Colts Beat Pats…and The Dead
We linked this morning to the New York Times’ review of the first performance of the two-night American Beauty Project. But we like to do things a bit differently than the Gray Lady, so we sent HT reporter Specs Toporczer down to the World Financial Center for a first-hand account of the latest Grateful Dead tribute.
Who schedules anything during the middle of the AFC championship game?
I had to put the Brady-Manning Bowl on pause to hit the second night of the American Beauty Project — a cover tribute to the Grateful Dead’s album of the same name — in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center. The trip down to Battery Park City was extremely strange; the streets were empty, save for neglected women, Asian delivery boys and the handfuls of frozen old hippies scurrying across the West Side Highway. Everyone else was watching the NFL.
Read on for more of Specs’ review and a few photos snapped from the event…
The concept called for 10 different bands to each play interpretations of American Beauty tracks (they did Workingman’s Dead the night before), with a few instrumental interludes to kill time between changes. One of those intermezzos ended up being the highlight of the night, with Tony Trischka and Andy Statman giving us a raging banjo-mandolin duel early in the set. (‘Twas based on a popular Dead song that somehow left my brain on the walk home. Help, anyone?)
There were limited high points elsewhere: Toshi Reagon and her band Big Lovely managed to perform Box of Rain as a funky rock song, and ex-Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar re-worked Candyman into what he appropriately called a “dirge.” It had some of the Dead’s old guard sitting around me grimacing, but it was actually a strong, dark alt-country take on the tune.
Emcee John Schaefer (of WNYC) did awkward interviews with someone from each band during the breaks. My favorite was with Chris Smith, the bassist for Philly 20-something freak-folkers Espers. Smith told the crowd that the song his band had been asked to play at the last minute — Till the Morning Comes — would actually have been their “last pick” for a Dead song to perform. (A Pigpen offering, or at least Ripple or Brokedown Palace, he said, would have been preferable.)
After stating that Espers’ brand of folk had creepy qualities, he said one of the reasons he liked the Dead was because “Jerry Garcia was a creep.” And then Smith’s band went out and played a wonderfully creepy, overhauled TTMC, dominated by the haunting voice of their lead singer, Meg Baird, that was probably the evening’s most creative cover. It left you with the urge to find out what they would have done with a song they actually liked.
Right after Espers left the stage, I got a text from someone telling me how sick the Pats-Colts game was shaping up. The texter was kind enough to not reveal the winner. Suddenly, the pull of my paused DVR was far stronger than my desire to see whoever would be performing Attics of My Life and Truckin’.
Football won. I’m sorry.
Specs’ pics: horizontal group shot is Trischka & friends; that orange thing is Mark Eitzel, who played Friend of the Devil; faraway shot is Toshi Reagon’s Big Lovely
