Grateful Dead circus

[4 articles]

RatDog revives Grateful Dead circus

http://rocnow.com/article/jeff-spevak/2009907130326

Jeff Spevak ­ Staff music critic
July 13, 2009

It's not enough that time stands still for the Deadheads. Sunday
afternoon, Bob Weir & RatDog brought out the old Grateful Dead crowd
just as Phil Lesh & Friends had a year ago to this day at this very
same Highland Bowl. Some of the very same Deadheads in the very same
T-shirts and long sundresses, in fact. Evidently it's a calculable
celestial happening on this South Wedge lawn, like the summer equinox.

And this crowd of maybe 4,000, with those $35 ticketholders
supplemented by uncountable hundreds hanging out just beyond the
fence, where they could hear the show perfectly for free, was assured
by RatDog's opening song, "The Music Never Stopped," that all would
be the same as it ever was. Same spiraling, head-chasing-the-tail
guitar by Weir, endless interconnected jams, boogeying tie-dyes and,
as Weir sang, "fireworks, calliopes and clowns, everybody's dancing …
people joinin' hand in hand."

The Dead circus was open for business with women shaking Hula-Hoops
(I got hit by one, always a danger in this business), secondary ganja
smoke, a man in a skirt, young girls (and at least one guy) with
flowers in their hair and lots of multi-tasking, as evidenced by all
of the guys walking around with a beer in each hand, hip-sashaying to
Kenny Brooks' gorgeous tenor saxophone solo on RatDog's "Even So" and
the swanky "October Queen."

Like the Dead, which also had plenty of original songs, RatDog aims
to be the world's greatest cover band, delivering a jaunty take on
Johnny Cash's "Big River." Danceable, too, as the Deadheads slipped
into loose-limbed spaghetti-dance mode. Dylan's "Senor (Tales of
Yankee Power)" was moodier and darker, matching a freak weather
moment: Sunshine alongside a misting, refreshing moment of raindrops,
a short-lasting threat. But the real covers that these folks came for
were of the Grateful Dead, and songs like "Loser," "The Eleven," the
mournful "Black Peter" and "New Speedway Boogie," fueled by Jeff
Chimenti's Hammond B-3 organ.

Opener Jackie Greene was a perfect storm of John Mellencamp,
Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Band, with just a little more
rootsy California soul and blues. Joined at the end of his set by
RatDog guitarist Mark Karan, they jammed away on Greene's excellent
"Mexican Girl."

Greene, who joined RatDog for the Dead dance fave "St. Stephen," has
high-end taste in covers, handling the Beatles' "Taxman" and a "Don't
Let Me Down" that inspired a brawl among a handful of guys. Some of
the young Deadheads have yet to learn the proper vibe. "Back when we
were hippies, this kind of thing didn't happen," mused the slightly
graying Eric Schruers, who came in from Edinboro, Pa., for the show.

Greene's last show here? This very same place, this very same day a
year ago, opening for Lesh. Greene and the Deadheads can get out
their calendars and safely circle the Sunday some 364 days from now.
--

JSPEVAK@DemocratandChronicle.com

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Bout with cancer gave guitarist Karan a gift - letting go

http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_12806732

Paul Liberatore
Posted: 07/09/2009

Just two years ago, Mark Karan was lying in a hospital bed, steeling
himself for the first round of chemotherapy for throat cancer, when
he asked his wife to hand him his guitar and a piece of paper.

In 20 minutes, he'd written "Walk Through the Fire," an inspired rock
anthem about fighting back against the disease that threatened to
kill him. It would become the title track of his new album.

"It was one of the songs you hope for, when the universe says, 'I've
got a gift for you,'" Karan, now cancer free, recalled, sitting in
the airy living room of his hillside Fairfax home.

After the 1995 death of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, the
54-year-old Karan stirred up considerable controversy in the
xenophobic universe of the Grateful Dead when he was chosen, along
with Steve Kimock, to hold down the lead guitar slot in the Other
Ones, the post-Garcia version of the Dead.

Karan played two tours with that aggregation as a surrogate Garcia,
not an entirely comfortable job description.

While it was a huge break for him, trying to fill the shoes of a
beloved rock icon can be a no-win proposition. Deadheads initially
scorned him as an interloper who couldn't carry the great Garcia's
guitar picks.

Sitting in his living room, cradling his vintage gold top Les Paul,
he looked back and laughed, but it wasn't all that funny then.

"They called me the L.A. guy who played on the 'Friends' theme," he
snorted. "I said, 'No, that wasn't me.' But I got a lot of that."

When the Other Ones dissolved, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir formed
his own band, RatDog, tapping Karan as his lead guitarist. That was
11 years ago, and he's been a member in good standing ever since,
proudly wearing a necklace that is similar to the Dead's famed logo
except its centerpiece is a dog bone instead of a lightning bolt.

"During the year I was in treatment, Weir and the boys held my spot
in the band," he said. "They were ridiculously supportive. They kept
me on pay the whole time I was out, which, needless to say, helped a lot."

When he needed fresh food to stimulate his appetite, Grateful Dead
bassist Phil Lesh personally brought over blueberries that he'd
picked from his yard.

Early in his career, Karan, a baby boomer who grew up San Francisco
and Half Moon Bay idolizing the Beatles, had scuffled for years in
Bay Area bar bands. He briefly played with Marin's Huey Lewis and the
News when they were still called American Express.

Desperate for gigs, he moved to West Hollywood, working for a dozen
years as a studio musician. Trading on his childhood as a member of
the San Francisco Boys Chorus, he was called in to do vocal work more
often than not.

When he fell into the moneyed embrace of the Grateful Dead family and
its legions of ticket-buying fans, he was at long able to make a
respectable middle-class living with his music.

Then, just before RatDog's 2007 summer tour, he went to the
University of California at San Francisco Medical Center when the
persistently swollen lymph nodes in his throat refused to go away.

After a biopsy, the diagnosis was shocking: stage four throat cancer
with lymph node metastasis.

"Everybody deals with something like cancer in their own way," he
said, a faraway look in his eyes. "I never would have predicted that
I would deal with it the way I did. I might have had a few seconds of
horror, of saying, 'Why me?' Of whiny stuff. But then, for some
reason, I just felt this sense of calm. I said, 'OK, I'm not ready to
check out, so what do we do now?"

With his wife at his side, he embarked on what he calls "a
multiheaded dragon" approach to treatment: traditional Western
medicine - three months each of radiation and chemotherapy that
caused him to lose his long, dark, thick hair - combined with
alternative therapies.

He saw it as a good omen when he began acupuncture sessions and was
surprised to discover that he was going to the same Chinese
practitioner in San Anselmo who had treated Garcia.

"I walked into his office and there was an article on the wall about
him and Jerry," Karan fondly recalled. "It was one of those wonderful
life coincidences. He told me the Chinese character for crisis is
also the character for opportunity. So that became my mantra - what
am I supposed to gain from this?"

In the down and dirty business of rock 'n' roll, Karan had taken his
lumps. He'd gotten clean and sober after a period of alcohol and
cocaine abuse. But, like so many other musicians, he'd stored up his
resentments and disappointments, his suppressed anger and harbored
sense, rightly or wrongly, of being the victim of a nasty industry.

"So the gift of cancer for me became about letting go of the darkness
inside me," he explained. "It became about acceptance. It became
about forgiving people in my past. And it became about forgiving myself."

With that, he showed me the bracelet he wears, a gift from his wife.
It's inscribed, "It is what it is."

Karan is personable, good-natured and can also play with the big
dogs. That combination of virtues and talents helped him gradually
win over the Deadheads who had criticized him so mercilessly in the
beginning. When he got sick, they treated him like he'd always been
part of the family.

On the afternoon of this interview, his wife, Maile (My-lay), pulled
out a "care book," a thick scrapbook with page after page of well
wishes from fans.

"I literally received thousands of posts and messages, e-mails and
cards and gifts from fans all over the world," he remembered. "They
sent little meditation rocks and healing totems. They made T-shirts
with little hugging symbols around my initials. A guy ran a marathon
for me. All the fan support really blew my mind."

When Karan returned to RatDog at the end of his year-long ordeal with
illness, Weir called it "pretty much a miracle."

"Walk Through the Fire" had begun as a project of Karan's side band,
Jemimah Puddleduck. But its members are often busy with other groups,
and if cancer taught Karan anything, it's that time is not to be
wasted. So he used his renewed health and vigor to finish the CD as a
solo album.

Every three months, he still has to go in for checkups, and he has a
scan twice a year. When he talked about that part of his lifestyle,
his wife's eyes welled with tears.

They both remember how deeply affected they were when another top
guitarist Karan had become friends with, Stephen Bruton, who often
played in Marin with Bonnie Raitt, died in May of a recurrence of
throat cancer. He was 60.

But there's nothing good that comes from worrying about what may
happen in the future. Karan knows he's alive and healthy at this
moment, and he's grateful for that.

"When I was getting clean and sober, I'd say the Serenity Prayer," he
said, doing just that: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change/The courage to change the things I can/And the
wisdom to know the difference.

"But when I got cancer, all of a sudden, it had a lot more meaning
than it did before."
--

Contact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at liberatore@marinij.com

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July 9, 1995: Jerry Garcia's last show

http://www.examiner.com/x-15209-The-Dead-Examiner~y2009m7d10-July-9-1995-Jerry-Garcias-last-show

July 10, 2009
by Shawn Perry

Fourteen years ago, the Grateful Dead performed their last concert
with Jerry Garcia at Soldier Field in Chicago. It was the last show
of the Dead's summer tour, and at the time, not a particularly
remarkable show. A month later, when Garcia passed away, that last
show suddenly gained a lot of interest.

The 2 1/2-hour set started with "Touch of Grey" and ended with "Box
of Rain," with fireworks a-blazing. The Band (what was left of them)
opened. Garcia's last vocal was on the second to the last song ­
''Black Muddy River.'' It's clear that he wasn't in the best shape,
having succumbed to his old habits and addictions. At 53, Garcia, in
a valiant effort to overcome his demons, died of a heart attack at a
Bay Area drug rehab clinic on August 9, effectively ending the
Grateful Dead's 30-year run.

''It was just another show at the end of a typical stadium tour,''
Dead drummer Mickey Hart has said. ''We had a party afterwards to
celebrate the tour, and then Jerry and I took a flight home
together...That's about all I remember.''

Surviving members have kept the light shining, as solo performers and
in occasional collaboration. Live Grateful Dead recordings seem to be
dropping out of the sky every couple of months, books are written
every year, movies are in the works, the merchandise gets weirder,
and general interest increases among the young and uninitiated. The
Dead may no longer be grateful without Garcia in their midst, and
somehow, a show isn't quite the same without the big and gregarious
man at stage left. But the memory and the music of Jerry Garcia will
live forever.

Grateful Dead
July 9, 1995
Soldier's Field ­ Chicago, IL

Set List:

Set 1:
Touch of Grey
Little Red Rooster
Lazy River Road
When I Paint My Masterpiece*
Childhood's End
Cumberland Blues
Promised Land

Set 2:
Shakedown Street
Samson & Delilah
So Many Roads
Samba In The Rain
Corrina >
Drums >
Space >
Unbroken Chain
Sugar Magnolia

Encore:
Black Muddy River
Box Of Rain

Click to listen to the last Grateful Dead show
[See URL for audio link.]

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New Riders of the Purple Sage

http://www.glidemagazine.com/articles/54906/new-riders-of-the-purple-sage.html

Where I Come From

By Doug Collette
July 10, 2009

Fronted by David Nelson on guitar and vocals with Buddy Cage on pedal
steel, the chemistry of the current NRPS goes further than just the
band personnel. Robert Hunter collaborates with Nelson on a half
dozen cuts and the long-time Grateful Dead lyricist demonstrates an
elegant command of language on the title song, while the band's
playing on a close to eight minute track is articulate in its own way.

There's more of a pedestrian air in both the playing and writing of
"Big Six" but the New Riders band of today is greater than the sum of
its parts. Ronnie Penque's mobile bass playing, for instance, offsets
the metronomic drumming of Johnny Markowski and you wouldn't be able
to discern that so clearly if it weren't for the clarity of sound
enabled by producer Michael Falzarano, who also plays guitar and
sings in the band (a role he also enacted with Hot Tuna some years ago).

Elsewhere, David Nelson's crisp guitar work on "Barracuda Moon" plays
off against the swooping steel of Cage; the latter continues to
distinguish himself through the judicious use of effects on his
instrument while utilizing a more traditional sound as on "Olivia
Rose." Guest keyboardist Mookie Siegel brings more scope to the sound
on cuts including "Down the Middle."

NRPS 2009 can excel when they improvise, as on the ten-minute plus of
"Ghost Train Blues," and the group would do well to jam more often
and bring in more cover material, such as the traditional "Them Old
Minglewood Blues," to complement their originals. Tracks like
"Higher" sound dated (as Stanley Mouse's cover graphics appear), but
overall, these New Riders generally turn their limitations into
strengths on Where I Come From.

.