The reanimated Grateful Dead, who have taken to calling themselves The Other Ones, stuttered to a start Saturday.

Apparent equipment problems waylaid the opening notes – a spacy flourish that would have sparkled were it not for the speakers clipping out at least a dozen times.

The sounds righted, The Other Ones lugged out the heavy thunk of “He’s Gone,” but before the apropos was fully realized or a note was sung, slipped into “The Other Ones,” as if to stamp their own identity into the now. The crowd was ready and with the band fully agroove, the giant green bowl of Alpine Valley Music Theatre was flush with flailing limbs and thousand-watt smiles.

After weeks of tense negotiations between Grateful Dead Productions, Clear Channel Entertainment and local authorities over concerns the concert would be overrun by people who didn’t have tickets, 35,000 Deadheads steadily descended into East Troy with little problem.

Two hours before show time, drummer and original member Mickey Hart was relaxed and predicting big things based on weeks of rehearsals.

“Only a few people have heard it, and from what they’ve told us, it’s back,” Hart said. “The creature lives. If we play that way tonight, you’ll hear the Grateful Dead. We won’t call it the Grateful Dead, but it will be better than where we left off, I’ll tell you that.”

Standing in for Garcia on guitar was the slight and unassuming Jimmy Herring, a veteran of tours with the Allman Brothers and Dead-related side projects, whose guitar was eerily evocative of Garcia’s but altogether unique. In place of the shimmery, fat curlycues of Garcia was a muscular staccato wah-wah that the rest of the band followed with precision.

“He’s great,” Hart said. “He’s a sweetheart. He doesn’t play anything like Jerry, and best of all, I don’t think he’s even a Deadhead.”

A similar incarnation of the Dead’s remnants has played since Garcia’s death in August 1995, but never with this much anticipation. Hart and Herring joined original members Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir for Saturday’s show.

Sheriff David Graves called it a “very successful concert event,” noting only 11 arrests and 60 citations, mainly for drugs. Extra deputies were assigned to work throughout the weekend, but Graves said some were sent home early.

There were plenty of restrictions after Walworth County officials originally denied a permit for the concert in June, fearing authorities couldn’t handle the estimated 200,000 people it might draw for a venue that can only hold about 35,000.

The promoter, Clear Channel Entertainment, submitted a new plan with tighter security and emergency procedures. It hired 40 tow trucks to prevent people from parking on the freeway and walking through the fields, as some concertgoers did for the band’s 1989 show.

Promoters and the band issued newspaper appeals warning fans that anyone without a ticket would be turned away. Graves said about 100 cars were turned away because at least one person in the car came without a ticket. “That was very easy,” he said. “They didn’t argue.”

Band publicist Dennis McNally said if Sunday’s events went as smoothly as Saturday’s had, a fall tour announced last week would likely be held.

The band sold out all 35,000 seats each day at about dlrs 60 a ticket.

“It’s a landmark event, plus, it was so impossible to get tickets, that if you got one you had to go,” said Steve Larson, 29, of Chicago.