All the festival goers and Phil followers descended on
Masontown, West Virginia for All Good '08, the 12th annual to be
exact, with a vengeance, promising to deliver rip-roarin' fun for all.
Car
troubles in Massachusetts forced this disappointed journalist to miss the early
arrival sets including "The Join" which by doing my duty and interviewing some
folks who were actually there, was apparently, "a gnarly dance party!" and,
"absolutely delicious!". No, we ended up driving through the night to the
festival and with no sleep under my belt I pounced on All Good feeling the
impending awesomeness that was welcoming our wonderful lust for raging live
music and complete and utter debauchery that completes any life-altering
experience in beautiful
After a
funky evening with Lettuce and Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood, Phil Lesh and
Friends were finally on for their Friday night headlining set. Jackie Greene's
guitar solos were gut busting, on point and creative. The rapidly growing
lovers, appreciators, and addicts to the music known as '80's Dead got their
fix quickly when Phil opened up with "Feel Like a Stranger". But the most
mind-blowing aspect of this particular Phil set, which was by no means this journalist's
first, was a monumental trance fusion jam which was actually a song by Phil's
keyboardist's band Particle. For some of the purists it was blasphemy but to me
it showed the continuing evolution of Phil Lesh not just as the Grateful Dead's
bass player, but as an independent musician in his own right. Like it or not
Phil has had a long running respect for bands such as Particle that fuse live
jam music with electronic music. After two slow songs, "Loser" and the always
beautiful "Ripple", Phil and Friends pumped up the crowd and melted faces by
playing the Particle song, 
"Gone Wanderin'" sometime after darkness fell. Doing
my journalistic duty I danced my ass off and wandered through the crowd with
glowsticks aplenty seeing many familiar faces and meeting some new ones to the
sound of Phil's new groove. I don't care what anyone says, I like it.
"The
Freshly off
a mini-reunion with Trey at Rothbury, Mike Gordon and his new band pumped out
two songs, "Dig Further Down" and "Crumblin' Bones" which both had their
moments. But what really struck me was a tune I believe is called "Radar Blip"
that featured some very strange but hilarious (only Gordo could think of) crowd
participation. You just had to be there. The highlights of his show for me were
the same duo of songs played with Trey at Rothbury, the Phish tune, "Meat" and
"She Said, She Said" by the Beatles. No Trey this time but we'll see what
happens...
Elegantly dressed and full of mellow yet infectious dance grooves Telepath got the crowd moving despite the short set time and scorching temperatures. Oh yeah, I love the bass player's hair! Bringin' back the '70's!
Now that Widespread Panic has Jimmy Herring formerly of The Dead and Aquarium Rescue Unit, they rock harder than ever and they've been around for 22 years. Their raucous headlining Saturday night set showed off their masterful chops by featuring a rocks-off cover of P-funk's guitar classic "Maggot Brain."
The Bridge followed by opening their set with two sick instrumentals and eventually featured Mr. Micheal Gordon sitting in on bass as a special guest star blooping out all the right notes. Once again the All Good fireworks display tickled everyone pink.
The stars
seemed to align for DSO's late-night set. The weather was perfection and the
glowsticks were flying, especially during the always crowd pleasing "China Cat
Sunflower>I Know you Rider" and the other classic song duo, "Scarlet Begonias>Fire
on the Mountain". A rare but beauteous "
- by Andrew Place
- photos by Lee Crumpton
We also recommend viewing Colleen's Gallery featuring many of the interesting people of All Good 2008.
More photos:
