Melody Monday

The Grateful Dead 

12/31/1978 

Closing of Winterland

JG

Forever Grateful

"I'll Get Up and Fly Away...Fly Away"

 I got up and wandered
Wandered downtown
nowhere to go
just to hang around

(~);}

JGski

First performance: February 18, 1971, at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY. "Wharf Rat" appeared in the first set, sandwiched between two segments of "Dark Star." Other firsts in the show included "Bertha," "Greatest Story Ever Told," "Johnny B. Goode," "Loser," and "Playing in the Band."  It remained in the repertoire thereafter.

 

 "I'll get up and fly away"

Compare the folk song "I'll Fly Away." 

One bright morning, when this life is o'er
I'll fly away,
To that home on God's celestial shore
I'll fly away.
 

 I'll fly away (O glory)
I'll fly away (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah bye and bye,
I'll fly away, fly away.

When the shadows of this life have gone
Like a bird from prison bars has flown

Just a few more weary days and then
To a land where joys shall never end.

Melody Monday

My world in this moment for different reasons.  If I could have any words to say, these would be it.  A knot in my stomach that won't go away.  Memories stuffed in a shoe box tucked away underneath my bed.
Time heals all wounds and scars set in.  I don't think the pain will ever relinquish completely.  Just for today.

JG

Post Traumatic Life

The background.  A view from abroad but so close that you could give the details.  Built in binoculars zoomed in on particular past events.  Slow down.  Speed up.  Pull over and get out, only to get back in and run out of gas.  I'm out of gas!  It's the only thing apparent to my flooded perception of crowded highways.  The gates to my soul have swung shut.  Sorry, no admission until further notice.  Sobriety is the only thing that I can cling to.  It reassures me that tomorrow will be that less complicated and a path that the sun will shine in my backyard again someday.  I wish I was a headlight on a westbound train lately.  "There's someone who understands you more than I do.  A sadness I can't erase.  All alone on your face."  Time is either on your side or not, and there is no happy medium.  It stops for nobody.  I can't figure out if it is the known or the unknown that bothers me the most.  A flip of the coin for now I guess.  Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my friends' loss to his struggles.  He was an amazingly great friend.  I miss and love you Brian!  You really don't know what you have until it's gone.  That is a very hard reality folks.  Don't fuck around and just look at things as a permanent piece of the puzzle, because it just doesn't work out that way sometimes.  The known or unknown in different situations.  Which would you choose?  I would be willing to bet, according to the question, that if there was a whole group of people sampled that there would be a dichotomy.  A fork in the road.  One path known and another unknown.  Winters are always the hardest for me.  Everything dies off and in my opinion, turns to shit.  I'm like that kid at the window who has the day off from school because of a storm, but can't go out and play.  Well, I'm not admiring my storm and I'm suffering from chronic vitamin D deficiency.  Not that your skin would generate it from the sun through the glass, but I wouldn't be there in the first place.  I keep saying year after year, this is my last NY winter.  Last year wasn't so bad and I hoped for one like it this year.  All bets are off moving forward.  Forward.  The F word.  You will never have your cake and eat it too.

JG

"Think good thoughts and do good deeds."  Brian J Slater         

 

YEMSG 12-31-12

Phish 

12/31/12 

MSG NYE Show

Set 1: Garden Party (1), Possum, Roses are Free, Rift, Sample in a Jar, Alaska, Mike's Song > Walk Away, Weekapaug Groove, Character Zero

Set 2: Birds of a Feather, Ghost > Piper > Light > 2001 > The Horse > Silent in the Morning, You Enjoy Myself

Set 3: Party Time, Kung > Chalk Dust Torture > Auld Lang Syne > Tweezer Reprise (2) > Sand > The Wedge > Fly Like an Eagle (1), Wilson, Lawn Boy, E: Driver, Iron Man (1)

Comment: (1) First time played
(2) with backup singers
(3) sung a-capella 

JG

http://www.jambands.com/news/2013/01/01/phish-s-madison-square-garden-lawn-party

Melody Monday

The Allman Brothers

MIDNIGHT RIDER &  SOULSHINE

Live at the Beacon

 

 Happy Holidays everyone!

JG

Weir Here

Bob Weir and Jackie Greene 

TRI Studios 12-5-2012

(~);}

JG

Joy

Phish: Joy

2011-12-30

MSG, New York, NY

 It takes as much effort to be miserable as it does to be happy.  Life is not a bed of roses and nobody ever promised us that it would be.  Choose love and a smile people.  Even in the midst of a horrible day, I still have so much to be grateful phor.

 JG

Melody Monday

Grateful Dead

Terrapin Station

12-31-78

"...till things we've never seen will seem familiar"

First performance: February 26, 1977, at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino, California. "Terrapin" opened the show, which also included the first "Estimated Prophet."  It has occupied a stable place in the repertoire ever since, though only on two other occasions has it appeared in the first set.

There are some interesting aspects to this song. Most notably, the fact that the Grateful Dead's realization of the piece is, in Hunter's view, lamentably incomplete, leaving out as it does the lyric resolution. Garcia intentionally uses only a fragment of Hunter's lyric. In Box of Rain, Hunter writes more about "Terrapin" than about any other single piece, with the exception of "Amagamalin Street." Hunter's own recording of "Terrapin," on Jack O' Roses is complete, and attempts to incorporate a plethora of imagery and iconography from all over the Grateful Dead map, especially in the "Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track" portion of the song. Ultimately, Garcia's decision to treat the piece as a fragment is far more satisfying. 

Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics

"Faces in the Fire"

Lewis Carrol

"The night creeps onward, sad and slow:
In these red embers' dying glow
The forms of Fancy come and go.

"The picture fadeth in its place:
Amid the glow I seem to trace
The shifting semblance of a face." 

T.S. Eliot's oft-quoted lines from the 

"Four Quartets: Little Gidding" 

"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

JG

Moments

Six of them are not mine (1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 13).  The first picture was taken by Jackie Green from stage at the Roseland, Fall 2012.  A picture narrates a thousand stories. 
" The storyteller makes no choice
soon you will not hear his voice
his job is to shed light
and not to master..."

"Spent a little time on the mountain
Spent a little time on the hill
Heard some say better run away
Others say you better stand still..."

JG

The Darkside of Alice's Wonderland

JG

Phish 11-28-11

PHiSH 

12.28.11 

Madison  Square Garden

Set 1: 

Free
Glide
Possum
Cities
The Ballad of Curtis Loew
Stash
Contact
Sample in a Jar
Kill Devil Falls
Bathtub Gin

Set 2: 

Birds of a Feather
Carini
Tweezer
My Friend, My Friend
Rock and Roll
NICU
Bouncing Around the Room

Harry Hood
Bug

Encore: Tube
Rocky Top
Tweezer Reprise

 See you on the 28th!

JG

A Long December

Circumstances took us to a path not traveled well.  Alas...time stops for nobody and it's getting late; I must push forward.  I will walk alone by the black muddy river...sing me a song of my own.

All the birds that were singing
Have flown except you alone

(>3);}  

JG

Melody Monday

Grateful Dead

 Looks Like Rain 1987

First performance: Probably March 21, 1972 at the Academy of Music, in New York City, following "Mr. Charlie" and preceding "Chinatown Shuffle." It remained in the repertoire from then on.

JG

Melody Monday

Brokedown Palace

Phil Lesh and Jackie Greene Acoustic

JG