4/17/15 4:31 PM

Grateful Dead. Damn it Jerry, you robbed me of too many good years.

4/20/15 10:29 AM

Jerry, Phil, Bob, Mickey, Bill. . Thanks for the music, guys.

I never became a real Deadhead -- only saw them live a few times, but I've always listened, almost from the beginning (first time I saw them was for free in Golden Gate Park, with the Jefferson Airplane).

Have you read Phil Lesh's book?

4/20/15 2:56 PM

didn't score a ticket for chicago nor Santa Clara??? still remember exactly when and where I was when I first heard Jerry's "The Wheel" on the radio was driving in my car in HS. now it is my racing anthem:

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down
You can't let go and you can't hold on
You can't go back and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will
Won't you try just a little bit harder
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
Won't you try just a little bit harder
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?

4/20/15 6:53 PM

The dead could be as uneven as hell. I only saw them twice, but the second time was one of the great experiences of my life.

Missed.

4/20/15 7:12 PM

No, not going, and I think Trey will do a stand up job. The Grateful Dead died for me with Jerry. Ratdog did some great shows in the early oughts, but the band was the band, and some of these later incarnations are just a freak show.

Yes, they were uneven, but when they were on...it was magic.

4/21/15 9:00 AM

That's a good anthem for riding, Rick, and for life. Let's give proper credit, though. Like most of Jerry's songwriting work, the song is a collaboration, and Bob Hunter wrote the words. His lyrics for Dead songs are a remarkable body of work.

4/21/15 9:32 AM

On the 50th I was riding in my car and the radio played a live version of "Bertha" and I thought what a great song it was and how uniquely Dead. I thought back to a few years ago when I saw Los Lobos and they blew the roof off covering the song - maybe even as an encore. A great tribute - not sure they do many covers.

I was never a true Deadhead but I liked them a lot. I remember my friend Al turning me on to "Live Dead" - loved Dark Star, St. Stephen, all the spacey stuff. Saw them once, part of a tour shortly after Woodstock, remember "Turn on on Your Love Light" like it was yesterday. I thought the whole stadium was bouncing. Pigpen fronting.

Also very memorable to me was that The Band came on after them and closed the night, and Jerry was at the side of the stage clapping his hands and tapping his foot through the entire show. I thought, that is a unique and great guy.

4/21/15 11:09 AM

"I was never a true Deadhead but I liked them a lot"

That's about where I am/was. I totally appreciated the experience in/of their live performances when they were dialed in.

4/21/15 11:17 AM

quote:

---

Also very memorable to me was that The Band came on after them and closed the night, and Jerry was at the side of the stage clapping his hands and tapping his foot through the entire show. I thought, that is a unique and great guy.

---

4/21/15 3:02 PM

You are right about R. Hunter....maybe my anthem these days should be "A touch of grey" :)

4/21/15 4:54 PM

or so, my parents shipped my brother and me off to a week-long camp. In my cabin, the counselor played the same record every night, and I have always remembered the line "St. Stephen will remain..."

It wasn't until more than a decade later that I realized what he'd been listening to!

4/21/15 7:53 PM

Stephen prospered in his time, well he may and he may decline.
Did it matter, does it now? Stephen would answer if he only knew how.

. . .

Saint Stephen will remain, all he's lost he shall regain,
Seashore washed by the suds and foam,
Been here so long, he's got to calling it home.

Fortune comes a crawlin', calliope woman, spinnin' that curious sense of your own.
Can you answer? Yes I can. But what would be the answer to the answer man?

4/22/15 6:05 AM

yeah,
water the children of the garden
the ivy on manzanita
William Tell's bow
the required change

And after that...the driven bass line, the crackling guitars, unbelievably a lilting calliope, The Eleven, Lovelight, whatta groove.

4/22/15 9:45 AM

It must've been the roses.

4/22/15 9:54 AM

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
the heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings,
But the heart has its seasons, its evenings and songs of its own.

And then there's "Ripple" and "Uncle John's Band," which are special because I've been playing and singing them myself all these years, including singing them many times to my kids from when they were tiny.

It's a hand-me-down; the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they're better left unsung.
I don't know; don't really care.
Let there be song to fill the air.

4/22/15 10:13 AM

Each of my kids had a song (not all Dead) we'd use to dance them to sleep. For my eldest son, it was Box of Rain.

4/22/15 10:45 AM

My daughter insisted on listening to Eyes of the world each early summer morning when I drove her to work when she worked as a summer day camp counselor.....now 24 she's read every book about the dead when she was in H.S. and accompanied me to a Further concert at McCoy Stadium (Home of the AAA Pawtucket Red Sox)

One of my faves:

I ain't often right
but I've never been wrong
It seldom turns out the way
it does in the song
Once in a while
you get shown the light
in the strangest of places
if you look at it right

4/22/15 11:35 AM

What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
this is all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago

Walk out of any doorway
feel your way, feel your way
like the day before
Maybe you'll find direction
around some corner
where it's been waiting to meet you -

What do you want me to do,
to watch for you while you're sleeping?
Well please don't be surprised
when you find me dreaming too

4/22/15 11:44 AM

Andy it was either the roses, or, I seem to recall Jerry's nickname in the early days was "Captain Trips."

I recalled I also saw Jerry with Merl Saunders at a restaurant in SF, I think the cover was $1. Cool.

I have a highly prized cassette bootleg recording of "Lovelight" with Janis joining Pig for a duet. It's, umm, about what you'd expect....

A guy I went to high school with, Len Dell' Amico, was the Dead's longtime video guy (another classmate, Jim Ralston, was Tina Turner's longtime guitarist, may still be).

4/22/15 12:47 PM

"It Must Have Been the Roses" has been my favorite ever since I first saw the Grateful Dead Movie. It's just a lovely song, and the chord structure is *just* different enough to be interesting (I play it in C, and in that key it's the C to Bb drop in the chorus that gets me every time).

And while I'm a guitar player, I think Phil's work in the Dead is truly amazing. His bass moves things in important ways.

4/22/15 1:10 PM

Yeah, he's really different. His story of how he came to join the band in his book is fascinating. He'd never even played guitar, let alone bass, but he had some ideas from his compositional training, and when he met Garcia at a Warlocks gig he started talking about his musical ideas, and thought he might write for the band. Jerry, just from talking to him, knew he'd fit in, and invited him to join the band. Jerry borrowed a guitar for him, explained that the bass was tuned an octave lower than the bottom four strings, and told him to take it home and learn all the scales and come to a rehearsal. When they grabbed Bob Weir (he was still in high school), the core of the band's sound was there.

4/22/15 1:18 PM

If you didn't score tix then pay per view :

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/grateful-dead-final-shows-will-be-available-on-pay-per-view-20150422

4/22/15 1:32 PM

;)


<img src="http://coupekiss.host-ed.me/images/ttf/g-dead.jpg" width=320>

4/22/15 1:52 PM

Phil was studying classical trumpet and avant-garde classical composition when he got involved with Jerry and the boys. He knew his way around the scales and chords and counterpoint methods better than the average rocker, and it shows in the playing.

4/22/15 3:40 PM

That Janis/Pig duet is a classic bit of raunch.

The Scarlet Begonias bit quoted above is one of my ringtones, along with the opening of Eyes from Nassau 3/29/90, the one from Without a Net-I was always partial to the interplay between Jerry and Branford (and Jerry and David Murray).

Will have to read Phil's book, have read Ramrod's, and McNally's.