it's beautiful and find examples of it in concert and then you'll listen to it and then it'll be one of those things where you say, oh man, I wish I would have really paid attention to it the other night because this is just such a great song. And then just to show that they were situationally aware, they closed out the set with a very strong dancing in the streets with the breakout line, Dancing in Chicago, which got the crowd certainly pumped up. uh... they jam through it not quite at the same energy level than the entire show was played maybe a bit or two slower than uh... most of us would normally associate with the grateful debtor like to hear it at but this isn't a grateful dad this is further this is dead and co and this is the way you know bobby and mickey and the rest of them have chosen to play it and so it still gets the point across the crowd was having a great time again a beautiful night everybody's in the stadium dancing and Dancing in the streets closed out the first set. So, you know, as I say, it was about an hour, 20, 25 minutes. And it was just tremendous. They came out 45 minutes later, open with Sugary. We talked about that. Went into a very strong estimated profit, which was beautiful, but only disappointing because I knew the other night in St. Louis, they had played Eyes of the World. And so we were not gonna get an estimated eyes, which we didn't. But instead we got a really, really nice long extended jam that eventually slowly made its way into the other one. Although if memory recalls, I think we only got the first verse of the other one. And then the jam on the back end of that made its way into Terrapin Station. And Terrapin is a song that these guys really like to do with John doing the lady with the fan the first part of the song. And then... the inspiration segment from there on out done by Bobby. And again, it's all great. Bobby will always, it's just nothing you can do about it, spits the words out much faster so that it's not in the, the words aren't syllables on the beats like we're used to doing when you sing along. And you kind of have to make up for that a little bit with him, but that's okay. God bless Bobby. You know, he's just having a good time and so are we. The Terrapin was great and it eventually made its way into a drums. It was a very, very long extended drums. Uh, at one point they stopped and I thought that they were moving onto space, but in fact it was just the percussionist moving to some of the toys in the back and just creating some very, very interesting sounds. Uh, Mickey got a very strong ovation on his way off the stage at the end of the drums and into the space, uh, which was by contrast, a very, very short space, not particularly. engaging other than everybody kind of tuning and doing a lot of standing around up there for a minute, which is what space is. And then they went into Estella Blue, which was good, if uninspired. Estella's such a beautiful song, and I'm not going to lie, I just saw Warren sing it with Phil at the Salt Shed here a couple of months ago. And Warren sings it like Jerry. Warren has that emotion. Warren has that growl. Warren has that just reaching down deep inside with the music and everything. And um. Bobby doesn't. You know, and Bobby played it next to Jerry however many times they played it, many, many times. And this is not a slam on Bobby. You know, I'm a big Bob Weir fan. He, I thought really played great last night. He was very also energized, having a lot of fun. But Stella Blue's a tricky tune to play. It, you know, any of these Jerry ballads can be particularly difficult because so much of it was Jerry's personality and the tone of his voice and the flick of his guitar and a note here or there. that just made all the difference in the world. But again, there was a strong effort and there wasn't anything wrong with the version of Stella Blue. It again played probably a little bit slower than we would have liked. And then they got funky because they jumped into Sugar Magnolia. And they're playing Sugar Magnolia and I'm thinking, well, wait a second. This is only the second song out of space. And although there were times later in life when the Grateful Dead would only... would do a set where they'd only have one or two songs coming out of space or maybe two songs into space and three songs on the back end, especially some of those shows when Jerry was not doing as well and they were keeping them shorter. But I thought, boy, that's going to really be cutting us off. And they did a really, really good, strong Sugar Magnolia. And then very interestingly, they jumped into another tune. And let's first listen to it from 1992. So, Sugar Magnolia into Scarlet Pagonias is not unheard of. The very familiar 1979 Farewell to Winterland show that the dead played famously, begins at midnight with the countdown, and launches into a Scarlet Pagonia Sugar Mag. I've seen the dead do that before, where they would come out and open up the second set with Sugar Magnolia, Scarlet, Fire, and then eventually get back to the Sunshine Daydream at the end of the set. So, That was wonderful. And they played it. It was a good Scarlett Pagonius. Scarlett Pagonius is, there's so much that goes into that song that I think it's really hard to copy it entirely. John does an excellent job on the guitar. He does a very passable job on the vocals. And the overall effort is not bad. Not like the Scarlett we were just listening to from 92, but a... strong scarlet and fun because now the possibilities begin except again uh... sometimes you know it sucks to know more than the average fan i'd been paying attention uh... to the saint louis show and they had already played fire on the mountain in saint louis the show before so uh... you know just like we didn't get the eyes of the world we were not getting the uh... fire on the mountain and we didn't uh... instead uh... they took scarlet begonias out and dove into sunshine daydream and sunshine daydream uh... was wonderful as it always is. But when I got home last night and I was putting this together, there was just this feeling of this sense of something was missing. Of course, it was the fire on the mountain because for me, estimated profit is a standalone tune even though it's great to have Eyes of the World follow behind it, estimated shows up in a lot of different places and very frequently not being followed by Eyes of the World. But it's very, very rare. uh... you know from seventy seven or whatever fire on the mountain first was played uh... all the way through the present for you know to get uh... a scarlet without a fire there's even been times when the dead uh... played fire without scarlet uh... most famously i recall in nineteen seventy eight at the uh... egypt shows at the pyramid uh... there's a beautiful one there that uh... they take right into the killer i ko i ko but you know there was no scarlet begonias on the front end of that but i had just you know Can you imagine? You get down to the Sugar Magnolia and then you get a Scarlet Fire. But I got home last night and I needed my fix of Fire on the Mountain and luckily this show from 92 has an excellent Fire on the Mountain and Dan's gonna play it for us right now. boy talk about a nice pail of water man, Fire on the Mountain just brings everything back. It's, you know, I listened to it last night a few times. First just to listen to it once or twice, then to kind of go through and figure out what clip to play. And it's such a wonderful tune. And it really had me thinking that of all of the, you know, famous combinations, China Ryder helps slip Frank, that Scarlet Fire is just far and away the best, my most favorite I should say. And... I think a huge, huge reason of it is because of the Fire on the Mountain. I love Scarlett Begonia's and it's such a happy tune whenever you hear the opening chords of it everybody's just in a great mood. But I love that transition into fire and that opening womp, womp of Jerry's guitar that tells everyone we're moving into Fire on the Mountain at the very beginning, the anticipation of the whole song. And it's just wonderful. This is a great version from 92. And again, we had seen a hot Scarlet Fire the third night of those Las Vegas shows. So no doubt they were on their game with it and really laid down a solid one here in 92 as well as the one they played in St. Louis and give a quick shout out to my brother Steve, cool cousin Brent, my good buddy Lappers who are all at the show and all reported in from St. Louis, very favorable set list. very well played and just showing again that St. Louis is a favorite town of these guys and whenever they go there, they try to make it special Before we dive back into more music I thought probably not a bad idea to just see what's going on in the world of marijuana right now there are some good things happening and One of the best is that Rhode Island the courts in Rhode Island have now expunged 23,000 plus marijuana possession charges as part of the legalization laws mandate for relief, right? So if we're going to make this legal so that people can possess it, that we need to do something about the people who are in jail or who have convictions on their records that's interfering in their life and their ability to get into school or to get jobs or to do what they want to do. And it's nice that when a state says they're going to do it, that they follow up and props to Rhode Island really for not screwing around and getting this taken care of. I'm sure these people are all thrilled, hopefully, for some of them. It's a positive change that will now allow them to move on and do things that they might have been blocked from doing before just because of the fact that they had an arrest and even possibly a conviction for possession. So thank you to Rhode Island for stepping up to the plate on that. In another story that I think is just great and... these stories, I just want to give a shout out to our friends over at Marijuana Moment. I think that they do a really, really great job, as do our friends at MJ Biz, and we'll have a few of their stories in a minute as well. But it turns out now that people in all areas of government are really cashing in on the opportunity to help move forward with the marijuana movement and to show their chops get some credit for it at the top of everything. And then there are people who are actually really doing something about it. And one of those people, not surprisingly, is Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senator from Maine, as well as Senator Ed Markey also, Massachusetts. I'm sorry, I said Maine. I meant Massachusetts. And they are calling now for marijuana reform. that prioritizes communities most impacted by the drug war, and, and I think this is the key point, prevents monopolization by large corporations like Amazon and big tobacco firms. It's been a long kind of a joke, although not really a joke, that it wouldn't take R.J. Reynolds or any of those others very much time to simply convert their cigarette rolling machines into joint rolling machines. And, you know, they're just ready to step in and rock and roll. And when they do, There's really no way, not even for an MSO, I don't think, to be able to keep up with the volume of marijuana that can be produced and packaged and sold by big tobacco. And so, not that everybody doesn't have a right to run their businesses, but we've also talked about how there's this perception in the marijuana industry that we don't really want to be big corporate America, at least not yet. That may be inevitable someday. But right now, as the industry is first just coming out of its shell and blooming, if you will pardon the pun, we have to give folks a chance. We have to give communities an opportunity to establish laws the way that they want to do it and not have to be pushed around because big tobacco comes in and says, we're going to do it this way, this way, and this way. And Senator Warren said, we know that legalization alone is not enough. We need to ensure that the communities most harmed by the war on drugs are at the front line, at the front of the line for reaping the benefits of legalization. And we need to legalize in a way that avoids big tobacco and alcohol corporations or retail giants from dominating the market. Because if left to its own devices, the industry is going to head in that direction. We're already seeing some of those companies like Amazon lobbying for cannabis legalization. She added that she's deeply skeptical that Amazon's lobbying is anything more than a self-interested move. to monopolize yet another market, potentially blocking black and Latino entrepreneurs from the emerging industry. So she's really doing two things here, right? She wants to make sure that people in the communities most harmed by the war on drugs all have an opportunity to participate. And historically, over the last few years, as these industries have come online, there's been a lot of lip service paid to that, but in reality, not much done. And so it's nice to see Senator Warren and Senator Markey stepping in and saying, hey, look, if this thing is going to possibly go illegal on a federal level or continue to expand on state levels, let's be sure to keep our eye on the ball in terms of protecting people who are most harmed by the war on drugs and giving those people an opportunity to prosper instead of just handing that profit right over to big tobacco or alcohol or other big corporations. Now, it all sounds nice. Unfortunately, it's hard these days to have any confidence that these views will prevail over others in the legislature. But look, somebody has to be willing to step forward and make the proposals, and Senator Warren is doing that. She's well known for often leading the charge on causes that might not be popular. We know she's been made a punch bag more than once by Donald Trump. And yet she keeps coming forward. and really pushing on these things that make a difference. One other article I saw that I think is just fascinating because of course, now that we have legal marijuana, one of the big questions for law enforcement is, how do we know if somebody is intoxicated? And we've talked about, you know, if you pull blood and you see that there's THC in the bloodstream, but that's just an indicator of presence and not an indicator of impairment. And if you're gonna give somebody a DUI, you have to be able to demonstrate. that at the time you pulled them over, at the time you stopped them and you wanted to give them a ticket for driving under the influence, that they were in fact under the influence and it wasn't just present in their system. So people have been working on a breathalyzer type test for a long time. Israel has been very much at the forefront of breathalyzers and other type of technologies that might help measure a person's impairment. But at the moment a new federally funded study illustrates the difficulty. of developing a breathalyzer-like device for cannabis, even when using carefully collected samples and laboratory analysis, researchers found THC levels were too inconsistent to tell whether someone had smoked marijuana recently. And of course, that's the whole thing here, right? If you pull me over and you say, I test hop, but I haven't smoked the marijuana five days ago, that's a lot different than if I'm putting out a joint as you're pulling me over. or even if I had just smoked a joint minutes before hopping in the car. And it's important for law enforcement to be able to do their job and important for all of us so that law enforcement can do its job and not feel the need to arrest people or pull us in because they don't have a way law enforcement to accurately measure presence versus impairment. So hopefully this type of technology would come around. But the findings from researchers at the National Institute of Standards and and the University of Colorado Boulder said that they do not support the idea that detecting THC in breath as a single measurement could reliably indicate recent cannabis use. More research is needed to show that a cannabis breathalyzer can produce useful results. A breathalyzer test can have a huge impact on a person's life, so people should have confidence that the results are accurate, and that's true. If we have, just like you can go into a bar now and you can blow into a breathalyzer in the bar and it will tell you, if it's as exact or specific, but close enough, whether you're approaching the red line to be considered legally drunk. And it would be nice if we're gonna have cannabis consumption lounges, or people are gonna go to concerts, or they're gonna go over to their friend's houses to watch football games, or whatever they might be doing, and they wanna be able to enjoy marijuana, that if they know they need to get into a car, and driving is an option, but if they're not in the right frame of mind, they can always do an Uber or get another ride. It would be nice if people could measure where they're at on a basis that will be consistent with what law enforcement will utilize to make determinations of whether somebody's engaged in unlawful conduct. So there's still a ways to go on this technology, which is fine. I suppose the silver lining is that for people who might be out there driving intoxicated and would otherwise be nailed by a breathalyzer. you don't have to worry about that quite yet, but on the other hand, you should be worrying if you're driving so high that you are worrying about whether or not there's a breathalyzer. So like we always say, you've got to be careful and you have to be reasonable. Moderation is always the key of the day, unless you're at a debt and company show and you know that you've got someone who is of the right frame of mind who can transport you around wherever you might need to go after that concert. So back to the drawing board, maybe on breathalyzer and to see what other types of technology and research they can come up with. And then, you know, we'll revisit this and see where things are at. Swinging our attention back to 1992 and some wonderful, grateful dead music from a really, really good show from the Knickerbocker Arena up in Albany, New York, always a favorite Haunt of the Grateful Dead. They have a three disc release from the Knickerbocker in Albany that came out a number of years back and always fun to listen to that as well. Just you know part of the world where the Grateful Dead like to play and always seem to give their best. So like I said I'm trying to you know continue to find strains and strings between the show I saw last night. and this 1992 Grateful Dead show. And so just to be creative here for a moment, I figured that this next tune that Dan's gonna play for us deserved to be mentioned. The last time a well-known Rolling Stones tune was originally recorded featuring the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. It was the band's first original song released as an A single in the UK. The B side at the time was Play With Fire, another well-known tune written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and recorded at the RCA Studios in Hollywood, California in January 65. The song was released on the US version. of the Stones' album Out of Our Heads on July 30, 1965. The last time was the band's third UK single to reach number one on the UK single charts, spending three weeks at the top in March and early April of 1965. Now, interestingly, although the song is credited to Jagger Richards as are the overwhelming majority of Rolling Stones' tunes, the song's refrain is similar to This May Be the Last Time, a traditional gospel song recorded in 1954 by the Staples Singers. In 2003, Richards acknowledged this saying, we came up with the last time, which was basically readapting a traditional gospel song that had been sung by the Staples Singers, but luckily the song itself goes back into the mists of time. As only Keith Richards can put it. In the August 1965 issue of the Beat Instrumental in reply to a question, who plays the prominent figure on the Stones releases, Keith Richards said, I played it on Satisfaction. Brian played it on the last time. It all depends who thinks it up. Of course, that's Brian Jones, who passed away in a tragic swimming pool accident relatively early on in the Rolling Stones career, but certainly in their very formative years, was a significant contributor on guitar right along with Keith Richards. And so, the last time was a Brian, as Keith is saying, was a Brian standard where he would take the lead and... and really jam out on it. A very popular song in the Stones' canon, it was regularly performed in concerts during 65, 66, and 67. It was left off their concert set list after that until 97, 98 when they brought it back out for the Bridges to Babylon tour. It later appeared on some of the band's set lists in 2012 and 2013 on the 50 and Counting tour. The Grateful Dead played the last time, 69 times. a long time for it to finally be the last time. But they did play it 69 times, the first one on February 25th, 1990 at the Oakland Coliseum. And the last time they played it was in one of the final shows, July 6th, 95 at the Riverport Amphitheater in St. Louis, the final stop before the final two shows at Soldier Field. So you can really say that they were bringing it along right up to the end. But I thought that it was appropriate for today because Den & Company did not play it last night. But Den & Company is very, very heavily advertising the fact that this is their final tour on all the merch they sold, on all the t-shirts, on all the posters, on all the signs around the stadium, everywhere. Den & Company, the final tour, the final tour, the final tour. And I assume it's the final tour for this group here, but I can't believe it's the last time for Bob or, well, maybe for Mickey. Who knows what's going to happen to him after this. Um, you know, and, and if nothing, as these, as these various post-grateful dead, uh, band variations have popped up, uh, and then after a period of time, you know, they shut down, there was, uh, the other ones and there was, um, the dead and there was, uh, further and dead and co, and it just goes on and on and on, and I imagine that we will see some combination of things in the future. Um, but they really let us know that this was. the final tour and so yeah the last time right I mean they might as well just come in but they probably should have sung this song at the show on Friday night but you know for me it's the last time seeing them I'm not going to the show tonight you know like I say I like Den & Company a lot I think that they're a lot of fun and I really enjoy the scene and being there and being part of it and hearing some of the amazing music that they crank out even if it's not as true to the dead format as so many deadheads would like. When scalping prices to see them are $250, $300 and up with some people literally asking for $1,500 for a ticket down in the field, I get concerned that people have lost all perspective as to what they're seeing and what they're doing and I can't compete with that. I have no desire to pay. $300 as good as last night's show was, Friday night's show, I wouldn't have paid $1,500 for it. I wouldn't have paid six or $700 for it. I might have paid $100 or $200 for it, but anything over that, I say to myself why. I can just go home, pull out any one of 200 dead shows that I have in my CD collection, in my tapes, or really with my tapes, it's probably another $500. I can listen to any show I want from anywhere, anytime, and it doesn't cost me a damn thing, and there's no line for the bathroom. And the only thing that's missing again is the large dead community and just being there with everybody. And that was great last night. And I'm a big proponent of always leaving on a high note, always leaving with a good taste in your mouth. And I'm gonna predict that tonight will be a days between, there'll probably be a Liberty, a few other tunes like that. And while I don't wanna say that I don't like those songs, I don't enjoy them as much, the Denning Company version of them, as I did some of the songs that I saw them play the other night. So for me, this is just a good point to jump off of this bus for the moment and see what comes next for everybody. We're not giving up on this though. Of course, JRad just announced, very historically, that they're going to be doing a show up in Mundelein, Illinois, which is a northern suburb. There's going to be a festival September 9th and 10th, a Saturday and a Sunday. Jay Rad's headlining the Sunday show. Now just right there, the fact that Jay Rad is playing a show up in Mundelein, Illinois on a Sunday night in the early fall or late summer, that would have been good enough news. And I would have been very happy just to hear that and move on. But it's being sponsored by Sacred Rose. And Sacred Rose did not do another festival like they did last year down by the soccer stadium in Chicago, a multi-day event with many, many bands. But this is going to be a two-day event with a certain number of bands. And they have some good ones. But it's also going to be a marijuana exhibit. It's going to be a marijuana weekend. And the key to all of this is that for the very first time in the state of Illinois, and I don't know how many other places, the word is the official policy will be that consumption on site will be permitted during the concert while walking around the fairgrounds. And to me, that's just such an amazing thing to think. You can go to a show like that. You can go to an outdoor event like that. And if you want to smoke, you can smoke. You don't have to look for creative places to go and try and hide. You know, God forbid the local guard sees you or, you know, a parent and a child or whatever it might be, but now they've, they've come right out and said that this show up in Mundelein in September is going to be an open use event. And obviously that's one now with both Jay Rad being the musical guests and this wonderful little policy that they're putting in place. This is a must-see event and we will Be planning on checking that out and reporting to you about it down the road and the fact that it's in Mundelein Which my son Johnny lives in Mundelein, so that's about 20 minutes from where I live right now, so it's not like the next neighborhood over, but it's not really that far away and Johnny's apartment Johnny and Bella's apartment will just become the center of the grateful dead marijuana universe for a day or two as everybody takes advantage of their perfectly positioned department and location out there. I haven't told them that yet, but I'm just guessing that they'll be okay with everything. Sorry, Bella. But that's going to be fun. So it's not the end of the grateful dead. It's not the end of grateful dead life music. There's so much of it out there. So many bands. Dark Star Orchestra is always playing up a storm with what they do. Jay Rad and Phil will still be playing some shows and I'm sure Bobby and Wolf Brothers will be playing shows and whatever other conglomeration or combination of all these guys they can put together and we will certainly look forward for the next round whenever it is with whatever players make it to the scene and be happy to have an opportunity to check all of that out and to see what's going on. So there's a lot of talk about all of that but it was great fun. I'm glad I got to make it. If they're coming through your town, go check them out. Say goodbye. Everything they've done for us, it's a good thing to give them a final hurrah. I would strongly recommend people do it. One final marijuana story I want to throw in before I take off for the day and finally go take a nap is that MJ Biz had a really good story too. Thanks to them that now finally New York City is cracking down. or the entire state, but heavily in New York City, on unlicensed retailers of marijuana. We've been hearing about the rollout in New York has been so historically bad, even really making Illinois look good, that individuals and entrepreneurial folks have begun to sell marijuana themselves on the streets of New York, whether in a bodega or a little walk-up place or... convenience or tobacco store and it's been going on for a long, long time. And this is, of course, the one thing that Ross Dothat did get right, which is the states keep legalizing marijuana without having a plan in place. So you have this time lag and that's what happened in New York. And people were like, well, we're going to fill the gap. And they did. So now they're finally coming back and now they're taking the position. They've amended a law to say it's a crime to sell marijuana. without a license and I'm kind of like, well, duh, wasn't that always the presumption? You know, as we've talked about, it's not that marijuana is technically being made legal, it's that the state is creating exceptions when people can grow and sell and possess and use marijuana. And if you fall into the facts that make up those circumstances, then you're okay to go. But apparently New York now felt the need to remind everybody that it is a crime to sell marijuana without a license. And while they'll shut down some of them, knowing New York City, I suspect. that it will be a long and expensive road if they're really trying to get everybody else along with them. And we'll see how hard the governor wants to push on that. But if you're going to New York or if you live in New York, just be careful. It's not the same. Well, this has been a fun show. I enjoy rolling out of any kind of a Grateful Dead-like performance. It always puts me in a talkative mood with great stories to share. But this is why I have a producer to remind me that I've already shared certain stories too many times and that I need to cut back on those. So again, thank you to Dan for that. A final happy birthday shout out to Dan. Great shout out to the boys in Denning Company, to their roadies, to the whole crew. Even the folks at Wrigley Field put on a great evening last night. A lot of fun to reemerge, redive into. Not saying that very accurately today. Sorry about that. re-immersed myself in the world of the Grateful Dead, even if just for an evening with some of my best friends and to really get to have the full evening experience with them. And when I was talking about the show before, we mentioned that right out of the Stella Blue coming out of the space, the boys dived in to Sugar Magnolia. And I've always said that Sugar Magnolia might just be my favorite Grateful Dead song of all. It's upbeat, it's happy, everybody knows it, everybody can sing along with it. And I really like it at the end of shows. And again, I'll never forget 82 in the Syracuse Carrier Dome, the best show I ever saw. And at the end of the night, we were sitting in the very back in the whole football field. They were playing sugar magnolia, and the whole crowd was just going wild and crazy. And it's such a happy song. It's, you know, you're like, oh no, is this the end of the show? But then you immediately forget about feeling sad because you're just digging sugar magnolia so much. And they do such great things with it. They have a lot of fun with it. It's off of American Beauty. Just go back and listen to it on the album, and then find a couple of your favorite versions of it, and throw it on. So that's what we're gonna go out with today, because it is a typical Closer song. And we will spin out with Sugar Magnolia. Everybody have a great week. Thank you so much for listening. Please join us again as we will continue to highlight great, grateful Dead Shows, talk about the marijuana topics of the day, and share our own concert and marijuana experiences. Thanks everyone. Enjoy your week and enjoy your cannabis responsibly.