should i give the grateful dead a chance?

u.m.sd's wife OTM.

i remember hearing from people i knew who went to dead shows in the 80's pre-touch of gray that it was getting REALLY bad and kinda dismal as far as hard drugs and general misery goes. people nodding out all over the place. after touch of grey i think it became more of a thing for normal people to check out dead shows and this was probably a good thing overall. not that it wasn't still a drug pit. (this is all anecdotal, of course. i never went to shows. i would just partake in the drug booty that people would bring back home with them. but i knew more than one person who loved the dead and who were seriously debating at the time whether they wanted to go to shows anymore)if you were going to shows in 84 or 85 you were probably pretty hardcore.

not that they weren't still selling out arenas pre-touch of grey, but it just sounded like some sort of nadir as far as the "scene" went. getting ugly.

The movie TIE-DYED captures the desperate parking lot vibe of the final Dead tour pretty well iirc.

Final tour w/ Jerry, anyway.
I had a bad experience at a Phish show but it was my own fault. The scene always kind of freaked me out.

hell is wrong with those hippies upthread? bah

i mean, other than the fact that they're at a phish gig, if they are. apart from that.

Scenes like this are the real reason a lot of people *hate* (and not just dislike) the Grateful Dead

this is up on some "Hitler was a vegetarian" boring phoned-in shit imo

"You know who else liked guitars? POL POT"

this is up on some "Hitler was a vegetarian" boring phoned-in shit imo

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, April 21, 2011 11:38 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

When people talk about how much they hate the dead, the rarel fail to bring up Deadheads in the equation.

I was on Phish tour a lot in the 90s, which was okay to a point because I had my crew and we had a generally positive and relatively healthy way of doing things, although things did get kind of gross sometimes and the larger scene was often troubling.

I ended up on the second to last Dead tour ever bc I had lots of time but little money and needed to get from northern CA to the east coast and some friends were heading out and agreed to take me with them. That was after the Touch of Gray renaissance but there was still a thriving dope-addled gutter punk contingent in the scene. That whole tour ended up being a dismal experience for me for lots of harrowing reasons, but the severe downhill slide started when the guy I was rising with (not part of my regular crew) took on a couple of junkies as riders. They stole most of my stuff (including my sleeping bag - I almost creamed this dippy hippie who tried to pull some "I'm sure whoever stole it needed it more then you did, sister" bs with me) and left me stranded in Atlanta.

Anyway, lots of baggage. Hi!

nothing wrong w/hippies per se but i guess my wife's experience were that there was a certain ugliness creeping into the phish scene through the late 90s, i dunno, i never went to a show

i remember i lived in a duplex and some hippies had the downstairs apartment, ppl were always crashing with this girl that had the lease....

they had names and stuff, like Sleeping Bear and Storm and these two runaway girls from Flint, Michigan called Sugar and Spice but i think they got arrested and taken home to their parents....there was this one real snaky guy named Jameson that i hated, he dated my friend, he was a real druggie and piece of shit....Sleeping Bear was a cool guy, i remember once we smoked opium and listened to this live George Thorogood cassette. he loved one scotch one bourbon and one beer. they would always go play bongo drums in dinkytown for spare change and also worked for this college painter thing where they would paint ppl's houses cuz one of their brothers was a supervisor. i wouldn't really want any of them painting anything much less my house. but overall they were pretty nice downstairs neighbors.

they were pretty open to any music too, like i turned them onto pavement which they really liked

that there was a certain ugliness creeping into the phish scene through the late 90s

That would a lot of coke, heroin, bad ecstasy, oxycontin and pills of every variety, nitrious mafia hippie thugs, drunken fat white dudes in cargo shorts everywhere.

The drug scene around Phish shows then was more out of hand than the Dead lot scene ever got.

Saw a few shows on the last five Dead tours, plus assorted Jerry Garcia Band shows. JGB shows were sketchier but I liked the music better.

they have a jam/hippie fest here in town twice a year and you would have to pay me a whole lot of money to go to it. and its right up the road from our house. i've never been down with the drug hippie scene. kinda can't stand it. its definitely the reason i never went to a dead show in the 80's despite the fact that i was tripping my brains out all throughout the 80's.

dead shows i went to as a kid were fine, not too sketchy. the shows, that is. the parking lots, that was a whole other thing.

Cocaine and this kind of music don't seem to go together very well.

Didn't Jer almost die from a heroin overdose in the 80s? Was that some new shit to him, or was he always using?

2010 line-up for the wormtown festival here in town:

MAX CREEK (Sat & Sun!) Ryan Montbleau Band
Zach Deputy (2 Sets!) Goosepimp Orchestra
U-Melt (Last NE Show!) The McLovins
Rev Tor Band Nate Wilson Group
Jeff Bujak Hot Day At The Zoo
Primate Fiasco

The Kind Buds
Peter Prince & Moon Boot Lover

The Alchemystics
Domino Theory

Guitarness

Turbine

NY Funk Exchange
The Brew BuzzUniverse
Love Whip Jam Stampede
The Juicy Grapes Free Grass Union
Sauce Fungus Amungus
Humblebee Shakedown
Jimkata (2 Sets!) The Franks
The Change Up Gravity Works
Mark Mercier Band The Big Sway
Juggling Suns Kids Set w/Mike Turk
Jah-n-I Brooklyn Sound Lab
DPR Doctors of Flight
Hot Damn Scandal Shak Nasti
Sun Jones Black Rebels
Fennario Romano Project
Dirigo All of the Animals
Thomas Wynn & The Believers Clinton Curtis
The Phreaks The Beat Drops
The Glisten Effect Grass Gypsys
Wolfman Conspiracy

A nice fat J while settling into a 30 minute Scarlet Fire jam works very nicely however.

xpost

jerry was a big speedball fan. that shit will catch up to you.

jerry just really really liked drugs.

Didn't Jer almost die from a heroin overdose in the 80s? Was that some new shit to him, or was he always using?

― Funky Mustard (People It's Bad) (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, April 21, 2011 12:14 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

According to a book I read about the dead, he didnt get into it till late '70s. He only smoked it, never injected, but he had a major problem for the remainder of his life with it.

Didn't know that. I assumed he was only into weed & acid. In fact, at the time, I didn't know much about the Dead or drugs of any kind, but I thought, "He almost died? But I thought he didn't touch the hard stuff!"

The Kind Buds

lolz

That festival is like a shitty band name convention.

drivin' that train, high on cocaine

i assume there are two bands to a line there? might be cooler if The Change Up Gravity Works was an actual band name

The Kind Buds

lolz

I have met this band. Northampton, MA. One of my favorite music biz interactions ever w/their manager/merch person/wife for all I know. Me: "Are you with the Kind Buds?" Mgr: "Yeah!" Me: "Cool, what do yall play?" Mgr: "They jam on two Taylors!"

haha

http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/images/990430.taylor.jpg
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS0kWH4CzPU-6Eiud-MOfC-bFiZ2_RiS43xLAJrK2vUgTC8j_WdGw

You'd think, but hippies love them some cocaine, including one Mr. Jerry Garcia.

Scott, reasons not to go:

http://blogs.pitch.com/wayward/passed%20out%20wookie-thumb.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2Td2w2o9gZI/SJIy0M8PujI/AAAAAAAABtA/f_sZFV6MBrg/s400/rage.jpg

http://photos7.flickr.com/6803656_d485ea1537.jpg

http://tinyrager.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/dsc07749.jpg

http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-ash1/v310/236/26/19228353/n19228353_36474305_7520.jpg

http://image22.webshots.com/22/1/18/43/369411843jQVRbU_ph.jpg

http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/high-on-the-street.jpg

http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/lindsay-lohan-passed-out.jpg

People sleeping everywhere! And so many balloons! MY GOD!!!!

Those aren't just baloons:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-07-06/music/hippie-crack-nitrous-mafia-boston/

And I've done my share of nitrious when I was a wee one, the nitrious mafia at shows are total thugs and bad news.

i smell a new screen name

to be fair though, they are a really giggly mafia. they are cracking up the whole time they are killing you.

that article is pure gold

Man, I got out of the northeast to avoid stuff like the festival in Scott's town, as well as the lingering experience of going to all kinds of shows in college.

The weirdest thing about seeing Pavement in Central Park for me was leaving the show and finding myself suddenly surrounded by people selling, and doing, nitrous all over the place. I was just like "Really?????". You know, 30-40 year old straight-looking folks hanging out in a public place and getting obnoxiously goofy. Nitrous is just wrong, to me. I have seen people do some just awful shit after sucking down a nitrous balloon (like falling flat on their face and chipping both front teeth, turning blue in the face for a minute, losing body control and collapsing in a muddy puddle, etc. etc.) Depressing as fuck.

"They jam on two Taylors!"

just listened to a couple songs on youtube and it's just as bad as that description hints

Bud & Budd
http://www.thekindbuds.com/images/biggerlogo.jpg

I don't know...I know lots of ppl who've done whipits; always seemed harmless to me, but I suppose nitrous could do some bad stuff... (xp to grandavis)

I will say that I do hate crack, and knew way too many ppl who got all fucked up on it

okay i will take a cue from mr. aerosmith and say that i didn't mean to turn this thread into shooting phish in a jam band barrel. it's too easy. sorry. funny! but too easy.

No more from me either. The Dead deserve better.

More my fault, Scott, sorry as well.

Yes, everyone should give the Dead a chance.

And now, a day late:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQe4XVrJFGQ

Lots of nitrous at Philadelphia Eagles pre-game tailgates. Every fourth or fifth car has a tank.

as mentioned upthread, Mr Veg worked for Bill Graham in mid-late 80s...he worked pretty much every SF Dead show plus Electric on the Eel and all those hippy shows. And the 85 summer tour - Oakland, Berkeley, the whole Bay. The stories are 0_o ...and he still has all those laminates so you can kind of see the horror :) Smacked out hangers-on backstage and everyone is a "friend of Jerry's", Deadheads blacking out in the parking lot from too much nitrous and flopping all over the place, kids selling bunches of sage, stoned Deadheads raiding the hot dog/nacho condiments for "deadhead salad" ...and all the weird medical emergencies from bad trips, od's and dehydration..and 20 shows like that in a month...I cant even imagine.

Nitrous is "okay" in small doses if you a) limit the amount you do or b) do it with someone who can stop you going too far. Fuckwits with giant balloons or a tank all to themselves are just asking for trouble.

"I can't stand it backstage. Too many geeks."--Jerry Garcia

back on track:

the seastones thing linked upthread is pretty out there stuff!