I came shambling out of an ivy-choked alleyway near the Vogue Theatre just after dusk turned to dark. No line outside, probably because I hadn’t vacated my bunker until a half hour after doors opened, but the marquee was alight. It ran ‘Flood Relief Benefit Tonight: Dizgo and Hyryder.’ Two weeks had passed since the floodwaters receded from the streets of Broad Ripple, and yet volunteers still roved the neighborhood picking up detritus and removing downed trees and power lines. The borough came together in the wake of an all-out disaster, but righting these wrongs takes cash, and you have to raise that gap somehow. So here we were, ready to rock and drink for the benefit of Broad Ripple, with all of tonight's proceeds being sent to the cleanup effort. With that philanthropic thought in mind, I entered the venue.
I made my way immediately down into the pit, which was surprisingly empty considering the show was due to start any moment. I hung around, feeling the mushrooms I had taken slowly kick in, and considered if I should make a break for the bar. Too little too late, as the moment I turned to make my way to the drink counter, a flood of freaks, hippies, and dead heads rushed into the pit, trapping me in an all-encompassing wall of flesh. Some kind folks from the Broad Ripple Village Association came out to talk about the floods, the response, and to remind us that we were drinking for charity tonight. With that, it was on; Hyryder came out.
Hyryder is Indiana’s premier Grateful Dead cover band. You can find these wild cats cruising around the state playing shows with the same vigor the Dead once had. Tonight would be no exception to this. The band shook the house until it threatened to come down, jamming so hard they peaked the PA not once but a whopping three times, causing every speaker in the house to screech and prompting them to abandon their earpieces after presumably blowing their own eardrums out. Ignoring the theatrics of the band nearly frying the Vogues sound system, they sounded fantastic. Their tone was on par with so many bootleg Grateful Dead concert recordings, and the good ones at that, that I have managed to collect.
Their set list was full of hits, including a rendition of “Tomorrow is Forever," the classic Dolly Parton tune which the Dead famously covered, in honor of her passing. These dudes know how to work an audience; several times throughout the show I made direct eye contact with their bassist. He would smile at me and nod, letting me know he knew that I could see his aura radiating off him in sporadic bursts of sacred geometry and that if anywhere was the proper place to find yourself in such a condition, this was it. The audience was in motion from the first note to the last, boogieing and grooving to the hot licks that Hyryder had to lay down for us. After a handful of jams which spanned the Dead's discography from “Morning Dew” to "Truckin'," they unfortunately had to leave us.
The pit thinned out slightly, and the drugs bestowed me with the clairvoyance necessary to navigate my way out. Somehow this led to me standing at the drink counter ordering two tall boys from a bartender whose face was too difficult to look at. In the blink of an eye, I found myself underneath the Vouge's balcony playing Edward 40 hands by myself, waiting for the headliner to come out.
Around the time my first drink ran dry, Dizgo took the stage. My personal favorite jam band, Dizgo, is a legendary group in my hood. These guys dominate the psychedelic scene; you can’t walk into an Indianapolis record shop without seeing a sticker or a flyer of theirs pasted up somewhere. They spent no time screwing around, opting instead to fire immediately into “Hot Chili," followed by their hit “Curio.” The funk-heavy jams permeated the venue, infecting the masses with a jubilation you could not deny. You could feel the floorboards shake from the ripples caused by the audience bobbing and weaving as they danced along to hit after hit.
Along the way we got another Dolly number, this time a funk version of “Jolene.” I began somewhat losing my connection to consensus reality at this point. The spinning tapestries done up in rainbow colors behind the band, the heart-throbbing tunes, and the raw energy of the crowd caught up in an explosive lust for the hooks and riffs which make Dizgo iconic, all combined with a brave dose of psilocybin made it nearly too much. I retreated further into the shadows, continuing to nurse my beverage for fear I might dry out. The pit was a sea of flailing appendages and bobbing heads. To the untrained eye, it seemed as though a writhing mob of religious zealots had come to bow before their rock gods, and it was more than obvious why. No one, and I mean no one, commands a room like Dizgo. Forget Phish, forget Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, and forget Ekoostik Hookah. Dizgo is the golden god of the modern jam scene, and if I could, I would gladly sell them my soul just to see this set one more time. Lucky for you all at home, you can stream it for free on their Bandcamp.
The evening came to a close not long after midnight. Following an incredible rendition of Hendrix’ “All Along the Watchtower," Dizgo bid farewell and left the stage. The audience retreated into the night like a riptide pulling an unwary seagull into the depths of Lake Michigan, leaving me in my shady corner hallucinating a tower of gyrating fractals and wondering why the music stopped. I wandered back out into the lukewarm summer darkness, the smell of pizza and cheap liquor in the air. We had done something good tonight, packed a house full, and drank it dry to help our neighbors in their time of need.
What we had was an experience, a come-to-God moment, where we set aside everything that makes us different to come together over community, psychedelic rock, and twenty-minute jams. What’s more radical than that? I pondered this thought as I walked along the Monon Trail back towards my home, continuing to eat psychedelics like they were candy and sipping on a plastic cup of warm rum I had bought on my way out of the venue.
Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 5, 2018
