17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ 18 You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 19 And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20 Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
[Deuteronomy 8:17-20]
Please pray for the presidential campaign and for the election. This could get ugly.
Jerry Garcia would have been 70 years old today if he had behaved himself.
And in a coincidental matter, another musician whom I’ve been tripping over a lot lately was born 50 years to the day after Jerry. Today is his 20th birthday. Behave yourself, Danny.
While I was growing up, the Grateful Dead largely escaped me, and I don’t really know why except that top-40 radio wouldn’t touch the stuff. Songs by the Dead were too long, a little more for an older crowd perhaps. But anyone who enjoyed the Beatles, or the Who, or Crosby Stills & Nash (Neil Young optional) would have appreciated the Dead as well; and the others all got aired on commercial radio. So I blame the system.
The Dead never suffered for want of a following, though. A friend of mine said that she went to 19 Grateful Dead concerts as well as Woodstock (still has her ticket, because with thousands of people showing up the gates were overwhelmed).
When Jerry died in 1995, I pulled my boat into the Co-Op that afternoon to weigh up my lobsters, and the guy who passed me the crates said, “Man, there’s gonna be a lot of people wandering around with nothing to do.”
And so, because this kind of music deserves never to go away, I’m uploading another YouTube video. This is from the last Grateful Dead concert, in Chicago, July 1995, a month before Jerry died.
So many roads I tell you, New York to San Francisco. All I want is one to take me home.
From Offshore 