Touch of Garcia http://www.pacificsun.com/news/show_story.php?id=1002&e=y
Grateful Dead leader's legend still ripples the still waters of rock by Greg Cahill July 30, 2009 Fourteen years ago, on Aug. 9, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia went belly up in a Forest Knolls rehab center, where he was trying to shake his demons, but instead succumbed to health problems that led to a fatal heart attack. Death knocked just eight days after his 53rd birthday, ushering in a legacy that has gone into overdrive five decades after Garcia and a group of pals formed the proto-Grateful Dead rock band the Warlocks. On the anniversary of Garcia's birth, Aug. 1, the world still celebrates this gentle soul who more than any other musician personified the San Francisco music scene. In Austin, Texas, at the lakeside Moon River Bar & Grill, jam bands and fans will gather at the eighth annual Jerry Garcia Birthday Festival to help preserve the memory of the influential singer, songwriter, guitarist and bandleader. There also will be several satellite radio tributes. And locally, Dedicated Maniacs, 21 Aces and Dead Set will assemble Aug. 1 at 19 Broadway nightclub in Fairfax at a Garcia birthday bash. All of this comes on the heels of a tour that found four of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, with Government Mule guitarist Warren Haynes in tow, and billing themselves simply as the Dead, returning to the road for the first time since 2004. It wasn't the same without Garcia. "The Dead mightn't be the real thing as it relates to the Grateful Dead with Jerry," Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux conceded on the band's Web site, in a review of the tour, "but it's close enough to pretend and have a good time with 18,000 of your closest friends." Ain't nothin' like the real thing. Here are five reasons to celebrate the man they called Captain Trips: 1. In a band that exemplified the hippie ethic, Garcia remained a humble cat who spurned the urge to use his rock-star status to impress--you couldn't always say that about some of his bandmates. 2. First and foremost, Garcia was a bluegrass nut. He may be thought of as a psychedelic rocker, but he grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on his grandma's radio. He played in jug bands before being bitten by the rock 'n' roll bug. He contributed that country influence to the classic Dead albums Working Man's Dead and American Beauty. He then lent his fame to 1975's Old & in the Way, the one-off bluegrass album that helped launch the progressive bluegrass scene. He later recorded acoustically with his own band and worked with bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman (whom Garcia dubbed "Dawg") right up till shortly before his death. 3. He never lost his joy of the music and his quest to learn. At one interview I conducted at the band's San Rafael headquarters in the late-'80s, Garcia--widely regarded as one of rock's greatest guitarists--lamented how difficult it was to play acoustic guitar, having lost half the middle finger on his right hand as a kid. 4. "The Wheel"--the epic rumination about mortality co-penned by Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann and Dead lyricist Robert Hunter--is the apex of what Bob Weir once dismissed as Garcia's "flirtation" with pedal-steel guitar. The song is one of the most transcendent in the vast rock canon (once you get past the strident intro). 5. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first Woodstock Festival, where the Grateful Dead performed a rambling set (even by their standards), Garcia's birthday is a helluva great excuse to party. After all, what's the Summer of Love and stuff without a double scoop of Ben & Jerry's chocolate-flaked Cherry Garcia ice cream? . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
