Deadheads- What got you into the Dead!

What got you into the Dead?

How and when did it happen?

Do you listen sober or non sober?

 

Jerry's wonderful recipes. The music of course.

In 1982 my big brother gave me a cassette and I put it in my cassette player.

Does it matter?

 

I was looking at all my concert tickets my mom had, your standard fare from the 60's and 70's, Cat Stevens, the Temptations, Joni Mitchell. Then in the box was a stack of tickets all rubber banded together. 25 dead shows. This solidified the band with the sound. Now, we always had the dead on in the house growing up. I remember every Sunday morning my dad playing music extremely loud in the house so he could hear it outside while he gardened. I knew all the lyrics to the Skeletons in the closet album by heart before I even knew who the band was.

My father told me in high school he was going to take me to see them, a couple weeks later, Jerry died. So i never did see Jerry, and he has become my favorite. He's got such an honest sometimes sorrowful quality to his voice.

Well the day he died, I went and bought a memorial t-shirt for Jerry with his face on it and his life dates. I wore it all the time my sophomore?? year. I would wear it one day and then wash it and wear it the next day. I took a lot of shit for that from peers, hahaha.

A couple of years ago I went and saw "The Dead" at the e-centre in Camden on Jerry's birthday. It was amazing. Everything was, from the show to shakedown street to the hits. They are the quintessential jam band.

 

i was always around the Grateful Dead, as my mom and her brothers and sisters all loved it. but it wasn't till I was 14 that i fell in love with them. i was just starting to smoke weed and all my old music (marilyn manson, NIN, etc...) was not doing the trick. i would listen to it and be like, 'man this shit is harsh'....I was at HMV and I had a big gift certificate, i bought my usual stuff, everything new Manson had out...etc...and i still had enough cash, i had enough for two more albums. so i bought, Bob Marley's Natural Mystic and The Grateful Dead's Skeletons from the Closet. The other albums (mostly soundtracks which featured a manson song) sucked.....so i threw on the Dead and I was in heaven!! I was wisked away by the Golden Road and off into the best "Best Of" album ever.....and then i got more and more and more stuff....and loved it all.

i have like 2,500 hours of dead music probably.....its lovely

(later in the summer time, i moved back from Singapore to California, and i found in one of our boxes a tape of "Blues For Allah" my love was forever solidified...)

 

i listened to them with my older cousin hes like 32 now. but back in the day he introduced them to me.

 

When jerry's crazy finger solos turn into lightning bolts and spider webs in the sky.

 

My dad was a DeadHead so I was raised listenin to the Dead. As any normal kid I tried to rebel so not liking the Dead was my way of rebeling. Then on a family road trip my dad was playing Dozin' At The Knick. He must have played those 3 discs about 20 times. For some reason I didn't mind it and I actually started to like what was coming out of the family van's speakers. Then I heard the Not Fade Away. Thats what did it for me. The last like 5 minutes of that reack where it is just the crowd. I haven't heard a band that had that kind of fan base on a live record ever. The crowd kept chanting "no our love won't fade away" I listen to the Dead mainly sober since I mostly listen to them at work on my Ipod. At home though it's a different story. Thats when Dark Star simply melts my mind. The first time I heard Dark Star I was sober also. I guess I mainly listen to them sober. Also the Dead have become a way for my dad and I to bond. Which is funny cause his new wife won't let him listen to them. So I got all his discs, which was sweet for me but sad for him. It's also funny cause whenever I see him I make sure I burn him the a copy of a show that I'm really into just to piss off his wife.

 

Well I'm kind of young so the dead weren't big when I was growing up. No one I knew ever liked them. I had heard casey jones on the radio when I was like 8, and I liked it alot. I put it on a mix CD and that was the only song I knew. Over the years I liked touch of grey and a couple other popular songs. Then just in the past year is when I really started to like them, I learned about the culture and how amazing their concerts used to be and the person who told me about them made them sound like the best thing in the world, and I began to buy more albums and download live shows and what not, and now I love them.

As for the sober, it shouldn't matter. They are better not sober, but life is better not sober.

 

i kinda just got into them on my own. something about the music and mentality of deadheads spoke to me. unfortunately, like many, i never had the opportunity to experience a grateful dead concert...but the possibilities of what is was remains in my imagination, and im sure it was a euphoria in itself.

i've been a deadhead ever since.

 

None of my parents really listened to the Dead but I do remember about three years ago my cousin was way older cousin was listening to friend of the devil and i walked in and smelt pot...so i was like "hey man whats that smell" and hes like "its pot man" and ask if i want some...so i took the joint im like "i like this song by the way" hes like yeah its friend of the devil by Grateful Dead...so from then on i listened to Grateful Dead almost every day of my life and still do...now whats funny is that he like the dead and all but doesnt worship them like i do...so i'd have to say he inspired me and got me going and i helped myself along the way...now i love the Dead I could listen to them and day any time of the week.

 

your cousin smoked you out when you were 12!?

 

yeah man it was cool as shit...i do everytime i go out there now, He's basically like my brother now...i love my cousin hes real cool...

 

I grew up on the dead. there were the shit. i miss Jerry

 

What do you mean were?

 

I can't exactly be sure or remember. It was around the time when I started smoking the reefer. But i'm pretty sure the grateful dead came first. This was just after my 18th birthday... i think ever since i was about 15 onwards i'd been interested in the psychedelic experience... and especially LSD. Though I never got to try any of it.

Then after my 18th birthday, about a week after, me and my mates were trying to get served in any pub, but course some of us weren't 18 so then suddenly our groups stoner just said "WHO WANTS TO GET HIGH?"

I was like "ME!" hahaha, I bare wanted to smoke some weed. Just to try it. I took a couple of tokes and that started me on a long strange trip. That whole summer I listened to the dead, and got pissed a lot, but didnt smoke any weed. Then after the summer I got some weed, and have been smoking ever since. That was last summer. It's been a good year, listening to the dead.

Friends remarked that I never got into weed more than because it was something I was interested in, rather than getting into it because of others. I think cannabis is best enjoyed in solitude, from time to time, to enhance meditation, enter a state of relaxation... etc etc. But you I always listen to the dead when stoned, but they're just as great sober.

When I finally do get around to getting some acid, im for sure listening to some dead. Why the hell not. Best band ever. For certain. They did more for music than any other group in existance, they have a style that noone can emulate. In fact their music is really what I would call Rock Music, yet its rock music that has all the eloquent stylings and complexity of the musical geniuses that have existed through history. And something pushes it forward.

And for me, a brit, the grateful dead give me a taste of americana... so to speak. a raw taste, that speaks to my yearning for the endless plains of america. I mean I come from a small country where 100 miles is a very very long distance. The dead tell me magical stories of railroads, automobiles, and the magical age of life that existed post-industrial revolution, but pre-communication age, where life was free and interesting and personal and christ... gimme a time machine i wanna go back to 1900 and live out in the rockies.

 

Keep the stories comin' !!!

 

i was over smoking at my friends house and he said his brother turned him onto a cool band by the name of the grateful dead. we only had time to listen to truckin' before we had to go pick up some beer with his brother but after words when i was at my house, a little bit high and a little bit drunk, i got on itunes and looked up the grateful dead. i couldnt find a greatest hits so i clicked on the american beauty cd and saw that it had truckin' and friend of the devil on it so i figured it must be a greatest hits so i bought it. it was all so good i just figured it was the greatest hits. i must have listened to that album all night on my computer. the next day i got onto wikipedia and i found it out it wasn't a greatest hits, just a normal dead album. the next album i bought was working man's dead as it had casey jones. sweet jesus how can you make music this good? it was unbelievable.

from that day on for the next 4-5 months every day when i would go on one of my after school bike rides, i would listen to one of those two cd's. most of the time it was american beauty. when ever i turned on box of rain on my ipod as i got out my bike i new what i was in store for. i would make it to the end of sugar magnolia by the time i would get to my smoking spot out on this hike in the woods. by the time i was finished with my bowl or joint or however much i was smoking that day i would be on the sad tune of candyman. i would coast down hill with the wind in my hair and get home during ripple or brokedown palace and finish off the cd in my room. when it was working mans dead, uncle john's band always told me that i was in store for a good session. i would normally arrive at my smoking location by the river on my hike during dire wolf. i always smoked a little bit more during working mans dead so i would leave a little bit later and a little bit higher during a cumberland blues or maybe even a black peter. i would turn off and climb the giant uphill road on my street all the way to the top. i would coast down while casey jones was playing trying to beat the end of the song home. sometimes i won and sometimes i lost but it was always a race worth remebering. these lasted untill my parents got wise to 3 to 4 time daily bike rides.

during this time whatever money i got that didnt go to weed went to the grateful dead. the next cd i got was aoxomoxoa, where i found my favorite grateful dead song ever, saint stephen. than it was the classic europe 72'. before this time i had never even listened to the grateful dead live as hard as that is to believe. after that it became my bimonthly ritual of buying grateful dead cd's. every other thursday i got 25$ dollars as allowance that all went to the dead. i got every cd i could anthem of the sun, go to heaven, grateful dead, grateful dead from the mars hotel, history of the grateful dead, live/dead, in the dark, wake of the flood, blues for allah, terrapin station, and shakedown street. i got biographies, posters, shirts, bumper stickers, framed pictures anything i could get my hands on. i even began playing guitar and was jamming along jerry as best i could.

than i felt a sadness hard to describe with words. i was running out of grateful dead cd's, the music its self. the sweet ecstasy for the ears that is the grateful dead. than by pure chance i found something that would cause me to literally jump in the air with joy, the dead pod. so far 66 dead concerts worth listening to over to again and again, and i do. it has become my pleasure to tune in, and even if its just for an hour, feel like im right their, playing in the band.

so now, a year and a half later, i can look back on those daily bike rides with great joy. its hard to describe the feeling that comes over me when i hear box of rain. its a feeling of inner peace and calm, knowing that no matter whats happened in the past and what happens in the future, that even if its only for a moment, i know what its like to truly be happy.

 

Sweet dude, St. Stephen is a good tune. Terrapin stations one of my fav songs. (Not the album the song.)

 

I listen all the time, sober or not. Theres a lot of reasons why I got interested in the dead, my first festival, seeing tribute bands, seeing the feeling and love that went behind the music. The good feelings and memories that come from playing a song, and the smile that always grows on my face when I get lost in those memories. Also I can say my parents and friends played a part in it and also life style. Probably more but those are some to name a few