grateful for the dead (in any incarnation)

In the summer of 1967, I purchased the first Grateful Dead album simply titled: The Grateful Dead. I had not, of course, heard their music on the radio yet - that was still to come - but I had read about them in the spring. And as the summer of love dawned I wanted an inside track on what was happening. My family was vacationing at Lake Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaug in Webster, MA and I was all of 15. When my mom was shopping for groceries, I slipped into the local department store and spent a whopping $2.98 for a taste of the Dead. I was immediately a fan.

Don't get me wrong: I had NO idea what to make of this music - no frame of reference for this revelry and abandon - I just knew it made me want to dance. My music collection took a wild left turn that summer as I added Surrealistic Pillow and Moby Grape to my Beatles/Stones collection. It was an ecstatic time - or as Grace Slick was later that years: It's a wild thyme!

I didn't use any extra-sensory resources back in the day but came to value the way they helped my counter-cultural heroes create new sounds and insights. So, no sooner did the Dead put out a new album than I was wearing it out on my Radio Shack component home stereo. My small bedroom was agog with black light posers, a ton of psychedelic music, and a modest headset so I could listen to the groove late into the night. Our small band, Creepin' Jesus, was playing the Who, Jeff Beck, improvised suburban blues, some early Hendrix, and the Dead's take on "Morning Dew." For the next five years, while I still loved some pop and soul, my musical tastes plunged into the new groove with abandon. To say that I couldn't get enough of the Dead would be an understatement. "Cosmic Charlie" from the band's third outing became my default position as it was totally opposite from everything my family and culture valued.

There were countless other songs and bands, too - it's important to note that my first live concert was at the Garrick Theatre in the West Village where Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were in residence - and there wasn't a month that passed when I wasn't taking in some show at Bill Graham's legendary Fillmore East. And after three semesters of college, when I quit to contest my draft status, after resolving my conscientious objector status to the war in Vietnam, my first head over heels in love girlfriend and I became total Dead Heads as I played music with a children's theatre group for a summer on Martha's Vineyard and then followed the Dead for part of the summer of '73. Two recordings shaped that year: Skull and Roses and then Europe '72.

After three years organizing with the Farm Workers Union, my life matured and I found myself married with a young child while finishing my undergraduate work in San Francisco. My love of the Dead only went deeper as we took in the songs on Blues for Allah and various gigs at Winterland. I found that I was more of a Bobby Wier Deadhead than a Jerry Garcia guy - and this song encapsulates why. In fact, given half a chance with our current band, my heart, soul, mind, and motor memory takes me right back here...

After seeing the Allmans, the Band, and the Dead at Watkins Glen 50 years ago, there was no turning back for me. They were in my blood.

So why all this musical history? Well, the current incarnation of the Dead - Dead and Company - has come to a close. They were a brilliant reworking of the early band with wildly creative new additions like John Mayer, Jeff Chementi, and Otiel Burbridge along with Mickey Hart and Jay Lane. Some Dead fundamentalists couldn't abide by the new brothers in arms but I thought they took the improvisational tunes to new heights of energy and beauty. These new cats could harmonize like nobody's business AND had paid their dues working with the genre's foundations.

What's more, from my perspective, they took the Dead ethos deeper. Their extended grooves linking songs together in a seamless flow was brilliant. Their commitment to a set list helped. And they'd clearly rehearsed together and in their own private woodshedding which made the whole trip more profound. And while the core was now in their 70s - damn if Weir doesn't look like and OT prophet - the combo of old and new brought new beauty and energy to what was time tested and transformative. Perhaps the BEST version of "Sugaree" ever happened this year as the band was bringing this current incarnation to a close...

The Dead are experiential - not rational. They must be encountered will all the senses. The Dead are also a social and spiritual phenomenon: when you attend a concert you are reconnecting with sisters and brothers form other mothers as well as aunts, uncles, and some unanticipated cousins who just want you to groove like there's no tomorrow. Because, truth be told, there ISN'T the promise of tomorrow. Just be here NOW. So dancing, laughing, watching, and singing along with the entourage becomes a spiritual practice of simply "letting go." One need not take in additional chemical/organic helpers because the music and the community can take you higher (just like Sly Stone prophesied.) When you are in Deadland, you are kin to hundreds of others from every walk of life - at least for a few hours - and the experience points to what could be: trust and tenderness with a backbeat.

My young grandson is now into the Dead. When he visits we play "Friend of the Devil" along with "Truckin'!" Soon we'll work on "Sugar Magnolia," too. I have no idea where the band will go now that Dead and Company are finished. But as one song puts it: the music never stopped. And I trust that it will keep on bringing blessing upon blessing whenever the faithful gather to be open to the love...