Grateful Dead

At Miami the next show after Orlando I had one of the most beautiful days ever. The weather was perfect and the lot was calm. I was still soaking in all that had happened the days before. That day my friends from Vermont (3 girls) had found out that one of them had cancer so needless to say they were drinking. My best friend on the lot had broken his leg and another got a ticket for selling t-shirts. I had such great energy following me that I set out on a quest to get everyone into the show. I got on the right attire for the mission shorts and a peacock feather. First I chased a scalper around harassing him until he gave me a ticket. Next I stayed on miracle alley until I got 5 miracles I then went and gave all to my kin. When I got back to miracle alley I saw a kid with a Metallica shirt on and a sign saying "It's My 18th Birthday My First Show And My Friend's Left Me" so I had to give him my ticket of course. The show was about to start and I had no ticket. At Miami the entrance was raised above the lot with an outdoor gate area. Out of the blue I heard someone yelling from above. "I have been watching you all day and if anyone tries to catch this ticket I will come down and kick there ass" The ticket fell right into my hands. It was a mail order. Iran for the gates. When I got inside I saw some friends huddled in a circle, my one friend had ground scored a five pack of paper lsd. He was ripping large chunks off and handing them to all of us. Well now everything was different. When I got to my seat somewhere in the first section of the balcony when I got there no seat existed for my ticket. The usher took me to an office where a manager was. I was pretty well freakin by this point. She took a good look at my ticket and new it wasn't fake just a misprint. She then wrote out a ticket for my and the usher took me there. 3rd ROW CENTER "Row Jimmy"

HST PEACE

Cant wait for the next installment "A cap of good Acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Sypmhony with God singing solo, and the Holy Ghost on Drums" HTS

Simply stellar synapses snapping scintillating surrealistic snapshots. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. William Blake

I had been on tour for about three years when this happened. The show was Orlando spring 94. The night before had been canceled do to billy's father passing on. The night was filled with a lot of energy the police were being quit aggressive and the kids were playing right back with them. I was staying out of all that just hanging on a lawn. When night fell the hole place when nuts teargas was flying and kids were getting dragged off. The police had put up barriers so no one could get close to the doors. My friend dave and I were waiting for something to happen because we figured no matter whether we agreed with gate rushing in the show was better than out. The right moment came and I ran for the door before I could get there the doors were wide open mostly because I was carrying a full backpack and others got there first. I got to the top closed my eyes,prayed and jumped into the chaos. The next thing I new I was inside the inner doors were shut. I ran for one. As soon as I opened it I saw friend Carrie with arms open for me. And I heard " THE BOTTLE WAS DUSTY BUT THE LIQUOR WAS CLEAN " The most amazing and powerful moment I ever felt on tour. The rest of that year was filled with miracles. Tell more later I have to go do laundry. I NEED A MIRACLE EVERYDAY

more!

of my seat, GRTUD, please do continue a.s.a.p!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Was you ages and ages ago with that great cliff-hanging bat story, wasn´t it??********************************** Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you will still exist, but you have ceased to live. Samuel Clemens

The painting is from Jacek Malczewski a Polish Impressionist that has been dead (unfortunately) for over 70 years, thus his work is pubic domain. I'll be right back... "The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees. ." - Erwin Schrödinger

In honor of the "reunion" I finished enough of this story to get started here. It's a beautiful night for a campfire. There will be at least two parts, posted as I deem appropriate (OK, when I get around to finishing the damn thing). Robert Hunter impressed me so much with his short stories, I was inspired and thought it might be fun for everyone to do a project with "cliff hangers" and such. I hope everyone has a GRATE time at the reunion concert. "... when you find you're there, remember me, my only love, my only love, my only love." Prelude ~ Meet the Beast   Terror is the first emotion; at least until we make visual contact with the creature, first hand, putting it into context of the world we associate with reality. It could be a vulture, rabid bat or butterfly but until we make the contextual identification, without doubt, it is surely the wings of Hell itself that stalks us. HST surely understood this as he navigated the Nevada desert on his way to cover the motocross event sidelined in his "novel", Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The present day archetype of the apocalypse is making it's return, personally shedding it's own light on objects that cast shadows of doom these days; skyscrapers, airplanes, bridges and billboards. How could we have missed the meaning so easily spelled out in the hindsight of time? What next, TV's and computer monitors, as they are hurled out the windows of modernized life, onto the street corner named, Desire & Main or perhaps Madison & Wall? Poor bastards, wait 'till they see the bats...             Fungus and synthesized chemicals are something of their own dilemma. The beautiful spectacle of galaxies colliding will eventually draw too close to view in full, like our own Milky Way is now. Only the black of nothingness will shroud our view of eternity. The fad that was flavored in Kool-aid is merely evidence of grace, not of the compulsion to succeed. The horse, the water but not necessarily the drink. But what fun it was when combined with ignorance and youth! While no stone is tossed the ripple is viewed by some, as a tsunami. Sometimes they're bats the size of 747's, or high flying butterflies, I can't be sure anymore... terror is a hallucinogenic drug too, it turns out. The fractals of time and space as seen from the oblivion that frees the slave from the shackles of perspective are as delicate as the scales of such creatures. Drawn to the light of self-awareness, they fear neither bat nor bird of prey. Their wings, a delicious poison of truth and beauty like a dart frog on the leaf of a primitive fern basking in the glow of white light, spectrums hiding from view but not purpose. Here there is no Time or Space but all the same it exists in unlimited quantities. The need to monopolize quantity has no mind; therefore there is no hunger because there exists no processes. Here is “Now” and the tank never runs dry because there is no need for a tank in the first place. No parades to dogma equal the psychedelic backdrop to the scene here, man. Just allow the thing to let you go and you're gone, once and for all. No shadow here only perfectly dispersed light to read the book. The first pages turn lightly and contain only a few words but we know and dread the weight of our mistakes, as they mount with weight on every page we read. These words blare the burden of our ego which we were duped by, like the three-card Monte game that caught our eye. An easy buck, to be sure, until all was lost. A walk to the park turned into a mugging we solicited. What a fool I was to believe in such lies, but that’s the burden of being doomed, after all. Again, the shadows return and cover must be found. The creature has returned to claim its quarry.             The alarm screeched ceaselessly from the area that had, only moments ago, contained the delicate fern gully with a small steam of crystal clear water babbling over small smooth stones the color of auto body putty. It wasn’t possible that the time for work had arrived again. “Gonna’ have to invent something that cures poverty, and soon”, I thought as I twisted the alarm setting to “OFF”. Being dragged back from the brink of doom for this drab facsimile of reality, over and over again was becoming tiresome. I prefer the damn bats, quite frankly. I could take ‘em too, if I only had the time. Oh well, no time to lament, just one more night shift then off to NYC with No. 1 to take in some real culture. The Lyric Opera House show was tremendous and only God knew for how long this “second wind” would last. Lucky I’m still here to witness, much less with an adult offspring that wants to accompany me to such occasions. As I entered the great room of our home to finish dressing I over heard the audio portion of one of our “house movies” playing on the TV. “There’s nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster, “ Dr. Evil said on the TV as the “kids” watched Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Laugh as I did, it was becoming a poignant commentary of my life, at least from my perspective. Nothing was physically working as in the past. All physical activity now caused the need for several days of rehabilitation. My allergies were the only thing that had reclaimed their youthful edge. In fact, the last several years these disturbing developments were also causing anxiety the likes of which I had never experienced. I suppose all that crap about spirituality and faith was only so relevant and supportive so long as there remained no physical sign of personal decay and death. All that teenage tripping had made the veil of time as transparent as the cold, clear night sky that greeted me as I walked outside to warm the car and load my junk for another shift at “the mine”.             I still remember the day “it” happened. The day I had my life put in perspective. No it wasn’t the day we all think of post September 2001, it was some years prior. No. 1 came home and informed me he was working on a project at school and he needed to ask some various people a question, the same question: “How would you spend your last time on Earth if you were told missiles were on their way here from a nuclear armed country?” I was caught flatfooted by a question I had, myself, been asked to think about when I was about No. 1’s age. I’ll never forget what raced through my mind as he asked the question, bristling with confidence. Terror, pure terror, was the only emotion I could feel. For more than 16 years, almost half my entire life, I had belied reality by staying busy, working full time, coaching, going to community college at nights and weekends and taking whatever side jobs I could get to pay bills and yet we were flat broke, tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, in fact. Nearly $7,000.00 per year alone to send No. 1 to private high school and all I could muster was terror, oh and rage (plenty of rage). It wasn’t supposed to be this way, I thought. I could almost see the shadows from the “creatures” as they circled overhead. My pulse pounded my skull in rhythms of laughing thunder, mocking my defenseless state of being. How could this happen to me? I intended to be a doctor of journalism like my hero, Hunter S. Thompson and instead I was just another cog in the wheel of capitalism, a wallet with legs and now my own offspring would surely turn against me when I failed to offer an alternative to the stark, dull, parasitic reality that I inhabited. Worst of all, I feared for No. 1, as well my other children. If I had nothing better to offer, if all my efforts in life were merely measured in futility, what could the young expect from life? According to Albert Einstein, as I interpret his General Relativity Theory, a moment in time can last forever, since time is nothing more than a perception. Good timing for a person caught in the confluences of the preverbal “web” we weave in the haymaking, oat sowing days of youth, mine at least. The entertainment portion of life was now finished. It was time to “pay the piper”, as my old man used to say. “What a drag it is getting old…”   A Time Trip Backwards ~ GRTUD's Front Row Odyssey               “Hey man!”, the voice behind me said as my friend Moe, his wife and my wife handed over their tickets to the man at the top of the long flight of stairs. We were standing inside the Capital Centre, entering through one of the “portals” to descend to the floor for a Grateful Dead concert. I had never had tickets this good before, in my life. “Hey man, can I use your ticket to get down on the floor to get my gear from my friend?” I turned to look as a white “kid” bounded up to me with dirty dreadlocks and filthy khaki cargo pants and no shirt. “You want to use my ticket?” I asked, holding it up. The acid Moe and I “found” in the parking lot was taking effect. Voices seemed to take forever to get to my ear, almost like a nitrous balloon high that just kept getting stronger and stronger. The “kid's” dreadlocks were morphing into a thicket of snakes, like a male version of Medusa. I was the sucker of the group, believing the money a person asked for in concert parking lots was really needed for a bus ride home. I rarely had money to give but I always brought lots of food to share. I believed in Southern Hospitality and although Maryland doesn’t really qualify as “The South” I had always identified with the ideals represented by the notion of bringing enough supplies for myself, as well several others. Sharing was part of the fun for me. Moe was a DC cop and he had heard all the stories before and no one blamed him for becoming callous to all the sob stories that were popping up around the Dead’s scene these days. What I did blame on everyone in our group that day was having me “bring up the rear” of the group. I suppose the point man had the most risk in a situation like this one, but I could be distracted so easily, on acid. I had lagged behind the group. “You want to use this ticket… my FRONT ROW TICKET?”, I mumbled. At that moment everyone turned to look, as if they wanted to see how I would deal with this quandary. Would it be a Billy Kilmer to Charlie Taylor touchdown in the fading sunlight of an early winter’s NFL Championship game "moment" or would it be another triple overtime NHL loss to either the Flyers or Islanders? We all seemed frozen in time, looking into each other’s eyes, terrified. The Shadow of Wings melted across our faces… Don't touch that dial and stay tuned for more! "The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." - Ken Kesey

I wish to Inform the Deadhead community that my Best Friend in the entire world as passed and any fellow heads that would know him (and there were many, many heads)should know that this happened, particularily Tony in Portland that i do not know how to contact but I saw at the 2004 show there with the Dead. Andy was a model deadhead in his belief system or principals. Jerry would of have been proud to call him friend , he never wanted to be a typical fan or hassle anyone at anytime. He was my music partner we went to so many shows together , the ones on my profile is a small sampling. His knowledge of the music and the Dead plus numerous other band community was like a library of knowledge , The vault people could of used Andy. The following is his Obit and the DEADHEADS worldwide weather you knew him or not, should heed to his passing. His story is 30 years plus and amazing. It would take more space than I'm provided to tell the story from beginning to end. I have been given his music collection , which is quite extensive in tapes as well as CD's , Probably more than 3000 pieces or more. I will be cataloging this collection of live shows and all. The following is the OBIT , My Tears have flown for three days now since I found out. Yesterday was the big day for the furneral and being with his family. I have known Andy since we were 15 years old. John Andrew "Andy" Vojtko John Andrew "Andy" Vojtko of Libertyville Visitation for John Andrew "Andy" Vojtko, 45, will be from 1 p.m. until the time of the services at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 28, at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, 29700 N. St. Mary's Road, Libertyville, with Pastor Robert Davis officiating. Born Aug. 18, 1962, in Libertyville, he passed away Wednesday, June 25, 2008. Andy had lived in the Libertyville-Mundelein area all his life. He was a 1980 graduate of Libertyville High School, received an associates degree from the College of Lake County and attended Illinois State University. He was a charter member of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Libertyville and was employed as a cook at Winchester House for many years. Andy enjoyed music, model trains, the outdoors, various pets and cooking. Surviving are his parents, Gerald and Delores Vojtko of Libertyville; two sisters, Jane (Charles) Binning of Cornville, Ariz. and Lynne (Darren) Rogers of Wauconda; and his favorite nephew and niece, Ethan and Brianna Rogers. Memorial contributions can be made to your favorite charity. Arrangements were made by Burnett-Dane Funeral Home, Libertyville, 847-362-3009. Published in the Chicago Suburban Daily Herald on 6/27/2008.