Days of the Dead, Part 3: : Bears, Bertha and the Return of Scramblevision

(excerpt)
The show started shortly after we got to our seats. The previous night they kicked things off with boogie number “Alabama Getaway” from 1980’s Go to Heaven, the same album that contains the song John Mayer heard on Pandora in 2011 that led him to the Dead. They followed it up with “Truckin’” and “Ramble on Rose,” but tonight the opening track is a cover of “Good Lovin’.”

I thought that was a Rascals song but it turns out that band covered it too. The original was by a doo-wop band called The Olympics, but Dead & Company Deadify it and get the audience up on its feet to the mid-tempo beat. Bob Weir, looking like a miner 49er with his bushy white beard and swept-back hair offset by capri-cut pants and sandals more appropriate for a Key West pirate. He’s more wild-eyed now than the young Adonis who led the band through “One More Saturday Night” back in the day, looking like he’s possessed by the music.

He's playing a Stratocaster with “32” emblazoned on the body. It’s the jersey number of the most famous Deadhead Bill Walton, who passed May 27 after a battle with colorectal cancer. Mayer has a “32” on his Strat-style guitar as well. The bird-in-flight inlays in the maple neck betray its origin as a Paul Reed Smith design. In the morning I’ll find out it’s inspired by Jerry Garcia’s Alligator Stratocaster. The Dead Spec Silver Sky was built specifically for Dead & Company shows, with an ash body replacing the formative 2018 model’s alder body (the go-to Strat wood). It has a hardtail design for the bridge, so it looks like there should be a tremolo arm but there’s not.

That means the Dead Spec Silver Sky is unlikely to go out of tune as Mayer soulfully bends beautiful notes unmarred by effects, his pickup switch in its middle position. He clearly loves that guitar, which is captured pristinely through the Sphere’s sound system and really grabs me during the second set when he fronts the band for “Bertha.” I close my eyes sometimes during the first set and just listen as the band unravels “The Music Never Stopped,” “Row Jimmy,” “Black-Throated Wind,” “New Speedway Boogie” and “Deal.”

https://matthewscottkelemen.substack.com/p/days-of-the-dead-part-3-bears-bertha