Fare Thee Well -- Seal that Silver Mine

Did you get to hear any of the Fare Thee Well tour? I did and the following kept coming to mind as I was listening to the bit I did hear live and while I was listening to the rebroadcast:

If all you got to live for
is what you left behind
get yourself a powder charge
and seal that silver mine

This is from The Annotated “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo”

Fare Thee Well 50 Years of the Grateful Dead — 50 Years of Music Sweet Music.

I listened to the opening China-Rider of the very last show and it was good and it was standard. However, I was busy with chores that had to be done and so I quickly ehttp://www.wi-ski.com/apres-ski/kronos-quartet-concert-review/xited my truck and the music died. The next day however, I was listening to a rebroadcast of the show and the biggest thing that struck me was they played Mountains of the Moon and they had so varied the piece I was unable to pick up on what they were playing. In fact, I thought it was a Birdsong improvisation and I am not a big fan of Birdsong, eventually I did pick up on the lyrics, but there was much cognitive dissonance going on. I also heard the Touch of Gray which again was standard. Yes, I have a bit of clash going on between looking for the familiar and the new.

Admittedly, I did not listen to much of the concert series. I found some of the pre-concert commentary very interesting, but again some of it was so standard (there was some woman talking about a marijuana show complete with product judging — I wonder if the winner got a blue bong award?) and so on. What I found very interesting was listening to some of the other musicians who played with the Grateful Dead in the early days. Also, interesting were the commentators filling in the time between the scheduled and actual starts of the concerts, they did a very good job of that.

Fare Thee Well — Seal that Silver Mine

While I will never ever stop listening to the Grateful Dead I have definitely moved on musically. I now listen to classical music of all forms, but that is where I actively explore and seek out new music. I have stopped seeking out and listening to new pop music. Interestingly enough, it is another San Francisco combo that I often listen to when I seek new music. That SF combo is the The Kronos Quartet which is a classical string quartet playing new classical music and adapted pieces from other genres (Purple Haze for instance).

The wound of the passing of Jerry Garcia healed a long time ago, but this event ripped that wound open again (though it is not at all deep now) and it hurt, and in my mind was not worth the pain it inflicted on me.

I said Fare thee well a long time ago and I will commemorate the anniversary of the last Grateful Dead concerts I attended (Alpine ’89).

How about you? Did you listen or watch the Fare Thee Well concerts? What did you think of them?