Multi-instrumentalist Marc Muller leads his grateful jam-mates in a Halloweekend edition of Dead On Live, Friday night at the Count Basie — while “The Price Is Right LIVE” summons in November’s sweeps-month with interactive high-energy style.
All who doubt that the Dead walk the earth during the season of the Great Pumpkin should consult the arcane and eldritch works of Professor Marc Muller for the last word on the subject — as the multi-instrumental master (and Monmouth University faculty member) summons the thing known as Dead On Live for a special Halloweekend concert, this Friday at the Count Basie Theatre.
Set to rise at 8 pm, it’s a special double-header installment of the project in which Muller and his ace musician friends explore the history of the Grateful Dead with setlist-intensive scholarship and spirited jamming. Featured on the Mischief Night program will be a “Dead On Live with Strings” set in which members of the Monmouth Symphony Orchestra join the band for orchestrally augmented arrangements of Dead favorites, climaxing with the epic “Terrapin Station” in its note-for-note entirety.
Act Two finds Muller and the core band members recreating a 1976 concert by The Jerry Garcia Band at John Scher’s much-missed Capitol Theatre in Passaic (Jerry and pals would take their act to the Scher-booked Convention Hall in Asbury Park as well) — an eclectic set that folds in covers of Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” and “Sitting Here in Limbo,” plus Dylan’s “Positively Fourth Street.” Take it here for tickets ($20 – $39) — and “come on down” for more.
When Jerry Garcia sang of “The Wheel” on his first solo album, he probably wasn’t thinking of the gaudy Big Wheel setpiece from the TV game show evergreen The Price is Right. But the iconic guitarist who cited Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as the greatest film of all time was as savvy a consumer of popular culture as he was a scholar of traditional American music styles — and with the spirit of Garcia hovering over Basie airspace this weekend, it seems not so jarring a transition from Dead On Live to The Price is Right Live!, the interactive touring presentation that rolls into Red Bank this Sunday, November 1.
While host Drew Carey will be missing in action (ditto the TV cameras), the amped-up energy of that granddaddy of all game shows is present and accounted for, as contestants compete (via Price is Right staples like Plinko, Cliffhangers, and the fabulous Showcase) for some very real cash and merchandise prizes that include appliances, vacations, and (say it like Johnny Olson) A NEW CAR! Take it here for seating ($36.50 – $56.50) — and here for Official Rules on how to become eligible to play the live-action game. There’s no purchase necessary (“ticket purchase will not increase your chances of being selected to play”), and prospective contestants can sign up at the venue’s designated registration area three hours prior to the 7 pm showtime.
