Believe it if you can, or leave it if you dare...

Zen Tricksters at B.B. King's August 1, 2007

I have never listened to the music of the Grateful Dead. The issue? Soap.

I know that sounds weird. But hear me out- it gets weirder. Anyone reading this who is surprised at that admission doesn't know me.

In 1982 I shared a room at Camp Ella Fohs with a woman named Helen. I can't for the life of me remember her last name- I know she taught SOMETHING- maybe dance- probably ceramics- we were "specialists" which in camp lingo means we didn't have a bunk of kids to care for- we taught something "special". I was arts and crafts. To the best of my memory, Helen's specialty was annoying the crap out of me. It was the little things- the unmade bed, the clothes none of which were a single color- I swear she had tie-dyed underwear- not that she ever wore it- but it was strewn about our tiny room like Christmas ornaments along with her guitar (was she the music counselor?) her diaphragm (at that time- wide eyed and innocent I had to be told what it was after I picked it up once and it popped across the room) cassette tapes and various feathery beaded things. She didnt shave her armpits or her legs- which to a girl from Staten Island seemed just WRONG on so many levels. But I think I could have lived with all of it but she would ALWAYS use my soap- nothing fancy mind you it was probably Yardley's Oatmeal or Lavender- which my mom had sent me long with a 3 pack thinking that one bar for each month would suffice. HA! Helen not only used my soap, she would leave it, in its little plastic travel box, open, sitting in a puddle of water on the floor of our rusty stall shower. Each bar dissolved within days into a red box full of soap slime. Without exaggeration, I went through 12 bars of soap that summer. Working six days a week it INFURIATED me that I had to go soap shopping on my one day off.

Petty, yes.. But twenty five years later- it still kind of tweaks me.

Helen loved the Grateful Dead after that description you can tell she was pretty much a Dead poster child. I would enter the room to the strains of Sugar Magnolia and if Casey Jones was playing- a song that Helen played when she was "in the mood" and cohabitating with the friend of the week, I wouldn't enter the room at all. It was surer than a necktie on the door there was nothing inside I wanted to witness and mosquitoes be damned I would be hanging out in tent city for the night.

My friend Fred loves the Grateful Dead. He teaches their songs as philosophy and uses them as prayer. Hanging out with Michael riding through Pennsylvania the perfect musical accompaniment to the winding ride along the Delaware was a song I later found out to be "Dark Star" and one night heard a great R&B version of the great Smokey Robinson song "I Second That Emotion"- The artist: Jerry Garcia.

I might need to rethink the whole soap thing.

Last night I went to B.B. King's with Fred- the occasion? Jerry Garcia's birthday and the Zen Tricksters. I was dubious. I mean, ok I was liking the Dead Songs but a cover band? B.B. King's does Beatlemania tributes and other...well borderline cheesy stuff- I am musically intolerant of many tribute and cover artists and EVERY time someone does their version of "God Bless the Child" I wince. Since I was already sporting a pretty nagging Dead prejudice hangover from the days of Helen- what was this going to be like?

I was with Fred- who literally acted like he'd come to a birthday party. He sported a smile as big as a six year old's who knows there's gonna be cake. The front of the room, populated by polite tables for the John Waite concert was cleared out and I wondered at all the empty space. Not empty for long- the room filled in moments, mostly with men- the ratio was about 25-1- which seemed like a very NICE ratio. The uniform varied a bit- golf shirts and khakis for many of the older guys- an enormous selection of vintage Dead concert shirts and a couple of unbuttoned button downs. As the night progressed lots more got unbuttoned.

The Zen Tricksters took the stage and began with "Shakedown Street" and I realized I knew this song- and several after- osmosis? As I said I have assiduously avoided Dead music for years- and so cannot explain why I know the words to "Bertha" and "Box of Rain" or why "I Know You Rider" sounded on the cusp of real familiar. As I listened and grooved along I realized I was having .. a really good time. The Tricksters played with all their hearts- the lead guitarist- a Jerry look-alike- played AMAZINGLY- even Fred commented- he was channelling Jerry and never needed to pay attention to the strings- he just soared. On the dance floor the golf shirt guys played air guitar and raised horned fingers to the band. The room swayed and the scent of pot and patchouli wafted over the group. I do not know how anyone lit anything in that tightly controlled room- the bouncer at B.B. King's looks like former KGB. But I was grateful, Security left them alone- perhaps orders from the Kremlin- the smell seemed just a part of all the singing along, and the sort of wriggling hand fishy dancing and the lower lip biting air guitar earnestness and the guys who brought their kids to listen. Like we were all hanging in someone's basement listening to a jam. Albeit a nicely air-conditioned basement on the twinkliest street on the East Coast.




Four HOURS later. Yes four hours. Fred and I began to fade. He looked at me after one particularly long set and said- you know "Terrapin Station" is an ENTIRE ALBUM side- they just did the WHOLE THING! We were both fading. Fred and Jerry were born just a week apart- I think even Jerry would have considered calling it a night, having just celebrated his own 65th.

Fred and I parted and I made my way to the Port Authority. I had stopped to look at a lyric I'd scratched down on my ticket back that seemed particularly meaningful, then promptly forgot it. It was "Believe it if you can, or leave it if you dare..." As I looked up I saw a portrait artist had left one portrait on a chair and stepped away- maybe to hit the Starbuck's for a late night latte. And there wasa Jerry Garcia's face staring up at me. I know that the guys on Times Square are pros- and this savvy vendor was just particularly wise to the fact that a Dead concert was on the street that night. As I looked at the smiling visage in the charcoal drawing I remembered someone had told me how the Dead got their name- it seems Jerry randomly opened an old dictionary and found the phrase "Grateful Dead"- its definition : "a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial." It all seems pretty convenient- or not. But the face I was looking at was so...jolly. The music so fun- innocent, and part of a time past, but a joy still sorely needed in the world. So I believe in random things, in amazing coincidence- and as for soap? I think I'll leave it.



:) X