Conference rdvax::grateful

Deadhead grief evident after death
**********************************


By MARK EVANS Associated Press Writer
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The unique faith of Grateful Dead fans was evident in
Haight-Ashbury and across the nation Wednesday as Deadheads, rock stars,
politicians and others mourned the passing of Jerry Garcia.

Crowds quickly gathered in the mecca for '60s counterculture, putting up a
makeshift shrine to their grandfatherly leader. Someone started beating drums.
Others hugged and cried. A single red rose was tied to a tree at 710 Ashbury,
where the Dead began their rock 'n' roll odyssey three decades ago.

Jeff Aitken, kneeling in prayer in front of the Victorian house, was talking
about the Grateful Dead in the past tense.

"It was a great place to be a human being," he said of the roughly 180
concerts he'd seen. " It was the purity and the simplicity of it. It was pure
love, and it just poured out of Jerry."

The neighborhood's faithful called it the passing of an era.

"There's no more Grateful Dead, bro," said Wesley Law, sipping a morning beer
at a nearby cafe. "You can't replace Jerry."

Garcia's friends were shocked at his death.

"It's a big loss for the world and anyone who loves music," said a red-eyed
Bob Weir before dedicating his own concert in New Hampshire to Garcia
Wednesday night.

"His life was far more a blessing for all of us," said Weir, who founded the 
Grateful Dead with Garcia back in 1964. "Perhaps if we're going to dwell on 
anything, we should dwell on that."

Bob Dylan said "I don't think any eulogizing will do him justice."

"His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle," Dylan 
said in a statement. "There's no way to convey the loss. It just digs down 
really deep."

Carlos Santana, who came out of the same '60s music scene, called him "a 
profound talent, both as a musician and as an artist."

"He was one of those really special people on this planet, a person who had
unbelievable skill at what he did in bringing joy and happiness into people's 
lives," said former basketball star Bill Walton, an avowed Deadhead who went 
to more than 600 of the band's concerts.

Like a lot of diehard fans, percussionist Rob Fried couldn't imagine life 
without "Jerry."

"I don't think people realize the void this is going to leave. The Grateful 
Dead is no longer," said Fried, who has played "in the spirit of the Dead" for
the band Max Creek for 17 years. "A lot of people probably don't realize what 
impact this guy has on a whole culture."

In Columbia, Mo., Arnie Fagan lowered the flag to half staff in front of his 
eclectic Cool Stuff store, which sells merchandise hailing the band.

"It's a family thing, so Jerry's death is like losing your grandfather to a 
whole lot of people," said Fagan, 30. "He was the most loved member of the 
Grateful Dead."

At the United Nations, Bosnian diplomat Omar Sacirbey even turned his attention
from the battles in the former Yugoslavia to mourn Garcia's passing.

"It's an incredibly big loss to a lot of people," said Sacirbey, who spent 
most of his childhood in the United States. "A lot of people looked toward the 
Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia as the thing ... that made life a little more 
worth living."

9:41 PM 8/9/1995 

      Jerry Garcia 1942-1995 
     +++++++++++++++++++++++++

Grateful Dead's Garcia a '60s icon 
===================================

By MARTY RACINE
Copyright 1995 Houston Chronicle 

The '60s are dead. What a long, strange trip it's been. 

When a heart attack claimed the life of 53-year-old Grateful Dead guitarist 
Jerry Garcia on Wednesday, the news reached across the music industry to steal 
the breath of an entire era. 

Born Aug. 1, 1942, in San Francisco, the beloved Garcia was to the '60s what 
Elvis Presley was to the '50s -- and perhaps what Kurt Cobain will be to the 
'90s: a presence, a figurehead of rock 'n' roll around whom a generation 
created a new set of rituals. 

"Not to discount the rest of the members of the band, but Jerry Garcia was the
epitome of what the Grateful Dead stood for -- the image, the mannerisms," said
Houston promoter Louis Messina of Pace Concerts. "And by extension the Dead
stood for the '60s." 

The '60s stood for myth and magic, built on the hippies' rebuking of 
materialism but destroyed, in some quarters, by a drug culture seeking 
shortcuts to enlightenment. With his graying beard, Cheshire grin, and 
Buddha-like physique, Jerry Garcia, four years the senior of the oldest Baby 
Boomers, was the godfather of psychedelic rock. 

If he looked wise, Garcia almost always looked aged. From the old school, he 
never took care of himself. He smoked, he did drugs, he ate junk food and he 
rarely exercised. While he had tried to clean up over the past few years, his 
accumulated habits led to a recent "meltdown," band spokesman Dennis McNally 
said last year. 

When he turned 50, Garcia told Rolling Stone: "God, I never thought I'd make 
it. I didn't think I'd get to be 40, to tell you the truth. Jeez, I feel like 
I'm a hundred million years old." 

He was in a drug rehab center near San Francisco when he died. Garcia is 
survived by his third wife, filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia, and four daughters. 

After 30 years of touring, the band is still one of the top-grossing acts in 
rock 'n'roll. This year, they ranked No. 3, behind the Rolling Stones and the 
Eagles, taking in $34.5 million in 42 shows, according to Billboard's 
Amusement Business. 

While England furnished early '60s pop music with its mod invasion groups, the
Grateful Dead rose out of San Francisco to paint the decade in swirling, 
abstract designs that could be understood only by the initiated -- fueled by 
hallucinogens, asphalt mysticism and tribal ceremony. 

The band was founded in 1964 as the Warlocks, led by Garcia, a horror-movie 
buff and the son of a swing band leader who was mixing rock and bluegrass in an
uncertain alchemy. Two years later, they chose the Grateful Dead name by
happenstance from the Oxford dictionary and added a second drummer. 

While their temple was the corner of Haight-Ashbury in a formerly rundown 
section of San Francisco, their pulpit became the Fillmore Auditorium and 
later the Carousel Ballroom, where the Dead and other emerging Bay Area bands 
preached experimentation. They stretched rock, blues and jugband music into 
exotic shapes that broke the constraints of a 3-minute pop song and heralded 
the arrival of "album-rock" radio. The meandering rhythms were accompanied by 
the first full-scale use of light shows, and the ballrooms were cleared of 
seats in the earliest form of "festival seating." 

Said Carlos Santana on Wednesday: "Being guitarists and being a part of the San
Francisco music scene together, Jerry and I shared a special bond. He was a 
profound talent, both as a musician and as an artist, and he cannot be 
replaced. I take solace in the thought that his spirit has gone to join the 
likes of Bill Graham, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis and other greats 
who have left us much too soon." 

Wednesday night in New Hampshire, Bob Weir dedicated a concert to his friend 
and Grateful Dead partner. "It's a big loss for the world and anyone who loves 
music," he said. "His life was far more a blessing for all of us ... Perhaps 
if we're going to dwell on anything, we should dwell on that." 

I was not prepared for the first time I saw the Grateful Dead at the Carousel 
one summer evening in 1968. They were co-headlining a homeboy bill with the 
Jefferson Airplane, who turned in a rousing, triumphant set that was easily 
the best rock 'n'roll I had ever witnessed. I was 22 and a man of the world. 
I was, in Jimi Hendrix's view, "experienced," and I was in love with Grace 
Slick. 

But the Dead were beyond this sphere, reordering reality with jams so magical, 
so luminescent as to shine a light on a new way of hearing music -- not just 
listening but really feeling it. Their "songs" began as tune-up sessions, in 
which Garcia, rhythm guitarist Weir, keyboardist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, 
bassist Phil Lesh and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann appeared to 
pick their way individually through the sonic wilderness. When they came to a 
clearing, they forged a consensus, as if by sleight-of-hand, and then split it 
into polyrhythms and counter melodies unlike anything rock had ever attempted. 
Their songs were constructed like Indian ragas, and they comprised "world-beat"
music long before other Westerners like Paul Simon and David Byrne discovered 
it. 

Standing out front of the groove was Jerry Garcia, a shaman of the frets whose
celestial runs were beyond sound, like pure energy. His notes aimed for a 
faraway place, and we were all eager to follow. I was convinced this portly 
figure was the best guitarist on the planet and that the Grateful Dead were 
the best damn rock band in existence. 

No one "danced" at these jams. Grateful Dead music didn't so much soothe the 
soul, spark the feet or please the ear; it went through you. 

Their rambling, interactive music attracted a like-minded following known as
Deadheads, bands of blissed-out gypsies which for nearly 30 years would follow 
the entourage from show to show and set up temporary communes and marketplaces 
of paraphernalia, not all of it legal, outside concert venues. 

But, detached from the vibe, stripped of their youthful innocence and perhaps 
no longer willing or able to reach for greatness, the band increasingly went 
through the motions. The Dead were capable of some horrendous concerts. Their 
last Houston show, at The Summit in 1988, was painfully inept -- perhaps 
because they were never as home in the South as on the East and West coasts. 

Just refer to one of their anthems, Truckin', in which they sing, "Houston, 
too close to New Orleans ... ." 

In Casey Jones, it was "trouble ahead, trouble behind." Problems on their 
current tour included a gate crashing and a series of arrests in Indiana, 
forcing cancellation of the next night's show. In St. Louis, a deck collapsed 
at a Deadhead campground, killing one and injuring more than 100. 

"They had a lot of problems, not caused by the band but by a lot of hangers-on,
" said Messina. "It's the scene." 

In The Wheel, "If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will," and the 
Dead were dogged by tragedy. Original keyboardist "Pigpen" died of liver 
failure in 1973. His replacement, Keith Godchaux, was killed in a car crash in
1980 after leaving the band. Keyboardist Brent Mydland died the same year of a
drug overdose. 

Now, Garcia. 

"In one way I hope the Grateful Dead continue because it's part of a culture,"
Messina said Wednesday. "On the other side, maybe it's time to lay it to rest." 

    Dennis McNally, publicist for the Grateful Dead, just called to give me
    the straight poop.
    
    The band is officially in mourning today, and have NO official plans
    for anything at this point.  When they do, they will let us know.  Any
    rumors to the contrary at this point are horses**t!
    
    If you want to write the band, write to:
    
    Grateful Dead Productions
    PO 1073
    San Rafael, CA 94915
    
    Please do NOT send flowers
    
    Regarding charities, if you want to send a donation to a charity other
    than your own, send a check to:
    
    Rex Foundation
    c/o Grateful Dead Productions
    PO 1073
    San Rafael, CA 94915
    
    Dennis said we have all the time in the world to mourn Jerry.
    
    We'll keep you posted as things develop.
    
    Geoff Gould
    GD Forum
    
    
    
    Transmitted: 95-08-09 20:16:46 EDT
    

    From the PEOPLE Daily for Saturday/Sunday, August 12 and 13
    
    A FOND FAREWELL
    Private rites planned for Jerry Garcia 
    
        Funeral plans for Jerry Garcia are being kept under wraps for fear
    that the service would attract thousands of grieving fans. A spokesman for
    the Grateful Dead said the late musician, who died early Wednesday of a 
    heart attack, would be held sometime "late Friday or Saturday" at an 
    undisclosed location "in the Bay area" in or near San Francisco. Only 
    family members, band members and close friends will be invited to
    attend.  Reports of the surviving band members hosting a public
    memorial for Garcia are erroneous, said the spokesman for the group, 
    Dennis McNally,though he didn't rule out such an event in the future. 
    
    Meanwhile, a doctor who treated Garcia for the last 28 years, said the
    drug-abusing star "wanted to live. He recognized that his addictions were
    aggravating his medical condition. He was on the way back," said Dr. David
    Smith of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. "That's what makes this doubly 
    painful." Smith said it was "a good sign" when Garcia entered the Betty 
    Ford Clinic last month. He said Garcia told him, "Maybe this isn't so bad 
    after all." Garcia left the clinic two weeks into his treatment, according
    to sources cited by the San Francisco Chronicle, but entered Serenity
    Knolls,  a Marin County residential treatment center last Monday. Smith 
    said Garcia seemed upbeat that he'd finally be able to get drugs out of 
    his life. "We were optimistic about his recovery," Smith told the 
    Associated Press. "I was going to take him to a recovery group" on 
    Thursday night, the doctor added.
        -Marianne Goldstein
    

    THE BAND PLAYED ON
    Dead guitarist Bob Weir plays N.H. gig 
    
        It was a fitting tribute to a departed friend. Although Grateful
    Dead guitarist Bob Weir was grieving over the death of Jerry Garcia, he 
    played in front of a packed nightclub in Hampton, New Hampshire on 
    Wednesday night and dedicated the performance to both his longtime musical
    partner and the band's fans. "Good music can make bad times better," he 
    told the sold-out crowd at the Hampton Casino Ballroom. 
    
        "It's a big loss for the world and anyone who loves music", a
    tearful Weir told reporters before the show. Calling Garcia's life "a 
    blessing for all of us," he added, "If we are going to dwell on anything, 
    we should dwell on that." 
    
        Weir, who writes music and plays rhythm guitar for the Dead, is one
    of the band's original members. He had been scheduled to perform with his 
    band, Bob Weir, Rob Wasserman and Ratdog, weeks in advance, but after 
    learning of Garcia's apparent heart attack earlier that morning, there was
    some uncertainty as to whether the show would go on. By then, 900 of the 
    concert's 2000 tickets had already been sold. After it was announced at 1 
    p.m. that there would indeed be a performance that evening, fans
    snapped up the remaining 1100 tickets in less than an hour. "We turned 
    away 5,000 people, too," said the club's promoter, Marc Gentilella. 
    
    Deadheads without tickets gathered in back of the nightclub and held an
    impromptu vigil during the show. As a courtesy gesture, the band left the
    back doors of the venue open so that the fans outside, estimated at 5,000 
    to 6,000, could hear the music as well. The all-ages crowd played guitars 
    and drums, lit candles and carried flowers in tribute to Garcia. 
    
        As an encore the band played a Dead favorite, "Knockin' on Heaven's
    Door." After Weir left the stage in the middle of the last verse, "the 
    crowd picked up on it and the 5,000 people outside and the 2,000 inside 
    were all singing [the song] for literally 20 minutes," says Gentilella. 
    "It was priceless, there's no doubt about it. I've never seen
    anything like it in my life. It was the most amazing outpouring of love 
    I've ever seen."
        -Lorraine Goods
    

    Garcia: Life and Times
    
        Over the 30-year lifespan of the Grateful Dead, the group has
    become more than just a band-- they have come to personify a lifestyle and
    a state of mind. And Jerry Garcia, in his role as the band's nonchalant 
    leader, was a central pop culture figure who represented -- depending on 
    who you are -- everything from a counterculture radical to a revered guru.
    He was also among a handful of 60s rock stars, like Mick Jagger, Pete
    Townsend and Eric Clapton, who had survived their own abuses and excesses 
    to continue making music well into the nineties. 
    
        With his burly figure and frizzy grey locks and beard, Jerry Garcia
    was truly an eminence gris of rock and roll -- a low-keyed, mellow 
    presence who drew people into the world created by his music. "He was a 
    charismatic person, but one who refused to make decisions," recalled 
    Dennis McNally, who worked for Grateful Dead Enterprises as a band 
    spokesman. "So as a result, he was not a leader like a Mick Jagger; he 
    led by example." 
    
        And lead he did -- a roving and rag-tag group of followers trailed
    the group from performance to performance, often joined by middle-class,
    middle-aged professionals who would break away from their everyday lives 
    several times a year to recapture their youth -- and listen to some 
    wonderful music. 
    
    Garcia's long, strange trip began on August 1, 1942, in San Francisco.
    His father, who died when he was young, was a swing bandleader and reed 
    player. After the death of Jose Garcia, Jerry's mother, Ruth, a nurse, 
    struggled to make ends meet and keep up Jerry's music lessons -- though he
    hated the piano. When he was 15, his mother gave him an accordion, but a 
    disgruntled Jerry informed her what he really wanted was an electric 
    guitar. "Man, I was just in heaven," he recalled to Rolling Stone magazine.
    "I stopped everything I was doing at the time" -- including his schoolwork,
    which was sporadic, at best. "I was a juvenile delinquent. My mom even 
    moved me out of the city to get me out of trouble. It didn't work," he 
    remembered. 
    
        After dropping out of school at 17, Jerry joined the Army, but,
    predictably, enjoyed the military as much as he enjoyed academia. After 
    nine months -- and two court martials -- Garcia was discharged and 
    traveled up to Palo Alto, where he joined the coffee house scene that 
    spawned other seminal San Francisco talents such as Janis Joplin, Jorma
    Kaukonen and Paul Kantner. Garcia began to broaden his musical interests, 
    using acoustic guitars to play bluegrass and folk. Soon he began playing
    regularly with several other musicians -- drummer Bill Kreutzmann, bass 
    player Phil Lesh, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and Bob Weir. They began as a jug
    band, but soon, influenced by the Beatles revolution, dubbed themselves 
    The Warlocks, playing their first gig in a pizza parlor. 
    
    It was also around that time that people began experimenting with LSD,
    championed by writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. The Warlocks 
    started hanging out with Kesey and his friends, playing at their infamous 
    Acid Test parties, which Garcia later described as "thousands of people, 
    all hopelessly stoned, finding themselves in a roomful of other thousands 
    of people, none of whom any of them were afraid of." The Warlocks' 
    reputation began to grow, but, learning of another band by the same name,
    decided to come up with a new one. While at Lesh's house one day, Garcia 
    opened up an Oxford dictionary. "The first thing I saw was The Grateful 
    Dead. It said that on the page and it was so astonishing. It was truly 
    weird, a truly weird moment." 
    
    The Dead were signed by Warner Bros. records and released their first
    album in 1967. Though their albums never were chart-busters, they shined 
    onstage, going into long improvisation riffs that made their third album, 
    "Live Dead," a watershed recording for them. They hit greater heights in 
    1970, when they released two popular -- and accomplished -- studio albums,
    "American Beauty" and "Workingman's Dead." But after some financial losses
    and the death of Ron McKernan, the disheartened band dissolved -- but only 
    briefly. Garcia recorded some albums on his own, but the band reformed 
    and, backed by an astonishing strong band of fans, began to tour again. 
    During the mid-80s, though, malaise struck Garcia, who put on a lot of
    weight and seemed lackluster onstage. His friends blamed his increasing 
    drug use and urged him to cut back; in January, 1985, Garcia was busted in
    Golden Gate Park, and was charged with possession of cocaine and heroin. 
    He agreed to undergo rehab in lieu of jail time, but a year later almost 
    died after going into a diabetic coma. It was enough to get him to try
    to change his personal habits. "It was like my physical being saying, 
    'Hey, you're going to have to put in some time here if you want to keep on
    living' " he recalled. 
    
    But Garcia's discipline wavered and he fell ill again in 1991 -- and
    again pledged to stop smoking, cut back on junk food and begin exercising. 
    He also began exploring his love for visual art, taking up drawing and 
    painting as a pastime. He even began a sideline business designing fabric 
    that was made into a line of neckties and was, earlier this year, used to 
    decorate a hotel suite in Los Angeles. "It's a process of discovery for
    me," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1993. "I can't say 'Oh, yeah, I'm a 
    total model for health.' But I'm on a program. I've accepted the idea that
    my life has to change, and I've taken some steps to do that, to create 
    less stress, have more physical activity, eat right and just be sensible." 
    
        The band played on -- last year grossing $50 million, making them
    the top concert attraction in the country. "I feel like we've been getting
    away with something ever since there were more people in the audience than
    there were on stage," Garcia reminisced in 1993. "The first time that 
    people didn't leave after the first three tunes, I felt like we were 
    getting away with something. We've been falling uphill for 27 years. I 
    don't know why. I have no idea. All I know is it's endlessly fascinating 
    and incredible luck probably has a lot to do with it." 
    
    -Marianne Goldstein
    

re: -.1 

notice that one of the SF Chronicle writers is Kenneth **J. Garcia**

    New Yorker Article - Reprinted W/O Permission of course
    
    AMERICAN BEAUTY
    The Grateful Dead's burly, beatific alchemist.
    
    	As word of the death of Jerry Garcia spread last Wednesday, via
    news reports and phone calls and E-mail, the scale of the reaction and
    the depth of the response quickly surpassed what anyone might have
    expected.  It was suddenly obvious that Garcia had become, against all 
    odds, an American icon: by Thursday morning, the avuncular old reprobate 
    had smuggled his way onto the front pages of newspapers around the world.
    That his battered, ruined body had finally given out was somehow less 
    surprising than the abrupt recognition of how much he had meant to so 
    many.  He was eulogized as a rock star and as a guitar god, of course; 
    he was praised as a businessman who marketed his mystique both shrewdly 
    and generously; and, in the obituaries that recounted the intermittent 
    struggles with addiction that preceded his  demise, at the age of 
    fifty-three, in a Marin County drug-rehabilitation center, he was 
    inevitably, and with some justice, pronounced a casualty of
    drug abuse.  But Jerry Garcia was a more graceful and complicated
    figure than those categories can encompass: he transcended show business, 
    and it's impossible, even now, to think of him as a victim or a sad case.
    The choices he made in life, whatever their ultimate cost to him, command 
    respect. He  was a lyrical hipster, an outlaw with a sense of humor, a 
    fount of profound pleasure for tens of millions of people.
    	He started his extraordinary career as a bad boy in the classroom
    ("I was a wise guy, I talked too much, I spoke out of turn, and I was a
    notorious underachiever," he told an interviewer in 1989) and graduated
    to become a hood on the streets of San Francisco.  In the late fifties, he
    joined the Army to avoid jail (the reverse of what some of his fans
    would do a decade later), was discharged after a few months, and wound up
    living in a car and playing low-end folk gigs in clubs and coffeehouses 
    around Palo Alto.  It was a fateful place and time: Beat culture was mixing
    with pop culture, and the Bay Area's perpetual party was on the verge of
    being hijacked by the novelist-provocateur Ken Kesey and his band of Merry
    Pranksters, who spiked the punch with a stash of LSD that had been
    liberated from local research laboratories.  Garcia and his friends went 
    to see "A Hard Day's Night" and metamorphosed from a jug band into a rock 
    band.  In 1965, the newly psychedelicized Garcia opened a dictionary of 
    folklore and alighted on the phrase "grateful dead," and his group, having 
    adopted the name, began playing at a series of Acid Test gatherings: wild,
    euphoric, Dadaist affairs that celebrated noise, nonsense, and open-ended
    improvisation.  Those acid-fuelled evenings became the inspiration and
    the model for the next three decades of Grateful Dead concerts, each of
    which sought to invoke, in some measure, the crazed, beatific spirit of the
    Acid Tests.
    	Amid the chaos, Garcia managed to project a casual authority, and
    his crystalline guitar enhanced the alchemist's aura that he gradually
    acquired.  (For a long time, Deadheads called him Captain Trips, a title 
    he disliked.)  Onstage, he was a stolid, impassive, faintly Buddha-like
    presence, but in conversation he turned out to be a street philosopher
    with a keen wit and a taste for the absurd.  Despite, or because of,
    all the drugs, he was a lucid, articulate raconteur and spokesman.  What he
    was a spokesman *for* was not exactly clear (and, in any case, he disavowed
    the role). The Grateful Dead seemed to be the ultimate hippie band, but its
    members, and Garcia in particular, were far more sardonic and
    tough-minded than the flower children who wafted into their concerts.  
    The Dead were independent, apolitical, and free of self-dramatizing 
    posturing, and their ornery edge was one of the secrets of their longevity.
    	Garcia was both starry-eyed and impish about the first blush of the
    psychedelic subculture he helped bring into being, but there was also a
    touch of cruelty in his outlook.  He loved to tell stories about the
    first Trips Festival, which was held in San Francisco's Longshoremen's Hall
    in 1966.  It took place "right down on Fisherman's Wharf, near where all
    the tourists are," Garcia once told a radio interviewer.  "People came in
    total drag __ the parking lot was full of cars painted Day-Glo colors, and
    all kinds of crazy things.  Nobody had seen any of this before, this was
    all *brand new*.  One of my vivid recollections is seeing this old friend
    of mine, who was stoned out of his head on God knows how many tabs of
    acid, and he was running down the street stopping tourists and sticking tabs
    of acid into their mouths, making them take acid, forcing them to take
    it." He laughed his smoker's half-choked laugh at the memory.  "It was
    crazy, outrageous. There were women running around naked, and Hell's Angels,
    and every kind of weird thing.  Nobody had ever seen this stuff before. 
    The straight people had not seen it.  It was like taking Martians and
    dropping them right into 1957."
    	It *is* funny, but the slightly chilly indifference to the reality
    that some people did not (and do not) survive the Acid Test was a
    characteristic that persisted throughout the history of the Grateful
    Dead. Yet it was an honest indifference: the imagery of death's-heads and
    skeletons and matter-of-fact mortality ("If the thunder don't get you then 
    the  lightning will," as Garcia's song "The Wheel" puts it) was right on the
    surface, and the band carried on with a minimum of angst through the 
    passing of three earlier members.  Garcia was unwilling to condemn even
    heroin.  "It's tough for me to adopt a totally anti-drug stance," he
    said in 1989.  "For me, it was like taking a vacation while I was still
    working, in a way.  I was on for eight years.  It was long enough to find 
    out  everything I needed to know about it, and that was it."  Evidently,
    Garcia was unable to maintain that kind of detachment until the end.
    	In spite of these dark tints, Jerry Garcia's legacy is overwhelmingly
    positive.  Grateful Dead tours became an American institution, a
    travelling Chautauqua of eclectic musicianship and communal, 
    cross-generational joy. For every show that fizzled out into noodling 
    mediocrity, there were two or three that sheltered the audience in a 
    beneficent rainbow of great rock and roll.  In the future, those who will 
    come to know the Grateful Dead only through their recordings may wonder 
    what all the fuss was about; the Dead's most original creation, after all,
    was the gestalt of their concerts -- the belongingness that enveloped 
    their audience and made it as central to their music as their very voices 
    and instruments.  If something so evanescent could be put in a museum, an 
    evening with the Grateful Dead would warrant a place of honor in the 
    Smithsonian.  But what was best about the band cannot, by its nature, be 
    preserved, and that gives Garcia's passing a special sting.
    With his death, only the gratefulness remains.
                                                   - HAL ESPEN
    

    
    amen
    i thank christ i was a part of it and able to experience what i did
    
    as was stated before...feel bad for those who never got to go
    
    :^)

    zounds...  too cool...  
    
    oh, and about my earlier request to post it?  never mind... :^)
    
    
    				da ve

    
    PEOPLE Magazine just came out with a Tribute to Jerry Garcia issue.
    It's was well worth the $3.95 that I paid for and had some great
    pictures and articles.  Quite a few ads in the magazine that pay tribute
    to Jerry also.  
    
    FWIW,
    Chris 

The special People magazine on Jerry is on the web at
   http://www.pathfinder.com/people/jerry/special/index.html


/Ken

    Thanks for the NYer article. I thought that hit the nail on the head.
    
    gary

    
    Following are some clips from an Interview with Garcia in Spring 95
    Relix Magazine.  A very personal and touching interview with Jerry's
    concepts of death.
    
    D: Do you feel sometimes at your shows that you're guiding people or
    taking people on a journey through those levels?
    
    J:In a way, but I con't feel like I'm guiding anybody.  I feel like I'm
    sort of stumbling along and a lot of people are watching me or
    stumbling with me or allowing me to stumble for them.  I don't feel
    like, here we are, I'm the guide and come on you guys, follow me.  I do
    that, but I don't feel I;m particularly better than anybody else.
    For example, here's something that used to happen all the time.  The
    band would check into a hotel.  We'd get our room key and then we'd go
    to the elevator.  Well, a lot of times we didn't have a clue where the
    elevator was.  So, what used to happen was that everybody would follow
    me, thinking that I would know.  I'd be walking and thinking, "Why the
    fuck is everybody following me?" (laughter) So, if nobody else does it,
    I'll start something - it's a knack.
    
    D: A lot of people are looking for someone to follow.
    
    J: Yeah.  I don't mind being that person but it doesn't mean that I'm
    good at it or that I know where I'm going or anything else.  It doesn't
    require competence, it only requires the gesture.
    
    D: Is there any planning involved about the choosing songs in a certain
    sequence to take people on a journey?
    
    J: Sometimes we plan, but more often than not we find that when we do,
    we change our plans.  Sometimes we talk down a skeleton of the second
    set, to give ourselves some form - but it depends.  The important thing
    is that it not be dull and that the experience of playing doesn't get
    boring.  Being stale is death.  So we do whatever we can to keep it
    spontaneous and amusing for us.
    
    New interviewer:
    
    R: I understand that you became ill a few years ago and came very close
    to death.  I'm interested in how that experience affected your attitude
    to life?
    
    J:  It's still working on me.  I made a decision somewhere along the
    line to survive, but I didn't have a near death experience in the
    classical sense.  I came out of it feeling fragile, but I'm not afraid
    of death.
    
    R: Where you afraid of death before?
    
    J: I can't say that I was, actually.  But it did make me want to focus
    more attention on the quality of life.  So I feel like now I have to
    get serious about being healthful.  If I'm going to be alive, I want to
    feel well.  I never had to think about it too much before, but finally
    mortality started to catch up with me.
    
    R: You say that you didn't have a near death experience, but did
    anything happen that gave you unusual insights?
    
    J: Well I had some very weird experiences.  My main experience was one
    of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic
    space-ship vehicle with insectoid presences.  After I came out of my
    coma, I had this image of myself as these hunks of protoplasm that were
    stuck together kind of like stamps with perforations between them that
    you could snap off. (laughter)  They were run through with neoprene
    tubing, and there were these insects that looked like cockroaches which
    were like message units that were kind of like my bloodstream.  That
    was my image of my physical self and this particular feeling lasted a
    long time.  It was really strange.
    
    D: That sound really similar to a DMT experience.
    
    J: It was DMT-like as far as the intensity was concerned, but it lasted
    a couple days!
    
    D: Did it affect what you think might happen after death?
    
    J: No.  It just gave me a greater admiration for the incredible baroque
    possibilities of mentation.  The mind is so incredibly weird.  The
    whole process of going into a coma was very interesting, too.  It was a
    slow onset - it took about a week - and during this time I started
    feeling like the vegetable kingdom was speaking to me.  It was
    communicating in cosmic dialect in iambic pentameter.  So there were
    these italian accents and german accents and it got to be this vast
    gabbing.  Potatoes and radishes and trees were all speaking to me. 
    (laughter) It was really strange.  It finally just reached hysteria and
    thats when I passed out and woke up in the hospital.
    
    D: Do you feel psychedelics might be a way for the vegetable kingdom to
    communicate with humans?
    
    J: I like that thought, but I don't knowif it's true.  The thing is
    that there's no way to prove this stuff.  I would love it of somebody
    would put the energy into studying the mind and psychedelics to the
    extent where we could start to talk about things and somebody could
    even throw forth a few suggestions as to what might be happening. 
    There's no body of information - we need more research.  These are
    questions that we should be asking, this is important stuff.
    
    R: And when you came out of your coma, did you come out of it in stages?
    
    J: I was pretty scrambled.  It was as though in my whole library of
    information, all the books had fallen off the shelves and all the pages
    had fallen out of the books. I would speak to people and know what I
    meant to say, but different words would come out.  So I head to learn
    everything over again.  I had to learn how to walk, play the guitar,
    everything.
    
    R: Did you always have faith that you would access it again?  It didn't
    scare you, the idea that you might have lost it forever?
    
    J: I didn't care.  When your memory's gone, you don't care because you
    don't remember when you had one.  (laughter)
    
    D: What do you think happens to consciousness after death?
    
    J: It probably dies with the body.  Why would it exist apart from the
    body?
    
    D: People have had experiences of feeling like they're outside of their
    body.
    
    J: That's true.  But unfortunately, the only ones who have gone past
    that are still dead.  (laughter)  I don't know what consciousness is
    apart from a physcial being.  I once slipped out of my body
    accidentally.  I was at home watching television and I slid out through
    the soles of my feet.  All of a sudden, I was hovering up by the
    ceiling looking down at myself.  So I know that I can disembody myself
    somehow from my physical self, but more than that I have know way of
    knowing. 
    
    ----------------------
    
    I will try to type in more over the weekend.	

                             
    I received this in mail today from Bob Segal (ZKO) and he said
    it was ok to post. I thought you might appreciate it. I think it's 
    grate that he pointed out to the Phoenix, FNX etc. that they 
    did'nt acknowledge Jerry/The Dead until he/they were gone.
    
    Also Re: 474.17.  Thanks for putting that in DeanO. Jerry sure
    provides some mind expanding concepts, ie. communicating
    with veggies.
     
    Sloan
    
    
=================
    Subj: Man of letters finally gets one printed ...
    
Just thought I'd blow my own horn here in case any of you music fans might be
interested. I got a letter published in this week's (Sept. 7) edition of the
Boston Phoenix. 

I was compelled to write after Jerry Garcia died. You see, for years WFNX has
pretty much ignored the Dead, barely acknowledging the existence of their
Boston shows and of course rarely (if ever) playing their music. This despite
the fact that I'm sure a decent percentage of college age kids and other
listeners who fall into the WFNX demographics must have attended Dead shows.
The Phoenix too pretty much ignored the comings and goings of the Dead these
past several years. Only when Garcia died did they throw his picture on the
cover (a small insert) and write about him and the Dead. Why bother to do that
when they had already decided for their readership that the Dead wasn't of
interest musically, culturally, or otherwise? I was offended by the hypocrisy
and sent in the following letter:


     I'm sure Al Giordano's piece about Jerry Garcia came from the heart, but 
     your tribute was a sham nonetheless. The incestuous Phoenix/WFNX hype 
     machine has disdainfully ignored the Dead--the original "alternative" 
     rock band--for years. Now that you have dutifully acknowledged Garcia'a 
     death, you can hop off the bandwagon and go back to wallowing in the 
     "legacy" of Kurt Cobain.


The letter generated the phrase "respect for the Dead" on the front cover where
the highlights of the contents appeared and, next to the letter itself,  a
photo of Garcia with the caption "Cobain received more coverage" (not really
the point of my criticism).

I didn't build my life around the Dead but they certainly played a role. And
while I myself sometimes looked on in amusement at the antics of the second
generation of tie-dyed fans, I nonetheless resented the potshots often taken
by the media. So I got one in of my own this time.

- Bob   
            
                

Matt Groening is the creator of the Simpsons, fyi.  Jamie

Article 77766 of alt.tv.simpsons:


This, copied without permission, is the text to Matt Groening's "Life
in Hell", from Aug 18, 1995:

Portland, Oregon, April 1967...I'm a miserable, confused, 13-year-old
Boy Scout.

Young Matt(YM)'s thought balloons:
"I'm trapped.  I'm surrounded.  I'm doomed."
"I'm horny."
"I hate my life."

We spend our troop meetings lining up, saluting the flag, reciting the
scout laws, getting inspected, receiving demerits, and marching around
in a rigid frenzy.

Nasty Scoutmaster(NS): Atten-hut!

YM: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind,
obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, SIR!

NS: Wipe that smirk off your face, Groany.  You win the big prize,
Groany, you're the worst scout in the whole troop. What do you htink
of that?

YM: Well...Someone's gotta be the worst, sir.

NS: THAT'S A FINE ATTITUDE!



I spend a lot of time alone, walking in the woods, trying to sort out
my bad thoughts and feelings....

(thought balloon): Dear God, I know you can read my thoughts, so
please try to forgive me for not believing in you anymore.


One weekend our scoutmaster volunteers us all to be ushers at a
gigantic evangelistic Christian rally at the Memorial Colidrum across
the river.  We pile into a bus, and on the way through downtown I see
something strange and exotic....

YM: What's that??

Other kid: That's the psychedelic shop!  Hippies go there.

 At the coliseum I help old ladies find their seats and then stand at
attention, listening to the echoey preaching. Finally, I can't take it
anymore, and I slip out of the cooliseum when my scoutmaster isn't
looking....

Three miles later, I reach my destination....

Inside, I stare at all the wild posters and sniff my first
incense. I'm transfixed by this new world, and barely notice the
hippies snickering at my Boy Scout uniform. Finally, I buy an album
with the coolest name-The Grateful Dead.  And that's when I begin my
escape.


(thought balloon): This music is great!!! I bet it'd sound even better
in stereo.

This strip is dedicated to Jerry Garcia, R.I.P.

not sure if i posted something in here about a WSJ editorial
which was very negative towards Jerry.  it was 2-3 wks ago or so.
anyways, i wrote a letter...

well, in friday's journal, just about the entire (all but 1)
letters to the editor section was deadicated to people pissed
about the editorial.  everyone said the guy who wrote the editorial
was off track BIG TIME.  unforetunately, mine wasn't one of them.

rarely do editorials generate that kind of response.  i would
guess they got flodded with people saying the editorial was off track.

anyways, i felt good about readingh all those letters this morning....

JERRY LIVES!

    my respect to Bob Segal and JC....
    
    
    rfb

  This month's Musician magazine (Back Side department, just inside the back
  cover) has a tribute to Jerry by Merl Saunders.  Really nice.  And as you
  would expect from this magazine, definitely a musician's tribute to
  another musician.  Should be hitting the stands right now.   - Jay

    Just finished reading Entertainment's Jerry tribute...some good stuff
    and some stuff (esp. the reviews of albums) that made me say "F*ck U"
    out loud...good thing no one was around here early this morning. 
    
    Still gets to me when I read certain things....like some of the little
    snippits in the article "The Life and Crimes of the Grateful Dead",
    esp. ones that ring a bell real close to home like:
    
    "Dec 2, 1992: The Dead resume performing with a conceret in Denver."  
    
    Patty and I will never, never, ever wear that t-shirt again that says 
    "Jerrys Back" on the back.....
    
    still missin the fat man everyday, 
    rfb

    rfb -
    	I bought one of those "Jerry's Back" t's in Albany on Spring Tour
    the following year. Pretty cool shirt at the time but yes, it will be
    packed away nevah to be worn again.
    
    							_Jeff

    
    not exactly in the "press", but i recently got my Free Mexican Air
    Force newsletter (Peter Rowan's flyer for the uninitiated) and it
    has this to say abou Jerry from Peter:
    
    "	'he can heal your wounded heart, he can set your spirit free
    	he can raise your hopes to be the very best that you can be...
    
    	I was fortunate enough to have worked with Jerry Garcia at a time
    when Dave Grisman, myself, and Jerry were all living in Stinson Beach
    California and we could get together casually just to play music.
    
    	Old and In the Way grew out of spontaneity and openness of playing
    music for the joy of it.  Garcia's enthusiasm was infectious and made
    us all feel the boundless quality of music.
    
    	At a show he once said "no thoughts!"  He asked only that music go
    beyond concept and flow freely.  That's the legacy of Jerry Garcia,
    that's the challenge.
    
    					Peter"
    
    
    
    	i thought it was pretty cool...  very Jerry and very Peter....
    
    
    						da ve

Anyone check out the GD Almanac?
Bill Weld's letter/comments made it in.
Rage!

    
    Where can I get this R.S. tribute?
    
    >Kesey, in a breezy farewell, remembers that Jerry was always "the sworn
    >enemy of hot air and commercials, however righteous the cause or lucrative
    >the product. Nobody ever heard you use that microphone as a pulpit. No 
    >anti-war rants, no hymns to peace. No odes to the trees and All Things 
    >Organic. No ego-deaths or born-againness. No devils denounced, no
    >gurus glorified. No dogmatic howlings that I ever caught wind of."
    
    Yeah!  :-)   

    yeah
    just imagine what, say, Sinead O'Connor coulda done with an audience the
    size of a sold out RFK or Rich Stadium show
                    

    >>Where can I get this R.S. tribute?
    
    
    I saw this book at a book store in one of the malls this week while I
    was shopping. The same picture that was on the Jerry RS magazine is the
    cover of this book. (circa 1980 picture of Jerry peeking over his
    glasses for those that didn't see the mag.) I flipped through it quick
    while in the store and it looked pretty decent from the few pix I saw
    and snippets I read. I think it goes for $30 or so - didn't buy it as
    I'm hoping it'll be a X-mas gift. Should be able to find it at any
    major bookstore I'd figure.
    
    

Anyone see the latest Rolling Stone?  

Well Jerry made the cover again - this time w/ his monkey that rode on his
back.  Actually it's a skeleton on his back.  

The article is about Jerry's drug use and is an excerpt from a book soon
to be released.  It's an "oral history" in that they interview a lot of people
who knew Jerry personally such as; Owsley, Grisman, Parrish, Merle, 
Jon Mcintire, Laird Grant, Mountain Girl, Barsotti, his housekeeper, doctor,
personal advisor, first girlfriend, wives you name it...on and on and on.

It's the dirt.  You knew it wouldn't take long....they made the money praising
and what's left?  DIRT!
    
bob

    i knew there was a reason i let my subscrip to RS lapse again....RS has gone
    way down hill IMO. I felt this way a couple of years ago after I had
    agreed over the phone to renew, then an issue came out that I took
    offense to, decided to let them know by NOT renewing...they took me to
    a collection agency, I called the editor and bitched them out, they
    said don't worry, I would NEVER get another subscrip again.....couple
    of years later...introductory offer, couple of months ago...lapse.
    
    rfb

I haven't read the article, but the truth as I saw it was that there were 
years when Jerry was heavy into drugs that the Dead weren't progressing much 
artistically.  In particular, I think that his heroin use and addition should 
be talked about so that it can be de-glamorized.  Jerry's and music was highly
praised - as it should have be.  Jerry was also remembered as a great guy 
to be around.  However, I would not want any young people to be given the
impression that *everything* in his life was an example for how a life should 
be led.  YMMV

Jim

    Jim, your opinion is always welcome...just don't piss us off!  %^)
    
    Jerry often said "Don't follow me!" and we all know heroin isn't something
    to be glamorized, but Jerry's main message, when asked, was "Do your own
    thing, don't look to us(me) for an answer, cause we ain't got it!" 
    I think if we listen to THAT msg, at least -I- don't need "The Secret
    Life of Jerry Garcia"
    
    rfb

	We put Jerry high up on that pedestal  and it was/is easy
	to forget that he was just another human being(a very talented one!)
	and subject to all of life's pitfalls like the rest of us.
	

	Toby

An artist's substance addiction is hardly anything new.  Whether it was Billy
Holiday's heroin addiction, or Earnest Hemingway's alcoholism, many
of the greatest artistic forces throughout time have had life threatening
substance abuse problems - and many of them were taken from us as a result.

Jerry's personal life and his public persona were, to me, an ongoing paradox.
I think it's important, especially for young people who look up to someone
like Jerry and his memory, to remember that he was still just a man.  He had
many faults, perhaps the worst of which, or at least the most frightening
and dangerous of which, was his inability to control his vices.

Maybe it's just because I have three teenagers, and such things sometimes
concern me, I don't know.  It's important to avoid deifying him - he himself
would have detested that, I'm sure.  Let people know that he was imperfect,
fragile, talented and beautiful -- just like all of the rest of us.

tim

    very good, tim...

	I think the best one can do with their children is to
	help them and encourage them to make up their own minds.

	Jerry's message seemed to be about "doing your own thing - 
	follow your bliss"...not "do it my way - follow my lead".

	I'm not saying "deify" Jerry - I agree, he would hate that! -
	but I am saying - I don't think that "exposing" him as
	"fragile and imperfect" has to be done so that kids won't
	follow in his footsteps.  That seems like "crucifying"
	Jerry.  I don't think that's necessary.

	as I started to say - teach your children well...

	Debess

    "When it's done and over, a man is just a man, Playin', Playin' In the Band"