Hola, amigos. It has been a minute since I rapped at ya, so I thought I would share some thoughts about a pair of very good concert films I recently watched, 2008’s Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light, and a 2019 archival release from the Grateful Dead 1991 show at Giants Stadium. 

The dichotomy of the Rolling Stones is that they’re surrounded at every level by suit-wearing professionals, while being fronted by two guitarists who would sound sloppy in a bar with a $5.00 shot and a beer special. At one point Keith Richards tells director Martin Scorsese that he and Ronnie Wood are “both pretty lousy, but worth ten guitarists together.” And, you know what, he’s 100% right. I love how sloppy they are together. I love how they both play lead and rhythm at the same time. How they try to play where the other one isn’t. How Richards tears into solos, forgets where he’s going, and then bends a random note while staring at the audience like it was the most deliberate choice in the world. He’s the only legendary guitarist that I might actually play a little bit better than.

Mick Jagger, of course, remains the consummate professional. The seriousness at which he approaches sashaying, preening, and waggling his ass in front of thousands of people undercuts how ridiculous it is for a (then-) 63-year-old man to do so. At the time of Shine a Light’s release, fans had been referring to the Stones as the greatest band in the world for almost forty years. If it were up to Jagger alone, there would never be any doubt that they were still the best.

Nowadays the hippest music (made by bands like Wednesday) is noisy country that’s played kinda shitty, and the Stones have been making that music since the final days of the Big Bopper, so I think they deserve more respect among the indie intelligentsia. Granted, Shine a Light doesn’t really do a good job showing their country bona fides, as it bypasses heavy-hitters like “Torn and Frayed”, “Wild Horses”, and “Sweet Virginia” for the goofy lark “Far Away Eyes.” However, even that silly song gives us a chummy moment in which Mick and Keith share a microphone, which is probably the closest the two have been since 1978.

However great he is as a front man, Mick has always sounded a little prissy singing country and blues (he can’t help it; he was born a middle class Londoner), so when Buddy Guy comes in hot for the second verse of Muddy Waters’ “Champagne and Reefer,” he blows off Mick’s head. In fact, all of Shine a Light’s guest stars seem to want to prove that they can hold a note longer than Jagger, even though they look totally stoked to be playing with him. Hell, Jack White bounces around stage from Mick to Keith to Ronnie, as if ticking off squares on his bucket list. I also bet that Christina Aguilera didn’t wake up that morning thinking Mick Jagger was going to grind up on her while they sang “Live With Me.”

Charlie Watts was a special, peculiarly British treasure whose elastic tempos and backbeat-heavy drumming provided the foundation for the entire Stones temple. He breaks the fourth wall exhaling directly into the camera after an energetic “All Down the Line” that probably went on longer than he wanted. Pretty funny.

Some of these renditions get pretty wacky. Richards doesn’t really fuck much with the melodies, but he’ll pull on a rhythm like its a loose thread in a sweater. “Shattered” is barely recognizable, “Tumbling Dice” is so loose it almost rattles apart, and “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)” rips by so fast you almost forgot the original was a mellow Motown song.

Look at this setlist….I love how even the Stones kind’ve pretend that they stopped releasing records after 1981. Oh, wait, “She Was Hot,” was from 1983. That was probably included as a tribute to one of Mick’s early girlfriends who had since died of old age.

Can we get an anti-Epstein edit where we yeet the Clinton crime family the fuck outta here? Charlie nailed it when he said, “That was a bit dull, because they weren’t really rock ‘n’ roll people.” I guess I should be glad he wasn’t onstage next to Bobby Keys honking on a sax.

I also recently caught a theatrical screening of The Grateful Dead’s 1991 Giants Stadium show with my dad, a lifelong Deadhead. 

Before his death earlier this year, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir told NPR that he hoped the Grateful Dead’s music would last another two or three hundred years. I don’t know if they’ll last centuries (that would put them alongside Beethoven and Mozart), but as long as the Dead’s music-industrial complex keeps the band’s archival concerts in theatres, they’ll at least keep fans like us satiated for new content from a band that hasn’t existed for thirty years.

Two pianomen, Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby sit in for the recent speedball victim Brent Mydland, with Welnick handling the synth strings and horns, and Hornsby wailing on a grand piano that must’ve been dampened within an inch of its life, otherwise it would’ve bled all over the stage. Amazingly, Hornsby was younger by only a couple years, but those years looked like decades. He’s the most ingratiating musician onstage, looking eagerly at Garcia whenever he’s about to solo or sing backup.

After a 1980s that found him struggling with a $2000-a-day opium habit and slipping into a diabetic coma, Garcia is fresh-eyed and impish, despite wearing a XXXL Kevin Smith muumuu t-shirt and looking gassed by the end of the second set. In the first set, though, he’s having a blast, bouncing off the new keyboard players and prick-teasing the audience by repeatedly beginning the fan favorite “Dark Star” only to transition into another song. It’s one of rock’s great tragedies that he would only live for another four years, but he also looks like he’s lived a lot of life. On June 17, 1991, he is 48!

Weir rocks his then-signature stringy cutoff jean shorts and a purple Polo shirt. On “Space,” he employs a volume pedal that reveals a nice, pumped quad. In a band of fatsos, geeks, and gearheads, Bobby was always their prettiest piece of ass.

That six-string bass Phil Lesh plays looks like no fun at all. Looks like he’s fretting a 2×4 instead of an instrument.

We lost about a third of the theater when Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart dove into “Drums.” I appreciate that the Dead introduced a popular audience to some pretty out-there experimental music, but even as someone with appreciation for that kind of stuff, I was tuning out after the second minute of Hart grinding a pipe against a reverb tank.

At least three of the band members wear shirts of a teal color that hasn’t existed since 1992. My dad chalked the color up to the lasting influence of Miami Vice. So that’s just one more thing Don Johnson has to answer for.

One of the great joys of watching a concert film is seeing a musician playing onscreen and suddenly hearing their instrument pop out of the mix. I imagine it’s a trick of my brain, but wouldn’t put it past the always astute Dead tech team to bump up certain musicians’ outputs once they appeared onscreen.

June 17, 1991 was a Monday. Gosh, nothing like an after work Grateful Dead acid trip in New Jersey to throw off your whole week.