Jerry Garcia once said that the Grateful Dead was similar to licorice: not everyone liked the stuff, but the people who did ended up having a real serious taste for it.
You could also say that the Dead were like wine: people who know about it have their favorite vintages, varietals and regions. You can find knowledgeable (read: obsessive) Dead heads who swear by the year 1972, or 1976 or 1983, or 1968. And there are those who have a special fondness for recordings from certain parts of the country — New England was good, but the Pacific Northwest was great!
Live Dead & Riders ‘69, which features Tom Constanten, who played keyboards with the Dead in the late ‘60s, does not focus on replicating the music of the Dead, exactly. Constanten’s appearance on the monumental albums “Anthem of the Sun,” “Aoxomoxoa” and “Live Dead” mark him as a founding father, there at the creation, more or less, of America’s greatest psychedelic rock band.
As such, his approach to honoring the Dead’s music involves getting loose ,going far-out, and having fun, which seems fitting. This group also includes veterans of the Bay Area and London blues-rock scenes. To approximate the braided, fluid and cascading solos of Garcia, two guitarists wind their solos together, a fair way of approaching the challenge.
The band zeroes in on the 1969 and 1970 era of Dead’s output, a peak period for the band’s psychedelic exploration. Expect to hear cosmic epics like “St. Stephen” and “Dark Star,” and maybe a strangely medieval-sounding solo keyboard rendition of “Mountains of the Moon.”
See Live Dead & Riders ‘69 at Space Ballroom, 295 Treadwell St., Hamden, on Oct. 30 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $30. 203-288-6400, spaceballroom.com