MORE DEAD WEIGHT

To paraphrase an old saying, nothing is certain but death, taxes and the length of a Grateful Dead concert. Equally certain is that a Dead marathon--such as the one Saturday at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre--will often carry some transcendent musical moments to help justify the band’s three-plus hours onstage. Clashing slightly with the sextet’s expansive nature, a few of these moments were squeezed into one selection--”Little Red Rooster.” A Dead live staple for years, the Willie Dixon chestnut got a particularly terse and spirited reading, fired by Jerry Garcia’s winding, whiny guitar lines and Bob Weir’s felicitous full-throated growl. It’s just too bad that to reach such inspired--and inspiring--territory, one had to wade through a hefty number of the Bay Area group’s busy, bloated jams.