Pop Weekend : Fans Stand, Grateful Dead Deliver at Irvine Meadows

The Grateful Dead were their quirky old selves at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Saturday night. Guitarist Jerry Garcia, looking like Father Time in a black T-shirt, was in especially fine form, playing solos that ranged from foot-stomping to caressing--and were always tasteful. No insecure showboating here.

With material that spanned their 22-year career, the Dead had the crowd up and dancing from the moment they took the stage until they finished their second set nearly 3 1/2 hours later.

The only places they may have lost the crowd were during and right after an extended treatment of “Uncle John’s Band”--during, with an elongated tandem drum solo by Mickey Hart and Phil Kreutzmann--and after, when Garcia and Bob Weir’s guitars were run through the same signal processor, making a sound not unlike that of a dentist drill. The rest of “Uncle John’s Band,” though, was of tour de force caliber, and the crowd sang along with every word and screamed at every musical embellishment. Indeed, there may never be another audience as vociferous and generous with their adulation as the Dead’s.

The Dead are no ordinary band. They boast a musical diversity that rivals Neil Young’s--though where he shifts gears with every album, the Dead do so with every song . Shifting rhythms, irregular song structures and occasionally unorthodox time signatures might halt any other group, but the Dead seem to love the challenge.

Saturday’s show--the middle of a three-night engagement at the Meadows--ran the gamut from a Dixieland treatment of Johnny Cash’s “Big River” to the cosmically musical noodling tune “Playing in the Band.” An especially strong number was “West L.A. Fade Away,” but the strongest of all came at the end of the first set: the Dead’s slow, longing rendition of “To Lay Me Down” had an almost religious feel about it. When Garcia and Weir raised their voices together in harmony, it was if they were one.

Time seems to change all things--except the Grateful Dead, who continue doing things their way, combining rural blues, country, rock and anything else that suits their fancy for an audience that never seems to tire of them. Everyone should have it so good.