Life lessons on two wheels to the tunes of the
Grateful Dead
Robert Hall Weir, né Parber,
October 16, 1947 – January 10, 2026
Let the words be yours, I’m done with mine.
I first saw Bob Weir on October 19, 1974 with the Grateful Dead at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. I last saw Bob Weir on June 14, 2024 as a member of Dead & Company at The Sphere in Las Vegas. Over the course of almost 50 years, it was my privilege to see Bobby perform countless times as a member of the Grateful Dead, Kingfish, Ratdog, the Other Ones, The Dead, Furthur, Dead & Company, the Weir Robinson & Greene Acoustic Trio, and probably others that I have failed to remember.
Other Posts
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 8 - February 19, 1973
Smiling on a cloudy day
Jerry Garcia was repeatedly in trouble for skipping classes, and was discharged from the U.S. Army after repeatedly going A.W.O.L.; Bob Weir was expelled from nearly every school he attended; and I was suspended for refusing to interrupt a marching band practice I was leading when then-Governor Ronald Reagan visited my high school in Anaheim, California. The common threads running between the three of us are a rebellious attitude towards authority, intertwined with having endured a series of punishments for merely following the well-known Shakespearean principle (as stated by Polonius in Act 1, Scene 3 of “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”): This above all: To thine own self be true.
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 13 - March 23, 1974
Comic book colors on a violin river
A few weeks ago we explored the seemingly oxymoronic nature of Grateful Dead as a band name. “Upon scrutiny” we came to the conclusion that the words, “grateful” and “dead,” are not the strange bedfellows they appear to be, but actually complement each other to perfection if considered in the context of the psychedelic-inspired “ego death” experience the band and most Deadheads were engaged in during the Acid Test years (and, of course, well beyond). Still, if there were a Jeopardy category called, “Strange band names of the Sixties,” Grateful Dead would most likely be the “Daily Double.” And there are plenty of other band names that came out of that same period that appear to defy logic, regardless of how hard you try to spin them.
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 32 - August 8, 1982
There’s a dragon with matches
According to the Chinese zodiac, the next Year of the Dragon is not due until 2024, and we are currently in the midst of the Year of the Rat. But with all due respect to Chinese culture, we may need to depart from this ancient tradition and designate 2020 as the year of the “dragon with matches that’s loose on the town.”
All Material Copyright 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 by Stewart Sallo