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On July 4th, 1996 – nearly eleven months after the passing of Jerry Garcia – I attended the first of what would be a lifetime of concerts featuring members of Jerry’s old band, the Grateful Dead. The show was called Furthur Fest (the spelling of “Further” was altered to mimic the name of the bus at the centre of Ken Kesey’s old Acid Tests back in the ’60’s, where the Grateful Dead…err, I mean The Warlocks…figured prominently) and it was a travelling conglomeration of bands directly or indirectly related to The Dead (Hot Tuna, Los Lobos, Bruce Hornsby, Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box, and Ratdog featuring Bob Weir).
And I almost didn’t go.
Or (more likely) I almost drove down to Darien for the concert by myself. I don’t remember why I had an extra ticket and no companion, but I did, and all of my usual suspects were out or unaccounted for. I ended up asking my friend John to come along, explaining that we (I) could sell beer in the parking lot and that would pay for both the tickets and the gas, so all he had to do was sit in the passenger seat there and back to keep me company and enjoy the show when we got there, and can you believe it, I pretty much had to beg him to agree to come along.
But beg I did, he caved, and off we went. We stopped at the duty-free to buy our allotted cases of Molson XXX (which was the money back in the pre-IPA days) and in no time we were there.
It was a beautiful day and I busied myself turning our beers into cold, hard US currency, something I always approached with an eager vim and vigour. it didn’t take long to sell out – just long enough to miss sets by openers John Wesley Harding and Alvin Youngblood Hart – and in we went, jubilant that we had more than enough money to get us back home.
I’m pretty sure Los Lobos was the first act we saw, which was pretty fun, and included the Dead’s Bertha as a closer. Then I think it was Hot Tuna (which contains half of Jefferson Airplane) and then Bruce Hornsby.
And I’ll have to pause here for a second because Hornsby was drop-dead fantastic. Many remember Bruce Hornsby for his hit That’s Just the Way It Is but most of my friends know him as a more-than-occasional sideman for (and near-member of) the Grateful Dead. That said, despite including several Dead songs in his set the true standout was – surprise, surprise – That’s Just the Way It Is. I mean, he must have jammed that thing out for fifteen minutes, and get this: I heard that he pretty much never plays the song and that it was the first time he had played it on the whole tour. Good song, that That’s Just the Way It Is.
Next up was Mickey Hart, and all I’ll say is: I didn’t get it. At all. With the exception of a very embarrassing Fire on the Mountain that may or may not have involved synchronized dance moves I have blocked his set from my memory as a coping mechanism.
The closing act of the night was Bob Weir’s rock outfit Ratdog, and I remember it being quite fun. Strange that he played songs that had already been played earlier in the day (Dylan’s When I Paint My Masterpiece had been covered by Bruce Hornsby and Son House’s Walkin’ Blues had already been played by Hot Tuna), but hey, it’s jam music, and nothing ever gets played the same way twice. Heck, Bobby even does us the solid of blowing the lyrics from time to time, which really helps to mix things up.
Bob’s set included the standout moment of the whole concert (for me at least), when the 4th of July fireworks started up over the adjacent amusement park during Rob Wasserman’s doublebass solo. This was my first time being in the USA for July 4th so I was already feeling a bit foreigner-patriotic, but when Wasserman segued his improvisation into The Star Spangled Banner I got all jittery. I shan’t forget it.
What I do forget is whether or not there was a night-closing super-jam involving all the musicians, but it seems likely. That said, those things are always underrehearsed and overly busy so they are generally not very musical, so if it did indeed happen it was probably pretty forgettable anyway.
I also forget where we slept that night*. It wouldn’t have been a hotel – I didn’t sell that much beer – but I certainly recall we got pulled into the border on the way back and I’m pretty sure it was daylight at the time.
Geez, you can’t expect me to remember everything…
*John has since told me that I pulled into a no-name greasy spoon truck stop after the show and we slept in the car, inadvertently parked right next to the employee’s entrance. “I woke up sweaty and hungover with an unimpressed greasy cook smoking and staring at me…” Sounds legit.
Todd Man Out 