HAPPY BIRTHDAY JERRY

[Wookies]

I know it's a day early, but I may not have the chance to log-on tomorrow.

 

When I had no wings to fly

You flew to me

You flew to me

[babaoriley]

I know it's a day early, but I may not have the chance to log-on tomorrow.

That is worth celebrating (your not logging in not the birthday)

[Wookies]

That is worth celebrating (your not logging in

 

[Wookies]

Good read: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/9/13455/59727

 

I don't know how ten years have managed to pass since Jerry died. In a way it's almost easier to believe that it has been over seventeen years since I first stood in the same room with him and listened to him make music. Those years chasing the Grateful Dead around seemed like they lasted forever. So many moments.

 

You're really, really lucky when your first show is at Hampton Coliseum. On the day your school battles its way into the NCAA Final Four. And it's the day before you turn 20. And your friend has a sandwich bag full of MDMA. Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go. Except through the wormhole.

 

That night, when Jerry wished he was a "headlight on a northbound train," and that train thundered through the mothership, the hair on the back of my neck stood up straight (I am not exaggerating), and my DNA mutated. I was born again in the Church of the Cosmic Misfit. I don't care how stupid it sounds, even today. Jerry Garcia unburdened me.

 

Five long months and at least 50 bootleg Maxells later I was back again at the Capital Center. I knew enough to know that "Ripple" was something rare enough to be treasured, and managed to work my way down onto the floor in front of Jerry. "If I knew the way," he said, and I raised my fist. "I would take you home," he said, and raised his, shooting me a smile.

 

I felt like a moth who'd just flapped headlong into a bug zapper.

 

So it went for years. So many roads and so many shows. I took a lot of acid, and a lot of mushrooms, but Deadheads will tell you this: these were sacraments in that context, not party drugs. You remember. We did it to learn things, to reach for and grasp at understandings and ideas and connections that we couldn't even put into words, but that shaped who we were becoming.

 

My last shows were at Shoreline Amphitheater in 1995. The last itself, well, that was unremarkable except for the fact that it was my last and I sort of sensed that given Jerry's appearance. But the second to last, I was alone in the very front row. I had been dosed, heroically, by a gentleman sitting beside me, and spent most of the show trying to hold my marbles in. For the better part of the second set, Jerry was plainly, obviously smacked out, and you could see the consternation on the faces of every bandmate, particularly Phil Lesh, who was dropping bass bombs in a mostly futile attempt to wake Jerry up.

 

Then came "Stella Blue."

 

I don't know how he did it. I guess it was predictable; the "ballad slot" was his time every show to reach for it. And he looked up as he played the first few arpeggiated notes of that diminished E chord, and the rest of that performance remains burned in my memory:

 

All the years combine

They melt into a dream

A broken angel sings from a guitar

In the end there's just a song

Comes crying up the night

Thru all the broken dreams

And vanished years

Stella Blue

 

When all the cards are down

There's nothing left to see

There's just the pavement left

And broken dreams

 

In the end there's still that song

Comes cryin' like the wind

Down every lonely street

That's ever been

Stella Blue

 

I've stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel

Can't win for trying

Dust off those rusty strings just one more time

Gonna make them shine

 

It all rolls into one

And nothing comes for free,

There's nothing you can hold

For very long

And when you hear that song

Come crying like the wind

It seems like all this life

Was just a dream

Stella Blue

 

Well, that was it. I lost it. And I had to sit down and bury my head in my hands and just let go, right there in the front row of a Dead show. I know Garcia must have seen me. It was fairly obvious. If I were him I would have probably blocked me out of the mental picture as a needless distraction to the job I needed to finish. All too much.

 

But out he comes for the encore. And starts plucking "Liberty." The song gets dissed frequently by cynical Deadheads, but I'm a shameless patriot, and I always loved it. "Sake of my baby, I'd die for love"? That I can get behind. And so I started singing, because I knew every word. And down looks Jerry. And sees me singing. And he starts to kick his feet. And all of a sudden I realize I AM SINGING "LIBERTY" WITH JERRY GARCIA and our eyes are LOCKED ON EACH OTHER. And I start laughing, and he smiles. "He's going to look away any second," I keep thinking, as I get self-conscious. But he doesn't, and neither do I, and we sing the entire song together. As he leaves the stage, he waves to me.

 

As the house lights come up, the guy who dosed me lays a hand on my shoulder, understanding the magnitude of what just went down (at least in my tiny universe), and offers, "It's gonna be all right, man."

 

I took my first breath in about six minutes at that point, and said, "Oh, I know."

 

Ten years? Can't be. It's like he's still here.

[nettles]

I was celebrating and didn't even know it, listened to Working Mans Dead on my lunch walk.

[NightOfJoy]

Hey Wookies.......thanks for posting that.

[mountain bed]

So glad you made the topic.Every year here it's like Jerry Week from 8/1 to 8/9...all Jerry all the time.

No disrespect to ya AWATT,but the pantry is much fuller with JG

 

Today,8/31/82 grrreat 2nd set.Tomorrow,8/1/82,JG's 40th! Who knows from there.I think I could safely say that if not for JG,I wouldn't have discovered a goldmine of American music...including however indirectly,Wilco.

 

Hardly a day goes by that I don't still miss him.Especially when summer comes around & I start thinking about all the road trips from '81-'95.

 

Jer,you're gone but you damn sure ain't forgotten

Scott

[Pocahontas]

Happy Birthday Jerry if it wasn't for your music, I would still be listening to cramp. Miss getting excited for the summer tour dates and ticket sales, summers are not the same. "But all a friend can say is ain't that a shame". Miss you Jerry.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Yeah, I'm listening to 5/6/70 on archive.org as I write this. What a long strange trip it's been.

 

I got on the bus way back in the fall of 1982. Jerry and the boys came in and blew the roof off the New Haven Coliseum, and life has never been the same.

 

There were times when the band tried too hard to recreate their earlier days of freeform flight, and drugs (and possibly fatigue) combined to drive them to the outer limits of space cadet wankery. That gave them a bad name among music lovers who heard poorly-recorded noodling on old Maxells. But the fact remains, they were one of the most daring and innovative bands of all time, and when they were on, they were sublime.

 

They went out night after night and played different set after different set. So many people create a great lick and then repeat it note for note at every performance of a song. Not Jer. Jerry's guitar solos were like snowflakes, or fingerprints, no two alike. He was always searching for something, and sometimes, you can tell, he found it.

 

A lot of uninformed people think the Dead were a bunch of lazy hippies, but they were almost the opposite. They worked their asses off - just look at how many shows Jerry played with his side band when the Dead weren't on tour - and they were like a bunch of shit-talking pirates when they were on their own. They were willfully apolitical, having tuned in, turned on, and dropped out before they were even popular.

 

Jerry's life is one that deserves celebration, although he wouldn't think so, having been relatively embarrassed by superstardom and indifferent to money. He was a true American original. Thank God for all the tapers!

[Gobias Industries]

But if you fall you fall alone,

If you should stand then who's to guide you?

If I knew the way I would take you home.

[mountain bed]

Jerry's guitar solos were like snowflakes, or fingerprints, no two alike. He was always searching for something, and sometimes, you can tell, he found it.

That's one of the best descriptions of the process I've ever heard Here's another:

John Dawson:"You've heard of going out on a limb,musically? Well,Garcia lived in the twigs...He might fall, might break a few branches on the way down,but he nearly always landed on his feet...the main thing about it was YOU WERE WITH HIM THE WHOLE WAY"

[Wookies]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6JWcfKTMKs...ted&search=

[Wookies]

Absolute tearjerker

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkU97fYIeZI...%20Many%20Roads

[Lammycat]

I got on the bus way back in the fall of 1982. Jerry and the boys came in and blew the roof off the New Haven Coliseum, and life has never been the same.

Heh, my first show was one year previous at the same venue. I was at the '82 show, as well (though the JGB w/ Weir opening at NH Coliseum a few months earlier sticks out in my head moreso).

 

I've met a lot of my closest friends through the years solely because of our mutual and initial interests in the Dead. I would not have met my wife were it not for the scene, as well.

 

The testament to the endurance and impact of the music, for me, is that it's still played often in the company I keep, as well as through a lot of the live music I see. The memories surrounding the man and the band are dusted off now and then amongst friends as a reflection on adventure-filled and happy times.

 

I like to thumb through old Dead Bases every now and then for the memories, too. It's amazing how clearly I can flash back to certain tunes played a certain way at a certain venue I attended just by checking a particular set-list, even from 25 years ago....

[nettles]

Ramble on Rose concert footage from Europe 72 tour, I love this clip!

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuB6-gIuflI...rancisco%201970

[Wookies]

This is a must see:

 

http://www.philzone.com/flash/jerry-2005.swf

[mybenito]

I miss Jerry so much. Good times. I'll never forget those days that changed my life.