Phil Lesh and Friends 12/31/00

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"Still got a long way to go." ~ Warren Haynes 12/31/2000

Phil Lesh and Friends 12/31/00 Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium-Oakland, CA

https://archive.org/details/2000-12-31.akg480.schwartz.3232.sbeok.flacf

First time I saw the Q

wow they don't make set lists like that anymore!

thanks for sharing.

A hell of a night. LOTS of things happened with me that night.

One of my better nights at the good ol' Oakland Auditorium.

And I had a few good ones there over the years.

A long time ago now.

 

"Didn't get the lickings that the Other Ones had."

 

wasn't this the year of the meet and greet  dinner/soundcheck the night before?

This was a great night. After Jerry passed, I didn't see any GD music until I caught P&F in Ventura in June 2000, and then when Phil started releasing soundboards of the fall tour that year, the Q's first, I knew I had to make it to NYE at the Kaiser. That was the start of the second chapter of my GD story, and the next couple of years chasing the music were pretty amazing in so many ways.

> wow they don't make set lists like that anymore!

And LLOLLO, that doesn't even include the Gov't Mule set that kicked off the night.

Lance, how would you say this one compares with 12/31/78?

"Lance, how would you say this one compares with 12/31/78?"

While we await Lance's reply, let me say that there is no comparison.

Phil & Friends 12/31/2000 was a brilliant and fun show. The West Coast debut of the Q and near the beginning of their amazing run, revitalizing the music and bringing us forward into the 21st century.

The Closing of Winterland 12/31/1978 was one of the all-time legendary shows with great historic significance. We are lucky to have such fine documentation of that event. When I fire up the DVD can still almost feel and see the LSD seeping out from the screen. I remember where I was that night at a party in the Oakland Hills with the KSAN radio broadcast booming through the house and one room with a little television playing the KQED channel 9 television feed. I remember peaking in that room from time to time to see Jerry looking blissful and high. At the time Bill Graham said they HAD to broadcast the show on radio and TV "otherwise the people would have EATEN that building."

Bottom line

12/31/78 Jerry

12/31/00 no Jerry

That's the bottom line of our lives since 8/9/95

 

Wowza!

I saw most The Q shows at the Beacon and that Nokia basement venue in NYC under the Lion King.

 

Lots of killer setlists, but the 12/31/00 list is melting my screen.

All hail The Q

>>>Lance, how would you say this one compares with 12/31/78<<<

Well, there really is no comparison. At the Winterland show I was a 17-year-old kid new to the scene, and that show was WAY in the deep end of the scene. That was an amazing, very memorable and in some ways a life-altering night for me. Even though I was aware that there was much flying over my head that night I was also aware of the greatness of what was happening, but still, I felt a bit like an outsider looking in.

At the Kaiser Q show I was at the other end of things. It wasn't the music so much that makes that night so memorable, although I did enjoy the music. The 30th & 31st were my first time seeing the Hallowed Q (I believe those could have been the first Bay Area Q shows) and I liked the band fine, but I was working for the box office those two nights, which allowed me access to everything & everywhere.

There are many good parts about working will-call at a show, but best part is that once most everyone is in you get cut and can go in and enjoy the show, and I took full advantage. The Kaiser is (it's still standing) an incredible building, with multiple levels & rooms, small theaters, ballrooms and a labyrinth of hallways that are not accessible to the public, and that night there were official parties and pop-up parties happening everywhere.

At that point I was well-established with BGP and had the run of just about everything with my all access pass. I found myself on a constant revolving tour of the place, continually amazed by the next area I'd never seen before, running into people I knew partying everywhere I went. It was really something to be back in that building where I'd spent so much of my youth, in so many ways exactly the same, but this time in a completely different context.

By the end of 2000 it was obvious that the Phil & Friends thing was going strong & rising, and those two nights at the Kaiser, and especially NYE was where I really knew that the Grateful Dead scene, that great live energy & vibe that only happens when we lucky few get together was still truly alive and well.

It's funny, as I'm writing this it occurs to me that on NYE 2000 it had been 22 years since that Winterland show, when I was first getting on the bus, and now it's 22 years since that Kaiser Q show.

And the scene is still going strong, still thriving, still very alive and well.

And that's far out.

LLTGD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>>>The 30th & 31st were my first time seeing the Hallowed Q (I believe those could have been the first Bay Area Q shows)


First Bay Area Q but there was no show on the 30th.

you may b thinking of the following year when rat dog opened both nights with Derek trucks and a very pregnant Susan T joining on nye plus all that crusader rabbit hullabaloo.

But I've always felt 12/30/01 was one of Phil's most underrated shows; that 'other one> the eleven' slays!
 

>>>>The West Coast debut of the Q
 

That was actually this show, still considered by some as the greatest plf performance and/or recording.

https://archive.org/details/2000-10-28.paf.sbd.philleshnet.2359.sbeok.flacf

a concert so impressive it compelled me to make the journey with a few friends at the impressionable age of 18 to see our first nye show which was also my first time in the Bay Area.

We were not disappointed.

As a fledgling bass player and concert goer, I cannot overstate the impact of seeing something like Phil & mike Gordon performing a bass duet in the middle of a 3 set performance on a holiday in a big city.

nor can I over emphasize what that band represented to some of us who were too young to see Garcia but still avid fans of his.

This band was on a whole other level than any of the post-Grateful Dead related projects since his untimely demise and it was obvious, at least it was to a lot of us anyhow.

I would see every public California Plf performance for the next 3 years and they were some of the most special times of my life

"First Bay Area Q"

Lance and I both been schooled.

"nor can I over emphasize what that band represented to some of us who were too young to see Garcia but still avid fans of his."

Love hearing this.

 

>>>Lance and I both been schooled

 

i don't know much but I know I loved Q and that may b all I need to know on the zone(s)


>>>love hearing this.


And I Iove that some people who saw a bunch of Jerry still felt this band was something special.

I still don't think I can fully convey though just what it was like to b a teenager having only seen a couple one set Phil shows with guys from little feat at mediocre outdoor venues and a couple other ones 2000 shows without Phil, and though having enjoyed all of them, still feeling I might have missed the boat on plf's better days when kimock was involved, let alone anything nearly as epic as Garcia's finest hours, to then go to a theater like the wiltern and see that 10/28/00 performance.

I had never heard of ARU, Gov't Mule, jazz is dead or the Zen tricksters, so the Q caught me completely off guard.

It wasn't like "neato, this is a little bit better than the stuff I've been seeing."

it was like "wtf just happened?! My God; the group chemistry, instrumental interplay and 3 part harmony vocals! Phil was on fire! What was that magical modern GD/Allmans hybrid type sound they were achieving? Who were those guys?! Am I ever gonna see a concert that good again?!"

smoking crater indeed

I didn't mean to suggest that 12/31/78 and 12/31/00 were comparable musically; after all, there's nothing like a Grateful Dead concert, right? But instead I was thinking about the significance of these two shows, and the enormity of them in the history of GD music, and I do see a basis for comparison there.

12/31/78 always struck me as a huge event that marked the end of an era for the GD. I wasn't fortunate enough to be at this show, but I've seen the video a zillion times, and to me, it seemed like a culmination in a way. Within a few months of this show, Keith and Donna made their exit and Brent was brought on board. The 70s were shifting into the 80s, and the GD were dragging the times along with them as they always had, as Bill Graham once observed.

12/31/00, on the other hand, marked a new beginning for GD music, and P&F did it up in a big way. There'd been a lot of GD music made after Jerry passed. We had Ratdog, Further Fest, The Other Ones, and early iterations of Phil and Friends, but to my ears, Jerry's absence was always very much present at those events. Then, in the fall of 2000, the line-up we came to know as the Q started tearing it up from coast to coast. By this time, there were a few GD communities where information and music were being shared (I was a DNCer, and didn't make to the PZ until years later), and when Phil started releasing soundboards of select shows from the fall tour, I remember lots of people getting very excited about the prospects of things to come. In fact, I don't recall people being this excited about GD music since Jerry died, and probably a few years before that actually.

When the NYE 2000 show in Oakland was announced, I knew right away I had to be there, and I'm really glad I was able to make it to this epic event. I had been to the HJK once before for a run of shows in September 1985, and my expectations on my return to this hallowed hall were met and exceeded by orders of magnitude. I remember walking out the Kaiser in the wee hours of New Year's Day 2001, feeling like I was walking on air, and wondering where and when the next P&F show would take place.

Luckily, for me, that next run was at the Maritime Hall in February 2001, and I was lucky to attend the shows there. I learned early on during the Maritime run that the New Year's show had not been a fluke, and it hadn't just been the doses. While the NYE show had been epic in so many ways, I think it was the Maritime run where things got much more strange and interesting, but that's a topic for different thread.

>>>First Bay Area Q but there was no show on the 30th<<<

Ah yes, you're correct about mixing up the 30th from the next year. I worked will-call for those as well and things tend to blend together over time, but everything else I blathered about that 2000 NYE show was accurate. I had a great time at the 2001 NYE show, but it wasn't nearly the adventure that the year before was.

>>>i don't know much but I know I loved Q and that may b all I need to know on the zone(s)<<<

Nothing's ever gotten the zone going like a Q thread.

>>>Luckily, for me, that next run was at the Maritime Hall in February 2001, and I was lucky to attend the shows there. I learned early on during the Maritime run that the New Year's show had not been a fluke, and it hadn't just been the doses. While the NYE show had been epic in so many ways, I think it was the Maritime run where things got much more strange and interesting, but that's a topic for different thread.
 

maritime was gnarly, definitely when things started getting looser, more experimental and freaky.

only 4 night run at the same venue by any band I've ever attended and I was lucky to make it out one piece.


 >>>>mixing up the 30th from the next year.

 

Just found a really decent audio source for that one I've never heard before, for some reason the first and second set is inverted in the play window but I'll say again, very underrated show:

https://archive.org/details/2001-12-30.paf.naks.unknown.7351.sbeok.flacf...

> Derek trucks and a very pregnant Susan T joining on nye

That's a set I still listen to fairly frequently.

https://archive.org/details/dtb2001-12-31-flac16

> only 4 night run at the same venue by any band I've ever attended and I was lucky to make it out one piece.

We were up in one corner of the balcony all weekend long, and there was a bumper sticker with the word "Decorum" stuck on the wall right next to us that had me cracking up all weekend.

Happy 19th anniversary to this show.

The Q were winding down in 03' but as this sbd from the first night of their final Warfield run shows, the magic and chemistry was very much still there:  https://archive.org/details/2003-09-25.paf.sbd.bertha-ashley.20287.sbeok...

Did the Q play ever the Nokia?  Some time after the 07/08 Larry/Jackie/Particle Guy runs?

Because they definitely didn't during 2000-2003.

I remember getting shut out one night at the Nokia (maybe Best Buy by then) but I think that was for Furthur.

Pretty sure they never played Nokia.

they's was a beacon band back in the day and I think all the reunions were either at txr or the cap.

maybe forest hills once?

Forest Hills in '15, I think.  My first trip back since TH in '83.

7 song rehearsal set the night before was fun!

Especially when the stopped playing brown eyed women to get the harmonies right.

 

I had met Warren a couple times before that night and he knew I was growing some of the best weed at the time.

So at the meet and greet dinner before the rehearsal set I walked up to him in the crowded room and said hi and reached out to shake his hand.

Unbeknownst to him I had and eighth in my hand. 

Like a pro he said he was glad to see me and shook my hand and pocketed the weed without anyone seeing.

also a little later I think Mike Gordon was hitting on me.

So theoretically, at least Warren was smoking my weed that night.

Only once at Virginia Beach on that Beach to Peach thing.   What night though, Derek Trucks Band, Allman Brothers, Quintet.

 

 

 

maritime may have been some of the very best of Q

forgot all about that meet n greet stuff

such a time for Philophiles !

> maritime may have been some of the very best of Q

Word.

My first Q show was Vegas 10/27/00 followed by the two Wiltern shows.

Furious E that China Cat-Eleven was epic and from then on I tried to catch every possible Q show I could attend . My all time favorite Q show is 2/18/01. Unfortunately I could not attend NYE in 2000. 

>>>My first Q show was Vegas 10/27/00 followed by the two Wiltern shows
 

SD head for the west coast Q forefront win.

I ended up hearing Vegas later that year and liked it but didn't love it as much as the CA shows.

still, having never seen the band before, that must have been impactful.

did Wiltern feel like a level up from that at the time or was it pretty much what u were expecting by that point?

indeed china>11 opener ain't nuthin to fuck with

So many interplanetary Phil shows over the years but Maritime 2001, Greek Theater 2002 and Warfield 2003 runs are among the most memorable.

All three had Grateful Dead apparitions. As close as it gets. 

 

 

(((((PlanetJams)))))

Furious E- I was really blown away by that Vegas show especially Warren's take on Just A Little Light as I had not seen any live Brent songs played since his passing. I also loved the Fantasy opener and Built To Last was Grate but that China Cat-Eleven and Blue Sky right out of the gate atThe Wiltern was definitely a step up.

After the second night in LA I flew back to The Philippines and proposed to my girlfriend of 6 years at the time. We got married in Aug. 2001 and are still together almost 30 years later.