Dark Star Orchestra
Left: DSO rhythm guitarist Rob Eaton
On Wednesday night, July 30, Dark Star Orchestra (DSO), a talented band from Chicago that recreates Grateful Dead concerts with Martha Stewart-like meticulousness, visited Showboat’s House of Blues in Atlantic City for the first time since May 2006. DSO formed in 1997 and has played over 1,500 gigs around the country and in Europe, announcing the date, city and concert venue they replicated at the end of each show. They arrange the stage in a mirror image of how the Dead had it, and seek out equipment appropriate for whatever their prototype’s era was at that time. Like the Grateful Dead throughout its history (1965-95), DSO tries to never duplicate the same set list twice. A capacity HOB crowd witnessed DSO reenact with its own element of improvisation the Dead’s April 4, 1988 concert at the Hartford, Conn., Civic Center. Three of the first four songs in the set were first sung by the Dead’s Bob Weir, including “Promised Land,” “Greatest Story Ever Told” and “Little Red Rooster.” His DSO counterpart, rhythm guitarist Rob Eaton, bears a striking physical similarity to Weir in both voice and appearance. Lead guitarist John Kadlecik looks nothing like the late Jerry Garcia, but his virtuosity with a guitar is comparable and his voice is eerily similar. The three-hour show (with a half-hour break) included one of the first songs the Dead ever performed, “Cold Rain and Snow,” as well as two Bob Dylan numbers, “Memphis Blues” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Rob Barraco, a former member of the Zen Tricksters (a band that now includes ex-Dead vocalist Donna Godchaux) and Phil and Friends (fronted by ex-Dead bassist Phil Lesh) showed some incredible expertise on the keys throughout the evening. A rather surreal side to DSO, besides the fact that they were established in the city where Garcia played his last show in 1995, is that one of its founding members, keyboardist Scott Larned, passed away suddenly in April 2005 while on tour. An element that permeates the Grateful Dead’s mystique is that the band lost four keyboardists to sudden, untimely demises throughout its 30-year history.
