Grateful Dead

HEY NOW-my son & grandson are coming over for Halloween. I'm breaking out the old tye-dye, just for fun-the one with Mr. Natural on it- 1) it'll crack my son up & 2) my grandson won't know what hit him. He needs an education outside of the "norm".....will be playing Pigpen for him @ home, trick or treat- I will pick them up @ the airport with the "Lone Rangerette" outfit, pink 38 pistol, holster & all (no bullets, don't worry) Mask included. THEN I'll break out my old GD stealie sweatshirt-hasn't been worn in awhile.....YEH-let's get back to the basics & wear the stuff!!! why not???? Maybe I'll wear the GD/Obama hat also.......your story was so cute! xoxoxo Gypsy Cowgirlps-my mom, now 92 has her GD keychain on her keys........

I consider myself, and the rest of my age group that were just starting to catch on during the "In The Dark" age, to be the last possible wave of the old school. I also admit the possibility that I have not yet totally graduated from "Snot Nose" yet. But what I do know, is that the moment I had an awareness of "on tour", I immediately was. I didn't know shit about the world, or where my place was in it. But I did know, that I didn't know...and therefore, didn't consider myself qualified to decide how the entire rest of my life was going to go. It didn't take long for me to realize this to be true for all of us, even if, to varying degrees. Through (a lot of times no conscious effort on our parts) we were the type of people, that in daily life situations, would stand out among the masses, usually even if we were actively trying to blend. Anyway, (to keep from writing a novel here) I, like so many others, found more feelings and experiences of being at home, and among family at the shows, than when home with our blood familes. Grateful Dead became an entire lifestyle for me, and going home for a visit was more of a "special" or "rare" occasion. Therfore, on Aug. 9 1995 (my 20th birthday), when I got a call from a friend saying "Happy Birthday buddy, oh,by the way, Jerry's dead.", as our road crew was sitting around making plans for Fall Tour...I felt like I had just been notified that I was locked out of my house forever, my family was scattered all over the nation, and we would never be together again. This is, of course, not 100% true. And when it comes up, I will always maintain that '99 Further Fest was the last Grateful Dead Tour that I did. Two other points are of noted significance to me: First, that before we lost JerBear... we, the heads, were starting to undergo a proportionately unjustifiable amount of suffering as a result of these events, who's very purpose was to spread joy. Secondly, no matter how many of us were present, and which collection of performers were rockin' us however hard...The stadium/arena environment was a NECESSARY ingredient in my eyes. Holding it dear, but not sadistic enough to continue trying to replace it, DeceivedOne

i have a few glaringly obvious dead tatoos and stealie pins on whatever hat i'm wearing i wear the tie-dyes that still fit (few, mind you) but keep the ones with dates for special occasions.....like that particular date for instance. long hair, beard and sunglasses so the only people who tend to approach me are "in the know" nudge nudge wink wink

Went to an annual gathering of some friends, which in this particular occasion happened to be at the house of some folks I didn't know way the hell up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And let me just say, should you be visiting unfamiliar locales in the Santa Cruz Mountains, do not place your trust in Google Maps or GPS. But I digress. As it happens, part of the trip involved taking BART to Fremont, so I just had time to copy two of the newly-arrived Egypt discs to the iPod and race out the door. The music is, as reported elsewhere, awesome, and for a while there baking in the sun at the Fremont BART station, if I closed my eyes I was kinda sorta there in spirit... The next part of the trip, however, involved a long trip through windy mountain roads in my pal's convertible (yeah, poor me), so with a rare burst of foresight I had grabbed a baseball cap on the way out the door. The one with a big stealie, as it happens. So we finally get to the party after the aforementioned GPS debacle, and it's all so nice we forget all about the trauma. For several hours this woman and I are giving each other funny looks, and we finally realize we were part of the same extended group at many, many shows. Hey, last time we met, Jerry was alive and her hair was purple. So we had a fine old time, in the course of which one of my pals wanted to know how we knew each other. "I slept in her van," says I. This startled my pal a good deal, and he said, "I'm sure there's a story there." Whereupon my long-lost pal and I turned to him with one voice and said, "Dead shows." You mean it's not NORMAL to sleep in other people's vans? Oops. Not that I've done it lately, mind you. But, STILL. So anyway, after many pleasantries the festivities break up and eventually I'm headed back home on BART with Disc 2 on the earbuds. And since I'm bundled up for the drive in the convertible, I am now in full-blown scruffy bag lady mode in a ratty denim jacket and fat paisley scarf and the stealie hat I'm too lazy to take off because I'd just have to carry it and don't want to lose it. Peoplewatching is excellent, especially the young thing in the hot pink minidress who thinks she's really something and manages to flirt with every young guy in the car before her station comes up. Also these two young twentysomething dudes with really nice and obviously hardworking bikes, one of whom is wearing a t-shirt for a band that I fail to decipher over the entire trip. As it turns out, we get out at the same station, me with Egypt still blaring in my ears, and t-shirt dude looks at me and says, "Awesome hat." So I laughed and said thanks, and they waved me with great ceremony down the escalator ahead of them. Which leads me to the larger question: we used to wear our Dead stuff in public all the time. Why don't we now? We need the secret handshake now more than ever!

You should check out the wonderful 3-D simulated shrine to Everything Dead in Second Life (secondlife.com) There is a sim called Darkstar, a loving tribute to the Grateful Dead that features an amphitheater complete with the "wall of sound", a parking lot with Further style buses, surrounding the Mars Hotel. There is also the beautiful Terrapin Station dancehall, modeled after the building from the Terrapin Station Limited Edition release. The island streams GDRadio 24/7 except during events such as special archival streams and live streaming performances by many of the musically talented residents. It is the most loving tribute to the legacy of the Grateful Dead I have ever seen. With Darkstar Deadheads have an opportunity to spend time in a virtual 3-D universe where the tour never ends and the lot never closes, where there is always another show, another drum circle, where the music TRULY never stops. Ever!

how great we have our own website and (sirius) radio channel after all these years. i'm glad i chose to be part of something built to last. the music still brings me joy and is a fountain of youth. may you stay "forever young".

very nicely put, free idea! we are all the sum of the parts, spokes to the wheel and the wheel keeps turning.... hows the ride : )

yeah, for me it was 100% about listening to Jerry hash out, carve out,be the vehicle for such the right sounding melody, (i call it the uber-melody, the melody that rises above all the other melodies to stand like a king of melodies) that you could never think of a better melodious path through whatever musical passage he was in, that the rest of the band were always just those other guys up on stage. But in the intervening 13 or so, I have come to appreciate each for the role thay play in this ongoing experiment in light and sound. Having Jerry around was like living during the time of Liszt, or Mozart, and getting to hear them jam on the piano. I hear those cats could jam. And I think more about how mozart could really rip it up on the ivories, more than whatever written down thing he left behind for us to play over and over again. So, there's few people who really know their way around a melody, and who will dig so deep into it as ol' jg. and no-body no-body has ever raised up the hair on the back of my neck, like ol jer could do. But this Grateful Dead thing is more than the sum of its parts, and we all have a role to play. mine was audience member, and i wouldn't have traded it for anything. And these "other guys on stage" they have carried on, shouldering the responsibilty of the legacy, but also the present. Totally the right guys for the job, and I only hope that seeing through the lense of time will dissolve any barriers to future great together-music-making! schubert andy

welcome and make yourself at home!

I'm a Deadhead from back in the day as they say.I'v been around and done it all but now I'm back on this site. What more can I say?