Where to start with The Grateful Dead?

[quarter23cd]

Hey q23 be sure to give us a report when you can. Have fun!

clicky for my random thoughts this morning

[Analogman]

Jam-band singer Donna Jean Godchaux sings exactly what she likes these days, but she'll never forget - or regret - her pivotal years with a music legend

 

By Jonathan Pitts | Sun Reporter

July 22, 2007

 

FALLING WATERS, W. Va. In the dry gulch in front of the stage, where a day's worth of summer sun has baked the rutted ground, two tow-headed 8-year-olds, long hair in dreadlocks, fling straw on each other, smudges of horseplay marking their bright Jerry Garcia T-shirts.

 

Their folks are someplace else - at the "One Love" vending tent, perhaps, looking for some new hemp duds - but in a setting like this, they needn't worry. On a former farm in a corner of West Virginia, as a sinking sun streaks the sky tie-dyed, the vibes are a group hug for the fans, young and old, coming together for the first-ever Great American Roots Music Festival and the return of Donna Jean Godchaux.

 

Godchaux - now officially Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay - is the only woman ever to have been a member of the Grateful Dead, and at 59, she's old enough to be a grandmother. The flowing, nearly waist-length hair is flaxen now. As the Tricksters, her new band, swings into a slinky blues tune and she begins to sway, it's hard to tell whether she has grown older or younger in the 28 years since she parted ways with the world's first, biggest and most influential jam rock band.

 

The Godchaux years, from 1971 to 1979, were among the most creative of the group's three-decade run, generating music that challenged the boundaries of rock 'n' roll. But her presence was as controversial as her voice was striking. In the end, citing musical and personal differences, Garcia and his band mates finally confronted her and her keyboardist husband, Keith, and asked them to leave - a move that sent Godchaux on a long, often strange trip far from the spotlight.

 

As the marquee name in Donna Jean and the Tricksters, a new jam-band group, a newly settled Godchaux is making a comeback this summer, one that includes an appearance at the 8x10 in Federal Hill tomorrow night. "I've never been so comfortable with who I am," she says.

 

Taking a mike, Godchaux trills the opening notes of a slow scorcher about, of all things, going home. Donna Jean and the Tricksters settle into a slow, funky groove. Down front, flanked by their parents, the two 8-year-olds are swaying.

 

Elvis crush

In an air-conditioned trailer near the stage, Godchaux remembers the period that changed her as if it had been yesterday. "I'm a simple girl from [the South]," she says softly, her eyebrows arching a bit behind big maroon shades. "I was used to a certain ... structured approach to music. Golly, I'd never heard anything like the Grateful Dead."

 

She grew up Donna Jean Thatcher near Muscle Shoals, a northwestern Alabama town known for its influential recording scene. By 12, she had met a few musicians and "caught studio fever." During her freshman year, she was splitting time between cheerleading at the local high school and doing backup vocals for the likes of Dionne Warwick, Percy Sledge and Boz Scaggs. She even recorded with Elvis Presley, on albums such as Let's Be Friends and Back in Memphis, both 1970 releases.

 

"A total, absolute gentleman," she says. "I had such a crush on him."

 

When Godchaux recounts her musical past, it's usually in tones of incredulity, as if it all might just as easily have happened to someone else. "It's hard to believe the opportunities I had," she says. But in time, the polished feel of the Muscle Shoals scene felt confining, she says, and like young people from all over the country, she chucked her life and moved to San Francisco, looking for adventure.

 

Friends there told her how much they loved a noisy local band with an ominous name. Godchaux had never heard of the Grateful Dead, and the group's records just about curled her hair.

 

"That ragged sound?" she says. "I didn't think they could play. I figured, 'These guys must be good-looking.' So I checked the back of one of their album covers and went, 'Nope; that's not it.'"

 

She didn't "get" the sound until one night in 1970, when her posse all but dragged her to a Winterland Theater show.

 

No drugs were involved, Godchaux says - she was working the next day - but as Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, took the stage, "each band was better than the last," she says. "When the Dead finally came on, they were on fire. They never did the same thing twice! To them, music was an adventure, like something spiritual.

 

"I'd never heard anything like that. I thought, 'This is what I want to do."

 

Her wish seemed the hippie equivalent of the Little Leaguer who says he'll join the Yankees. But then Godchaux and her new husband, little-known jazz pianist Keith Godchaux, learned Garcia was playing a tiny nightclub one evening and approached him between sets.

 

"I can't believe the chutzpah we had," she says, face all but reddening at the memory. "I didn't know people did that to him all the time. But Jerry just always had his antennas up. He gave us his home number." Within a week, the Godchauxs were, in effect, in the band - and in the vortex of a coming storm.

 

'Wall of sound'

In the trailer, spacy, noodling guitar strains - the signature sound of Dead-style festivals - are audible as a warm-up band gets going onstage. The crowd outside is thickening, sellers are peddling T-shirts, and Godchaux, the festival headliner, is content to be "back on the scene."

 

"I'm lucky to have a chance to do what I love at this - how shall I say? - advanced age," she says. But Godchaux especially enjoys that, as lead vocalist for a newly formed band, she's no longer "trying to be something I'm not."

 

That's at least partly in contrast to her years with the Dead.

 

From their first rehearsals together, husband Keith and guitar wizard Garcia clicked. Godchaux joined in a few weeks later, her bluesy stylings adding new textures to the Dead's uniquely psychedelic take on Americana. "We were hungry for color," Garcia said at the time. "They made that happen."

 

Godchaux helped fashion the sounds on one groundbreaking tune after another - the jazz-like "Eyes of the World," the Caribbean-tinged "Scarlet Begonias," the driving "Help On the Way" - and made a mark on signature Dead albums such as Wake of the Flood and Shakedown Street. She excelled in her comfort zone, the studio, where she fondly remembers clowning with Garcia and Bob Weir "like a comedy trio" as they wove arrangements, mostly at Garcia's direction.

 

What changed her most was the powerful sense that in this band, music was an adventure. "They were tremendous musicians," she said. "We did a lot of the same songs, but they were different every time out. Every show - every show - was like an adventure on the high seas."

 

But the blend was rarely smooth. Both Godchauxs had to jump into the vast, noisy Dead scene more or less cold turkey. For years, fans debated Donna Jean Godchaux's adjustment problems. The band's vast "wall of sound" amps were so powerful she often got lost in the sound onstage, a critical problem for a singer used to controlled conditions.

 

At times, she compensated with discordant wails or wandered off-key - a problem the Dead's official biographer, Dennis McNally, calls "pushing hard and going flat."

 

"[she] was trying to make her mark on this cultural sensation and she couldn't hear herself," says McNally, author of A Long, Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead.

 

"Honestly, I can't listen to [those] tapes today," says Godchaux. "What in the world was I thinking? It's like the clothes I wore - silk blouses? pearls and heels? Everybody else was wearing tie-dye. I'd be a different singer with them now. Some things I wish I could go back and do over."

 

Drug problems Godchaux would rather not discuss exacerbated the tensions, and by the time Garcia and band mates confronted the Godchauxs in 1979, the pair - then parents of a toddler - all but jumped at the idea of leaving.

 

"For those on the inside, the Grateful Dead life was not always sane or healthy," McNally says. "[Donna Jean] was sane, healthy and smart enough, at the end, to walk."

 

"We left amicably," says Godchaux. "I don't regret a thing."

 

In 1980, Keith Godchaux died in a car accident in Marin County, Calif. In time, Donna Jean Godchaux remarried - to a bass player, David Mackay - and moved back to Alabama, where the couple raised her son, Zion, now 33 and leader of the band Boombox, and their son together, Kinsman, now 24 and also a musician.

 

"It was a time of soccer practices, baseball games, a whole normalcy experience," says Godchaux, who calls herself "a genuine half-breed" - half-Southern girl, half-Californian. For 15 years, she was so busy that even as the Dead grew into one of the top-grossing live rock acts of all time, she had little chance to follow their exploits.

 

She didn't see Garcia again until 1995, when the Dead played Birmingham, Ala. The Mackays attended the show, and Garcia made time to chat with Godchaux privately. "We laughed again, about so many things that were just private between Jerry and me," she says. He sounded so happy, so on top of things." When he died of heart failure that summer, she says, she was "flabbergasted."

 

"Everyone always said 'If Jerry doesn't change, something bad could happen,'" she says. "But I don't think anyone really ever thought it would."

 

But usually, there was music - occasional gigs with Phil [Lesh, the Grateful Dead bassist] and Friends, a variety of Godchaux and Mackay family bands, and in general, continuing participation in the still-thriving Muscle Shoals scene.

 

"It's all very down-to-earth," she says, "given that we're all crazy musicians."

 

She met the Zen Tricksters, a Dead-style jam band based in Long Island, N.Y., during a benefit two years ago and, when they invited her to sing, was so impressed with their musicianship and originality that she started sharing the stage at gigs. (Baltimore native Mookie Siegel, formerly of Bob Weir's band, Ratdog, plays keyboards.)

 

"They have the improvisational skills of the Dead, but a style all their own," she says.

 

Godchaux and lead guitarist Jeff Mattson have been co-writing songs, two of which will appear on Donna Jean and the Tricksters, the band's first CD, slated to be in stores around Christmas.

 

When the band hits the 8x10 tomorrow night, fans are likely to hear the R&B standards of Godchaux's past ("River Deep, Mountain High"), originals (the jazzy "Shelter") and all manner of Dead tunes ("Cassidy," "Catfish John," "Ship of Fools"), in arrangements that blend sophisticated three- and four-part vocal harmonies with extended, exploratory jams. (A sampling of their live fare is available at donnajeanand thetricksters.com.)

 

Retirees and fireflies

At the back of the fairground, a dreamy young man in dreadlocks leans against a food wagon, a plate of deep-fried Oreos in one hand. At 23, he acknowledges he is too young to have seen the Grateful Dead - they mostly ceased to exist when Garcia died - but through tapes, CDs and younger, Dead-influenced bands such as Phish and Widespread Panic, he got interested.

 

Nearby, hundreds of fans - children, thirtysomethings, retirees in their 60s - settle in lawn chairs, snuggle on blankets and gyrate on the ground below the stage as fireflies illuminate the night.

 

Godchaux loves the Tricksters, whom she calls "incredible players and people of sterling character - I don't have time for anything else anymore." They swing into a favorite, "Going to Florence," about returning to roots. The backbeat is strong, the psychedelic lighting behind Godchaux bright.

 

"Gotta figure out what's heaven-sent, let go of what is not," sings Donna Jean Godchaux.

 

Not a note is out of place.

[mountain bed]

Thanks for that article A-man. I did not know that Mookie Siegel was former Ratdog. I DID know, however, that for the last 13 years he has been the keyboardist for the most excellent David Nelson Band.

 

Seriously, if anyone here has not heard the DNB, you MUST give them a listen. One of the best live bands I've ever seen. If you like the rootsy sounds of Workingman's or Beauty, this stuff is right up your alley.

[hwllo]

grateful dead studio albums get ripped on a lot. many people say they weren't a good studio band, but i love their studio work. they sound great live obviously, but their studio albums deserve more credit

[speakers speaking in code]

Hey there. I have heard so much about the Grateful Dead. So I looked up their albums. But theres a lot of albums! What would the 3 to 5 best albums be to introduce a newbie to them? Any input would be much appreciated.

 

Wake of the flood

Mars Hotel

Anthem of the Sun

 

I saw them a number of times. These studio recordings are my favs.

[Analogman]

Our next stop this week is in 1974, at Dillon Stadium in Hartford on July 31, one of the longest Grateful Dead performances on record. From the third set, we have the big jam featuring Truckin

[quarter23cd]

What A-man said. The Tapers Section on dead.net will keep you pretty busy--not too shabby, especially considering it is free. Poke through that for a while and you'll quickly come up with a pretty wide selection of songs from different eras.

 

I used to recommend the studio-album route for people just starting out who want to familiarize themselves with the catalog (rather than ending up listening to 32 different versions of "Truckin"), but anymore I'd say the Taper's Section offers the best way to get a taste of the band's music.

 

But, for the record, my favorite studio records are:

American Beauty

Mars Hotel

Blues For Allah and/or Aoxomoxoa

[wheelco]

I used to recommend the studio-album route for people just starting out who want to familiarize themselves with the catalog (rather than ending up listening to 32 different versions of "Truckin"), but anymore I'd say the Taper's Section offers the best way to get a taste of the band's music.

 

But, for the record, my favorite studio records are:

American Beauty

Mars Hotel

Blues For Allah and/or Aoxomoxoa

still some merit to the studios, though

AB and Workingman's Dead are musts

Aoxomoxoa is fine, especially with the added live tracks on the remaster

[Mr. Heartbreak]

For someone new to the Dead, I still would not recommend anything other than the original official releases. The Dick's Picks and Fallout from the Phil Zone, etc., etc., all have too many offkey notes and too much out of tune singing to be tolerated by a casual listener. I'd say pick up Europe '72, American Beauty, and Workingman's Dead. If those don't appeal to you, you're hopeless.

 

If they do appeal to you, and you become a fanatic, then start diving into the vast archive of live recordings that were not officially released in search of gems among the dross. I love the Dead, but they played a lot of shows where only about 20-30% was really listenable, due to drugs, sound system problems, and so on.

[Lammycat]

I love the Dead, but they played a lot of shows where only about 20-30% was really listenable, due to drugs, sound system problems, and so on.

I've gotta respectfully disagree with this. If you're talking about 20-30% of their entire body of work, no way. If you're talking about 20-30% of a lot of individual shows I think it really comes down to personal preference.

 

I personally don't think the drug issues were overtly noticeable until the last couple of years of the band, and even then it was not all the time or even most of the time, but a noticeable amount of the time. Save for a relatively few rough patches in the early-mid 80s I don't see drugs impacting the music to a level deemed unlistenable.

 

Sound system issues? I don't see/hear it either as a major contributing factor in making anything unlistenable. They had amazing sound systems for almost their entire career. There are spotty years (or patches of years, really) for attaining decent sounding shows, but overall you can seek out crisp 1970 shows as well as 1995 shows.

 

Of course, it's perspective, too. It may seem to your ears that only 20-30% of their live stuff is listenable, which is of course fine, but I think the vast majority of their work is listenable. There are clunker tunes in shows at times and even clunker shows in entirety, but I agree with the adage that even when they were "off" they were still good.

 

Then again, I always liked them warts and all.

 

 

 

As it's the weird week between Garcia's birth date and death date, and we've covered the great availability of music from live archive, here's some live radio Garcia and/or Dead for anyone not familiar with the sites and would like to hear a tune or two:

 

Garcia: http://jerryradio.com/main.php

GD: http://www.gdradio.net/

[mountain bed]

It always used to make me smile when they would fuck up. I don't know why exactly, but I guess it just made them seem more human.

 

For me, it's all about the process. I never gave two shits what they played. I just loved the fact that they never seemed to be in any hurry to get anywhere, but by the end of the evening you'd know you had been somewhere, and it was rarely where you expected to go.

[quarter23cd]

I'm in full agreement with Europe 72 being a wonderful starting point. (As I think we've already covered in this thread at some point) I think it makes a great intro b/c it has the energy of being a live album, albeit with some studio polishing to make is go down smoothly to a newcomer's ears.

 

Personally, I started out with the studio albums and I think my addiction took longer to develop that way. Started with the obligatory American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. Liked 'em a lot. Actually, In the Dark might have been my first exposure, come to think of it. Anyway, then I think I went to Aoxomoxoa. Liked it okay, but was kind of uneven. Didn't totally light my fire. Then later I think I picked up Shakedown Street and Terrapin Station at a used cd store and had a giant WTF moment with those. Not that there aren't a few good tunes sprinkled in there, but overall I'm not into the sound of those records. It really wasn't until I listened to Europe 72 that it all really clicked for me, and I've been listening primarily to live recordings ever since.

 

As those things go, the official releases can generally be counted on to have pretty decent sound and are less likely to be a "dud" performance than just downloading any random show from etree. But its all good. After a while its fun sifting out those diamonds in the rough. I don't think I've ever heard an entirely "dud" show without anything good to recommend it, though there are definitely periods I prefer over others. The great thing about the GD is that it really can become an obsession sifting through all of it b/c each show and each recording is a different experience.

 

Edit: In other news, this is awesome:

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Well, maybe "listenable" is too strong a word. How about this: they played a lot of shows where only about 20-30% of the performance was strong enough to warrant an official release. And many of the shows contained performances which were ultimately subpar, to put it kindly (think of the infamous "Donna screeches" during "Playing").

 

I'm not saying I don't like any of what's in those shows. I will say, however, that when someone is looking for a starting point in a massive catalog - not to mention the fact that there is also a massive archive of unreleased recordings out there on the web - I would NEVER direct them to recordings that contain multiple instances of offkey singing, flubbed lyrics, wrong notes, and so on. That's why it's good that there are so many official live releases to choose from BEFORE Dick's Picks ever existed: Reckoning, Europe '72, Skull & Roses, Live Dead, and even Steal Your Face (which I personally like, though the band didn't). I'd tell someone, Start with those albums. Pick up some classic studio albums like American Beauty and Workingman's. Then, if you're hooked on that, maybe some of the other live stuff.

 

I recently picked up Dick's Picks #6, 10/14/83, which is reputed to have one of the best Scarlet>Fire combos of all time (note: it's all right, but they did it way better in '77, IMHO). When it kicked off with Alabama Getaway, I was loving it: I've always liked that song as an opener. But within seconds I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. Ol' Jerry botches the lyrics at least twice, forgetting large portions of the song. Personally, I think it's a disgrace to have something like that on an official recording, and no one should really be spending money on it unless they like hearing embarrassing moments in high fidelity. If it had been my first purchase, I would never have bought another album from them (who would?). The Dick's Picks albums are most likely the worst starting point, not the best.

 

As for sound system comments, see the above article on Donna's contributions. She is a wonderful singer who often got lost in the mix, and her out of tune and/or offkey singing marred many an otherwise fine show from the 70s.

 

The Dead are one of my all time favorite bands, and I hate to think that there are people who might miss out on hours of listening pleasure because they've been subjected to bad versions of great songs and thus have an ill-informed idea of who and what the Dead were. That was my point.

[mountain bed]

Well put Mr. H. For someone starting out I'd direct them to officially released multi-track masters of the live stuff.

 

Here's a thread in & of itself: best Scar>Fire? I think 5/8/77 gets fluffed a little much as a total show, but the Scar>Fire there is a personal favorite.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Here's a thread in & of itself: best Scar>Fire? I think 5/8/77 gets fluffed a little much as a total show, but the Scar>Fire there is a personal favorite.

I'm with you on that. The vocals are good, not just the instrumental sections.

Should we start individual threads on this for favorite songs or song combos? And how many do you think we could get away with before the admins step in?

[Lammycat]

The Dead are one of my all time favorite bands, and I hate to think that there are people who might miss out on hours of listening pleasure because they've been subjected to bad versions of great songs and thus have an ill-informed idea of who and what the Dead were. That was my point.

I agree that starting off, for someone with little no knowledge of the tunes, with live stuff wouldn't be the best jumping off point. Though to contradict myself I'd still recommend Reckoning as a great starting point. Ease your way.

 

That Scarlet-> Fire from Hartford is decent but yeah, JG flubs a bit. I was able to attend it and the following night and always wondered why they didn't/don't do the next night with the very good China-> Rider, China Doll, and of course the second east coast bust-out of St. Stephen, which imo blows the MSG one from earlier that week away. The segue out of the Space into St. Stephen still gives me shivers as it did that night when I hear it.

 

One of my favorite Scarlets (but not necessarily the Fire) is from Poplar Creek in '83. Jerry was playing a lot of tunes a bit fast around this era (hmmmmm....) and this Scarlet is a bit quicker than some, but it's just a really nice and energized/up-beat/happy bent he lends to it.

[Analogman]

Grateful Dead Hour no. 242

 

I think this is the only time I ever built a Grateful Dead Hour show around a single song, but hey - "Dark Star" is a huge part of what the Grateful Dead is all about.

 

The first thing you hear is a studio recording of "Dark Star" that was released as a single in April of 1968, with "Born Cross-Eyed" (according to the Grateful Dead Discography, a different mix of the Anthem of the Sun track) on the B side.

 

As the track fades at the end, you hear a bit of Jerry Garcia banjo, and lyricist Robert Hunter's voice reading these words:

 

Spinning a set of stars through which the tattered tails of axis rolls about the waxen wind of never set to motion in the unbecoming round about the season hardly matters nor the wise through which the stars were set in spin.

 

Hunter wrote those words out for me during an interview on December 12, 1977. "I moved out to New Mexico about the time the Grateful Dead really started working as an entity," he told me. "I wrote 'Alligator' and 'China Cat [sunflower],' and... mailed them back, and they set them to music."

 

After returning to San Francisco, Hunter said, "I ran into Phil [Lesh], who said they were going to Rio Nido [on the Russian River, north of San Francisco] to play a gig. I went along, heard the music to 'Dark Star,' and wrote part of the words that day.

 

"Garcia asked me how I'd like to be 'lyricist in residence' for the Dead. I thought it was pretty far out, but I might like it fine. I thought of myself as a serious writer, and rock'n'roll wasn't exactly what I had planned for myself, but things were changing. It seemed like it might be a nice thing to do."

 

Hunter laughed and said again, "A nice thing...

 

"I had written lyrics off and on since I was seventeen," Hunter continued, "but I fancied myself a short-story writer and a novelist. I never thought I was writing rock'n'roll, and I didn't think of the Grateful Dead as a rock'n'roll band. I thought we were creating a new form; I still do, to some degree. There was a feeling of a pregnant somethingness happening."

 

My transcript ends there, but note I wrote on the same page as Hunter's "spinning a set of stars" text says that he finished the "Dark Star" lyric in the Golden Gate Park Panhandle, a few blocks from the Dead's home at 710 Ashbury Street.

 

Regarding the 2/2/70 "Dark Star," as I said in my narration: "I've always liked this particular version of this improvisation: very sweet and lyrical."

 

The December 1992 "Dark Star" is edited together from two performances: the band played the first half on December 12 and then "finished" it four nights later. I thought it would be fun to combine them for a radio broadcast, so I found appropriate musical moments later in the 12/12 performance and earlier in 12/16's, and merged them seamlessly. December 16, 1992 was later released as Dick's Picks Volume 27.

 

One more note about "Dark Star": In an interview on March 5, 1983, Bill Kreutzmann told me: "'Dark Star' was a free entity. It had a head, it had chords - but man, it could be played in a straight feeling, a shuffle feeling. It just changes. It was a total mood indicator: you can tell how everybody was feeling by the way that song was played."

 

Thanks for listening!

David Gans

gdhour [at] dead.net

 

Grateful Dead Hour no. 242

Week of May 10, 1993

 

Grateful Dead, What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

DARK STAR

 

Grateful Dead 2/2/70 Fox Theatre, St. Louis

DARK STAR

 

Grateful Dead 12/12/92 and 12/16/92

DARK STAR

 

Time 52:28

 

 

I finally get to listen to this show now that it is online.

[quarter23cd]

I think 5/8/77 gets fluffed a little much as a total show, but the Scar>Fire there is a personal favorite.

5/5/77 isn't shabby either, if I recall.

[Lammycat]

I just got word that T.C. will be playing at the local Dead bar with some guys from a local Dead cover band as well as "Bobby" from DSO next weekend. I might have to check it out. I caught him once once before and it was pretty cool.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Another favorite of mine is the Frost Ampitheatre show from 10/9/82.

 

I especially love the second set opener of Throwing Stones > Touch of Grey: new (at the time), a little sloppy, but passionate ... just great. The first set is pretty cool, too, with an early West LA Fadeaway that has the original extra verse about living "by the golden rule."

 

http://www.archive.org/details/gd82-10-09....5800.sbeok.shnf

[mountain bed]

Should we start individual threads on this for favorite songs or song combos? And how many do you think we could get away with before the admins step in?

At least the GD have achieved a certain amount of respectability over the years. Not too many outright haters here at VC I think (unlike with that Vermont-based band with the phonetically-challenged name ).

 

12 years ago today folks. A definite demarcation point of my twisted little life.

[Lammycat]

I ended up catching Merl Saunder at the Fox in Boulder 12 years ago today (tonight). A pretty rough day.

[mountain bed]

I ended up catching Merl Saunder at the Fox in Boulder 12 years ago today (tonight). A pretty rough day.

Yes it was. I've buried friends & family & not had it affect me as profoundly as missing someone I never even met. Wierd.

 

"Though I never met him, I knew him just the same"

 

--Byrds, He Was a Friend of Mine

[Analogman]

That first DS from the GDH is pretty cool.

[quarter23cd]

12 years ago today folks. A definite demarcation point of my twisted little life.

12 years already. That's hard to believe. I was really only a casual fan at the time. One GD show under my belt, a handful of cds and maybe one or two live tapes a friend had given me. I remember driving that night that Jerry died...I was stopped at a stoplight with my windows down and Brokedown Palace was playing on my stereo. There was a girl sitting on the sidewalk with her head down, and she heard the music coming from my car and she looked up and smiled at me, with tears running down her face. Such a simple little moment, but for some reason its one of those moments that is frozen in time for me. It was just amazing to see the impact it had on people.

 

I'm a bigger fan now than I was back then, and I just wish I had been around to experience more of it first-hand.