Grateful Dead

....but I stayed at a Holiday Inn!

I know that this wouldn’t be too popular, but I would love to see them finish off the east coast summer tour of 1989.
There are 7 shows left...
7/2 - Foxboro, 7/9 and 7/10 at Giants Stadium, 7/15 at Deer Creek and then the 3 shows at Alpine 7/17, 7/18 and 7/19.
All recorded in multi-track, I think...
This summer will be the 30th anniversary of that tour.
Would probably be right around $200.

I don't oppose Summer of '89. It might make more sense to wait a bit though, it looks like RFK 89 hasn't sold out yet (although I had a hard time finding it here at dead.net.. but if you google it you find an active link with inventory to sell).

As for Hampton, I had good luck there.. it was the first venue I road tripped for and we just kept at it all the way through 89. Those Warlocks shows were perhaps the best I attended. Magic was in the air those two nights. The one-off Stir it up and Take Five (though it might be clear whey they only did these once, but nice novelties nonetheless) .. the break-out Box of Rain, the wonderful '84 Morning Dew, sleeping on the floor of the banquet room at the Holiday Inn with 200 or so of my new best friends (until the cops figured us out). Great memories..

Would love to see some more 89! I went to six shows that spring and summer in Minnesota and Wisconsin. My senior year in high school. The time of my life. 30 years ago, man I am getting old.

I don't know if they base future box releases on whether past boxes sell out.
I believe the only box to date that sold out within a week was GSTL.

The rest of them have all sat on the website for long periods of time.

The Warlocks box at just $69 was for sale for six years. Even the 1990 box sets with less than 10,000 made were available for at least two years.

Still believe we will have an announcement tomorrow. Let's hope!

Funny I just was watching "It Happened One Night", with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It has the famous scene with Gable teaching Colbert how to hitchhike. For the youngsters here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyWMOt11ceU

Our group had a period where we hitched everyday one summer to go somewhere "far". We were maybe 11 to 15 years old and we hitch in a group of about 6. We always thought this was safe since we really were a "gang". Who would fuck with a group of 6 kids. Mostly picked up by big rigs or pickup trucks. I had a period I hitch home from work everyday. After the first week this guy stopped everyday and gave me a ride. I have found the best place to hitch is at a light or an entrance ramp to the interstate. Some place where people would have to stop or were going slow enough to stop. Always got a ride,,,, I'm sure being a good looking young white boy helped!

I think perhaps my generation was the last to regularly hitchhike as a mode of transportation.. in college, hitching was commonplace in my network of friends. I only did it a few times, but I had friends who would hitch hike cross country every summer. That was in the mid to late 80's. I think that is mostly gone today.

Last summer, I was driving home at about 10 pm and this absolutely beautiful young woman in her early 20's was standing on the side of a very rural road coming from and leading to nowhere with her thumb out. I was dumbfounded.. pulled over and picked her up. Her car broke down and she walked about 7 miles on her way home. I gave her a very safe ride to her front door, dropped her off safely and drove away. It just seemed so weird.. this was the exact kind of place might imagine someone disappearing never to be heard from again.

My dad used to pick up hitch hikers in the 70's.. we picked up this hippie couple in CO one summer and drove them to I think Aspen or something. Me, my dad and these two hippies driving around vail looking for an address in the days before GPS. My how times have changed.

hitchhiking with a group 11 to 15 years old?

WTF???????????????????????????????????????????????????

that's a bit...dangerous.

https://youtu.be/lQJjWhSTgEI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W76hM80Svs

I'm just happy it wasn't this guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldQBm-DW9_8

7 minutes abs.. complete with a body in a body bag.

Some quite helpful people, to be sure...but a few decidedly off key ones too. The fastest ride I got was on the back of a Hells Angel wannabees bike-the slowest with a vicar. Who was actually quite a nice chap, as I remember. The worst was with a guy who propositioned me. I got out unscathed, but it was back to public transport for me after that one.

I hitched up and down the West Coast quite extensively from 1969 to about 1978...lot'sa fun, lot'sa strange happenings...once in So Cal going out to Malibu from Hollyweird I got a ride from a rather creepy looking fellow who after a few blocks asked me if I had any "abstract manifestations"...hmmmm...I'll get out right here and thanks for the ride...but those days are long gone as they should be...also rides seemed to dry up around the time of the Manson Trial...

Cheapest I have found so far for the upcoming vinyl. Thought I would share for all the vinyl people out there.

https://www.google.com/shopping/product/7073759308451941209?q=grateful+…

Angry Jack: cheese and rice dude, what a bummer! Missing 3/27/88 was bad enough, but 10/89......words can not convey.....3/27 was definitely in my top tier of shows, don’t think the download recording does it justice. And I won’t even mention how great the experience was in 89......reminds me of a local joke.....How does a snowboarder introduce himself.....”sorry dude!”
Not sure which story is worse, AJS or Hendrixfreak. HF never intended to go to 6/10, where as AJS intended to go?
I almost think missing 89 Hampton was worse just because of the historic nature. 73 they played DS still fairly often, of course that one had the Allman/Merl jams etc.....yeesh, either way sucks!

89 BOX: I’m up for any of it, but feel the same as others about the likelihood of a summer release this close on the heels of the last one. Now fall 89 might be more appropriate. Personally I’d prefer that, especially the Philly shows. COME ON DAVE PHILLY 89! 😉 Alpine would be cool, but I already have that.....not familiar with the giants shows?

HITCHIN’: first thing I think of is the poor bastard they pick up in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas! We actually did that to some poor bumpkin out in the country......not anywhere near like the book/movie, but it was us three “booze brothers” in a giant Ford Galaxy around 1980. We used to go work for and go hang with our buds in this awesome dead band (had all the same gear from that period etc)...it was about forty miles of 2 lane country road with like no cops back then...so the booze mobile was modified with dual overhead openers, holes drilled in the back floor and trunk, and a giant plug in cooler. The holes in the trunk were for long road trips or tailgating etc. You could fill the whole trunk up with beer and ice and it would just melt out the holes! The back floor would get filled with cans etc so after a trip you could just hose it and the trunk down and clean er right up!
Anyway, we pick this guy up with the radio playing jazz and the boom box playing something else, with us being especially weird, mostly show, just to try and freak this guy out. Well it worked, didn’t take more than 10-15 minutes and this guy wanted out.LOL
Personally didn’t do to much thumbing, but did hitch to my first JGB show at Brookport university in November 81.
Unfortunately not so romantic actually doing it as compared to the dumb notions I had in my teenage head! Same route out to the same friends as above, but rides were few and far between, and the weather was horrible. Ended up walking probably half of it just cause I was desperate to meet up and not miss my ride to the show...long day but I made it and the show was awesome. So chill. It was in a tiny gym with no real stage, maybe only a foot or two off of the floor....so we sat on the floor right in front of Jerry. Could literally reach up a touch his mic stand, not that we would. The second set though some uptight dumbasses made us stand up cause they thought we were hoggin too much real estate. We tried to explain that with us on the floor they could see better, but they started being douches and sorta kicking us and saying “your too mellow, you need to dance etc”....so all six or seven of us stood up, many over six feet and shuggred and said, there, happy now....because of course now they couldn’t see!

EDIT; another good hitching image....sissy raw shanks in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues! Hee-hee which of course makes mr think of Deloras and the peyote wagon 😁

My mom would tell me about Jersey City in 1956 (year I was born). Everyday she would walk down the "boulevard", usually with her mother or sisters. We lived in a 6 family house. My mother's brother lived across the hall, her parents lived two floors above us. I remember being little, moved from the city in 60, but I remember walking down the boulevard, the long walk took us to JJ Newberrys (5 & 10 cent store), big toy section. Anyway, Mom would tell about how in her day, women left their sleeping babies in their carriages while they ran into the store and there be a dozen carriages out there! "Nobody would ever think about someone taking their kid!"

Also when I was 7 to 8, during the summer mom would push us out the door, lock it and say don't come back till dinner I got work to do. We would go miles from the house, places where "parents" couldn't find you. Play on the railroad tracks, swim in the marine creek under the bridge, play at the brick works at night when they were close. So yeah, hitching to the mall 15 miles away, a large group of kids,,,, you know to me that seemed about right!

I couldn't find it, but I'm sure some here know it. A Lampoon(?) skit about a dead head who was asleep for 10 years.

Well I am on record as still being pissed off 30 years later. Not sure about HF. All I know is the common source of angst for both of us was formal education. I'll tell you what though. I learned a hell of a lot more about life following that god damn band all around than I ever did in school.

Actually the biggest regret about Hampton was in 88 and not staying in touch with Amy from SUNY Stonybrook. If you are still as cool as you were and look anything remotely like you did, I'll divorce my wife.

Not really.

Well, maybe.

More about hitching later.

So I hitched alone, age 15 -- man, you look at a 15-yr-old these days and they do not look like the worldly person I thought I was at the time (1973) -- throughout New England and backpacked solo for a week through the Adirondack Mtns, famous for the density of black bears. Every night in the woods when darkness fell, I was scared shitless! Eventually I'd fall asleep, exhausted by fear. Would wake up in the middle of the night and see glowing eyes everywhere. I've gotten pretty comfy though doing this over the past 45 yrs... but back then, I guess I had a propensity for doing things that scared me. But I digress. Right here at the beginning...

So I'm hitchhiking from St. Johnsbury in northern Vermont back home to northern New Jersey. A pickup stops for me. It's a backwoods family: eldest son is driving, ma in the middle, pa at shotgun. In the camper in the back, I joined the youngest son, who unfortunately was developmentally disabled. This is the Clampetts to the nth degree. I get in. They're going as far as Bridgeport, Conn., probably 275 miles. The driver proceeds to drive, seriously, about 95+ mph. I could look through the little window and see the speedometer. Plus, the damn vehicle is shaking like it's on Star Trek and Scotty's yelling "She's breaking up, Captain!!" A five-hour drive looks like it's going to take about 45 minutes or so.... Then they stop at a liquor store: a quart of Jack for those in the cab, a case of Bud and chips for me and the kid. We resume at 95+ mph. I decided, probably unwisely, to stay with them. I convinced myself the driver could keep it on the road and, as a veteran hitchhiker, it looked like a quick ride, if we didn't all die.

They pull over at a rest stop and four of us walk to the trees to relieve ourselves. I think, where's "ma"? I look back, and she's got one foot on the truck's running board and one foot on the arm rest of the open passenger door, skirt hiked, taking care of business from about 3-4 feet off the ground. You can't un-see that!! Short story long, we got to Bridgeport in maybe 3 hrs and I thanked them and continued on my way...

Summer '78, after the first GD Rocks shows, a buddy gets a drive-away service vehicle (they used to transport cars interstate by getting someone to drive them one-way) and it's a brand-new power-blue Fleetwood Cadillac. No passengers allowed. So he invites me to catch a ride, Denver to Flagstaff to see another friend, while he would drive on to LA and deliver the vehicle. We stock up on ice, Foster's Lager, quaaludes, mescaline and few other goodies. No toothbrush, no spare clothes, just ... materials. By now I'm a fully ripe 20 yrs old. (A real adult, right?) Anyway, by the time we stop in at the Colo-NM border station (commercial vehicle, you know) the uniformed folks inside had swirling blobs for faces and I couldn't stop laughing. (Y'all know when, the next day, your smile muscles hurt like hell! That's going electric for ya.) When we got to Flag, my buddy the driver takes us and a couple young women four-wheeling in Sedona Canyon, across the creek and all -- in the Fleetwood. He splits. I spend a week pumping my buddy's older brother's girlfriend with ludes and foolin' around. Then my driver friend shows up, with a ride back to Denver. We get in. My friend immediately begins talking in an exaggerated street dialect, signaling me that our new "friend," the driver, is a) probably not too bright and, b) probably dangerous. That's when I looked down and saw the butt end of a sawed-off shotgun tucked under the driver's seat. After we had a few beers -- absolutely crucial on such a long hot drive -- the guy reveals that he and his dad just busted out of prison in Nevada and had split up, stealing cars to cross the country. Naturally, at this news, I pounded a couple more beers and joined in the lament about ... whatever he was lamenting at that moment. When we got to Denver, he insisted on driving us to our house. So we had him drop us off at a nearby friend's house, so he wouldn't know where we lived. And we (and they) thankfully never saw the gentleman again.

Great form of transportation, if you're ready for a little "adventure."

As someone pointed out, I had not planned on attending 6-10-73, just a palm-to-forehead moment after we heard how big the second night was. And who could know ahead of time when the big performances would happen? Not even the band knew. But it makes a brief anecdote in the annals of the-one-that-got-away...

Another such tale: after my first show, 9-19-72, in the Thunderdome-esque Roosevelt Stadium in lovely Jersey City, NJ, the band moved on to the intimate Stanley Theater there for Sept 26-28 '72; you know 9-27-72 was released as Dick's 11th pick. I knew it was relatively small (,4,300 seats) and my older brother's friends had cars. (I didn't know that the theater, built in 1928, had hosted my all-time heroes, the Three Stooges, as well as Janis Joplin.) But I was already in trouble for skipping school on 9-19-72 at the very beginning of high school, I had just turned 15, and it was just too much to ask of my parents and society generally for me to be allowed to accompany them. So I knew enough not to try. Result: three legendary shows, without moi.

So it goes! I did catch multiple major shows, as high as a Mayan priest (sans sacrificial virgins, dang it) so if I'd caught any more I'd be waaaay too crispy at this stage. Actually, after 47 years of consistent psychedelic use, I'm feelin' pretty good. I mean, sure, this odd white garment that ties my arms behind my back is a little tight, but between the injections, the attendants are generally pretty nice, except that one nurse named Rachett........

What is it?!? I may go crazy if I don't find out this week

For the love of God, man.. announce the fargin box.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kc143SgLQY

We've waited this long, I suggest a relaxing revisit of 4/2/73 to sooth your soul.

Dennis: sounds like your childhood was a lot like ours......”free range children” . Thanks, I was laughing my arse off, especially about mom locking the doors!

Hendrixfreak: thanks for the awesome road tales. Thoroughly enjoyed. Made me think of the “old weird days”. Love to hear more anytime your feeling it...
Know you’ve seen some real monsters over the years, but it still has to be tough thinking about THOSE monster shows.

Dark Star: yea, what he said!!!

I can tell you no Deadhead will be disappointed! Soon my friends, soon. You will be amazed at what is in store!

Jim 😁

Well gang, it’s go time.....what are y’all feeling?
No offense to B fans, but I’m not particularly fond of the Bruins, lol, how’s that for PC!
Plus, I love rooting for the underdogs, I mean I’m a Dead Head for fugs sake!
It would be cool for the Blues to win their first, and in a game seven in Boston! Wasn’t that the same situation back in 70 only they lost?
I think they missed their opportunity in game six....they came in in charge of their destiny, they had em down by the throat, but they seemed flat? I don’t think you can give the Bruins a second chance like that. Plus their more experienced in the big games, and their at home, I mean Beantown, talk about some crazy Bastids!! 😉
Anyway, just wondering what all you arm chair Don Cherry’s are thinking?
GO BLUES!

Getting outplayed badly, yet up 2-0. Particularly gratifying that the second goal was totally the fault of that little bitch Marchand, who completely bailed on his team. Hang on boys.

Hampton - yeah, that's the rub with shows. You never know what you are going to get on a particular night. So you hit as many as you can, hoping to catch something special. With the surprise Warlocks shows, you knew ahead of time that something special was going down. The band loved playing there. That is why it was so aggravating.

Back the the late 70s, early 80s, the I90 corridor from Buffalo to Boston was a haven for hitchhikers. Mostly college kids traveling back and forth to school. Nobody ever waited more than a few minutes for a ride. Hold up a sign with your school on it and you were good to go.

My last time hitchhiking was after the 86 RFK shows. Most of our group decided to skip the last night, so my brother and I were forced to hitchhike home. Not at easy task beginning at 11:00 at night. But, that is your best chance of a ride as folks head back home from tour. Our first ride got us just north of Baltimore. 1:00 in the morning or so. Out on the highway, we get offered a ride by two guys in a van. They explained that they had to make one stop a few exits up. Turns out that they were looking to exact some revenge for a drug deal gone bad. Guns ready as we found out too late. Fortunately, the other guy was not home, so they drove us back to the highway and dropped us off. We were out there quite a while before a State Trooper spotted us, put us in his car and drove us to the PA border. Not an exit. The border. Good luck getting a ride to stop in the middle of the night with cars doing 70 miles an hour. We had to walk miles to the first rest stop.

No more hitchhiking for me after that.

Most people were extremely nice and would actually drive somewhat out of their way and bring you right to your destination. Shows were pretty easy rides, especially if you had Tie-dye on.

Yes please..

Eight and a half shows, two cities, one previously released. Seems like a reasonable way to slice the onion to me.

02/07/69- Stanley Theater - Pittsburgh, PA (early show)
02/07/69- Stanley Theater - Pittsburgh, PA (late show)
09/26/72- Stanley Theater - Jersey City, NJ
09/27/72- Stanley Theater - Jersey City, NJ
09/28/72- Stanley Theater - Jersey City, NJ
11/30/79- Stanley Theater - Pittsburgh, PA
12/01/79- Stanley Theater - Pittsburgh, PA
03/05/81- Stanley Theater - Pittsburgh, PA
03/06/81- Stanley Theater - Pittsburgh, PA

The Stanley in Pitt is now called he Benedum Center for the Performing Arts. It's a fantastic venue, seen many a show there (but not GD). Bob Marley played his last show there and the GD played there five (and a half) times. Never been to the Stanley in Jersey City, but the pictures look grand. Both built the same year, 1928.

.... Enterprise Arena is packed even though their team is on the road. If the Blues win, I think St. Louis will tilt the earths axis.

Congrats Laila Anderson. Your boys came through for you.

....interim coach comes in. Amazing and well deserved. Plus, they beat the Sharks. Bad news? No more hockey until October ☹️
Dead & Co was playing Stella Blue btw. Followed by GDTRFB. Salt on the Bruins wounds?
Boston fans booing the Cup? Stay classy 😉

....with Laura Branigan's Gloria (which is the Blues locker room song all season), followed by The Stones Loving Cup. BADASS!!! I wanna be in St. Louis 😔

Thank God the Blues won! I could not take Boston winning the championship of 3 sports this year. Watched the whole thing and loved it!
Rock on

Received my copy of the 50th anniversary yesterday and was extremely pleased to see the cover is holographic, just like AOS. Received my t-shirt today and the colors are awesome! Great shirt.
Rock on

Never heard of Laura Branigan before tonight. Tragic death.. I was thinking of the classic Van Morrison Gloria.

Shows what I know..

I have a feeling there's a lot of people our age group that while we had a lot of fun we're damn lucky more of us didn't go down hard in those days. I'm about 5 years older than you. My peak period on the road was '68 to '74. I met a lot of really nice people and had a lot of fun but some scary moments definitely happened. Hitching from Boston to school in western Ma. January 73 I spent 3 hours on the road in Turners Falls . Rural, at night 15 degrees. I was getting scared. It obviously turned out ok but It could have been different. A guy in a pickup, maybe the 1st vehicle in 45 min stopped. He made it clear he only stopped because of the seriousness of my situation.
I too had one of those proposition deals when I was 16. Only this guy didn't ask he grabbed the second I got in the car. Luckily he wasn't that big. I smashed him in the face hard as I could he lost control and I hit the pavement a fast as I could. For every bad scene I had a 100 good times but I finally figured out it wasn't worth it. Lots off good times but there but for the grace of god go I

Ew.

Gents....Motorhead has a multitude of matrrial to choose from.

But you did win the SC....

I guess I have to get the t shirt too then.

The Vinyl picture disc is stunning as well. Aoxomoxoa is my favorite cover art of all time. In 82 I had a Rick Griffin Cigar Sam t-shirt that was classic as well. I wonder where that went to?

....as a teen raised on MTV, when it was really about music, I know that song too well. It's all about eras. And that was the era I was dealt. Could be worse....

Jim dbl 😁 the Stanley Stuff.....actually, nice box eh?
Laura Brannigan? I did sound for a beauty pageant of all things at the Eden Corn Festival.....yea, just what it sounds like, but hey gigs were few and far between back then. Something to do with Laura Brannigans music was the theme, with I think her version of “I love a rainy night”?? Man, where did this come from? Haven’t thought of this in decades?
Anyway, in typical dumb ass hubris of youth, I need some cash, GD, Bear influced idiot, I schlep all kinds of heavy McIntosh Amps and JBl Speakers and what not, and for what? A ##$&*$ country, farmer type annual festival, specifically their high school age daughters sporting bathing suites while drunken hillbillies, ahhh, like, there neighbors etc, basically were inappropriate! Not too weird....
The beauty of weed, I was inexperienced and so focused on sound then, that the actual fiasco sort of went by mentally unnoticed until years later......ah, huh, huh, stoner!
Now you’d throw up a pair of powered Mackies or EVs and a little board and be good, nope.....idiot!
It was an adventure—getting high was a real challenge! Definetly learned a few things, but of course no girl outta the deal.....no skills! Loser! Lol

HOCKEY: Nice!, didn’t see that coming! During the first like 16 minutes of the game there is no way in hell I thought the Blues would win. Then those 2 goals, and decent game but that was basically that, more or less. I think the Bees came out so hard that they finally gassed out, meanwhile the Blues looked at each other during the first intermission and were like “whoaa, not only did we survive, we’re up 2 zip”, mostly their goalie was solid! Proper! The Bees could of easily been up 2 or 3 to zed after one.....
Mostly I’m just glad there wasn’t much BS like all the Sharks series.....besides that one non-trip call I don’t recall anything too heinous? And that didn’t really end up mattering like the Knights and the AVs series.
Ah, interesting year, and good second season, but of course now we have the long drought, with those lessor sports in between, until next year, the year “ my” team is gonna do it.......yea, and they say there’s a drug problem in this country!
Hey-ooo! Sorry to all the non-hockey folks here, we’re done for a while, thanks for your tolerance.

....my emotional investment paid off. And yes, Lemmy & Co are top shelf my friend. Not Branigan quality, but it'll work. Lol.
I think the non-hockey fanatics put up with us pretty well. I can't recall a STFU, so that is why I come here. Looking forward to October.

For all y'all that recall, I had a job interview yesterday. It went alright with no major flubs I think! I'll know next week.

Thanks for the encouragement - especially KF, LMG, VG, and the Lawn Mower Man. It really helped settle nerves a bit!

Definitely there but for the grace of God go I. I am incredibly lucky how things turned out for me the way they did. Quite why, I am not sure-but hey. My first girlfriends dad used to say to me that if teenage boys got to 21 without killing themselves ( which obviously applies to all 21 year olds), or someone else, then they had it made. A bit over dramatic, perhaps, but I know what he meant now.

I have also always loved the cover of Aoxomoxoa, too. I used to have a great and massive poster of it back in my flat in the 1980s. As to the new version-its in the post. I am quite tempted by the vinyl picture disc, too.

Listening wise, and I think I say it every time I hear it... the jam after drums on 4/29/71, as heard on "Ladies and Gentlemen" is breath taking. 1971 isn't my favourite year of the 68-74 timespan by a long way-but that jam is something else.

Donna, Bill, Jerry, and Phil,
Last train to Jacksonville,
Pigpen, Keith, and Cowboy Bob,
Wilfred T LanDead his job!

... it seems that I exerted myself over the weekend and I woke up yesterday paralyzed from the waist down, I couldn’t move my legs. an ambulance was called. got to the Englewood hospital, went through all the regular tests and the doctors concur that I pushed my physical being into overdrive...weekend at the beach with my children seems to be the reason/cause.
Well worth it! Can’t leave until tomorrow. 😔
Have a grateful day everyone ! God Bless.
Listen’n to Dicks Picks #13. 5/6/81 ‘Nassau Coliseum’., right now...I love this Pick! The hidden track on disc #2 is PRIMO!!! 🙏❤️😎
...Congrates my brother on your interview ! ✌️

Just remember amigo, if it’s meant to be it’ll be, if not, we’ll, that’s one thing about getting old......you learn sometimes things work out in the long run. The main thing is to be yourself and try....and always remember, “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” rock on brother! .....and may the force be with you!

I have a suggestion for your first book, "The Cat and the Bats."

I bet we could have some good fun with Green Eggs and Ham too..

Edit: Green Barrels and Ham(ton)

Flaccid on brown acid! or
There’s a rainbow goat in the moat, maybe
Daddy’s in Jail, stuck without bail!.....or
Ate some peyote, now everything looks like guacamole

Is this thing on?
Hey CaseyJanes, you out there?
Haven’t heard from ya since you were entering the gorge?
Hope it was awesome!

Three of us were hitchhiking through Vermont. Stayed with a friend one night and we baked a quarter-pound of crappy Mexican into a big dish of brownies. Me, being the genius, got the munchies and ate a considerable quantity. Hitchhiking the next morning, a guy picked us up in his hatchback. Only two seats available. So I crammed in back with our three backpacks. He pulled over when we reached the trailhead and popped the hatch. I was literally unconscious -- a brownie coma in progress -- as they pulled out the backpacks and had to just about drag my ass out, too.

"Hey, is that g-g-guy all r-r-r-right??" the guy stammered. "Sure, he's just sleepy," my friends covered for me as they helped me upright, informed me of our whereabouts and, uh, prepared to hike 10 miles that day.

I was too young to be properly embarrassed. I mean, what's a little coma among friends?

Oh, just remembered a better tale. Again, strangely, it involved Vermont. Hitchhiking to see a friend who'd been thrown out of high school, now ensconced in an alternative "school" in northern Vermont. Late in the day, southern Vermont, I get picked up by a couple of long hairs. (Who looked just like I did at the time...) "Hey, stay with us tonight." I had a few doobies, they had two bottles of tequila.

Okay, now who among you can spot the clues here to the pending scene?

They take me to their house and two young women stop over. Five of us party down. No dinner, just weed and tequila. What could possibly go wrong? We sit cross-legged on a small rug; no furniture except a king-sized waterbed in the room. By midnight, we're all very chummy, two guys, two young women and me. All old-time friends by the end of bottle two. The person who rented the place -- can't remember whether man or woman -- said, well, there's the water bed, let's all sleep in it. Nothing weird, just a few young hipsters gonna take their rest. So all five of us climb onto the water bed and proceed to pass out.

Except, in those days, water beds did not have baffles or chambers. Just one giant rectangle full of water. So, inevitably, if one person moved, an internal wave would move throughout the bed. The effect was like rafting white water or like Jer's description of playing live: an open rowboat on the roiling sea. In this case, we had five people tossing and turning, all shit-faced. I'm on the outside, clinging to the bedframe. About halfway through the night, inevitably I'm ralphing projectile-style into a nearby wastebasket, yet unable to rouse myself sufficiently to escape to the floor. Everyone else, apparently, slept like babies, despite the hideous stench.

In the morning, washed out my mouth. No coffee. A few gulps of water. Just walked out to the road and stuck my thumb out. Standard operating procedure for the summer of '73.

When I reached the alternative school that afternoon, I hiked down the long forested approach road and a man who looked a helluva lot like George Carlin comes up to greet me. Turns out he's Pat Carlin, George's older brother. This is totally true! Over the weekend, it became clear to me that Pat Carlin was a hilarious lunatic, a warm, caring, yet insanely funny man. And I came away thinking, "So that's where George learned his stuff. His older brother paved the way."

It might have been the hitchhike home that got me that 95+ mph ride with the inbreds from St. Johnsbury. In fact, that has to be the same trip, because I only visited that joint once.

Back to your regularly scheduled angst over the box announcement. Ta ta!

Just got my copy of "Deadhead Stories" – pretty cool book at first look and in perfect synch with the nostalgic stories from the road y'all have been sharing. (thanks!) Just wondering: are any of you in this book? Maybe you can't/won't say, but, if you're not in it, you should be! It's a unique and well done book: https://deadheadstories.org/

Some of you have better memories than me. "If I could remember all that went down, it would...."

I really do struggle to recall events in enough detail to make it worth reading. Funny.. there was a period when I tried really hard to refrain from taking too much of anything so I could remember the shows better. I think I recall details of when I took too much better, in hindsight I guess that was a stupid idea..

Enjoyable reading..