Mesmerizing. Couldn’t stop reading word after word, line after line. So eager to move along through your memories. So wide-eyed at some of what you lived through. My coming of age scene was Alan Fried concerts, endless cha-cha and dancing the lindy and reading the Amboy Dukes just a few blocks from Amboy Street.
Phish opened with Box of Rain the other night. They never cover Dead songs. I'm sure it choked a lot of folks up, including myself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rmYjsdU_q0
I have so many things to say about Phil Lesh, but then I was and am a Deadhead who loves the jams. A few years ago, I wrote an essay for a talk called “A Short Time To Be There: Life, Death, and The Grateful Dead”. Here’s the final paragraph, on the end of “Box of Rain”:
The final line of this song was also the last line ever sung at a Grateful Dead concert: "Such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there." An individual life is short compared to the vast expanse of time our lives are embedded in. Once death has shown us no mercy and the days go by "just like any other day that's ever been", we will be gone much longer than we will have been here. One sense of this conclusion is bleak: in the words of another song from 1967, "is that all there is?" A second sense is less bleak and offers more than "just a box of rain" or "just any other day": what remains of the songs discussed here are the moments of life, community, and aesthetic experience that we can have in our "short time to be there."
I have never been much of a Grateful Dead fan, although I've liked a few songs. One day I happened to be in a musical instruments shop called Amazing Grace in San Anselmo CA. (It's owned & run by a musician named John Pedersen & his wife, & it was reportedly financially rescued some years ago by none other than George Lucas, who lives (or did live) up the hill from the store.). When I was there a guy shambled in, wearing a dirty raincoat and seeming like a homeless person. He started looking at various instruments and eventually asked how much a mandolin was. I don't remember the amount John quoted but it was something like $1500 or more. The guy said, "Hell, I'll take it." It turned out that the guy was Robert Hunter, and he was buying it as a birthday present for Jerry Garcia.
Mesmerizing. Couldn’t stop reading word after word, line after line. So eager to move along through your memories. So wide-eyed at some of what you lived through. My coming of age scene was Alan Fried concerts, endless cha-cha and dancing the lindy and reading the Amboy Dukes just a few blocks from Amboy Street.
Thanks! Love the endless cha cha image of you. Had to look up Amboy Dukes book. Very cool.
Phish opened with Box of Rain the other night. They never cover Dead songs. I'm sure it choked a lot of folks up, including myself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rmYjsdU_q0
Thanks for that
I have so many things to say about Phil Lesh, but then I was and am a Deadhead who loves the jams. A few years ago, I wrote an essay for a talk called “A Short Time To Be There: Life, Death, and The Grateful Dead”. Here’s the final paragraph, on the end of “Box of Rain”:
The final line of this song was also the last line ever sung at a Grateful Dead concert: "Such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there." An individual life is short compared to the vast expanse of time our lives are embedded in. Once death has shown us no mercy and the days go by "just like any other day that's ever been", we will be gone much longer than we will have been here. One sense of this conclusion is bleak: in the words of another song from 1967, "is that all there is?" A second sense is less bleak and offers more than "just a box of rain" or "just any other day": what remains of the songs discussed here are the moments of life, community, and aesthetic experience that we can have in our "short time to be there."
Nice. Poignant. Thanks for sharing it here.
I have never been much of a Grateful Dead fan, although I've liked a few songs. One day I happened to be in a musical instruments shop called Amazing Grace in San Anselmo CA. (It's owned & run by a musician named John Pedersen & his wife, & it was reportedly financially rescued some years ago by none other than George Lucas, who lives (or did live) up the hill from the store.). When I was there a guy shambled in, wearing a dirty raincoat and seeming like a homeless person. He started looking at various instruments and eventually asked how much a mandolin was. I don't remember the amount John quoted but it was something like $1500 or more. The guy said, "Hell, I'll take it." It turned out that the guy was Robert Hunter, and he was buying it as a birthday present for Jerry Garcia.
That's a great story - thanks for sharing! Funny how the super famous can get a bit shambly.