I woke up during the night (Tue-Wed) with the ideas percolating…but I’m just getting to my laptop now (Wed. 6:48 pm) due to home repair issues…So, If you’re interested in today’s “Deadline story”, please skip this part and head down to "POST TIME" below. That said, Jerry, the Grateful Dead, practicing Buddhists and others simply see that life just IS…IS…IS… and “our mission should we decide to accept it” is NOT impossible…as long as we practice acceptance without judgment. Practicing this made the day’s “interruptions”…well, they just were part of the long, strange trip…and I stayed focused and relaxed...
“When life looks like Easy Street, there’s danger at your door…”
…our landline stopped working and the condensate from our basement ductless A/C unit started dripping onto the carpet…Oh! One more, when I logged in, Windows crashed and I had to do a restart…
Ahh! But I wasn’t deterred and started my morning with centering prayer meditation, read inspirational email from some friends, listened to movin’ music, had a Filipino-Mex breakfast…was reminded to feed our backyard birds ("the crow told me") then contacted Verizon and had a fun and wonderful encounter with their representative and then moved in HVAC land. After several hours of learning, watching, reading and experimenting, I found a clogged condensate drain line, To do this I had to dig up the dirt next to the foundation and go down until I found the end of the tube. Got my trusty coat hanger and pushed it through (“Keep on Pushing”) [1] until I “Broke on through to the Other Side”). After removing the clog, I repositioned the drain tube so it was pointing DOWN – For some reason, the installer had made the tube like a sink drain with a U bend so the open end was pointing UP. Never having worked on this, I called the installer to see what he thought of my idea. He agreed and I proceeded. AND IT'S FIXED!!!
[1] I liked this version as it shows these veterans years later and still pushing - provided role models for the younger musicians who are accompanying them.
It is now post time…
JERRY: A FRIEND OF THE DEVIL
From the article:
The character in the song is on the run—a theme that comes up again and again in Grateful Dead songs from “Sugaree” to “Bertha” to “Jack Straw.”
It’s a story song for the ages. One for the campfires and the hoedowns and the tributes and the masses.
My adds:
Outlaws are a recurring theme...so we can see connections between the Dead and the Hell's Angels. This will be explored in this post.
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First played: 1970
Time played live: 420
Last played: 1995
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The music was written by Jerry Garcia and John Dawson and the lyrics are by Robert Hunter. It is the second track of the Dead's 1970 album American Beauty. The song is largely acoustic, like most of American Beauty. It is known for the guitar riff Garcia plays in the bass register, which is a descending G major scale (G F# E D C B A G). The song is among the most covered songs written by the Grateful Dead; Hunter later stated, "that was the closest we've come to what may be a classic song."
The song was introduced in concert on March 20, 1970 at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY. Following the group's October 1974-June 1976 touring hiatus, the song was performed in a significantly slower arrangement with extended guitar and keyboard solos. Loggins and Messina, whose version of the song was slowed down, might have inspired the Dead to do the same. In more recent history, Phil Lesh and Friends have performed a more uptempo version similar to the original.
Hunter plays a slightly different version on his album (released only in LP format) Jack O'Roses. He adds a final verse:
"You can borrow from the Devil/ You can borrow from a friend/ But the Devil'll give you twenty/ When your friend got only ten"
VERSIONS
--closing of Winterland
--Donna providing the Devil’s female face
--this song ends at 4:39… followed by bonus audio during the commercial break: The CBS Orchestra, along with solos by David, then Jerry, perform the Jagger/Richards song made popular by Marianne Faithful in 1964, "As Tears Go By."
Friend of the Devil – Robert Hunter (acoustic) (02:58)
--great version, includes these alternate lyrics:
“You can borrow from the devil
You can borrow from a friend
The devil will give you twenty
When your friend got only ten”
-- Béla on banjo just adds to the fun in this acoustic gem
--singer’s voice captures the country energy and the video adds to this effect. Told Mike, my transplanted New York friend now in Arizona, that the scenery looks like where he lives in the desert.
From the article:
One of the group’s earliest major performances – the ‘Mantra-Rock dance’ – was organized by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple and took place on Jan 29th, 1967, at the Avalon ballroom. Accompanying the band on stage was the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, beat poet Allen Ginsberg and singer Janis Joplin. Proceeds from the concert were donated to the temple and soon after the band released their first LP, The Grateful Dead, on Warner Brothers. The album cover featured an image of Yoga-Narasimha, the man-lion avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu.
One of his very last collaborations was on Calcutta-born composer and guitarist Sanjay Mishra’s album, Blue Incantation, a gorgeous set that effortlessly locates Indian classical music within a western context. On tracks like “Clouds and Monsoon,” Jerry’s bluesy riffs are worked into the song, evoking a rich, atmospheric palette while Samir Chatterjee’s virtuosity on tabla matches the layered texture of Mishra’s compositions. The centerpiece of the album is Sanghamitra Chatterjee’s intense vocals in “Passage Into Dawn,” an impassioned tribute to beauty and impermanence.
Garcia’s bargain with the devil finally ran its course when he was killed by a heart attack on August 9, 1995, barely a week after his 53rd birthday. But not before he had created an alternative American reality that still lives on through the vast ecosystem of bootleg recordings, folklore, lyrics and the Deadhead community.
As per his wishes, a portion of Jerry Garcia’s ashes were spread into the Ganges river in the holy town of Rishikesh by Bob Weir and his widow Deborah Koons, accompanied by Sanjay Mishra. The remaining ashes were scattered into the San Francisco bay.
The Grateful Dead (first album cover - cited in previous article)
BRIDGE BETWEEN HELL AND HEAVEN
--Luther (Lucifer) Dickinson heating it up…pure Baccanalia!!! Thanks, Phil, for keeping a watchful eye on these modern-day Pranksters.
JERRY: A FRIEND OF THE ANGELS
“Jerry Angel Unplugged – Jerry Garcia 2002” - Stanley Mouse (Source)
From the article:
Backstage at a Grateful Dead concert in the early 1980s, band lyricist John Perry Barlow cornered Jerry Garcia and asked, “Why do we have the Hells Angels around?”
It was a fair question. At first glance, the two groups could not have been more different: The Angels were a motorcycle club known for their penchant for violence; the Dead were musicians whose philosophy skewed distinctly pacifist. But there were deeper connections that linked the unlikely pairing. Far beyond the tragic events of the infamous Altamont concert in December 1969, which cemented the two groups in the public imagination, the Dead and the Angels had a long history and a number of mutual friends that bonded the two groups in surprising but enduring ways.
But beyond geography and similar countercultural sensibilities, what really connected the two groups was history. The Angels hired the Dead to play on New Year’s day 1967, a free concert in the Panhandle, and two weeks later, the Angels guarded the power cables and even tended to lost children at the Human Be-In, a monumental free event in Golden Gate Park featuring the Dead and several other bands along with Beat poets and politicos.
Barlow discovered that when he managed a tour for the Dead. “You know,” he complained to Garcia, “these people are actually committed to darkness, if you think about it.” Garcia replied, thoughtfully: “Well, you know, good wouldn’t mean much without evil.” It startled Barlow, but left an enduring lesson. “The integration of the shadow and the light and the complete seamlessness of both is to me so fundamental to my philosophy,” Barlow explained. “The reason we had those Angels around was so that I could learn that.” But Garcia was also saying something about the Dead. Community was a guiding principle of the Dead’s project, and that meant inclusiveness — which was why there was a place for the Angels in the Dead’s world. At Garcia’s funeral in August 1995, journalists watched in amazement as a phalanx of Angels, dressed in their colors, rode their Harleys up to the church and walked inside — only to reappear a few moments later, dressed in black suits, to act as security. More than two decades after the Dead played for Chocolate George’s funeral, the Angels returned the favor.
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--includes a song from each band that included Brian Cutler – a guy who brought some order to the Dead as their manager and also spent time managing the Stones
(from this article)
By the Stones' third song, "Sympathy for the Devil," Jagger saw just how tense the situation is and stopped the song. He implored the crowd and the Angels to remain calm.
"Hey, people. Sisters. Brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters. Come on, now," Jagger said. "That means everybody just cool out. Will you cool out, everybody. I know. Everybody, be cool now. Come on. Alright? How are we doing over there? Alright? Can we still make it down the front? Is there anyone there that's hurt, huh? Everyone alright? OK? Alright. I think we are cool. We can go. We always havin' something very funny happens when we start that number."
THE VERDICT: WHAT SAY YOU, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY?
"Guilty on both charges...just like the rest of us..."
"We're all a mixture of darkness and light..."
