Time-Wasting Journeys In Music

In one of those circuitous weekend Internet rambles, I have finally stumbled across what every self-respecting "Deadhead" found long ago, the Internet Archive treasure trove of Dead shows. As I am neither a "Deadhead" or self-respecting, this is not surprising, but XM Radio merged with Sirius.

Okay that doesn't probably make sense. You see, XM merged with Sirius and Sirius has a Grateful Dead 24/7 channel that is now also on XM. Earlier this weekend I was listening to "State College 5/6/80" (and, naturally, you have to say things like "State College 5/6/80" when writing/talking about these things) while throwing the massive number of glass receptacles I've engendered over the teaching semester into the recycling bins at the nearby Walmart.

Despite never really getting "into" the Dead, per se, the concert sounded pretty good. I started hunting around the 'Net upon my return, and came across the Internet Archive site. With the help of my former "Deadhead" wife (who talks in some sort of East Coast "Deadhead" code, using terms like "SPAC"), I started downloading a few concerts and am now well over a Gig o' stuff.

I can't say "Fire on the Mountain" is going to replace Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations or Miles leading the 65-68 quintet in my personal pantheon of music, but these old Dead shows are fun in a noodling-around sort of way, even without the requisite mind-altering chemicals. It's also a kick to hear the crowd during the show, especially as one remembers the folks screaming "Right on!" and "Scarlet!" are now in their 40s-50s and beyond.

And because the Dead is all about sharing the music (or was until there was a nasty battle over the aforementioned Internet Archive site, as I also discovered), and because I've wanted to play with some music embeds for a while, here's "Fire On The Mountain" played at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium on December 12, 1978.



And for those with even more time to waste, here's an August 8, 1971 version of "Mountain Dew" played at the Hollywood Palladium...