I Miss Jerry

It's hard to believe it's been 5 years already. In late May 1995, I packed all of my belongings [other than the 23 boxes of books to be shipped] in my trusty ol' Geo Metro, and headed west out of Las Cruces. I drove for exactly 24 hours that night, finally stopping for sleep at a Motel 6 in Red Bluff, CA - north of Sacramento. Two days after that, I arrived in Seattle. I arrived here with neither a job nor a place to stay. Before I rectified either of those situations, I had an errand to run. The Grateful Dead were playing Seattle and I needed tickets.

The turning point for me was summer of 1994. I had just returned from the Phish tour up the West Coast. I had seen Seattle for the first time and knew that I had to live there. I looked at the tour schedule and knew I had a choice. I could see the Grateful Dead play in the region that I was infatuated with or I could see Phish tour the midwest - a region that I kind of tolerated. In 1993 I would have made a different decision. In 1990 this wouldn't even have been a question. It was 1994 though, and I had just seen 3 highly mediocre Dead shows in Phoenix earlier that year. I didn't know the drug rumors, I just knew that I would rather see Phish in the heat of the Eagle Ballroom than see the Dead in Seattle.

When it came to those 1995 Seattle shows, I didn't go expecting much of anything. I bought the tickets mainly because I felt that I should want to go. For years I would have loved to have the Grateful Dead play my town; if it's actually happening, I had a moral obligation to be there. It felt weird going to see the Dead solely because I felt compelled to go, but when I arrived at Seattle Center, I was glad I had come. A crowd of people was around Memorial Stadium listening to the soundcheck... "Unbroken Chain." "Tough Mama" followed and I had hope for the shows.

Speaking to my move, my first show as a Seattlite opened with "Touch of Grey." Las Cruces was over and I did survive. After that though, the show was weak, except for an amazing "Estimated Prophet." I was getting about what I expected. The second show began to give some hope though. The opening "Foolish Heart" went on and on. As though he suddenly cared about playing again, Jerry built the mid-song jam to a peak far beyond what anyone expected. I was suddenly reminded again why I used to go on Dead tour. I was in such a good mood in fact, that I walked home from this show (about 2 hours), just to say that I was able to walk home from a show. Seeing how I called Phish's 1993 Red Rocks show (over 600 miles from Las Cruces) "local," this was a big deal.

Two shows were down, one was to go. Neither one blew me away, but at least both had moments. I walked to the back of the floor of Memorial Stadium - a spot with a great view of the Space Needle and roller coaster - with no expectations. When I heard the opening tuning though, that faded away. "Help on the Way" was to start this show and I was to be exposed to 3 hours of bliss.

I wrote a long review of this show for DeadBase X, but I want to say a few things about it. Getting a "Scarlet ->Fire," "Help > Slipknot! >Franklin's," or "Playin' -> UJB" would have made me happy. All three in the same show was an embarrassment of riches. The "Fire on the Mountain" from this show was especially amusing. Jerry was making UFO sounds and sang a rasta-eqsue chant of, "Fire, FIRE," over and over again. Finally, during "Stella Blue," as Jerry was singing, "It seems like all this life was just a dream," a flock of birds flew over the stadium in a perfect V formation. If you get a copy of the show, you can hear the cheer; much more that excitement over music, it's a cheer for nature, for life itself. That night I was reborn as a Deadhead. I told my friend Jake that I was back on the bus. Sure I didn't get an "Unbroken Chain," but there would be time for it.

I would never see the Grateful Dead again.

I was reading an article about Deadheads once, when I came across an interesting theory. Every 5 years - claimed the article - there was a turnover in the touring crowd. People get bored of the road, find jobs, settle down, or other ways of occupying their time. Five years can be considered a generation of Deadheads. If that's true, then we're about to reach a milestone. The most recent generation of the touring crowd has never seen the Grateful Dead.

Unless you actually saw them, you won't understand this, but touring with the Grateful Dead was different than touring with any other band. The Dead had a mythic property about them, from being the only band that people followed for most of their career, from the length of time that they had played (given them a sense of tradition beyond what other bands could even dream about), from their connections to the Acid Tests - being an important influence at a time when it seemed that anything was possible, all of these things gave Dead shows a special weight. When you went to a show, there was the whole sense of the gathering of the tribes. The stigma of being a Deadhead in the Reagan era was much stronger than that of being a Disco Biscuits fan in 99; a Steal Your Face sticker was making a statement, a KVHW sticker is a cause for blank looks. The additional pressure on the fans made arriving at the show much more joyous. For once, you wouldn't have to defend your life based on people's understandings of stereotypes. You were home.

I love Phish. String Cheese Incident has shows that fill me with joy. Phil and Friends is a lot of fun. The Seattle jazz scene blows my mind. What I really want though is to go home one more time. Just one more Dead show. Is that asking too much?

"Don't it always seem to go -
You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"