The Tuesday appearance at Club Lingerie by Zero--which not only comes from the Grateful Dead's Bay Area home base, but lately has had lyrics provided by Dead wordsmith Robert Hunter--looked as if someone had miniaturized a Dead concert from stadium size to club proportions, right down to the clutch of neo-hippie dancers and the lone "taper" with his high-tech microphones.
Musically too, Zero didn't shy away from Dead territory, though it's hardly a clone. The sextet, made up largely of Bay Area veterans, including saxophonist Martin Fierro and former Starship keyboardist Pete Sears, specializes in a brand of rambling, home-grown pop-jazz that has some measure of Dead-like ebb and flow, though little of the magic.
