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Bob Weir Live

November 6, 2014 by Garren Christopher Stamp   

I want to take a break of my usual format of contextualizing and reviewing Dead Albums to discuss the time when i saw Bob Weir Live. For those of you who don’t know Bob Weir was the second in command and in the Grateful Dead(Jerry Garcia was the unannounced figure head). He was one of its founding members and played with the Dead for their entire musical career. He sings the second most amount of songs (behind Jerry Garcia) and also was the lead guitar player. Bob also wrote a good amount of their most popular songs.

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For anyone who loves or is interested in the Grateful Dead Bob Weir is a must see concert. The Grateful Dead are no longer a band since Jerry Died due to heart complications from battling drugs and an unhealthy lifestyle for decades. The remaining members will occasionally perform together calling themselves the Other Ones, a reference to one of Bob’s most famous songs “Thats it for the Other One’s I-IV”, but these concerts are very rare and hard to get tickets to. Bob Weir also performs with his solo group (Bob Weir and Ratdog). They play a lot of dead songs as well as some of their original music which is actually pretty good.

I got the chance to see Bob Weir and Ratdog two years ago. My friends and I love music festivals. That summer we had decided to go to Peach Fest. Peach Fest was a four day music festival set up on a giant Mountain in Scranton, PA. It was set up by the Allman Brothers, another one of my favorite bands, and would feature a double set (ended up being 3 sets) from Bob Weir and Ratdog. Their were a lot of other good bands their but my memory of their names is a little hazy. Anyway I finally got to see a living member of the Grateful Dead perform. I could finally here Dead songs as they were intended, live. It was an amazing experience that i wouldn’t trade for the world. I remember during his second set he started playing at like 4 in the morning because all the other bands had jammed over their time slot(something that no one at festival was complaining about). Anyway, Bob’s setlist was amazing. He even brought Grace Potter ( a female act) on stage with him to do an amazing cover of Dear Prudence. Anyway at like 6am the sun was beginning to come up and Bob was still jamming on stage doing an amazing rendition of “Fire on the Mountain”, a popular Dead Song. It was then that my friend pointed out to me that the sun was coming out from behind the huge mountain the concert was below. He said, and i quote, “Dude their literally is a fire in the mountain”. This blew my mind. It was such a unreal and awesome moment. All of the days events had led to Bob Weir not playing till 4 hours later than he was supposed to and then the song selection at that time was perfect.

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Bob Weir gave everyone at the concert an extra set two. He was only supposed to play a set on the second and third day. He decided to play on the last day as well. Bob performed an acoustic set that was so relaxing and awesome that it just summed up the festival perfectly. I would recommend anyone to go to Peach Fest or any festival with Bob Weir or the Allman Brothers to anyone.


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