The Good Old Grateful Dead-Four Experiences

 

As I type this Dead & Company, the final offshoot of the Grateful Dead, are about to begin their last tour’s final three-night run. Bob Weir and the boys will make their stand back where it all began: San Francisco. In numerous posts over the years, I have used references to the Grateful Dead’s music as a background element of whatever events I have described. Often, I have quoted a lyric from one of their more iconic songs like Ripple or Box of Rain. I don’t think I have ever written just about the Grateful Dead in my life and how they have been a thread that weaves in and out of everything I have ever done and experienced since I was 12 or 13 years of age.

 

I first heard the Grateful Dead late at night on my plastic crème and blue Philco Radio when I was 12.  A DJ on a local AM top forty station had a Sunday night underground radio show. In the hushed deep tones of an underground DJ of the era he announced he would play only the Grateful Dead on the upcoming Sunday night. The DJ described them as a band at the forefront of the underground scene from San Francisco. At 10 pm on a Sunday night in 1968 while listening to WIBG in all of its static filled AM glory I heard St. Stephen and The Eleven for the first time. It was like nothing I had heard before. The music was captivating. I was hooked and followed the Grateful Dead with growing intensity for the next five decades.

 

As to what I heard that night well wow.  Just Wow.  I was blown away.  The music, the lyrics they boggled my little mind.

 

Did he doubt or did he try?

Answers aplenty in the bye and bye,

Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills,

One man gathers what another man spills.

 

St. Stephen-Hunter/Lesh/Garcia

 

I would not be listening to Wibbage AM 99, home of Jerry Blavat, the Geator with the Heater for much longer.  I shifted the small plastic switch on my radio from AM to FM first to WDAS and then to WMMR. And suddenly it was 1970 and these stations were playing the Rolling Stones, Argent, the Incredible String Band, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Fairport Convention, Love, Jimi Hendrix, Mississippi John Hurt and on and on. Music washed over me. I was drowning in blues, rock, psychedelia and folk.

 

Two thirteen-point lightning bolts struck that year. First, in June “Workingman’s Dead” dropped. It was the Grateful Dead’s sidewise return to guitarist Jerry Garcia’s and lyricist Robert Hunter’s bluegrass roots. If you listen to Cumberland Blues you get that hill mentality mixed with the hippie ethos. The album was filled with songs of what would come to be called Americana. American Beauty was an innovative direction for the counterculture musicians. The screaming guitars and feedback of Garcia and company were replaced with acoustic sounds, even mandolins. Workingman's Dead was an enigmatic album but it seemed hopeful. Workingman's Dead was a defining moment of change for the Grateful Dead.

 

Almost instantly Casey Jones became a staple of late night underground shows. Vice President Spiro Agnew noticed. He raged about its drug-loving message and tried to order radio stations to stop playing it. Agnew’s attempt at censorship went over like a fart in an elevator. FM DJs would simply slip the song into a marathon 10 song set and never announce the song's name or the artist. In the politically charged Vietnam War/Nixon White House/Generation Gap era, nothing gave an artist greater credibility than being on the receiving end of a Nixon/Agnew enemies list.

 

Who really cares about Casey Jones? Yes, it rocked. It still rocks. Yes, it got tons and tons of airplay. But I mean if you heard the opening strains of side one, song one you knew a seismic shift in the Grateful Dead’s sound had occurred. Uncle John's Band was something far beyond what the Dead ever created before. It was sweetly sung, had a delicate melody and lyrics that you could ponder for hours if you had smoked a bowl or two. Uncle John's Band was the pylon on the Camino whose arrow said make a sharp turn pilgrim.

 

Well, it wasn't just the Dead. A seismic shift had taken place changing the whole musical world of west coast rock. Workingman's Dead taken together with CSN&Y’s Déjà Vu released a month and a half earlier, made it clear that thoughtful lyrics, shorter songs and vocal harmonies had become really significant.  The Dead's sound on Workingman’s Dead was clean, crisp and awesome. 

 

So, when American Beauty dropped in November of that year, I had to have it. I couldn't afford it but fate intervened. My cousin Pat had obtained a copy that he was willing to sell to me for one dollar. This was a bargain at half the price of what it would cost in a record store. I was in on it at once, wholeheartedly and without reservation. A dollar price implied the LP's provenance was sketchy but I didn’t care. I was on the road to becoming a Deadhead and I had to have that record. From Box of Rain to Ripple to Brokedown Palace to the Attics of My Life to Truckin’, I was mesmerized. Hunter’s cryptic lyrics combined with Garcia’s intricate lead guitar and Phil Lesh’s bass took me to places I needed to explore mentally and emotionally.

 

So, this is what led me to the door that opened my path to becoming a Deadhead. However, it was that first live show I saw in Philadelphia’s Tower Theatre that pushed me into the Dead Zone for real and for good. This was the first of my top four Dead experiences. On June 24, 1976 I ventured to Upper Darby to see my first Dead show. I worked at that time in Ocean City on the Boardwalk. One of the guys I worked with had somehow gotten a ticket to this show which had only been sold only by mail order to Deadheads. I bought the ticket at a premium, got another friend to drive me up there and let me stay with him. I went to the show. When I got to the show, I was offered five times what I had paid for the ticket but I would not sell, not for the world.

 

This leads me to peak Dead experience #1. During the first set at the Tower, they performed five songs that were everything I had expected of a Dead performance and much more. The five songs began with Friend of the Devil and moved into Cassidy. The band followed up with It Must Have Been the Roses finishing with Lazy Lightning'/Supplication. The voices were clear and strong, the guitar work was impeccable and whatever was in that guy's wine sack I drank from was choice. The second set was also very, very nice with a stunning version of Wharf Rat, just incredible.

 

When I left the Tower, I knew there was nothing like a Grateful Dead show. Nothing, period full stop. Here is a link to that show if you want to hear what I heard. https://youtu.be/g7dLrnCKC6g

 

The next of my four peak Dead experiences was Labor Day weekend in 1977. 1977 was the year I attended college all summer. I took a full quarter of classes and four pointed every single damned one of them. As a result, I did not get to my beloved beach until Labor Day. When I got there I looked for one of my favorite cousins, La De Da Dot. She was not at the family compound but I found out she was probably hanging out with some friends at 32nd and Asbury. I walked down that perfect summer day two blocks to the general area where she was supposed to be. Nobody knew exact addresses back then. We didn't have tricorders to guide us like we do today. In the end I found her by smelling weed on the wind and hearing the sound of the Dead playing live at Englishtown Raceway over the radio, WMMR I think.

 

In a one-story beach bungalow, we sat. My memory makes the house's interior almost white or some soft pastel creme shade of color. It was totally beachy. I believe we both wore whites of some kind or another. I mean what else do you wear on a warm late summer day a block and a half from the beach? I am really sure had on my Mexican wedding blouse with roses embroidered on it. We drank beer and listened to the band as they took the music home that night. We talked about our dreams and laughed. We watched the sunlight fade outside the windows. Yeah, there were those thin white curtains blowing in and out as the wind changed with the coming of night. I am pretty sure we stumbled down to the beach at some point, although that might just have been me. This was an idyllic moment, with my cousin, a dear friend. This was a sunny day flowing into a warm night. It had the Grateful Dead singing and playing and, on the ball, and the warm Atlantic waters in late summer.

 

The third of my peak Grateful Dead experiences involves one who was lost and then found.  I doubt that anyone in my high school class thought I would escape the inexorable pull of the very large DuPont chemical plant ten miles from our homes. This is where all our fathers worked. Pretty much everyone was pulled towards Chamber's Works on the Delaware River. This was a city of metal orbs and large tanks filled with chemicals and it paid well.

 

I didn't want anything to do with it, though.  I wanted something new, so I moved 600+ miles away to attend university. Then, I stayed for law school. Then I stayed for my first job. I moved back to Delaware for a couple of years, but it didn't work out for me. So, since 1974 (with that couple years excepted) if I wanted to see someone or perform a family obligation I have had to travel from Michigan to New Jersey. 

 

On one of those occasions, I hustled off to see my dear friend Don who lived in Sea Isle City. Again, this was before mobile phones and electronic maps.  And I kind of sort of had his address written down in and unintelligible scrawl. And it was a long trip from Michigan to New Jersey. And we were tired. And honest to God the closest I could narrow it down was that he lived on the bay and the street started with a 3, I think. 

 

So, we drove around block after block and I could not say I recognized his house. The streets were parked up to the brim and each lap was tedious and miserable. Finally, pulling over to the curb we rolled up the windows and got out of the car. It was at that moment that I heard from the balcony of the house next door the opening lyrics to China Cat Sunflower. I looked up and saw people laughing and drinking and I knew. I hollered out, “Hey Don, is that you?” And I got back a, “Jaaaaaay, my man.” And the Dead kept singing. In that moment the Dead led me home.

 

We were so relieved to find it that we almost ran to the door. We knocked and were greeted by my friend's smiling face beers in hand.

 

I have often told the tale of my second son’s birth, the harrowing nightmare it was. Suffice it to say I had that conversation no husband wants with the doctor. Yeah, the one where the man in the white coat says, “Within half an hour you will have to make a choice, the baby or your wife.” But the lad was born and the wife survived.

 

But the first son’s birth was not without its moments. Preeclampsia motivated an induced delivery. We were frightened. And it was really nerve-wracking, but we had support present. Friends and neighbors kept us company and encouraged us. We also had a boom box in the room playing a mix tape (or CD). When the nurse came in and gave a look and said, “Don’t push, the doctor is already delivering one baby,” we knew the time had come and it was going to be okay. The fourth moment of the Grateful Dead major life events took place then.

 

When the doctor got into the room and began the whole process of getting the gelatinous garden slug out for us, the boom box segued into a Grateful Dead song that was appropriate to the moment, Unbroken Chain. Our elder lad was born healthy and strong. But was it  synchronicity that this continuation of my wife and I came into the world just as a hippie band sang a song called Unbroken Chain? I mean that is what a birth is, isn’t it? A link in our humanity's continuous chain.

 

Yeah, the last few lyrics.

 

Unbroken Chain of sorrow and pearls

Unbroken Chain of sky and sea

Unbroken Chain of the western wind

Unbroken Chain of you and me.

 

Unbroken Chain-Petersen/Weir

 

As I look back, the years have flown by faster than I could have imagined. My journey with the Dead began with my ear to the radio in my bedroom in 1972 when I sought refuge in their music from a confused world of war, riots and generational strife. It continues now as the remaining Dead remnants finish up their last tour as Dead & Company. Not so surprisingly as they play these three last nights the world is mired in war, environmental strife and economic strife. Back then the music soothed me, intrigued me, moved me and made me sing along. Today the songs of the Grateful Dead are a nostalgic escape valve from what my brain reads as a world gone mad.

 

If I had been born of something other than the boomer generation maybe music wouldn’t have been so meaningful.  But I am a boomer and the world has shifted, changed and moved again. From LP to cassette to CD to lossless streaming services, how music was delivered to me evolved. The world has shifted too. My globe from fourth grade is so out of date with its borders and boundaries and country names. Simple issues of life have changed, I mean we moved from rented black handset party line phones to me having a cell phone with two different numbers from two different countries (both mine) integrated with a tiny powerful computer where I can do just about everything. My days in the sun are ending. The Dead have been my musical friends and provided the soundtrack to my life for almost 55 years. Their day is ending.

 

 I guess the Grateful Dead described our relationship with this lyric from Ripple.

 

 

There is a road, no simple highway

Between the dawn and the dark of night

And if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone

 

Ripple in still water

When there is no pebble tossed

Nor wind to blow

 

You who choose to lead must follow

But if you fall you fall alone

If you should stand then who's to guide you?

If I knew the way I would take you home

 

Ripple-Hunter/Garcia

 

I think my relationship with the Grateful Dead will end when they play Ripple at my wake.

It's my Life

 

There is something that my children will never know that I knew all too well. It was a portent of ill fortune. It was sign of waiting turmoil. It was the sighting of a lighthouse at a place where you were already on the shoals. It was the red glow of the old man’s cigarette as he sat on the back steps waiting for me to sneak into the house. 

  

My brothers, my sister and finally me, we all had boundaries and curfews. There were places we should not go. There were times when we had to be in. Beyond this we had a lot of freedom. But those limits, they were not negotiable things with permeable boundaries. Rules were rules. We were allowed out, we weren’t followed, we weren’t told exactly where we had to be or who we had to be with like the current generation. We just had to be back by a set time and we were not to be seen in certain places. 

 

Do kids these days understand the concept of freedom? I am not sure because their lives are so penciled in and booked and arranged. I just don’t know if they understand the concept of freedom to screw around.

 

I digress, as always. If you missed the curfew time by a few minutes there would be a short conversation. If you missed the mark by a lot Mom would go to bed but Dad would wait. This was especially true if the car you were driving was seen in a place you were not supposed to be. This was also true if he heard from a friend (and the old man had lots of friends) that you might have been up to something less than acceptable.

 

You would try to avoid confrontation by sneaking into the house. I know one of my brothers would climb up the roof and come in through a second story window. I was not that agile.

 

For me to get into my backyard, I had to pass through a gate. Our yard gates had their own nuances. You had to lift that horseshoe-shaped latch just right so it wouldn’t scrape or screech metal on metal. You then had to inch in so as not to make any other noise and then replace the latch quietly, really quietly. It was also essential to have your key out because jangling keys by the side door would alert someone that you were sneaking in. You had to get your night vision acclimated because mom would have pulled out different chairs around the dining room table and you dare not flip on the light switch. They would be awakened by that simple click. The chair thing was really a sobriety test. Nothing quite like whacking your shin and causing the chair to screech across the floor alerting everyone in the house to the exact hour you were returning.

 

But hell, you didn’t get this far if trouble was in the wind. Coming around the back of the house you knew you had better have your story straight if you smelled even a hint of tobacco in the air. Sometimes the wind brought that warning to you before you saw the red glowing end of the cigarette. It gave you a chance to bolster your story with details to make whatever lie you spun more plausible. But you should have worked on that before you got to the steps. When you saw that cigarette's glowing red light you knew judgment was come to be visited upon you.

 

I don’t remember screaming or yelling. However, I remember a commanding bass voice that would start out with a question “Boy, where have…what have…” you get the gist of the questions that would follow. His cigarette was held down now so he could smell for the scent of alcohol. He would be gauging your reaction time too. I don’t think he yelled because he wasn’t supposed to smoke and if Mom came down, he would have to explain that. But you knew there would be consequences.

 

I always thought I was alone in facing this situation until one night in 1975 or 76 I got to see Bruce Springsteen at the MSU Auditorium. He did a cover of “It’s My Life” that began with a long rap about meeting his old man in the darkened kitchen with the glow of a cigarette. Yeah, my kids will never know that.