dark starred.

Last night, presented in pleasing bullet form:

• The meeting that Mrs. Crappy was asked to cover turned out to be a waste of time; the board did nothing, and she didn’t need to be there.
• Carnegie Music Hall: Wow, what a cool old place. The library complex is huge, taking up an entire block and looming over the Waterfront and the Mon below. The compact theater occupies just a small portion of the building. I was sitting upstairs on one of the wings of the wraparound balcony, with a nice, clear view of the stage.
• “Sitting” probably isn’t the right word. Although I need more breaks than I used to, I still dance through most of the show. My seats were at the top of the section, so I stood behind them in the outer aisle, bouncing on the loose floorboards in time to the music.
• The music: This is the first time I’ve seen DSO when they’ve played an original setlist, instead of pulling one from the Grateful Dead archives, and that worked just fine. They opened with Iko-Iko — pretty much a necessity for Mardi Gras — and played a mostly laid-back, country-fied first set, until they wrapped it with a monstrous Tangled Up In Blue. Highlight of the second: St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>St. Stephen>William Tell bridge>The Eleven. NFA returned after Throwing Stones to close the set. Big, old-school fun.
• Picky Deadhead gripe: Let Me Sing Your Blues Away as the encore? I can think of, oh, a couple hundred better choices off the top of my head.
• Towards the end of the first set, I met Twitchy Guy, who was a bit too, uh, stimulated for his own good. Some of you might have seen my Tweet about this during the set break: Standsitstandpacedancesitstandtalkdancesitstand. He kept showing me annoyed texts from someone I assume was his wife and asking me about what song they were playing now. I used to be good at shutting out people like that at a show; that’s a skill I need to re-acquire.
• I continue to marvel HOW FREAKING CLOSE WE LIVE TO EVERYTHING NOW. Show was over at 11:55 p.m. I was walking through my front door at 12:15 a.m. Ahhh.
• A pleasant side effect of me begging for company last night: I found a surprising number of people who might actually share some of my musical tastes, and a few others who are at least curious enough that they sounded disappointed they couldn’t come. Next time DSO rolls through town, I’m making sure at least a dozen of yinz are coming with me.