Man, listening to you guys speak of JGB at The Warfield, that’s about as close to heaven as one can get. I was too young to experience good dead and the scene was already corrupted when I got into it.
Used to rank on a head buddy before I became one, he asked me what I listened to, I said country. He pulled out one of those El Paso->Big River runs. In my ignorance I never knew they played that stuff and I was turned on. If I said folk or rock or punk or anything else, he could have found the same type of answer in a ‘leg. If you took Workingman’s Dead or American Beauty and ripped the label off, then played it to joe anyman; their minds would be blown that it‘s Those acid freaks, the Grateful Dead.
They‘re the spirit of America personified in a lot of ways and Jer’s playing in its prime was so melodic and beautiful. Hunter’s lyrics are impossibly deep and opaque. Being a head, not a trustafarian-looking for a drug scene-head, is a life long education.