A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes V

It seems to me like they were always there that indescribable band from San Fransico. I think the first time I heard the Grateful Dead was on a Sunday evening late night progressive show on an AM station out of Philadelphia. WIBG had some mellow voiced dude that had a couple of hours when he would play the acid rock sounds coming out of the left coast. The station could see the handwriting on the wall from FM and was trying desperately despite its history of playing rock and soul pop to hold an audience. I think the first song I remember hearing from the Dead was something like Don’t Stop on the Tracks.

Anyway a little while later one of my nefarious cousins had a purloined copy of American Beauty. It was too country for him so I bought it for a dollar. American Beauty became the anthem of my high school years. I played that record so many times that when you picked it up by the edge it became a slinky. To this day, my brain just shifts out of gear when I hear the opening strains of Box of Rain on Pandora.



When I got to college one of the first two or three records I bought was the relatively recent release by the band called Wake of the Flood. It became the soundtrack of that year of change and turmoil. Eyes of the World is special because well it was the soundtrack of, well uhm, it was my answer to Barry White albums if you get my drift.

No matter what has happened in my life the Grateful Dead have always been there. Unbroken Chain was playing when Primus was born.

Funny story. One day I was sitting talking to an anesthesiologist and we were comparing rock concerts we had attended. Damn if he hadn’t been to all the small and odd Grateful Dead shows I had been to like Masonic Hall in Detroit. The Crisler show in Ann Arbor was noted by both of us to have been real good. He had also been to the Pine Knob show where they only sold to row J. It was at that one that the hot air balloons went over and you heard 2000 people collectively say, “Wow man”. I looked at the doctor and said “From Deadhead to anesthesiologist?” He smiled and replied “You do what you love, ya know what I mean?”