An Other View

You can teach new dogs old tricks, it seems.

Christina Oliva and her husky puppy, Gypsy Rose, are both too young to have joined the traveling circus of Deadheads that followed the Grateful Dead on the road. Oliva, a 19-year-old from Massachusetts, never even saw the Dead in concert.

“I had saved my money for a ticket in 1995, when they were going to play Boston that October,” said Oliva, in full Summer of Love regalia, as she played with her dog on the concourse lawn at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Wednesday. “But then came August.”

That was when Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack while in a Bay Area drug rehabilitation facility, bringing an end to the band’s “long strange trip.”

Now Oliva’s getting a chance she never expected.

The Other Ones--featuring Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart touring together for the first time since Garcia’s death--are headlining the Dead spinoff Furthur Festival tour, and Oliva has been on the road for nearly a month as part of the village of vendors that sets up outside each show.

“This is the closest thing there’s going to be to Dead Tour,” she said, using the official Deadhead term for the journey.

On stage, it was the closest thing there’s going to be to the Dead. But it wasn’t a mere simulation. The Other Ones may be the skeleton of the Grateful Dead. But with this tour they demonstrate that there’s plenty of life left in them old bones--with an infusion of new blood giving a boost.

With keyboardist Bruce Hornsby--an auxiliary member of the Dead in the ‘90s--and four new faces fleshing out the lineup, the band was tentative at the start of a preview benefit show in San Francisco six weeks ago. Touring since, there was nothing hesitant Wednesday as the group launched its set with a confident blast of the anthem “Truckin”’ and the ebb-and-flow dynamics of “Jack Straw.”

Guitarists Steve Kimmock and Mark Karan and saxophonist Dave Ellis--who collectively have more or less stepped in to the void Garcia left--have become integral to the unit, which is taking on its own musical characteristics, especially in the trademark ensemble improvisations. The solid jazz chops of Hornsby and Ellis have blended with Weir’s blues-rock base, Hart’s world-music rhythms and even Lesh’s classical background for shimmering, shifting patterns.

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It was far from perfect in Irvine. The pacing was maddeningly uneven. The band built a terrific head of steam in the first few songs. Then a friend was brought on to sing an Irish rebel song--a nice gesture, but a momentum killer.

A similar sag occurred when, after a soaring run of “China Cat Sunflower” and the folk-blues classic “I Know You Rider,” Lesh stepped forward to sing Garcia’s elegiac “China Doll.”

Gorgeous, but a downer that had to be overcome with the rousing “we will survive” tag of the closing “Touch of Grey.”

Then again, unevenness was a Dead trademark.

Among the fans it’s not just the youngsters who are into it. Old dogs too are loving the band’s new tricks.

At a table for the Wharf Rats organization--the clean-and-sober branch of the Deadheads, which holds AA-style meetings at the concerts--Doug (who in the recovery tradition doesn’t give his last name) said he was filled with a sense of renewal. He saw his first Dead show in 1973 and toured with them many times in the later years anchoring the Wharf Rats’ effort.

After Garcia’s death, Doug watched as the Deadhead community fragmented. Many veterans stayed away from the first two Furthurs, which featured Weir and Hart each fronting a band but which lacked a galvanizing sense. This year, it’s a different story.

“A lot of people are coming back,” he said. “All the old energy is there.”

Indeed, there weren’t many casual fans in the crowd Wednesday. The tour has generated positive word-of-mouth and drew plenty of hard-core Deadheads, veterans and neophytes to fill the seats that were empty last year, when the Black Crowes were the incongruous headliners.

This year, all the pieces were in place, with fans dancing madly to opener Rusted Root, a young Pittsburgh band that updates the ‘60s tribal vibe with doses of world-beat grooves.

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Second-billed Hot Tuna, the blues-rock band fronted by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady (original members of the Jefferson Airplane--the Dead’s Haight-Ashbury cohorts) also was a perfect fit in its third Furthur appearance.

Should the Other Ones feel guilty that they had to revive the old format to satisfy the crowd? Not as long as they demonstrate the spirit they’ve shown on this tour.

Should the fans feel guilty for loving it?

Not Wharf Rat Doug. Asked if the Other Ones should continue as a full-time operation, he nodded and said, simply, “It seems to be working for me.”