You Have Yours

When one's life is full of drudgery, one is entitled to guilty pleasures.

American Idol tops my list. It's even ahead of Junior Mints. Wait...American Idol...Junior Mints. Yeah, American Idol. No doubt about it.

Another guilty pleasure is biographies of rock stars. I adore late 60s / early 70s rock and all the delicious trippiness of that era. And yes, I'll admit it, I feel comparitevly fabulous about myself every time I read about someone who had it all and ended up snorting it up their nose and blithering away in rehab.

In the past week I've read three such biographies. One was "My Life with The Dead" written by the manager of The Grateful Dead. Did I enjoy it? Of course. And I ate Junior Mints while I was reading it. It's a heady life I lead.

While I've never been a Deadhead, I do have a couple of Grateful Dead stories:

1983, Tempe Arizona: A dozen or so Deadhead wanna bes in a college student apartment (belonging to my friend Karen and her roommate Terry), pre-concert. Terrapin Station is playing. I'm thinking back to a Dead concert I had attended two years prior, in Kansas City. I thought it was boring. I'd turned to my friend half way through it and commented that I should have brought a flashlight and a book.

The day of the concert, I'd written on the white board in the dorm hallway "Trip on citric acid with the Grapefruit Dead!" Maybe that's what was missing. Acid.

After the concert, we'd somehow stumbled upon a crowd of ardent fans, waiting for the Dead to enter an awaiting limo. Finally his royal beardedness appears and the crowd asyncronously lauds little variation on two statements "Great show!" and "Hey Jerry, love you man!" This goes on for a while and is punctutated only by the lone and blasphemous cry of a spoiled 21 year old blonde: "Ew! I saw his butt crack!"

Well, I did - when he bent over to enter the limo and his baggy brown cordouroy pants slipped down. As might be imagined, it wasn't pretty.

Two years later, I'm dissing the Dead again. Mid Terrapin Station, I turn to the person next to me and say "You know...I really don't think their music is that great." The room goes silent, people freeze mid bong hit, and twelve pairs of eyes are upon me. I shrug and repeat that I think their music is just ok. I was 23 and that was a big moment for me. I chose integrity over cheaply won acceptance. It felt good.

What's funny is over the years their music has grown on me. But do I wish I had been a Deadhead? No, not at all. I didn't see a lot of joy in the faces of the gauzy dervishes whose dancing seemed almost perfunctory. If I would have followed any band around from city to city, it would have been the Beat Farmers in the early 90s. Whenever they played in Colorado, I was there, from Herman's Hideaway in downtown Denver, to the Buffalo Rose in Golden. I remember one night at the Buffalo Rose where the pre show energy was building like a storm at sea. I was close to a wall of speakers that blasted a song that was popular at the time "You want it allll, but you can't haaaave it...." That song just about killed me. I got a lot that night though. The energy of the crowd gave me no choice, they moved me with them, and I was nothing short of enthralled at finding myself in the front row, mere feet away from Country Dick Montana who, at the time, I thought was the sexiest man on earth.

At a BF concert in a small bar in Breckenridge, CO (Shamus O'Tooles), equipment malfunctions and suddenly the band is right in the middle of the bar, drinking and talking with everyone. Guitarist Jerry Rainey and I talk about his five year old son's obsession with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Joey Harris is smiley, friendly, and adorable. He makes me feel successful in my attempts to impress him with my knowledge of his previous bands. Country Dick is in a sinister mood. He stands alone, drinking beer.
The concert resumes shortly after. Some college guy (nice looking but nerdy), keeps trying to pick me up, and finally I agree to dance with him. Country Dick asks for a volunteer to do a "Sheep Shot" (a small inflatible sheep bedecked in a black garter belt. Liquor of some sort if poured into an opening and....ME. The sheep shot recipient has to be me. Some people need to summit Kilimanjaro. Some need to climb the corporate ladder. I need to be the one to do a sheep shot, and I am, as the crowd watches. A proud moment? Well, er... maybe not, but memorable. Country Dick held the sheep over my mouth,I drank what I think was whiskey out of it, and beamed at him as he said in his fabulous deep voice "There...now doesn't it taste better that way?"

Ninety minutes later the concert is over. Most of the crowd has left. Country Dick is sitting alone on the stage. He doesn't look happy. I go over to him and ask if he is ok. "I will be in a couple of weeks" he growls. God that voice. I'm 30 years old and just beginning to realize that life is short and opportunities often fleeting. I'm suddenly asking the mighty Country Dick Montana if I can have a hug. Amazingly, he smiles and stands up. He puts his long arms around me, I burrow into him, inhaling him, and we rock back and forth on the stage in each other's arms. Is he loving me? Is he about to ask me to come back to his hotel room? No. Actually I think I'm holding him up. He's pretty drunk. A few minutes later I'm telling him he should drink a lot of water, and maybe get a humidifier since we're high in the mountains. He seemed to think that was a good idea. Yep, my life as a groupie, Jewish mother style.

Country Dick died mid-concert a few years later, at a bar in Whistler, BC. Although I rarely listen to the Beat Farmers anymore, I consider them one of the great loves of my life.

I am right on the verge of discovering some new groove. I think it's going to be an artistic medium of some sort. Once it is in place, a mighty torrent is going to flood it.