Blair's Golden Road Blog - Keith and Donna's Last Days with the Dead
By Blair Jackson
Over in one of the discussion groups on DeadNet Central recently, someone was fondly recalling Keith and Donna’s final show, at the Oakland Coliseum on Feb. 17, 1979, noting it was a rare great show from their late period with the band.
Blair’s Golden Road Blog - 'Dancing with the Dead' Captures the Early Scene in Stories and Photos
By Blair Jackson
Blair’s Golden Road Blog - Plenty Shakin’ on Shakedown Street
The vending scene outside Dead shows started so innocuously. Before or after shows in the ’70s, if anyone was selling anything, it might be a handful of people peddling homemade T-shirts out of a backpack, or perhaps something small, such as pipes, stickers or low-key food items—brownies, cookies, etc.
Blair’s Golden Road Blog - Two Field Trips, 10 Years Apart
Blair’s Golden Road Blog: “Inch Your Way Through Dead Dreams…”
Based on conversations I’ve had with friends through the years, I’m betting that a bunch of you have had a variation of my most troubling recurring dream: It’s near the end of a quarter or semester in college and I have a huge final exam facing me in an hour. I’m sweating bullets, because for some reason I have not attended one class of whatever course it is.
Blair's Golden Road Blog - Where Were You When You Heard the News?
Summer flies and August dies / The world grows dark and mean…
—Robert Hunter, “Days Between”
Blair’s Golden Road Blog—A ’60s Psychedelic Sampler Playlist
Don’t get me wrong—I love 1970s Grateful Dead. It’s the decade they made their greatest albums, introduced most of their coolest songs (both originals and covers) and played hundreds of their finest shows. Just look at the number of official releases of ’70s Dead concerts—it dwarfs any other decade.
Blair’s Golden Road Blog—In the Shadow of the Moon: Terrapin Station at 35
The 35th anniversary of the release of the Dead’s Terrapin Station album on July 27, 1977, got me thinking about that magical year and how—or if—that disc fit into that time, and the ways it represented the Grateful Dead to the outside world.
Blair’s Golden Road Blog - If These Walls Could Talk
I had a wonderful experience last weekend, when Regan and I took a whirlwind trip up to Portland, Ore. We had some Alaska Airlines flight certificates that were going to expire if we didn’t use them, and it seems as though a lot of our friends have been raving about how cool Portland is these days. It had been many years since either of us had been there.
Blair’s Golden Road Blog — The 10-Show Plunge
Recently, I’ve been on a kick of listening to big chunks of certain Grateful Dead tours in chronological order. It started after I lauded the summer 1991 tour in this space a few weeks ago. I decided to check out the last 10 shows of that jaunt—from Charlotte through Sandstone (Kansas), to see if they were as good as I remembered.