Life lessons on two wheels
to the tunes of the
Grateful Dead
Life lessons on two wheels
to the tunes of the
Grateful Dead
This Week in Grateful Dead History
Week of November 23
We can discover the wonders of nature, rolling in the rushes down by the riverside.
There is one school of thought about the COVID-19 pandemic which suggests that we are all going to become infected with this virus at one point or another, and it seemed that my time had come. Ironically, it appeared that my buddy, Bill, and I had successfully dodged the Corona Bullet, as we were halfway through the final 800-mile drive back to Colorado, having played 34 games in six baseball tournaments in Arizona and Florida, spanning six weeks. We were about to slide into home plate, head first, with the winning run, our trusty mountain bikes safely secured behind my 4Runner, when my pick for T.W.I.G.D.H., the 11/24/79 show from the Golden Hall Community Concourse in San Diego CA, was preempted with breaking news.
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This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 1 – December 31, 1978
The storyteller makes no choice
The Grateful Dead were famous for their New Year’s shows, and played twenty-one times at the stroke of midnight on December 31, at six different venues, all in the Bay Area. Six of those shows took place at the Winterland Ballroom, an erstwhile ice skating rink which became a storied rock music venue with a capacity of some 5000. Sadly, Winterland was shuttered in 1979, but not until one final concert had taken place. For reasons ranging from its eight-hour length, to the line-up that included the Blues Brothers and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, to the almost-six-hour DVD – The Closing of Winterland – that was made to commemorate the event, this was easily the most famous of the Dead’s New Year’s shows, and the Deadhead Cyclist’s choice for T.W.I.G.D.H., as well as the best New Year’s Eve show of all time.
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 16 - April 12, 1978
Is there anything a man don’t stand to lose
I was first exposed to bigotry at the age of five when my family unwittingly became the only Jewish residents of what proved to be a passionately anti-Semitic neighborhood in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The year was 1960, and the hateful echoes of the Holocaust were still plainly audible, particularly among the already settled Scandinavian and Protestant Anglo-Saxon population, which made no effort to conceal their displeasure at the significant influx of Jewish families to the Twin Cities.
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 17 - April 23, 1977
Without love in the dream
Ask any Deadhead what period represents the apex of the band’s touring career and the Spring, 1977 tour will inevitably be cited. Much like references to the “seventh member” of the six-piece band being present during a particularly outstanding show, there was a seventh member quality to the magic of the 30 shows the Grateful Dead played in the spring of 1977.
All Material Copyright 2021 Stewart Sallo