so...took my sweet time getting this one together...
Anyways, headed down to the Dead at the centrum in worcester on April 19. I'd seen all of them together 3 times before this time (once on the summer getaway tour in '03 and twice on the wave that flag tour in '04) and I've seen Bobby or Phil prolly 20-30 times. Was pretty excited about this tour since it's the first in 5 years, prolly owing something to Bobby's ego. (he tried to get all their stuff pulled off archive.org)
Met up with Danwall at about 4 and then we went to go pick up Paul and Sasha, and headed for Worcester. We got there at about 6:30 for an 8:30 show and headed into the main concert parking garage. Was pretty packed already with the ussual food vendors and tanks. I had talked to my friend Joe cause he went to the show the night before. He said it was pretty bad, like in the middle of a jam falling apart Bobby said, over the PA, "let's just end this' so I didn't know what to expect.
Drank a few beers 'round the car and then headed down to the street, where of course Evan found us. He's uncanny about that kind of thing. You can be at a show with 10,000 people 3 states over and all of a sudden Evan will jump out and be like 'yo Dan you made it!' Happens every time... So we wandered around and met up with Brian, who said he knew where Kat was, so we followed him down to the REAL Shakedown Street (for people who have never been to a show, Shakedown Street is basically a big travelling circus/marketplace that inevitably follows the Dead around.
I've been to dozens of shows and festivals but I've never seen anything like this, it was so packed you had to squeeze between people, like trying to get up to the stage at a crowded show. Everyone was yelling about what they had to offer, everything from $1 beers to balloons to T-shirts. We made it back to his car and Kat WAS there and Sash bumped into Allison too. Blew my mind. I guess Dimitry and Molly were in the crowd too but I didn't see em.
We went down to the venue's main gate and were gonna go grab tix but noticed they were patting people down on the way in so we had to turn around and stash our beers. (Danwall and Paul's got grabbed, mine didn't) and went up to the desk. On the way to the way to the door maybe half a dozen people had offered to sell us tickets at inflated prices, saying the show was sold out, me and danwall had bought em online for $77 so we weren't too worried. We got to the ticket counter and they listed tix for $65 (I really hate service charges and ussually buy tix at the door but I wanted to make sure I got in)
We headed to our seats, told Paul and Sash we'd see em during set break. Got to my seat and saw Pauland Sash in the same row maybe 15 seats down, so I went over there. Our seats were behind the stage, which sucked but whatever, at least we got in. At set break we wandered around a little and bumped into Joe's gf who led us back to their seats, which were awesome, like 15 feet from the stage. Thought we'd get kicked out at set break but that never happened so we just stayed there. After the show ended Bobby was over at our and of the stage so I yelled out "Thank you Bobby" and he looked up and waved. Overall awesome show.
Setlist:
"(Set 1)
Here Comes Sunshine
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
Alligator
Deal
Hell In A Bucket
Cream Puff War>
Good Lovin'
(Set 2)
Scarlet Begonias>
Fire On The Mountain (Warren vocals)>
Rhythm Devils>
Space>
Satisfaction>
Born Cross-Eyed>
Slipknot!>
Let It Grow>
Uncle John's Band>
The Wheel>
Lovelight
(Encore)
Samson and Delilah
you can listen to the show, free as always at
Internet Archive: Free Download: The Dead Live at DCU Center on 2009-04-19