Newark Star-Ledger
March 30, 2004
by Jay Lustig
Members of The Grateful Dead will reunite this summer, and hit the road as The Dead. Until then, the closest facsimile is the current tour by Dead member Bob Weir and his side group, RatDog.
Singer-songwriter-guitarist Weir -- who performed with RatDog at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Sunday night -- co-founded the band in 1995 with inventive bassist Rob Wasserman. The band toured heavily, changed lineups constantly and, in 2000, released an album, "Evening Moods," that was dominated by new material.
RatDog, at its start, was supposed to give Weir a creative outlet for things he couldn't do with his primary group. But it is now more like a mirror image of the Grateful Dead than an alternative to it.
Sunday's setlist was virtually indistinguishable from a typical Dead setlist, complete with songs like "Touch of Grey," "Sugaree" and "Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo" -- all strongly associated with Dead singer-guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995. No one in RatDog is as distinctive a soloist as Garcia, of course. But no one plays as sloppily as Garcia often did in the last decade of his life.
RatDog is now a sextet featuring drummer Jay Lane, guitarist Mark Karan, saxophonist Kenny Brooks, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and bassist Robin Sylvester (Wasserman left early last year). Live, the musicians stick closely to the Dead philosophy. Arrangements stretch and contract to fit musicians' whims, and lots of time is devoted to jamming.
Sunday's concert got off to a shaky start. The first song, "Cassidy," seemed like a soundcheck, as band members repeatedly signaled for offstage sound adjustments. Distracted, they failed to give the song the crisp groove it needs. They found their footing, though, with the spacy jam "Dark Star" and a lilting, relaxed "Easy To Slip."
The mood changed abruptly for a cover of the blues classic, "Little Red Rooster" and the old-timey, acoustic "Artificial Flowers." A harder-rocking roots song, "Deep Elem Blues" and a strikingly powerful version of The Dead's "Greatest Story Ever Told" followed.
The second offered a similar mix, with the bluesy "Mississippi Half Step," another excerpt from the epic "Dark Star," an extended percussion solo and a tender cover of Bob Dylan's "Knockin on Heaven's Door." The band showcased its reggae chops on "Estimated Prophet," rocked out on "Samson and Delilah" and deftly negotiated the twists and turns of another Dead epic, "Terrapin Station."
"Touch of Grey" was the anthemic encore. "I will get by, I will survive," sang Weir to the largely middle-aged crowd.
The reggae group Toots & the Maytals opened the show with a strong hour-long set, full of hits such as "Funky Kingston," "Pressure Drop," "Monkey Man," "Reggae Got Soul" and "Sweet and Dandy." With his flexible, booming voice, Frederick "Toots" Hibbert, 57, proved he is still one of the greatest singers in reggae, and maybe one of the best in pop music, period. Plus, he's got some James Brown-like stage moves. When the spirit strikes him, he howls and shakes and wrings every possible ounce of drama out of a song.
The set deviated from reggae classics with a cover of Willie Nelson's "Still Is Still Moving to Me." Hibbert and Nelson duet on the song on "True Love," an upcoming album of collaborations between the Maytals and musicians like Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Bonnie Raitt, the Roots and Trey Anastasio. This album, due out April 6 on the BMG-distributed V2 label, is just the kind of all-star project that could give the Maytals some of the mainstream exposure that has always eluded them.
A freewheeling jam featuring RatDog and the Maytals could have really made this show one to remember, but it was not to be. Maybe on another night, the right set of stars will align.