09-05-2011, 09:31 PM
I was late to the dance... both of them. I never really got into the acid scene, the Dead, or West Coast music (I did come close in '66 when I found myself stuck without a job or much income after my freshman year in college in some plain place between endless corn fields and the pig butchery in mid-Iowa, and I had a choice to thumb to California, or go home.) i never made it to Haight-Ashbury or even the state it was in, but the state of mind came by for a few visits years later. I still wasn't into the Dead... most often I thought it was noise and a few who could not carry a tune... until one day when it just came to me, courtesy of some show on PBS, and I said "Who ARE these guys?" and the extended jams just caught me. I think you still have to look hard to find some really great music in that group (aside from that fellow with less fingers than he ought to have) but every once in a while, they would find it and blow me away. That was a long time ago, but a touch of grey suits me anyway.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"