The weather was great, you could buy California chardonnay by the glass and I had a bunch of Cornell deadheads out there. By day, we’d go around San Francisco or go sailing, and, by night, we’d go to see a psychedelic rock group. I’ve been to a few, including one outside of Kansas City on the Fourth of July, but my fave was Shoreline Amphitheatre - a beautiful outdoor arena built on a landfill. The Dead’s best venues were the outdoor concerts. That would have been as big a story as Brexit and probably would have rocked the stock market just as much. It breaks my heart that the band never played “Pride of Cucamonga” in concert. They drive around in 80,000 dollar farm trucks, have every ATV you can think of, barns nicer than most houses, and make barely any income. I can never pick a “favorite” song, just as I can’t pick a favorite Scalia dissent, but among the ones I love are: “Tennessee Jed,” “Althea,” “Stagger Lee”, “Eyes of the World,” “Loose Lucy,” “Franklin’s Tower,” “Deal,” “Sugar Magnolia,” “Unbroken Chain,” “Cassidy”, “Pride of Cucamonga,” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Ripple,” “Casey Jones,” “I Will Take You Home,” “Passenger,” “Mississippi Half-Step,” “Good Lovin'” and of course, the famous Mickey Hart rap version of “Fire on the Mountain.” You’ll Never Guess How Much The Dead Earned During Their Fare Thee Well Shows But still – you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a Deadhead dancing. If I would ever go to any type of reunion show, it would be the Dead, just for the Deadheads - the drum circles, the ptomaine-y veggie burritos, the copyright-violation T-shirts (“Is it Live or is it Dead?” from the “Is it Live or is it Memorex?” ad) the tie-dye. Actually, I hate tie-dye. How many other people still listen to the music they liked at age 12?
I still listen to the Dead channel on Sirius and also my 50 or so concert tapes. I guess I need to get those transferred to a disc before they disintegrate. My first albums as a little kid were Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits - and Workingman’s Dead.
I didn’t go to the reunion-type shows - it was too much like Beatlemania - but I have seen Ratdog, and I hear Phil and Friends is fantastic. It’s a rule of Deadhead-dom to claim to HATE Donna Godchaux and always say, “Phil makes the band,” though I think that pronouncement was proved inaccurate after Jerry died. Grateful Dead Fare Thee Well Sets Attendance Record at Chicago’s Soldier Field I checked with my fellow Deadheads after Jerry Garcia died and tried to figure out a rough number of shows we had been to together, which is how I came up with the estimate of 67 shows. And they were awesome.Ĭontrary to some people’s image of the Dead, they were huge in my very affluent WASP hometown of New Canaan, Conn. There was a faction in favor of making “Truckin’” our prom song, but the sense of the senate went for some schmaltzy rainbow song instead. I bet no one from my high school class can remember what it was.
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