Vibes Thursday

We met up with Riki and his friend Harry and his two sons in a WalMart parking lot and everyone loaded up on food and supplies. Harry was going to be staying in a hotel, but wanted to be able to hang with us, so I took his EZ UP and some other stuff in so that they wouldn't have to walk it in. We hit the road for Vibes and got to Bridgeport and almost as soon as we got off Interstate we were in a line. The line moved super slow, and we didn't make it to the wristband station until after 2. Once we had our wristbands we had to go the other way towards the security check, and that took another 2 hours. Along the way someone had set up a box of free CDs, and I grabbed a Dead show, a Phil & Friends show, and left a Furthur show. Once through security we all regrouped our cars and headed in. They parked us in the very very back, right up by the back road. We were also parked extremely close to each other, not leaving us very much room to set up. We made friends with our neighbors and began setting up our camp, and by 6 had everything set up. I wanted to go down and catch Dumpstafunk, but no one else would make the trek to the stage, so I stayed there with everyone else drinking beer and getting ready for Dark Star Orchestra. We made it to DSO right as they were ending "China Cat Sunflower" and into "I Know You Rider". Then Donna Jean Godchaux came out for "Jack Straw" and "Loose Lucy". Then came "Passenger". I thought they played "Brown Eyed Women" next, but on the site it says "Blow Away", but I remember hearing Brown Eyed. Then came a nice country section with a Hank Williams cover then Johnny Cash cover, "Mama Tried" and "Big River". Donna came back out to end the set with "The Harder They Come" and "Around and Around".
The second set opened with a fury going from "Help on the Way" into "Slipknot!" into "Feel Like a Stranger" and back into "Help". Donna came back out to sing one of my all time favorites, "Sugar Magnolia", and she sounded just as good as she did 40 years ago. She stayed on for an awesome rendition of "Fire on the Mountain", and "Playing in the Band" followed. Next was an epic "drums>space", which gave the crowd a long time of super psychedelic jamming that flowed into "St. Stephen". It was amazing to get to hear drums>space, and it sounded like the drums>space's from the late 60's. That flowed into "Alligator". Rob Barraco on keys sounded amazingly like Pigpen on this song, and its the closest I've heard since Pigpen died. "Morning Dew" flowed into a reprise of "Playing in the Band" to end the set. Donna came back for the encore, which was "My Sisters and Brothers" which I hadn't heard before, but was an awesome song. One of the cool things about DSO is that they will re-play old Dead setlists from back in the day, but this was an entirely original set.
After DSO, That 1 Guy was supposed to be playing, but no one could find the stage, and the map didn't help. After 30 minutes of looking, we headed back to camp to party until we went to sleep