Grateful Dead

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Even though I was a rabid Dead Head when I moved from New York to the Bay Area back in the fall of 1973, I didn’t make it to a Dead New Year’s Eve show until 1981-82.

Continuing what has become a cherished early-December tradition for the Grateful Dead Family, the Rex Foundation put on another Wang Dang Doodle of a fundraiser at the Fillmore in San Francisco Dec. 3.

I should be used to this by now and have a tougher skin. But I can't help myself.

In my blog a couple of weeks ago about my favorite cover versions of Grateful Dead songs, I mentioned the Bay Area acoustic band Wake the Dead, who play a unique fusion of (mostly) Irish traditional music and Dead tunes. I had liked several album tracks of theirs through the years, but had never seen them live—amazing since they’ve been a local fixture for a dozen years.

I’m as excited as everyone else to see what the future brings with Dave’s Picks. But please permit me one moment of nostalgia for the departing Road Trips series, which I thoroughly enjoyed being a small part of these past four years.

As I write this on the morning of October 25, it is 20 years to the day that Bill Graham was killed in a helicopter crash, along with his girlfriend Melissa Gold and pilot Steve “Killer” Kahn. On that stormy night in 1991, they were returning to Bill’s home in Marin County from a Huey Lewis & the News concert at the Concord Pavilion in the East Bay.

My blog a couple of weeks ago about the new/retooled Persuasions of the Dead CD, on which the famous a capella giants tackled a wide variety of Grateful Dead songs, got me thinking about my favorite covers of Dead songs.

The people came and listened/ Some of them came and played/ Others gave flowers away, yes they did/ Down in Monterey

—Eric Burdon & The Animals, 1967

This week I’m catching up on some odds and ends.

Finding a consensus on almost anything in the Grateful Dead world is a daunting proposition. There are as many opinions about the “best” shows or tours as there are Dead Heads.