Some (ethno-)musicological reflections on the Dead & Company Final tour at the Kia Forum in Inglewood (Los Angeles) …
I made this “rough cut” of highlights of videos and pics that I took from the concert to share with my UCSB students of Music 114. The class is called “Music in American Popular Culture,” and I try to focus on Californian music as much as I can, and especially the phenomenon of the Grateful Dead and Deadheads. In Isla Vista there is a resurgence of live music and bands, and I hear from the students that there is a flourishing scene of young Deadheads there, and even some Dead cover bands (though I do not know this firsthand).
Dead & Co. picked an incredible venue, the Kia Forum, in Inglewood/ Los Angeles for its final shows in the area. The Forum reminds me of the cavernous arena spaces in which I initially saw the Grateful Dead as a kid growing up on the East Coast. This did create a wellspring of nostalgic haze for me, as did the Shakedown Street, which was by far the most packed one I have ever witnessed (the aisle needed to be twice as large given the number of fans!).
This 2023 Dead and Company concert was extra special for me because I was able to take my son to his first rock concert, despite him being more of a Nirvana guy...He told me something that was so true: that what makes the Dead great is their audience-in this case 18,000 fans (I estimate) standing on their feet for the nearly 4 hours of music, singing and dancing and swaying to the beautiful frequencies and lyrical stories and messages of this iconic San Francisco group.
I am somewhat obsessed with Tonal Unity for constructing the “group mind” (X factor and band oneness with audience, or the breaking down of the fourth wall between audience and performer) at GD-style shows, and in this case the show settled on E (as I noted back in 2015 for the Fare thee well shows)—by the time they hit “Bird Song” with strong teases of the “Other One” in there, actually quite pronounced at times, I knew the second half would feature E in its glorious coming, and sure enough we got it in second set as a part of a Sandwich around Terrapin. Songs in E: Brown Eyed Women, Jack Straw, High Time, leading to the subdominant relief of Mr. Charlie (A), then immediately back to E: Bird Song (E), and the up tempo Don’t Ease Me In, then set II: Althea (I know it begins on a Bm, similar to how Brown Eyed Women begins on C# minor chord, but it's also in E), into Other One (the Dead and Company start it in D Dorian (I quickly found that 6/29/19, 6/17/22, and 7/15 22 have this D intro, a reinterpretation, either way not something the Grateful Dead ever did at least to the best of my knowledge)), Terrapin (F Lydian, harmonically in terms of E a nice Phrygian half step about the E, but at 'inspiration," where Weir starts singing, it's rock and roll and the key of A, so again in large-scale terms of the flow of the show, if it is rooted in E, then the E to A motion is functionally a subdominant relief), back to Other One (D to E), and after Drumz, we get "Stella Blue" in E (with a D# now, usually the Dead play in an E Mixolydian so with a D natural). The D# leading tone confirms the E-centric nature of the night, eight songs in all.
Am I blowing this harmonic focus out of proportion? I don’t think so, because if you listen to the night before and after (Kia Forum and Phoenix), tonal unity on E or any other tonic is not present in this fashion.
