Grateful Dead

wasn't even born yet my album of choice..

Just wanted to say hello to all and greetings from the great white north! Up here we like to jump out of (some say perfectly good) airplanes but this time of year it's a bit chilly at altitude so we have to find other things to fill our time. Pumpkin carving, for instance, can be fun and educational at times. I will post some photos of my jack-o-stealie if I can figure out how. Blue Skies!

great story!

welcome to the nutbox, sit anywhere ya like. the bus'll be along in a minute.

Hi all. This is a boring and long-winded post, apologies in advance :) My name's Lee - I'm a 29 year old British guy living in Colombia, although I'm about to embark on a around-the-world-overland-trip (seriously!), starting and finishing in Patagonia, Argentina. This is thanks to my grandmother (RIP), without whose inheritance such a thing would never have been made possible. Here's a map of my trip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leehawkes/4041779820/sizes/l/ Let me tell you about the Grateful Dead, for me... When I was a teenager (90s), I played the guitar* and was into the rock-music-styles of the time - you know, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Chili Peppers - plus some of the older school stuff, Led Zep, etc... (*I still do, but now have a chronically inflamed middle finger, which limits my guitarring to slide blues with cigarette lighters - chords and scales are a thing of the past for me these days. But, I digress...) We had a friend called Howard, and he was *really* into The Dead. I mean *really*. His devotion was scary. All of us, myself included, were awed, mystified and intimidated by his devotion to this band. We never listened to the Dead, probably simply out of fear that we would become like him. Listening to the GD, for us at the time, seemed like a dangerous slope that, once embarked upon, one might never be able to climb up again. Howard would sometimes break out of a conversation he was in the middle of in order to listen to a GD song that suddenly came into his head; sometimes, he would close his eyes and rock his head to a GD song that he was simply singing along to mentally, he didn't need a walkman/discman (as portable music was back in those days). Howard was nuts for the Grateful Dead. I avoided them as if they were heroin. The Dead represented a scary alternate dimension, one which I left well-the-fuck-alone. For 10 years, I forgot about them. Then, while planning for my trip, I bought an iPod with 120GB storage. I started downloading discographies of anyone and everyone, and (almost as an afterthought) included a Dead discography in my shotgun-blast-of-bittorrent-discographies-to-download-because-why-the-hell-not. It wasn't *every* Dead album, naturally - but it was a collection of the studio albums plus a handful of live sets. That Grateful Dead discography sat ignored on my hard drive for about a week. Then, idly, I clicked on the "Aoxomoxoa" folder. From the first few notes of "St. Stephen", I knew I was in trouble. Big trouble. I felt like Howard. It *rocked*. I fell in love instantly. In a wild frenzy, I started clicking randomly on songs/albums just to see if everything was as good as Aoxomoxoa. I discovered "Black Peter" (on an album titled "History of the Grateful Dead"), then the next track: "Smokestack Lightnin'" - a cover which is actually *better* than the original (which doesn't happen often, I'm a big Howlin' fan). In fact, I'm listening to it right now. Wikipedia's biography of Jerry Garcia exacerbated my love for the band, and the plethora of live perfomances on Youtube was yet another distraction. I consider myself a little old and mature for cheesy hero-worship, but it's difficult not to be impressed by the life story of Jerry Garcia. "[Lee] has just discovered the Grateful Dead, and it is a life-changing, epiphanous event"... ...read my status update on Facebook - causing a couple of Facebook-acquiantances to respond... "Welcome...." (I paraphrase), "...you've got a lot of catching up to do...". Quite. GD fans/enthusiasts/addicts exist everywhere, so I have found. I tried to find a Dead song that I *didn't* like, just to see if there was one. I dutifully did ('Born Cross Eyed', Anthem of the Sun) - but it took me forever to find. The Dead have, for me, a greater "Good Song/Bad Song" ratio than any other band I know of. So why have I bothered to sign up here and puke out a semi-coherent stream-of-consciousness at a forum of people I don't know, about a band that I (really) know hardly anything about? I guess it's because I have to share it with someone - all of the above is a long-winded way of saying... "I just discovered The Dead, and it's really cool." Lee out :)

as has come up on a list I'm on, the tour in question is NOT the one immortalized in Festival Express. It's much earlier.

Hi! I am working on research for a film about DIY music venues, and in the process have stumbled across accounts of the Dead's 1967 "Great Northern Tour." I have read that this was one of the first instances of a major band financing an entire tour themselves. I do not know much more than this, or am I very knowledgeable about the Dead but I thought someone here might be able to answer some questions and shed some light on the history. Is there a board member I should talk to in particular? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Direct message me with any and all insights. THANK YOU -Sam

Got my chips cashed in.............. Hello all! 36 year old recent convert to being a Deadhead, sayinh hi for the first time to ya all.

NOW" One Of These Days... it will be over.. cut and dry..... " -- from my Surround Welcome to GodHeaven,, part 1.. :^) ho ho ho . . .

Thanks starsleeper, I'll give Englishtown a try.