Twenty years ago, I was a twenty-year-old Deadhead with no worries beyond growing my small record collection and obtaining tickets for the next Grateful Dead shows. I’d been seeing them for nearly four years, listening for maybe eight, and I’d just come home from the Mardi Gras run in Oakland, California. My t-shirts were strictly music-related, my trousers corduroy, and my hair was a disaster. I had a girlfriend and a 1983 Datsun Sentra. Both were good enough. My life plans involved seeing any and every amazing concert possible; primarily, but not exclusively, Grateful Dead and Phish; and writing about them for any audience that might have eyes for such things. What could go wrong?

I only managed one show on the Grateful Dead’s East Coast Spring Tour that year. Money was tight after my California trip and I was disinclined to quit my record store job, so work took a degree of precedence. After all, Summer Tour mail-order would come around soon enough. But, I had the fortune to be inside the Philly Spectrum when they played the first live “Unbroken Chain”. That’s the way things went. You never knew which show would be the show. You went when you could and enjoyed what you found.

Dance. Wash¹. Repeat.

June rolled around and we caught some Phish shows, followed by the annual Dead shows at RFK Stadium and a one-nighter in Pittsburgh. We mail-ordered for Grateful Dead Fall Tour. My 21st birthday coincided with the scheduled Boston run and GDTS set us up with decent seats. Phish mail order soon followed for what was to become a legendary tour. Life was good. Even when it wasn’t. Who could complain about such riches? Continue reading →