Tuesday, August 14, 2018

chicago & tinley park & the grateful dead: 1990

jerry garcia to a 16 year old in the midwest who was looking for an escape represented everything: adventure...great songs....a community of like minded urban modern hippies....and the dead were different than kids...this isn't your 2018 dead...this is jerry....I always gravitated to jerry more...I guess you start to like bobby more as time goes on...but I always was a jerry guy....so me and my 2 best buds who also were looking for adventure from our drab suburban milwaukee existence.....got tickets to see the dead in chicago...and we went camping...which we told our parents we were doing and the first night we camped....dude....what 16 year old kids today are going camping in the woods.??? we were living testament to jerry's dream....it makes me want to cry....so the second night we packed our things and drove to chicago...and as we entered tinley park the band played china cat into rider into fade away...the acid kicked in & the world opened up....& to see jerry right there...this was our temple...this was our religion...this was what life could be....it's hard to explain that people today...it wasn't about snapchating anything or facebook or instagram...it was about living in the moment within a community where you felt like you were understood...by people who were open to the possibilities and weren't afraid to go there...it was a different time...and that night....the rain came down but it was like it was meant to be...and we had nowhere to stay....and we drove all night through the storm back to milwaukee....back to my basement....we told my folks we got rained out camping and decided to come back early.....we were still tripping....not sure how we got home....a few months ago....I went to a q & a with the director of the documentary "long strange trip"....and I got a chance to meet amir and talk to him about the impact jerry and the dead had on me...and he understood....of course he did....he spent years trying to get permission from the band to make the film....so tell alexa to create a grateful dead station on spotify and pour yourself a glass of wine & pretend your in chicago in 1990 with me, mike & dave.....

happy tuesday,


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