DSO!!!

Dan & I went to see Dark Star Orchestra (or DSO if you’re into the whole brevity thing) on Friday night! For those benighted few who are unaware of such things, DSO is the premier Grateful Dead cover band in the nation these days!

In our funny little post-Jerry world, there is probably a Dead cover band in every major city, and in our town there are a few, including, arguably, my band (many people would also put the surviving members of the Grateful Dead in this category). The weird thing is that there is great competitive ill will between some members of these bands – I remember one of our singers saying that there was going to be a “hippie war” between us – yikes!! The main L.A. Dead band is called Cubensis, and they refer to DSO as “Dirty Sagging Ovaries”. Aren’t you glad you never knew this?

Anyway, I’ve got no beef with the other Dead cover bands as long as they’re good, and DSO is undoubtedly the best (including, unfortunately, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead). In a way they’re kind of like Beatlemania in that they really try to sound like the original, so much so that it’s kind of spooky sometimes!

What DSO does is take one show that the Dead played and recreate the songs and the sound as much as possible. They don’t play everything note for note as this would be absurd, and would take forever just to get one show down! But the sound and the feel are pretty similar, and one of the fun things is trying to guess which show they're doing (much easier for those with Internet connections, although I did guess the year!)

It is possible that this particular form of entertainment is not for everyone, but I had a great time & Dan seemed slightly less miserable! Oh, and for the record, it was June 16, 1976 – a good show!!