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07-02-2015, 08:25 PM
This week, we have witnessed the ending of the 50-year journey of the Grateful Dead. The culmination of the shows at Santa Clara, Calif. and the three shows this weekend at Soldier Field in Chicago, Ill. will mark the end of a quite a musical and cultural legacy.
My first encounter with them was in (1968) when they appeared at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Ore. with Quicksilver Messenger Service. I liked them right away. They were creative, unpredictable, melodious, colorful and very spacey with their playing.
There was also a mystical quality to the Grateful Dead. Throughout the years of seeing them, either inside or outside unique things would happen. I saw them in 1975 in Portland, Ore. for the "Steal Your Face Off" tour. That year, they traveled with a 50-foot wall of sound. During the first set, I remember seeing Jerry Garcia play this very complicated guitar solo, all of a sudden a speaker 30 feet up got loose and crashed to the floor, barely missing Jerry. He just "smiled, smiled, smiled," and kept playing.
On another occasion in (1969) at a bucolic country dance hall outside Portland, Ore. called Springer's, the Grateful Dead appeared. Jerry Garcia was sitting out back in a panel truck that had a nitrous oxide tank, holding court.
Then in 1980, I saw The Grateful Dead at a venue called the Mississippi River Festival in Edwardsville, Ill. There were about twenty thousand people at this outdoor show. The rain was coming down and the sound was getting oxidized. During "Scarlet Begonias", I remember there was a blonde woman dancing about five feet in front of me. All of a sudden, her contact popped out of her eye and landed in the mud. I thought, "it's gone."
At that very moment, 20 people, total strangers to her, began crawling in the mud looking for the contact lens. Sure enough, they found it. The woman cleaned the mud off of the lens, popped it back into her eye and resumed dancing through the rest of the Grateful Dead's show.
This type of communal, humanistic, kind, artistic and creative scene was always a part of any Grateful Dead experience. The band also committed it's money to the values that they supported. They were responsible for creating the Rex Foundation that provided support to the arts, science and education in the San Francisco Bay area and elsewhere; also the Unbroken Chain Foundation was founded by Phil Lesh which is pursuing similar philanthropic work. Also for years, the Grateful Dead performed benefits for the Seva Foundation that supports working with vision impacted people living in Nepal, India, etc. Also, Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders provided benefit concert support to the Rainforest Foundation.
Ever since Jerry Garcia's early untimely death in 1995, the remaining members of the Grateful Dead have constellated in the musical configurations of Furthur, Phil Lesh and Friends, Bob Weir and Rat Dog, and Mickey Hart and Bill Keutzmann, the infamous "Rhythm Devils."
Earlier in their career, the Grateful Dead performed their memorable show in front of the Sphinx in Egypt where literally some of the sound was funneled through one of the chambers in the pyramids. This was in (1977 ) during the Camp David Accords.
The current "Fare Thee Well" tour will bring all of these experiences and perceptions and memories into focus once again. Trey Anastasio of Phish will be filling in for the role that Jerry Garcia played in the band.
But then again could anyone ever replace Jerry Garcia?
Jerry use to say: "We play it, we put it out there. You do what you want with it."
Who couldn't love that way of presenting the music?
The last time I saw the Grateful Dead was 1993 in Chicago at Soldier Field. Sting opened the show.
There was one quintessential moment when Jerry Garcia joined Sting to perform "Tea In The Sahara." The version they played was light, airy, ethereal. Sting introduced Jerry as "Father Christmas," and Jerry smiled.
Who would have known that Jerry would be dead two years later.
The Grateful Dead say in Scarlet Begonias: "Once in awhile, you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."
I'm glad that they showed a lot of light and creativity and spirit during their 50-year career.
May that sense of communal creative artistic muse live on and generate much beauty in the lives of all people. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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My first encounter with them was in (1968) when they appeared at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Ore. with Quicksilver Messenger Service. I liked them right away. They were creative, unpredictable, melodious, colorful and very spacey with their playing.
There was also a mystical quality to the Grateful Dead. Throughout the years of seeing them, either inside or outside unique things would happen. I saw them in 1975 in Portland, Ore. for the "Steal Your Face Off" tour. That year, they traveled with a 50-foot wall of sound. During the first set, I remember seeing Jerry Garcia play this very complicated guitar solo, all of a sudden a speaker 30 feet up got loose and crashed to the floor, barely missing Jerry. He just "smiled, smiled, smiled," and kept playing.
On another occasion in (1969) at a bucolic country dance hall outside Portland, Ore. called Springer's, the Grateful Dead appeared. Jerry Garcia was sitting out back in a panel truck that had a nitrous oxide tank, holding court.
Then in 1980, I saw The Grateful Dead at a venue called the Mississippi River Festival in Edwardsville, Ill. There were about twenty thousand people at this outdoor show. The rain was coming down and the sound was getting oxidized. During "Scarlet Begonias", I remember there was a blonde woman dancing about five feet in front of me. All of a sudden, her contact popped out of her eye and landed in the mud. I thought, "it's gone."
At that very moment, 20 people, total strangers to her, began crawling in the mud looking for the contact lens. Sure enough, they found it. The woman cleaned the mud off of the lens, popped it back into her eye and resumed dancing through the rest of the Grateful Dead's show.
This type of communal, humanistic, kind, artistic and creative scene was always a part of any Grateful Dead experience. The band also committed it's money to the values that they supported. They were responsible for creating the Rex Foundation that provided support to the arts, science and education in the San Francisco Bay area and elsewhere; also the Unbroken Chain Foundation was founded by Phil Lesh which is pursuing similar philanthropic work. Also for years, the Grateful Dead performed benefits for the Seva Foundation that supports working with vision impacted people living in Nepal, India, etc. Also, Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders provided benefit concert support to the Rainforest Foundation.
Ever since Jerry Garcia's early untimely death in 1995, the remaining members of the Grateful Dead have constellated in the musical configurations of Furthur, Phil Lesh and Friends, Bob Weir and Rat Dog, and Mickey Hart and Bill Keutzmann, the infamous "Rhythm Devils."
Earlier in their career, the Grateful Dead performed their memorable show in front of the Sphinx in Egypt where literally some of the sound was funneled through one of the chambers in the pyramids. This was in (1977 ) during the Camp David Accords.
The current "Fare Thee Well" tour will bring all of these experiences and perceptions and memories into focus once again. Trey Anastasio of Phish will be filling in for the role that Jerry Garcia played in the band.
But then again could anyone ever replace Jerry Garcia?
Jerry use to say: "We play it, we put it out there. You do what you want with it."
Who couldn't love that way of presenting the music?
The last time I saw the Grateful Dead was 1993 in Chicago at Soldier Field. Sting opened the show.
There was one quintessential moment when Jerry Garcia joined Sting to perform "Tea In The Sahara." The version they played was light, airy, ethereal. Sting introduced Jerry as "Father Christmas," and Jerry smiled.
Who would have known that Jerry would be dead two years later.
The Grateful Dead say in Scarlet Begonias: "Once in awhile, you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."
I'm glad that they showed a lot of light and creativity and spirit during their 50-year career.
May that sense of communal creative artistic muse live on and generate much beauty in the lives of all people. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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