Dark Star Orchestra on the Jersey Shore
When I saw RatDog last Monday night, a bunch of my friends told me Fake Bobby from the Dark Star Orchestra was playing better than the Real Bob Weir. I was stupefied — how could this possibly be? How can an imitator be better than the genuine article? I got my answer on Saturday when I saw the Dark Star Orchestra play a fantastic show at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.

Here’s the backstory on DSO, for the uninitiated: On most nights they recreate old Grateful Dead concerts, song by song, in the exact style of the era in question. When you ask around about DSO, you typically get one of two responses. Either “That concept is really lame” or “Those guys are fuckin’ amazing.”
The former generally comes from people who aren’t into the Dead, while the latter comes from the Deadheads. I was in the That Concept Is Lame camp for a long time, but I finally got over myself and headed down to the partially gentrified streets of Asbury Park on the 14th and found out how wrong I was.
Read on after the jump for Scotty’s full review of a night with DSO…