Grateful Dead – Memphis Flyer

If there is a rule book for Memphis music, the following are surely included: Memphis bands share members, and they love tribute shows like nothing else.

From the recently released, Luther Dickinson-led Sun Records tribute, Red Hot: A Memphis Celebration of Sun Records to Graham Winchester’s “Memphis Does Bowie” show, to last year’s star-studded lineup for the Talking Heads tribute concert, musicians in the Bluff City usually jump at the chance to pay tribute to their heroes and legends — both the local and international varieties. And what else do all the aforementioned concerts and records have in common? They all raised money and awareness to benefit local charities. Proceeds from sales of Red Hot go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, as did the proceeds from the Memphis Does Bowie benefit show. And the Talking Heads tribute benefitted the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

So local psychedelic jammers Left Unsung will be honoring a Memphis tradition when they pay tribute to the Grateful Dead by accepting canned goods as admission, for use by the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA).

Left Unsung is John Day on guitar and vocals, L.J. Cates on guitar, Michael Shelton on drums and vocals, Chris Hardy on bass, and Nathan Powell on pedal steel. The members of the tribute group all play in other local bands; they met after a Dr. Brown show. “We all kind of share each other around here,” drummer Shelton says. They also share a passion for the Dead, and, as Memphis was somewhat lacking in the long-and-improvisational tribute band department, they set about to remedy what they saw as a serious deficit in the usually lush Memphis music landscape.

But the jam-heavy musicians are more interested in playing music than in earning a buck. The members of Left Unsung have day jobs and gigs in other Bluff City bands, and the Grateful Dead tribute project has more to do with a passion for the Dead than with a paycheck. “It’s never been about the money,” Shelton says. So, after their first two performances, Shelton and the group decided to partner with local organizations to bring attention and donations to charitable causes. “We have an opportunity here with a captive audience and one who is focused on conscious change.” With that in mind, Left Unsung have partnered with MIFA for their upcoming Growlers show.

MIFA is one of the local organizations partnered with the Mid-South Food Bank – an organization that typically sees a “food drought” in the summer as donations slow down until the next school year (see article below). MIFA is the organization behind the Meals on Wheels program, which delivers nutritious lunches daily to senior citizens. “We want to remind [the audience] that we have this service in the community,” Shelton explains.
As for what to expect at the Growlers show, Shelton says the band has been steadily adding songs to the set list since their last performance at the Cove. “We focus on learning songs that not only span the band’s discography from the ’60s and onward, but also on varying styles of structure through playing songs like ‘Brokedown Palace’ and ‘Dark Star’ all the way to ‘Casey Jones’ and ‘Scarlet Begonias.’”

Shelton says the band intends to perform only every two months, with the intention of keeping the shows special – and giving the musicians time to learn new songs. They plan on adding 15 or so songs to their repertoire for each new performance so that, much like the concerts of the Grateful Dead themselves, no two shows will be the same. “Our goal is to keep the crowd guessing about what we’ll play at each show,” Shelton says. “We value learning well-known songs as well as deep-cut, obscure originals from the band. We keep an integral focus on transitioning and improvising through songs throughout our sets, so the music flows similar to the way Grateful Dead’s sets flowed. We’ll be dropping some newly learned songs at Growlers and will continue to expand our song base every show we play.”

Left Unsung Grateful Dead tribute and MIFA benefit at Growlers, Saturday, July 29th at 9 p.m. $5 or two canned goods.

Seeing the Cardinals in the World Series brings back a painful memory. No, I don’t mean when they got swept in the 2004 series by the Red Sox. And I don’t mean their clinching loss, at home, to the Astros in last year’s National League Championship Series. And I don’t mean when the 2002 team was taken out by the Giants. Or when Arizona scored in the bottom of the ninth in Game 5 of the 2001 playoffs to eliminate them.

What I’m referring to is one of those experiences that, even 13 years later, still makes me shudder. Almost every time I see a Cardinals player in their home white uniforms, a part of me winces at what could have been.

It was the summer of 1993. I was on the road a lot back then. I had decided that, wherever I was, life was more interesting somewhere else — no doubt prime material for a therapist to work on, but my way of dealing with it was to keep moving. Travel was among my myriad addictions, many of which I pursued at my favorite destination: Grateful Dead concerts.

The great thing about a Dead show, other than that they were my favorite band and there were thousands of other people there for the same reason, was the collective sense of craziness. It was the safest place in the world to get loaded and weird, because nobody among the throngs could ever look at you and say, “Dude, you’re high” or “Dude, you’re weird” — not when there are naked people walking around, and people dressed as clowns, and people sucking balloons of nitrous oxide, and people offering to adjust your chi for a hit of pot, and … well, you get the idea.

I was in the middle of one of these manic scenes, somewhere in the Midwest, possibly Indianapolis. Details are a bit fuzzy. And somewhere in the surging sea of insanity I saw a familiar face, an old St. Louis friend from my college days. Let’s say his name was Bill, because it just might be that he’s now an elected official somewhere in these great United States who doesn’t want everybody to know that he once roamed the Midwest in search of places to get loaded and weird.

We were all talking about how great it was that very soon the Dead would be playing in St. Louis, and I mentioned that I might go to a ballgame while I was there. One of Bill’s buds says, “Hey, you should give me a call. My sister knows Ozzie Smith. I can set you up with some tickets.” (Ozzie Smith, for you younger folks, was the Derek Jeter of his day, and if you don’t know who Derek Jeter is, please stop reading now.)

The thing is, somebody you’ve never met saying to you, in a Dead-show parking lot, that they know Ozzie Smith and can hook you up with tickets is really no more weird, or even memorable than, say, somebody running a disco in the parking lot after the show, or a school bus painted in Day-Glo colors, or people passing around an invisible “energy ball,” or … well, again, you get the idea.

In other words, it didn’t occur to me that, upon arriving in St. Louis, I should actually call this guy and say, “Gimme those tickets!”

We got to St. Louis on a Sunday, and some friends and I went to the game. We got cheap seats in the outfield, and the Mets killed the Cards, 10-3. We were so far away from the action (and so, um, loaded and weird) that just now I looked up the game on baseball-reference.com and realized Dwight Gooden pitched 7 innings for the Mets — which makes the story even worse, as you’ll soon see.

The next night at the St. Louis show, out of all the freaky faces flying around, the first one I see is the Ozzie guy, and he is pissed. “Dude!” he says, “What happened to you? I had Ozzie’s tickets for you at will call!”

Even now, after writing that, I have to stare at the words: Ozzie’s tickets. At will call. For me.

Turns out his sister was Ozzie Smith’s agent, and apparently in my foggy behavior I had told the guy I’d call, and so four seats, Ozzie Smith’s seats, front row, right behind home plate, under my name, with Dwight freaking Gooden on the mound … went unclaimed. With me, the idiot, loaded, sitting in the bleachers watching little mini-baseball players (mostly Mets) run around the bases.

The Cardinals won the World Series this year, with me rooting for them. But it was difficult to watch their home games with some peace of mind. I kept thinking about Ozzie Smith and those seats behind home plate.