Once in a While You Get Shown the Light

    "Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been."

"Truckin'," Grateful Dead, 1970

    "I may be goin' to hell in a bucket, baby, but at least I'm enjoyin' the ride."

            "Hell in a Bucket," Grateful Dead, 1983

Those two lyrics became my senior quotes, appearing in my yearbook beside a baby picture and the fully-coiffed, tuxedoed, 1988 version of myself.  Okay, fine, they wouldn't let me print the first clause of the second quote, so I shortened it.  Full text implied.

Have You Seen Me?
Jerry Lesh Garcia circa 1988

The first concert I ever attended was The Monkees at Scope in Norfolk in 1985.  In the same space where Dr. J used to light it up for the Virginia Squires, Davy, Micky, and Peter (Mike wasn't in need of the cash, as he was an heir to the Liquid Paper fortune) made us all daydream believers once again. Some months later, I enjoyed another act begat in the Sixties, the Grateful Dead.  Same vintage, different band.  Different venue. Different crowd. Different worlds. Different daydreams.

I never saw the Monkees again. The Dead, however, became a relative fixation that competed for my aural enjoyment with R.E.M., The Cure, Beastie Boys, and Run-DMC.  I saw multiple shows of theirs at Hampton Coliseum each of the next few years, saw the Jerry Garcia Band at Merriweather, and caught the notorious Warlocks shows in Hampton in the fall of 1989.  Worth reading about here. Saw those shows with Scoop Edwards, RIP.

At the same time, though, college is a great place to absorb a ton of different music.  Just on my freshman hall, I had a metalhead roommate, a guy across the hall who went to Boathouse shows with me like Living Colour and UB40, a nextdoor neighbor who introduced me to The Cult, and a little squirrel down the hall who taught me that The Smiths and They Might Be Giants were actually really good bands. Soon enough, my headlong affinity for The Clash and punk rock began in earnest.  (Not in Ernest.) And along the way the Beasties released Paul's Boutique.

By the time I was (finally) graduating from college, the Dead, Deadheads, tie-dyes, and tapestries all quietly faded into the rearview.

Jerry died in 1995 while I was in New Orleans. Slight uptick in old tapes unearthed, then back to my regularly scheduled dipshittery (like Ween, Weezer, other bands starting with wee...).

Fast forward 20 years.  In Norfolk, the clowns with whom I now revel lean jammy, just as they did back when.  I didn't really fall back into that groove right away.  Saw my first Phish show in 2011. My first Widespread Panic show a few years later.  And at the Lockn' Festival in 2015, I saw Bob, Phil, Bill, Mickey, and a host of other performers resurrect the Dead. I streamed the Santa Clara and then all three nights of the Fare Thee Well hoopla from Soldier Field last summer.

All that boring backstory said, nothing catapulted me back into JerryLand nearly so much as watching the Scorsese-produced, four-hour documentary I saw last week. On Thursday night, Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead was shown on a couple dozen screens across the country for one night only.

In Norfolk, it was the beloved Naro Cinema in Ghent, a few blocks from my place.  Well-attended but not packed to the gills, I saw dozens of friends old and older pouring beverages into beverages and letting there be songs and what-not to fill the air.  Management shrugged and smiled.

Four hours is a long time in a movie theater, even with an intermission (trip to the bar nextdoor for shots).  It flew by.  The director, Amir Bar-Lev, known for the Tillman Story (must-see) and other works, gave us the story/backstory, showed the shows, played the songs, and blew me away.

There's a whole lot in it; of course there's more to every story; the same Deadheads who have argued for decades about Barton Hall '77 vs Port Chester '70 or, as Al Franken amusingly discusses in the film, the best version of "Althea" ever performed (he says Nassau '80), will undoubtedly gripe that there's no post-Jerry scenes or that Tom Constanten is hardly mentioned or that Mountain Girl gets short shrift or whatever.  Shut it.  It's fantastic, it's art, and I had zero complaints, except that it eventually had to end, and the music stopped.

I always had a sense of kinship with Jerry Garcia, but then most people who like the music do.  I... ahem, a guy who looked like me in high school... had a state-issued driver's permit with the name Jerry Lesh Garcia that aided my... his... fun from ages 16-21.  Bearded and beefy as I sat in the Naro Thursday night, watching the greatest story ever told (at least that night), that feeling hit me again. The picture painted of a goofy character who always carried a little bit of mischief and anarchy, a little bit of leadership and ingenuity, a lot of love for those around him, and a firm philosophy of "Have fun!" that ensured good times galore but also incurred plenty of detriment... well, I know people like that.

Anyway, I now can't stop playing the old shows.  God bless Deadheads, there's almost as much music and material written about the Grateful Dead on the Internet as there is pornography and links to Alfonso Ribeiro shirtless.  I can hear most every show I attended.  (What I wouldn't give for that to be true of every band I saw.)  "Brown-Eyed Women" and "Morning Dew" on repeat; Jesus, I used to be a guy who mostly liked the 4-minute rock songs GD occasionally issued that Deadheads hated. Now, the longer the meandering, the better.

Anyway, pardon my own meandering down Shakedown Street.  Watch the trailer below, and if you have any interest whatsoever, as of this Friday you can use Amazon to stream the full documentary of Long Strange Trip.  Enjoy the Ride.