Home >  A & E

Saturday, November 30, 2002

By Scott Mervis, Post-Gazette Weekend Editor

The only thing you knew for sure going into a Grateful Dead concert was that there were no sure things.

There was no predicting the band's mood, song selection, T-shirt color, overall enthusiasm or degree of free-form exploration. But there were some guidelines, mainly that the first set was shorter and punchier and the second more "out there."

The Other Ones, the remains of the Dead, threw out even those rules last night at the Mellon Arena with a spacey first set. It even included an abbreviated version of the patented "Drums"/"Space" and you'd have to get the Dead historian to look up the last time they did that before the intermission.

The Other Ones took the stage with an open jam that eventually got around to a sweet and delicate version of "Here Comes Sunshine," a nice choice for Pittsburgh on a cold November night.

If you were close to the stage, you could see that bassist Phil Lesh was quarterbacking the team, calling signals on their ear pieces (or monitors?) to indicate which direction the band should go. Aside from Lesh, everyone was in pairs: with Bob Weir (bearded and the only guy in the house in shorts) and Jimmy Herring on guitars; Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann syncopating on drums; and keyboardists Rob Barraco and Jeff Chimenti. Joining them on vocals only was blues singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi.

Obviously no one's going to fill the late Jerry Garcia's shoes, but somebody's gotta try them on. Barraco does a very good Jerry on vocals, as he showed on "Sunshine" and later on a rousing "Dire Wolf." In fact, he does a better Jerry than Bob does, which was noticeable when Weir turned in a fairly colorless "China Cat Sunflower."

As for Herring, we saw him earlier this year playing more of a rhythm role to Warren Haynes' lead in Phil Lesh & Friends. Now, he's proving with the Other Ones that he can play naturally in Garcia's psychedelic style. If they aren't out there already, the Jimmy Herring bumper stickers are soon to be issued.

Anyway, the Other Ones' flexibility in the odd opening set extended as far as letting the nonsinging Hart take a vocal on "Only the Strange Remain." Pretty strange, indeed.

If the first set was an uneven one, the second, following an inspiring acoustic set by longtime songwriter Robert Hunter, was simply sublime. "The Bird Song," something of a group-sing, went deep into the band's improvisational territory, beautifully coming back to that simple theme.

"Mr. Charlie," sung by Tedeschi, and "Not Fade Away" had everyone in the house shaking their bones.

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the night, midway through set two, was "He's Gone," which came off as both a lament and a celebration of the fallen member. Listening to Weir sing it boldly and watching the girls twirl, you couldn't help but smile.