When the guest makes the band his bitch!

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Fuck yeah!  BMFS!

Dead & Company w/ Billy Strings - Wharf Rat - 08/01/25

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dwx5rPGyQ8

The thread title made me think about Billy's sit-in with D&C before I opened it. Well done.

Ornette Coleman with The Grateful Dead?

 

Billy was one of the first night highlights.  It was cooler and more overcast than the next two nights.  Except for Oteil, they're all in extra layers.  The cold got to Bobby that night. It's hard to hear his voice or guitar much.  Billy plays it true, while Mayer sounds like the clueless guest sit-in.

I've seen Carlos do that with multiple bands, including the Dead, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Prince and others.

He always seemed open to sitting in with other groups and when he lived in the Bay Area I saw him do it many, many times.

I've always thought that the best, most inspired times I've seen Carlos Santana play were when he was sitting in with others.

I miss those times.

The only time I saw Carlos play with the Dead was after Bill Graham died at the Oakland shows. My very bad memory was that he had trouble meshing that night and I love Carlos so I will need to listen to that show again. I remember seeing him at an afternoon show at the Greek and he just would not stop playing. You could see it was a huge family party back stage and on the stage. I think the place was half empty by the time Carlos finally decided to call it quits. Also caught him once at the Fillmore and that show is in my top ten shows. 

That said I'm not a huge fan of sit ins and more often than not they take away from the show after the first moment of excitement. Branford was the exception where the excitement grew the more he played with them that night. As a non musician the fact that he could get up there in front of 20,000 people and not know any of the songs and play like that is like trying to understand quantum physics.  

Billy was awesome with D&C but so was Graham.

Sierra Ferrell sits in with Mumford and Sons covering TVZ If I Needed You and makes them her bitches 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBh6WjAmMV0

To be fair, I appreciate when a band recognizes they have an opportunity to make new art and let her sing instead of singing over her or relegating her to backup singer. Good for them seizing the moment and letting her have space to go off for the art of it

>>>>Ornette Coleman with The Grateful Dead?

Does that opening set exist? 

There's audio of Garcia's sit-in for one song with Coleman's band.

https://archive.org/details/gd1993-02-23.116152.NeumannKMF4.daweez.d5sco...

"Not only did Coleman’s Prime Time open the show, but the saxophonist joined the Dead onstage during their second set—in the midst of an open jam called “Space” (see in playlist below). His horn became a prominently integrated feature of what one fan remembered as “singularly the most intense thing I ever witnessed.” Such exaggeration from Deadheads seems routine, and sadly we have no video, nor could it ever replicate the experience. But some pretty spectacular live recordings of the entire Dead set may bear out the extremely high praise. “The Other One,” at the top of the post, first stretches out into very Coleman-like territory, and the band keeps up beautifully. After the verse kicks in halfway through, the song soon erupts into “walls of sound, screams, meltdowns, explosions….”

The Other One,” was “a wise choice,” writes Oliver Trager in his The American Book of the Dead, “as its rhythm-based power allowed Coleman to continue his broad brush strokes.” After a “languorous” rendition of “Stella Blue,” the penultimate tune, “Turn on Your Love Light,” above, “provided Coleman with the perfect show-ending raveup to let loose in the fashion of an oldtime, down-home Texas horn honker.” In an interview later that same year, Garcia called Coleman “a wonderful model for a guy who’s done what we did, in the sense of creating his own reality of what music is and how you survive within it. He’s a high-integrity kind of person and just a wonderful man.” As for the night itself, Garcia remarked:

It was such a hoot to hear him play totally Ornette and totally Grateful Dead without compromising either one of them. Pretty incredible. Good musicians don’t do that kind of characterizing music. like this is this kind of music and that is that kind of thing."

https://www.openculture.com/2017/06/when-the-jazz-legend-ornette-coleman-joined-the-grateful-dead-onstage-for-some-epic-improvisational-jams-1993.html

Grateful Dead w/Ornette Coleman - The Other One 2-23-93

Grateful Dead Live at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on 1993-02-23

Oakland Coliseum Arena - February 23, 1993

Ornette Coleman opened, Jerry played on the last song of his set - first "Broken Arrow" - Mardi Gras parade during "Iko Iko"

setlist

Cold Rain and Snow
Wang Dang Doodle
Loser
Stuck Inside of Mobile
Broken Arrow
Long Way Home
Johnny B. Goode

Iko Iko
Corina
Lazy River Road
Playin' in the Band
drums
The Other One
Stella Blue
Turn on Your Love Light

Brokedown Palace

 

My bad.   I was thinking about 95   

David Murray and Octofunk blew the roof off the place as I remember it.  Would love to get a copy of that set.    

 

Still perhaps the worst first set I've ever seen:

 

Good Times

West L.A. Fadeaway

Queen Jane Approximately

Lazy River Road

Mama Tried

Mexicali Blues

Don't Ease Me In

 

In Kreutzmann's book he claims that after coming off the stage Coleman said, "Man, those cats aren't listening at all".

Which is pretty much what I had been saying about the band for a long time.

At that point I worked far more GD shows then I attended, but a bunch of friends were going, the Mardi Gras shows were always fun and I could get in for free so I went that night as a patron.

My main memory of that show was seeing that Jerry was playing Wolf, which I personally hadn't seen in close to 15 years. At that time (and I still do) I equated Wolf with the best & long gone times of the band so I got really excited and dashed down to the floor in front of the mixer for the rest of the first set. I recall really enjoying the Johnny B. Goode closer.

One of the friends I was there with had no idea what Wolf was, and to this day, whenever the subject of Jerry comes up she will look at me and say, "HE'S PLAYING WOLF!!! HE'S PLAYING WOLF!!!" I guess I got a little carried away.

It may have just been my wishful ear, but I thought I could hear a noticeable difference in Jerry's sound that night. I thought the Coleman parts of the show were good and I remember it being a really good time, but overall it was still a '93 Grateful Dead show that neither Wolf or Ornette Coleman could completely save.

By 1993 the Grateful Dead had become a walking antique.

They were practically a caricature of themselves.

Moments of brilliance were far and few between. The dynamic seemed to me Garcia vs. the rest of the band. Props to Vince for the enthusiasm he brought to playing in the band.

A second hiatus and suspension of touring might have altered the course of history.

Phil said that even had they stopped touring, Garcia would have been out on the road with his band anyway.

Probably so, but in the 90s Garcia seemed a lot more relaxed and happy playing with his bar band (a bar band even when playing stadiums) and with Grisman. He seemed burdened by the responsibility of fronting the commercial and cultural phenomenon that was The Grateful Dead.

I know we have been over this ground many times, and I guess what went down is just the way it went down.

And even though the Walking Antique Era was somewhat disappointing to me, in the decades since I have met plenty of people who had told me they only saw The Grateful Dead in 94, or 95, they got it, and have been on the bus ever since.

 

 

Meh  - so trite

So many gems in the later years that people miss.   We're they the complete bomb shows...nope.  But moments of gems for those that that want them.  

>>Broken arrow

>>Mardi Gras parade during "Iko Iko"

Thanks for clearing out the cobwebs so the memories of that night popped up

we had fun in the Phil Zone

That first "Do you feel what I feel..." hit hard and lasted a long time.

wish I could say Phil was looking at us when he sang that but....