\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThere was a moment at the end of Dead & Company\u2019s Sunday night performance at San Francisco\u2019s Golden Gate Park when you could truly feel gratitude float through the chilly night air. Not from the 60,000 in attendance, but the two men standing with hand to heart on the stage. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBob Weir and Mickey Hart have taken it upon themselves to continue the legacy started six decades earlier in the very same spot. The Grateful Dead, which they co-founded along with the late Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, had gone on to tour stadiums and have hit records, but they very much remained a local band \u2014 as synonymous with the city as the fog.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Jay Blakesberg<\/span><\/p>\n \n\tAnd for that, San Francisco rallied to mark the 60th anniversary in a big way. Flags bearing the Dead\u2019s iconography flew over trolly tracks throughout downtown; \u201cJerry Day\u201d was declared on what would have been the musician\u2019s 83rd birthday, and with it, a Jerry Garcia Street\u00a0was unveiled; pedicabs were decked out and blaring Dead classics; and the Haight-Ashbury house where the band cohabitated in the 1960s was swarmed by selfie-seeking fans. Mayor Daniel Lurie was on hand to welcome the band to the stage, while former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was among the VIP guests spotted grooving in the \u201cFriends and Family\u201d section alongside scores of California constituents. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAs a music tourism experiment, Dead60 succeeded in that it was well-organized despite its size. Another Planet Entertainment hosts three consecutive weekends of music at the park\u2019s polo field, including the Outside Lands music festival, which kicks off on Friday, with a footprint much larger than Dead & Co.\u2019s one-stage show, and the team is adept at creating a friction-less experience getting onto the grounds. At the same time, Dead & Co.\u2019s own management \u2014 led by Activist Artists\u2019 Bernie Cahill, Liz Norris and Red Tanner, with Steve Moir and Brandon Phelps \u2014 allowed space for the open-air market known as \u201cShakedown Street\u201d and ensured a multitude of viewing options inside the gates. And with a strict curfew of 10 p.m., that meant a reasonable bedtime for the more veteran of followers. Not that anyone would have minded more music \u2014 certainly not Weir.<\/p>\n \n\tThe music was the main event. Ever since John Mayer joined this formation a decade ago (alongside bassist Oteil Burbridge,\u00a0keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and\u00a0drummer Jay Lane), the Dead has expanded its audience by age, allowing those who may not have been around for Garcia\u2019s final years to hear the guitarwork as it was meant to be played. A bold statement, no doubt, but it\u2019s a challenge Mayer has stepped up to tour and tour again. And on this three-night bow, the pressure was most certainly on \u2014 not just because it was an icon\u2019s birthday in heaven, but with the knowledge that another guitar god, Phish\u2019s Trey Anastasio (who opened night three), would join the brotherhood on stage.<\/p>\n \n\tMayer and Anastasio hadn\u2019t quite crossed paths musically, though the former was in attendance at 2015\u2019s Fare Thee Well where the latter played alongside Weir, Lesh, Hart and drummer Bill Kreutzmann in a series of 50th anniversary concerts. Deadheads saw then that Anastasio\u2019s fret-defying, crescendo-stretching style complemented the Jerry jams they knew intimately.<\/p>\n \n\tMayer, for his part, has the benefit of 10 years of practice. He\u2019s mastered the melodies, no doubt, but continues to challenge himself when it comes to solos, almost as if he\u2019s going for a world record of interstitial notes in each bar. The combination of these two titans was a sight to behold, and especially so on \u201cScarlet Begonias,\u201d which helped kick off set two of the final show and allowed Anastasio\u2019s vocals to shine. On \u201cFire on the Mountain,\u201d each player took turns with a verse. Hart opted to rap his part, which delighted his ecstatic band-members, the reggae-rhythm providing a steady groove and allowing for Mayer and Anastasio to trade licks back-and-forth.<\/p>\n \n\tOpeners from the previous two nights, Billy Strings and Sturgill Simpson, also came out to join Dead & Co., performing \u201cWharf Rat\u201d and \u201cMountain Dew,\u201d respectively, and Grahame Lesh, playing his father\u2019s bass, accompanied the band nightly on early classics like \u201cBox of Rain\u201d and \u201cSt. Stephen.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Jay Blakesberg<\/span><\/p>\n \n\tCovers dotted the set lists \u2014 \u201cDear Mr. Fantasy,\u201d \u201cBroken Arrow,\u201d \u201cKnockin\u2019 on Heaven\u2019s Door,\u201d a snippet of \u201cHey Jude\u201d \u2014 but perennial favorites like \u201cUncle John\u2019s Band,\u201d \u201cChina Cat Sunflower,\u201d \u201cSugaree,\u201d \u201cBrown-Eyed Women\u201d and \u201cShakedown Street\u201d warmed hearts and bones as the sun dipped along with the temperature.<\/p>\n \n\tFortunately, the production offered comfort \u2014 for a price. VIP tickets allowed for separate bar and food areas as well as bathroom trailers; SVIP, known as the \u201cGolden Road,\u201d was a cordoned off upstairs deck where elevated food options and a full bar were free. Decked out in carpeting, velvet couches and tables, the space also supplied blankets for patrons.<\/p>\n \n\tElsewhere, private tented suites lined the perimeter and hosted a slew of executives including Warner Music Group\u2019s Val Blavatnik, Live Nation\u2019s Sid Greenfeig and Bob Roux, Meta\u2019s Sabrina Kartzman, ESPN\u2019s Burke Magnus and Chris Benchetler, FOX Sports\u2019 Jacob Ullman, Amazon Music\u2019s Jordan Davidoff, Rhino Entertainment\u2019s Mark Pinkus and Redbird Capital\u2019s Rob Klein and Mark Dowley. Other notables in attendance included actor Miles Teller, Bravo\u2019s Andy Cohen, singer JP Saxe and designer James Perse. Dead-affiliated Allison Statter of Blended Strategy Group and Michele Bernstein of Michi B. Inc. also beamed of the successful and mammoth undertaking.<\/p>\n \n\tEach night ended with a poignant number \u2014 \u201cKnockin\u2019 on Heaven\u2019s Door,\u201d appropriately, on Aug. 1; \u201cBrokedown Palace\u201d on the 2nd; and \u201cTouch of Grey\u201d on the 3rd \u2014 echoes of which could be heard up and down the surrounding neighborhoods, bouncing off houses and hills to \u201cfill the air,\u201d as the Dead sang. Timeless music, Garcia might have posited, has no end. And Weir is taking that to heart, writing on Instagram the following morning, \u201c60 years\u2026 I\u2019d say that\u2019s a damn good start.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a moment at the end of Dead & Company\u2019s Sunday night performance at San Francisco\u2019s Golden Gate Park when you could truly feel gratitude float through the chilly night air. Not from the 60,000 in attendance, but the two men standing with hand to heart on the stage. \u00a0 Bob Weir and Mickey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1731,2071,1596,2982,226,7859,121,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-14204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-celebrate","9":"tag-company","10":"tag-dead","11":"tag-gate","12":"tag-golden","13":"tag-grateful","14":"tag-park","15":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}