Art by Sergio Aragonés
Video - from Rob Bleetstein post on Instagram
(photo - Kevin Papa)
Capitol Theatre 3/30/80
Ole Trippenwandt
My Most Overwhelming Dead Show Experience
Me and a buddy were 20 yr old, heading for the show, and loaded for bear. We loaded our respective bullets with half an eighth apiece, rolled a dozen, and dropped two barrels apiece and jumped in the car for the 45 minute ride to Passaic. Things began to get a bit dicey when we got close, and I began to wonder if I was going to be able to get the car into a space before things got any hairier. Strangely enough, it seemed like I found a space on the street Right Behind the Capitol! Whew! And so we hustled into the show as Alabama Getaway was getting underway. We had the last seat in rows R & S on the right side, and when we got there, the chairs were gone! The Sidney was coming on strong as we begged bouncer after bouncer for help with this state of affairs without any seeming response. Suddenly three of them formed a cordon around us and I thought, Shit! I'm going to be tossed out into the street in the middle of a major peak bummer! But we went up to John Scher's office, and after a secret knock of some sort, we came into the room to find him counting stacks of money. "Put 'em up in the front row", was the command. I was totally whacked at this point. Heading up the middle aisle to the stage, I couldn't even look up. Finally we arrived, and took two seats on the left of the center aisle, and for the first time in my tripping haze, I looked up to see Jerry square in front me all of 4 feet away. The rips that came off their stage monitors tore into my head. It was like this was the real show and the fuzzy copy coming out of the speakers was not that important. Sometimes Jerry swung around, and beads of sweat came off him and landed on us. the first set we were conspicuous as the only jokers in the first row, like lounging in your living room for a private show unaffected by the standing throngs behind us. Later on Belushi sat with us for a while, and all this hot chicks (the beautiful people that always get these sort of seats I guess) came and sat around us. We tried to smoke a bone, but the fire officials would have none of that, so we had to content ourselves with our trips and our bullet blasts. It just didn't seem fair, because at one point Jerry was smoking a big canouing bone just offstage. The entire show seared my head such that almost the entire crowd had left before we could bring ourselves to leave our seats. Finally we made it outside, only to find that empty space and a driveway had replaced my earlier acid deranged impression of a proper parking space! Two Passaic cops came up, and asked up why we were sort of wandering about in the street. When the cop rolled down the window, I could see a bottle of Michelob in his lap, and he was smoking a bone! We asked them for a ride to the police station, but they refused. The radio crackled, and the cop at the wheel told us he had a call. They did a hasty k-turn in the street, crushing the side of a yellow cadillac that still had a temporary plate! Whereupon the cop on the driver side I had talked to earlier rolled down the window and hissed "not a word!" in a threatening way. And so we set off for the police station, still tripping somewhat, my infuenza (I did I forget to mention I had the fucking flu through this?) kicking in in the chilly night air. We had been given a vague direction for the station, and were about halfway there when we picked up a shadow, apparently someone who thought we might be an apt target for a robbery. After a few blocks of this, and sensing telepathically that the shit was going to go down on the next dark stretch, we conspired to turn in unison and scream at the tail, which of course surprised the shit out of him, and he dropped his knife and ran.Finally we got to the station, which was a bedlam of humanity crying about their broken windows and stolen cassette players. I was so scared I knocked off the last of my marching powder outside, and threw my remaining bones in the gutter. My buddy, being the absolute stoic, entered the station still half loaded with goodies. We were to see later that there was no risk of arrest. I stormed up to the counter wailing about my stolen car, and was told after some delay to sit down and shut up, "Your car wasn't stolen, just towed" and they would need to find free officers to retrieve the vehicle. This seemed to take hours. I wandered about the police station, eventually ending up on the third or fourth floor, where shiver my timbers, the familiar smell of herbal goodness filled the air! I could see through a half-open door a half-dozen cops were sitting around a table smoking bones and playing poker for money! Passaic in 1980 was one hip town! I was to meet some of this crew a year or two later in the Half Moon, a service road go-go bar at the Meadowlands that had ladies that pranced around entirely naked and was a firemen and police officer's bar, others enter at fear of a Severe Beating. But I digress. Finally, sitting down (and pretty much come down) in the station waiting area, they announced that officers were available to retrieve my car from the private tow yard. It was a tall kid that looked all of 15, and a short hispanic guy all of 5 feet tall! The absurdity of it struck me, and as we headed out in the police Bronco through the now dark streets of Passaic, and I couldn't get it off my mind. Mutt and Jeff! Mutt and Jeff! I repeated to myself. And everytime I said it, I dissolved into helpless laughter. Abruptly they jerked the truck to a halt, shut off the lights, and asked me if I wanted to get out right then and there, or shut the fuck up! I kept quiet the rest of the trip to the yard, where I paid my impoundment fee, and got the hell out of Dodge. 9 months later they arrested me for not paying the parking ticket from that evening, but that too is yet another story. Wrapped in drama, sheer cosmic concert experience, and chemical enhancement, this was the most amazing concert experience of my life.
“Talk to me, David…you should talk to me a little bit in my solo…” Garcia was asking me to converse with him musically during the guitar solo he’d been playing after the first verse of Blue Yodel #9, the Jimmie Rodgers classic that we had never played together before.
“Hi, Jerry, nice solo you’re playing,” I quipped. We were kidding around, exchanging light-hearted banter like we always did when we got together in the small recording room that used to be my garage.
Decibel Dave slated “Take 1,” but after the first verse we stopped, not quite sure whether Garcia would sing a long or short yodel. “The tempo’s a little quick, too,” Jerry commented. “Down from the bottom, brother, say way down from Dixie now,” and immediately kicked off a slower, more laid-back groove. “That’s it, that’s the feel. Nothing is moving on the river.” It had been over a year since Jerry and I had hit any licks together, and this was going to be fun.
Fun was always at the heart of the matter with Jerry, and now, three weeks and a thousand universes later, the notion that my world, and the world of countless others, will be decidedly less fun is painfully settling in. Of course, Jerry desperately wouldn’t want me or us to feel this way. I’m certain of that. Every fiber of his being was dedicated to the awesome task of making us all feel better, and he always did. He had those special unique qualities that fused his great creativity with his even greater humanity, tempered always with that sense of humor…fun.
Let’s not confuse the issue, though. Jerome Garcia was a great leader: musically, morally, and spiritually. He didn’t want it, he didn’t seek it, he didn’t ask for it, he may not have even liked it, but he carried that enormous weight with grace, dignity, and a huge sense of responsibility to his fellow man, particularly those less fortunate. If you needed help, he was there. Of course, as we now know, it was Jerry himself who needed help. Although he was getting it, the years had already taken their toll, and that long, strange trip is over. But is it really? Not for us: Jerry’s kids. We need to take his message to heart, find our own creativity and our own path, and help try and make this world a little better, which will be just a little harder for us now. This is our challenge, which I feel we can meet if we can all take a little piece of him with us. We all need to become a little more Jerry-like and move on down the road. Just one more thing I thought you’d want to know – Jerry died with a smile on his face.
-David Grisman
This passage is an excerpt from GARCIA - A Grateful Celebration, originally published in 1995 by Dupree's Diamond News