At final Spectrum shows, nostalgia rises with the Dead

The Dead live. And Deadheads live for the Dead.

The Dead are playing the soon-to-be-gone Spectrum for two final shows, one last night and one tonight. Not the Grateful Dead - laid to rest along with iconic bandleader Jerry Garcia in 1995 - but a core of the original band members who call themselves the Dead: guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.

If you count the original band and all its branches as one long, strange trip, these will be their 54th and 55th concerts at the Spectrum, more than any other musical act. (Bruce Springsteen is in second place, way back there with 32.)

And the faithful are here - on a drippy afternoon as misty as a pothead's memory.

As of 3 p.m., weathered vans and buses from Ohio, South Carolina, Vermont, Michigan - plus a Delaware van, license GRTFL - line one side of the Spectrum. They are soon shooed by police.

In the parking lot, with true Deadhead optimism, clean-cut Voorhees native Bill Read has set up a hammock and is reading Third Generation R&D (he's a grad student at Wharton) with a rainstorm about four feet over his head. When the rain gets to be too much, he deploys a party tent out of his hatchback.

He's here with Nick Shallers of Wilmington, and John McCall of Somerville, N.J. McCall says, "I saw them in Saratoga [N.Y.], and they blew me away. They've still got it." Shallers says, "It's a lot of fun to come back together with friends and see them."

Another group shows this band's cross-generational appeal. Lisa Connor, 43, of Feasterville, says, "My mother, who is 66 now, just loves the Dead."

Next to her is Vicki Syms, 17, also of Feasterville. Syms calls the music "awesome" and says that people her age like Dead concerts because "there's a great feeling - it's friendly and relaxed."

Denny Horn, 57, of Willow Grove, has been to every Dead show at the Spectrum, and he reckons he's seen "around 300 shows total - I've lost count. I first saw them in 1970 at Temple Stadium with Hendrix." His daughter Alison, 20, likes the Dead and "feels like she's been there [in the '60s]."

The shows celebrate a culture, not just a band. Deadheads evolved a style, a language, a fashion, a way of free-form dancing (Horn: "Time stands still for a few hours, and you let your hair down and dance"), an assortment of freely available drugs.

And a knack for home-made business. Billy Buell, 46, has driven his stuffed, duct-taped 1995 Dodge Marquis all the way from Ft. Lauderdale, "by way of Greensboro [N.C.], then Washington, then back to Greensboro, and after this I'm going to Chicago." He's selling drinks and soup. A beat-up Winnebago gas stove awaits employment on his roof.

Lisa Eaton, here from Youngstown, Ohio, says: "A kind of traveling carnival accompanies the band everywhere it goes. People finance their travels by doing a lot of different things, including selling stuff." She's right: The Spectrum parking lot - now drying out; the rain has let up - has become a bazaar. Stalls pop up to offer food, T-shirts, glass jewelry, and various intoxicants. Grills, tiny and huge, start to smoke.

Two time-honored Dead moments: One twentysomething approaches to say: "Hi, I drove all the way up here from [name of state] and I need $12 for parking. I got plenty of stuff to sell or barter to make it worth your while, man." And in the great Dead entrepreneurial spirit, a willowy woman roams the crowd, saying, "Thank you for pot-smoking" and flashing an array of smokes. (For the record, the sweet smell of excess was less in evidence than the consumption of beer. But then, it was raining.)

Dead enterprise includes "street teams" of fans who, organized via Web sites, help distribute info about Dead-related events in return for posters, tickets, or ins to post-concert parties.

When the sun finally works through, around 5, a fascinating thing happens. The faithful - the 60s, 50s and 40s in their campers and VW vans - are joined by a growing stream of 20s and 30s, out with their friends to hear the music and enjoy the scene. They come out of the subways, some in tie-dyed shirts, some in dirndl dresses, most in the T-shirt-and-jeans uniform of the young. New generations, keeping the love of the Dead alive.

Inquirer music critic Dan DeLuca's

review will appear in tomorrow's paper. Read it online at www.philly.com. EndText