Green Light with Chris Long - MNF Recap: Refs, Taunting & Justin Fields. Hosts of Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast Talk All Things Dead.

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

(2:19) - Hello, Layup Line and Chris Long Foundation's Climbing Kili Tribute for Veterans Day. (10:22) - NFL Roundup and MNF Recap: Aaron Rodgers and State Farm, Cassius Marsh and Taunting, Justin Fields' Improvement and AFC North Outlook. (47:27) - Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarnow from the 'Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast' Join To Talk All Things Dead: What Does It Mean To Be a Dead Head, Grateful Dead at a Bar Mitzvah, Impact of Acid on the Dead, Evolution of Grateful Dead Sound, Song Writing Process, Chris' Favorite Grateful Dead Songs and Jesse's New Book Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic in America. Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-ol-grateful-deadcast/id1522914723 https://open.spotify.com/show/6Jzbtj0r3sPiNWsPSkjrOR?si=ro-cn0IiSGiVq2cxoLveHA&nd=1 Green Light Spotify Music: https://open.spotify.com/user/951jyryv2nu6l4iqz9p81him9?si=17c560d10ff04a9b Spotify Layup Line: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1olmCMKGMEyWwOKaT1Aah3?si=675d445ddb824c42 Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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gambler, and in Michigan, 1-800-2707-1-17. Tennessee, y'all two. 1-8009-9-7-8-9. This show's all over the place. We've got two guys from the good old grateful dead cast coming on. Rich and Jesse,

we're going to deadhead out here in a little bit. We're also going to talk about the game two nights ago. Justin Fields, his night. Tony Carrenti, his night, the two stars of the show, basically. And also it's Veterans Day coming up. So I want to talk to you about conquering Kili. It's a program we run at the Chris Long Foundation.

Kibo Hut. Keebo Hut. That's in Tanzania. That's 15,000 feet up Mount Kilimanjaro. That's where you go the last night before you summit that thing. You sleep for five hours. it's freezing cold well you don't really sleep i never sleep up there it's cold it's altitude sucks and uh you're tired and then you set off at midnight to to summit kilmanjaro 19 341 feet

i'll tell you why i'm talking about kilmanjaro in a minute and uh it's to keep it with the theme here about the days that used to be we'll go del mccory high on a mountain uh del mccorri high on a mountain uh Del McCory is a legendary bluegrass dude. And I love the song, but we're talking about a mountain here. The reason I'm talking about Kilimanjaro is because it is Veterans Day tomorrow. And we do a climb every year for Waterboys, Waterboys.org, called Conquering Killey. And we take veterans, and by we, I'm talking about any athletes that are willing to climb a damn near 20,000 foot mountain in their offseason. or if you're retired or that sort of thing, hit me up.

But it's hard. Okay, Jason Kelsey and I got into it one day. We joke about it now when Kelsey went up with me and Connor Barrow one of these guys. We got back down to Keebo Hut after that march up to the summit, pastella Point up to the summit. We got back down there and Jason was like, you motherfucker, you didn't tell me how hard this was. And he was upset with me. So if you're listening and you're an athlete or somebody who wants to climb Kilimanjaro, read the bold letters.

It is not like a hop, skipping a jump up that mountain. It is a long way. So we take our veterans, we take our athletes, we've had MMA fighters, we had NFL players, I've had Stephen Jackson up there,

I've had Justin Wren up there, the big pigmy, the guy who came on my podcast recently, heavyweight, Bellator, the whole nine yards. I've had numerous athletes climb this mountain with me.

But my favorite people to climb this mountain with me are the veterans every year. And, you know, the reason we set out to start conquering killing you can learn more about it at waterboys dot org slash killy if you want to donate to support a veteran getting ready for their 2022 climb on this veterans day eve uh you can do that follow uh those directions and click um but yeah

the reason we do that is to to support veterans like uh our my foundation has always been one that has supported veterans i think it's important to me and to support veterans in a way. You know, we say thank you a lot. Thanks for your service, that sort of thing. Like, I want to put something behind that, you know. And conquering Killy for us is an opportunity to give veterans and players who are missing that team environment a chance to join a team and meet a goal,

like an objective, a mission for the veterans, for us a goal. You know, like there is a world of difference between fighting and a war and and playing a pro sport in football. I mean, it gets thrown around a lot. You know, you guys are warriors or something like, that's not true. You know, the guys and girls that we've climbed with, Kirstie Ennis, who's the first female above the knee amputee to Summit Kilimanjaro. She went with us.

You know, we've had Green Berets, Marines, Elliot Ruiz, shout out. We had Ivan Summit with us, completely blind, led up the mountain by Nick Hardwick and Luis Castillo. two guys from the Chargers because Fred, Freddie, Green Beret, big, big athletic, tough,

ultra marathoner, green beret, badass. First time he went up, he was spitting up blood, it was tough, he had to turn around like it was, it was rough, dude, like summit night can be rough. Freddie had to pass off Ivan to Luis and to Nick,

and I can, I'll never forget this when Freddie was like, you got him? because Freddie was like his guy, right? And the guys were like, I got him. And Freddie's like, no, do you have him? Because when we say I got my dude, it's a lot different than when y'all say I got my dude. So like there is a, there are some similarities between vets and athletes and that we love a team environment.

We love an objective, a goal. And for a lot of retired athletes, we're feeling like there's a void just the same way in a very different way as the veterans feel like there's a void. So there's this awesome synergy with these groups that have never met each other, might have nothing in common. But what they do have in common is they love a team environment. They love meeting a goal. And so when we get in these mess tents on the way up the mountain, guys are playing cards, girls are playing cards,

people on the climb are playing cards, like hanging out, telling the stories, eating just bullshitting, just like we're in a locker room or like they're in a tent halfway around the world. And all of a sudden, we're back doing what we used to do in a way. And so I think for the veterans, like, I appreciate their leadership. I appreciate the way that they fundraise for us all year.

Getting ready for this deal. I want to shout out Carrie Rock here in Charlottesville, who's taking the ball and run with it. Our veterans are the backbone of this operation, conquering Kelly. And our veterans lead the pro athletes. You know, when we get over there, it's amazing how leadership emerges in a group. Like, it just you find out who the leaders are. more often than not, it's going to be somebody who wore a uniform

and not the ones with the shoulder pads. So I really appreciate their leadership. I appreciate, you know, they're getting involved in the fight for clean water. That's what we're raising money for as we climb that, as we climb that mountain every year. It's service. It's a way to get back involved and serve. I mean, who knows how to serve a country.

You know, a lot of these places that the men and women that fought for our country have spent time in are extremely impoverished. And they know about things like clean water, scarcity or contamination or the whole nine yards. Whatever way that poverty rears this ugly head, like this is a familiar force to the veterans that we bring on these trips. So I appreciate their leadership.

I appreciate they're getting involved. And you can get involved too and help them. It's the one thing, like listen, there's a lot of ways you can probably help veterans. I mean, ask a veteran, like, how can we help? Like, what do you think is needed? But at the Chris Long Foundation, the one way that we, you know, like, kind of stay involved is giving veterans a vehicle for good and everybody wins because they are our best fundraisers

and they're tremendous friends of the program in a way, I'd say. We got group chats for that conquering Killy Climb that pop up. off all day, every day. They're still popping off from a few years ago. I had Helodi Nata climb that mountain. I mentioned Stephen Jackson. I had, you know, Holoidi retired at the top. There's so many highlights for me on this climb, but there are no highlights like the highlights of seeing a, you know, a vet feel like they're back in the game helping somebody and that there's a real purpose and that we share it together. So I appreciate you all. I hope you guys will go to waterboys.org slash killy to donate, to do a little something, pay it forward for people that have paid it forward for you in a lot of ways.

And I'm wishing all the veterans out there, happy Veterans Day. For those of y'all listen to who do not serve, ask a veteran how you can help. Just ask, what do you guys need? What do you girls need? What do you all need that's not being provided? And so I hope you spend tomorrow thinking about that. So Veterans Day is tomorrow. y'all watched Monday night a night or two ago

being a Bears fan has to feel like summon Kilimanjaro on a weekly basis I mean for sure not every game is as entertaining as Bears Steelers last night we thought we were in for a rock fight

it was a lot of fun it wasn't fun if you wanted to see a game that wasn't taken over by the officials we'll get to that in a little bit but I had a great time last night took a bunch of edibles and watched Monday night football which is like most Monday nights

It's only, I made a joke on Twitter that went about like this. It said, what happens first? The edible kicks in or the Bears score first. I was on the Bears. I had the Bears in a teaser, so they were getting 14, and the total was 47. Hindsight is 2020. I flirted with teasing the over-down.

That's what I should have done, because I had a feeling that Justin Fields would figure this thing out as the game went on. I set the odds at minus 3.30 that the edible would kick in first than it did. The edible kicked in in the red zone. The bears kicked the field goal. I had people tweeting at me like, damn, you really are high. I'm like, hey, welcome to my Twitter account. Like literally, if you're reading a tweet, what I'm probably doing is following along with a game that I have money on on an edible, like any night. So Monday nights, they're going to be edible, gummy, gummy night football. Call it gummy night football. Every Monday night, come to me,

And you'll get some good tweets on Twitter. I'm Joel 9-1. Joel 9-1. Is that it, Cowboy Reed? That is the Twitter account you created. I have a hard time plugging the podcast. I have a hard time plugging my social. But check that out.

Listen, a couple news items before I break this game down a little bit. Aaron Rogers is not getting dropped by State Farm. That is a shock, huh? On Sunday on the pod, I was like, dude, My big gripe with Aaron is just that like, well, besides, we disagree on all the, the other stuff, but I don't want to bore you guys with that. I'd be the 10,000 person who pointed out various, like, fact-checking type deals from the McAfee interview. But my big problem is that cancel culture is not really that fucking real, man. It's not that real.

You lost a health care partnership. Huge shocker. Like, there's like a bunch of doctors over there. Doctors disagree with you. you know that even so um state farm standing by aaron some people said like um hey but he was the ads were down to 1% so 1% of state farm ads actually 1.5% um even in the south state farm had like de-emphasized their Aaron rogers coverage this weekend can they take the fucking weekend he's kind of like a trending topic that doesn't mean they canceled him dude they actually came out over the

last 48 hours and said, we're not, we're not canceling Aaron Rogers. I don't know if Aaron's happy or sad about that because he said he was climbing into his cancel culture coffin. And nothing's happened, dude. Like really nothing's happening. He's going to take the field Sunday. He's going to play great. The Packers are as good as any Packers team I've seen since I've retired and started covering this stuff. A couple weeks ago, I said, you know, I finally believe in them. I was like one of the foremost Packers haters when they were 13 and three. The last two years, and people were saying you just hate the Packers, Packers fans, no, you just weren't ready.

Your defense has showed up two weeks in a row here in different scenarios, one where you didn't have your coordinator, two, where you didn't have your quarterback and you had to beat the Kansas City Chiefs. You didn't do that, but you kept your offense in the game, and they had plenty of chances. I outlined them on the podcast on Sunday night.

Packers had plenty of chances to win that game, thanks to the defense. So I think that the Packers are ready to make a run. I think that Aaron Rogers will be back Sunday. I think you'll see a lot of state farm commercials. And you'll realize that cancellation is most times a fucking, it's a look over here thing. It's not real.

It's not real. Aaron's fine. He's rich. He's famous. He's good looking. He's going to win Super Bowl MVP and they're going to run state farm commercials the whole Sunday. And at the speech, he's going to say,

man, we really overcame cancel culture this year. I'm very proud of me and my team. So Aaron will be back. Let's not panic about Aaron the football player. But come on, man, cancel culture. It doesn't apply here. I don't know where it applies when it comes to athletes. If you didn't do anything illegal,

you're probably not getting canceled. You're still going to make a fuck ton of money, and you're still going to have a bunch of people to love you. And that's kind of the way it's played out. People will forget about this thing. For better or for worse. That's just the way things are. People are forgiving in this country.

even if you lie. Aaron Rogers, he'll be back Sunday. I'll bet the Packers. They're going to play the Seahawks. I will bet the Packers. Nick Chubb has COVID, so he's going to be out this week. So just when the Browns think they have it together, you know, their best player. I mean, like Miles Garrett, probably their best player,

their second best player. Miles Garrett and Nick Chub, damn, they have two, like, Hall of Fame caliber guys on that football team. I don't know of a back that scares me more. than Nick Chubb right now. You could argue that different guys could maybe do more. The guy's averaging like nine yards a carry, dude. He had nine yards of carry the other day.

Eight-man boxes, like 100 plus yards on like eight carries. So there's just nobody like this guy. And when you lose a guy like that, especially a week after you weather that Odell storm, all the injuries, Baker looks good. You know, he doesn't have to do a ton, but what you ask him do, he does a great job at it. This is like really sweeping the rug out from under these guys,

and they got to play the Patriots of all teams. And you know Bill, who's as big a Jim Brown fan as anybody, Brown's running backs. I bet he sees a little bit of Jim Brown in Nick Chubb, and I bet that Bill Belichick is pretty relieved that he doesn't have to deal with Nick Chub on Sunday. It's a pick-um right now? I like the Patriots.

I don't want to overthink this one. I don't know where the money is. I like the Pats. By the way, I'm going to be doing Thursday night football on Amazon. The line for the Baltimore Miami game is like nine. Harbaugh, it's the Kiko Alonzo revenge game. They're going to kick the shit out of these guys. They're going to kick the shit out of these guys.

And I'm out for blood because I had the Texans this week. And somehow they didn't cover against the mighty dolphins. So this week, dolphins not covering the spread. Book it. Lamar, the Ravens. They're not that good. Lamar covers up for a lot of their deficiencies. I've said this over and over again.

At some point, the clock's going to strike midnight on this team. They've won a lot of close ball games, overtime games, two and one in overtime games. You know, crossbar, beat the lions. Clock's not going to strike. They're not going to turn in pumpkins against the fucking dolphins, dude. They're going to beat the shit out of the dolphins. I see this being a little bit more of a vintage Ravens win than the way they've won lately. So take the Ravens on Thursday night, take the Patriots on Sunday.

I'll get back to you on the rest of it. I lean Packers. I mean the Packers are like three-point favorites or three-point dogs. Either way, I don't know how they make that out against the Seahawks. They should be three-point favorites. Four points. Four-point favorites. Buy the point.

You know me. I like buying points. Last night, Steelers, big win for them at home. This thing feels like a little bit wide open. All these teams have yo-yoed, like for two weeks, Cincinnati was the flavor of the week. For a few weeks before Baltimore got their asses handed to them finally. They were the flavor of the week. You know, the Steelers, everybody's kind of sleeping on them,

but they're creeping up because they play good defense, and Najee Harris has been good. They have playmaking wide receivers. And a guy who can still shot put the ball 35 yards. Last night, I mean, he loaded up that RPG, seven-step drop. I was like, RPG! Thing went like 36 yards.

He still can get the ball where it needs to go. And, you know, we think about health, or we don't think about health with these quarterbacks. You see Matt Ryan in Atlanta kind of slowly getting healthy. Well, I don't know that he had something going on, but he looks different this time of year than he did earlier in the year. Maybe there's something with Ben where,

you know, as the year goes on, he gets right. Maybe he had something, you know, nagging in camp. A lot of times coming out of camp, and this is for a position player, so I can't say this for a quarterback for sure. But you can endure some little things that don't show up on the injury reporter, maybe do.

And then they, disappear and you're still dealing with them for weeks or months. Like I had a torn quad coming out of camp, like not torn like down the middle, but just a little quad tear in my right quad. And so every game, like I had two sacks against the Falcons coming out my last year, 2018 in the opener. But after the game, my knee filled up with a bunch of blood that drained out of my quad. Now that never shows up on the injury report.

That took six, seven weeks to go away. you know and that was a camp injury I heard it against the Browns I think it was I aggravated against the Browns in camp I just say that to say like these things don't show up and maybe they can they can inhibit quarterbacks from making the throws

it's a very technical position it's a very a lot of little muscles working in that position you know throwing the football and at that age little things can pop up and maybe they go away I'm not trying to sell you a dream with the Steelers I did that last year they were my

Super Bowl pick and the bottom fell out from under him. I don't know that any of these teams are elite teams in the NFL. I know Baltimore is going to be a consensus top five team. I'm just telling you look, like trust your eyes on a lot of these position players in Baltimore. They're not quite the same team that they have been in the past.

I don't know that any of these teams of what we've seen from Cincinnati the last two weeks are really primed to make a run right now. A lot can change the rest of the year. I don't know who I trust to win this division, but it's fun. First time since 2008, you've had two divisions this late in the year that have had all winning teams. Thank you for that, Cowboy Reed.

So fun division, who knows who wins it? I have a feeling. It's probably the Ravens because Lamar Jackson is an MVP. He can cover up for so many deficiencies, but the way they live dangerously, I just don't trust them down the stretch. I don't trust Pittsburgh down the stretch, obviously, because of the whole RPG situation. It's the quarterback thing, man. And I don't trust, I don't know that Cincinnati's quite ready.

I kind of jumped the gun a couple weeks ago and called him a contending team. Maybe they are. At this point in the season, obviously it doesn't look that way. Two weeks in a row, they've really struggled. And I'm forgetting the Browns who I just don't trust. I don't know. It's the least trustworthy best division. I just don't know.

But Justin Fields, he grew up last night a little bit. And I've liked Justin Fields. You know, I don't watch a lot of Bears games. I mean, I do on like my 14 TV wall, but they haven't exactly played themselves into the big TV arena over here at Greenlight Studios on Sunday. But I've watched him enough to know that I like him. I like his demeanor.

I like his style of play. The throws that he makes, the ball's got zip on it, he throws the ball moving on the run pretty well. That's something Matt Nagy's taking shit for not getting him out on the edge. You know, more QB design run stuff. This guy's huge.

His comp for me was like a more athletic Carson Wentz. And I'm talking about the 2017 Carson Wentz. I'm saying like big strong guy who can make all the throws and can really hurt you with the football in his hand scrambling. But he's not that guy that you think of that's like scrambling first. He's got the build of a pocket quarterback, but he can really get out and go. He hurt that team with his legs and his arm as the game went on last night.

He never really had a chance to get going last night. The field position off the bat was terrible for the. them. It was great for Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh smacked Chicago in the mouth, the first drive defensively, and you're playing catch-up in a game on the road that you don't really want to play catch-up. This is an in-phase game for you if you're the Bears. You want to keep this thing in phase, but they're down 14-0. So not an ideal situation for Justin Fields. He really grew as the game went on. He made really big throws in like a 10-minute span. I'll really remember these throws. They're backed up on that long drive. They got the field goal that they suffered a bunch of

bunch of, you know, really inexcusable penalties on the part of the refs and Curenti and that crew. You had the phantom low block. You had a missed roughing the passer. But early in that drive, they're backed up on like the seven-yard line. They're back there because the Bears defense started the game with a penalty. The ball was, I think it was an incompletion and they endure a penalty. And then the Steelers are damn near at midfield and like two, three plays that go on to score. The Steelers get the ball out of the half. The bears knocked them down for like a two yard loss or something on a quick game thing. Flag in the air. Rough in the passer, I believe it was. A 15 yarder. So effectively that bad field position trend continues and what happens is you think,

oh, no big deal. They got off the field with that penalty. Yeah, but the field flips. And so Justin Fields is on like the seven yard line to start a drive and he's got to go 93 yards down 143 or whatever was at this point that's fucked and you know the bears continued that first play of the fourth quarter they endured a penalty on defense like 14 15 to go trot out there penalty so penalties was the the theme of the night Justin Fields overcame a lot of those he overcame took took a lot of free shots, but backed up. He was rolling left, I think on third down, beautiful throw, keep that drive alive. Then he hit Goodwin, beautiful throw again, different kinds of throws, one on the run, one with touch and distance, and then a possession later, a ball down the scene

to commit, which the window was fucking windows like this big, fit it right in there. Kmet got lit up, but great throw. I mean, he grew up in a tough environment to play, a loud place, one of the best spectacles in pro football. And I think he soaked it up and got better last night. And really, you could make an argument that the Bears should have won this game. I mean, he's got to see things like the free rush around the boot. But I like the kid. You remember he got lit up in preseason.

He wasn't seeing protections as well. This will come. The kid is going to be just fine with the next group, if you know what I mean. He's going to be fine with the next group, the next group, the next coaching staff. He's going to be fine. Steelers defense fun watching him and Minka kind of like Minka keep an eye on Justin he came down early in the game and tattooed Justin Fields

and that's a big guy he tattooed and they were on the sideline and some people wanted a flag on the bear's sideline grow the, like it's fucking pro football man like we can't we can't be looking for roughing flags when your six foot three quarterback turns into a runner on the sideline like let's know the rules and let's realize that he's bigger than most guys in the back seven

So don't feel sorry for when he gets lit up by Minka Fitzpatrick, who's a great player. And the second time they met on the sideline late in the game, Minka, he's so good. He had Justin draped around Justin's shoulder pads and stayed off him. That's a tremendous athletic play. To everything you're doing, you're running full speed to get Justin Fields down on the sideline. You're using the sideline, but you want to get a shot in on him,

but you lay off. And as you're laying off, you run onto the tarp. so when you run onto a sideline you're running off the field and your cleats are not going to dig in the same way and put the brakes on the same way on that tarp. So a lot of times what happens is guys feel awkward and then everybody falls.

Minkin Fitzpatrick, great player, great athletic play there to lay off Justin Fields but lit him up on the sidelines early. Steelers defense, always fun. T.J. Watt, three sacks. Gets him in a lot of different ways. Get him on a boot. Gets him on an effort sack.

He's so skilled. I mean, it's so automatic that he's, he's gonna be around the ball. What makes us know T.J. Watt well, why he's a household name is because he's a sack artist. But the reason he's a really great player, a Hall of Fame guy, is because he makes all the plays. He makes them all.

And I know that I've bitched about PbUs and people celebrating about PbUs, like JJ, every time he gets a PbU, he wags his finger and I'm like, that's PbU. T.J. last night had the biggest play of the game, quite possibly, on that PbU with five seconds to go. Now the Bears are down three, I think it was. They lost

29-26, right? So they're down three. They're driving they're at midfield. They get a play to get them to damn near midfield and they have a 66-yard field goal at this point. They can kick. They've got four seconds to go. The refs put a second back on the clock

and it's at this point I say, especially with the Steelers playing off, that the bears should take it out. They really should. I hate Hail Marys. I love watching them, but if I need my team to win, I don't like watching them. And I was betting the Bears. At this point, I lost the bet, so I didn't give a fuck anymore.

But take the out, take a shot at a 58-yarder. They couldn't get the out because T.J. Watt batted the ball down. Smart play, and there was plenty of cushion to execute a three, four-second out with one second to go, kick a 56-yarder, kick a 58-yarder. I don't know if my math's

right, but I like the math there, but in 66 or whatever it is. So not just the three sacks, also a big play down the stretch that you didn't make such a big deal about and by the way that kick did not hit the crossbar I mean Steve Levian that's a tough deal looking at a kick and trying to gauge where it ends up

but you really have to be careful with Bears fans when you talk about like a football hitting a crossbar maybe it makes a thud maybe it makes a like a dong maybe it makes a doink you really have not I do not appreciate Steve trying to trigger Bears fans I don't appreciate it at all it's not funny it's not funny that y'all thought the ball hit the crossbar for six seconds last night at this point my teaser's dead sorry I can laugh nausea Harris Najee Harris played great great usage for him I thought when they drafted him the narrative was they don't have an O line they couldn't protect last year you know teams are going to load the box

why? Well, he's been most of their offense all year long and he was great. He was patient last night. He did not sleep on the floor in college. That was one that you got to double check that if you're in that booth because they told a story about him. He was homeless for a while. This is a real thing. But they said when he got to Alabama he slept on the floor for like months because that was more like I don't know where these stories come from. I don't know who makes that story up and how it makes it onto the production sheet

at Monday Night Football. You might want to check that one before you're like, yeah, the fucking guy slept on the floor because Najee Harris came right out of the game, checked his phone in his locker, and got a bunch of texts from people like, you slept on the floor?

Like his roommates, like, what the fuck did you sleep on the floor? What are you telling these guys? Obviously, Najee didn't tell him that. They heard it. They read about it somewhere. Like me sometimes on a podcast where I read something and it's not true.

but that's an interesting text message to get back to your locker and check. Big Ben did enough. Fryermuth is a good player. Like he's a good player. I've been, I held his name against him. A guy like that has to fight through having a name

like Friermouth for a long time. And everybody's like, hey, he's on athletic, he's a blocking tight end. But really, he's got ball skills. Like a guy like Friamuth is supposed to be a blocking tight end. That's it. He's supposed to be like Spath. the guy that was in Pittsburgh, who by the way, had the biggest vice grips of all time.

Like, he held the fuck out of you every play and got away with it. I thought he was going to be more like, like with a name like Fryermouth, you think you'd be more like Spath than Heath Miller, who, by the way, could block two. And drew comparisons last night. That's a huge compliment. The ball skills on this kid, I mean, in the red zone for them, it's big. It is big. Kicking game was great.

Boswell was great. A week after that halacious concussion where he got glitched out of the, fucking screen. He looked like all y'all if you guys got zapped into a pro football uniform and they were like, hey, take a snap. That's what y'all would look like. That's how Potsworth looked when he rolled right and ran out of places to throw the ball. It was like I could hear the clock. He got drilled. He got roughed, but we're not looking out for kickers in the passing game. Today, last night, he drilled multiple field goals, including the go-ahead field goal that won the game with some distance. He also, the most impressive thing to me that would tell me that Boswell is a fucking

football player. He's officially a football player is he fielded a ground ball with a whole, a whole herd of bears coming at him. One of his dudes fumbled and the ball popped. No, it was one of the bears fumbled or? Bears fumbled. Yeah, bears fumbled. Bears fumbled. And Bosworth, he's got this Sunday hop coming right at him. That's a good news, but the bad news is I think as the ball is coming to He realizes that a week ago, I was tasting spinal fluid on the sideline. Like maybe I just get out of the way. He is officially a football player. He caught the ground ball.

He took the hit. He was like on his knees. I thought he was going to get folded back like a cheap lawn chair. They got run over by a tractor or something. Like he was just in the most inopportune position. But he found a way to stand in there, take the hit. He also drilled some field goals. He's a fucking football.

player. This guy, Boswell. Shout out to him. But the refereeing took over this football game, right? That was unfortunately for the NFL. That was the news this morning. And you don't need that. Like the news you've had the last week is like Star quarterback lies about vaccine and then goes on Pat McAfee's show and makes more news. O'Dell and Baker don't get along. You know, you had obviously

terrible things coming out of Vegas. you had the drunk driving accident, that tragedy that Henry Ruggs cause. And then Damon Arnett has like, he has like Taliban guns in his house, dude. I'm just going to be real. Like, when you have the AK with the brown handle with like the woodstock,

like where did you get that, dude? I mean, I guess maybe a lot of people have that stuff. But he had a lot of fucking guns, man. They said he crashed four rental cars. I don't know how you do that. When you go back to, do you hit the different desk every time? Like the first time, you go to Dollar and you get a, like a Chrysler 300 C, then you total that motherfucker. And then you go to budget.

You get a minivan and you crash that. Like eventually you're going to get like, you come back to the airport and they're like, not again, dude. The Vegas thing is it's, it's been a tough couple weeks. And by the way, the Giants game, I tweeted this yesterday. I'm not willing to, I might bet the Raiders this weekend. I'm not willing to bury the Raiders yet because they've been through so much and they found a way to string together

a couple good wins. I had Keish on the show. He talked about the Italian stallion, as he called him. Basatia, the head coach now for the interim head coach for the Raiders and how much gravitas this guy has and some of the other great coaches that they have on their staff. And that team is tough. They've been through a lot.

They'll be fine. The Raiders traveling east is a bad problem. opposition. If you're going to bet the Raiders, don't bet them traveling east. And definitely don't bet them on the tail end of a run like that where they shouldn't have been winning. So I say that to say there's been a lot of bad news in the NFL. It was a really fun football game last night. We're not talking about Justin Fields. We're not talking about T.J. Watt. We're talking about Tony Carrante. I mean, he made himself the star of the show. You already missed a call on the low block, right? They showed that with the tackle box. It was bogus.

you missed a Justin Fields roughing which five plays ago on the last possession the very reason that you had bad field position was because you just overcame bad field position because the Steelers got roughed and it was nothing compared to the three step unloading that somebody did

to Justin Fields Justin Fields was just laying there there was a shot of Justin Fields just laying there and it was just evident that this kid was getting the raw end of the deal but D-Lyman were getting the raw into the deal which is normal we're used to that there's a fucking national tight ends day you guys is the easiest position in the world to

to become a tight end people like people Tim Tebow became a tight end dude that's what Tim Tebow did Tim Tebow was like ene miny monimo like how do I sell tickets in this motherfucker for Jacksonville urban Myers like how do I get my neighbor on the team let's hide him at tight end there's a national tight ends day we get our ankle twisted like Brian Burns we get fined for for shitty calls all the time. Nobody knows who we are. Like Shaq Barrett, if he walked around a mall in New York City,

nobody would recognize him. Okay? Guy practically won the Super Bowl, him and JPP for the bucks. And then we get hip-checked by officials? Like, what's next? What's next? We get no respect.

At least they pay us. You get paid, you rush the past, because you gotta deal with all this bullshit. By the way, the Brian Burns thing, that was dirty. I saw it the last, You can call it what you want to call it I saw the video I saw the new angle

And my man twists his ankle He twists his ankle It's call it what it is Pat's fans of course They've never done anything wrong And I'm on y'all side on deflate gate I don't know about spy gate Deflate gate I'm on your side

Ankle gate not on your side Carante bumped into To Cassius Marsh Like he was fucking Yokitch I mean Cassius Marsh is like What just happened

Cassius Mars is on a his eighth team, my man got to Chicago after being on the Steelers practice squad, just got caught up because a bunch of people are hurt. And Cassius Marsh finds himself getting a sack. By the way, shout out to 97 on the assist there. He's on the ground. He's off the ground. Takes Cassius Marsh or gives Cassius Marsh a little bit more time to rush. Comes up with the sack, does a sick karate kick. Cassius Marsh, awesome dude, into magic cards and shit. Also, evidently Kung Fu. Just takes a look. at his old teammates, which anybody could do that.

Like I've made plenty of plays and just looked at the other side line. Looked way worse than that at the other sideline. And there's like a four second delay before the guy throws the flag. And this is where people are confused. I will give Tony Currante this. He's got his hand on his flag because, you know, the Bears did something good before he bumps into Cassius Marsh, before he does like the fucking salsa into Cassius Marsh. And as soon as Cassius Marsh, um, and as soon as Cassius Marce,

kind of passed him. He was like, what the fuck, dude? You're like the guy at the bathroom, like in front of the bathroom at the bar. Tony Carrenti was a guy who when you're trying to get to the bathroom at the bar, dudes like, dudes just kind of like lean into you like, like it's their hallway. That was what Tony was like. Cassius was confused and he gets the sideline and then he's getting his ass ripped by coaches. He's like, dude, I didn't do anything. I didn't bump into the official. He bumped into me. I looked at the sideline. Like, whatever. I didn't say a thing. Taunting shit's gotten out of control. 40-something flags. this year so far on taunting. I think 47, Taylor said.

31 total taunting flags. That was my guess was 47. So there's misinformation there, guys. 31 taunting flags, but in 2020 and 2019 combined? Only 20. Only 20. Total. In 19 and 20, 20 taunting penalties.

There have been in the 30s this year. The race to 50 taunting penalties. at some point we're going to get tired of this shit it was like a couple years ago with PI maybe it was people after a few months were like guys we can't live like this anymore

and the NFL stopped emphasizing that call it's about time the NFL stops emphasizing taunting they can make it go away they've done it before with other calls make it fucking go away because nobody likes it unless you're doing the thing and I've posited this before

like bad officiating is good money for the NFL we haven't turned it off We got through the replacement reps. We've gotten through a bunch of, but we got through L.A., New Orleans. We got through a bunch of taunting penalties, DPIs, the whole nine yards. We're going to watch football. When are people on Twitter talking about the game the most? When there's a bad call.

That's the time when everybody gathers. I made this argument with replay before. We got to have replay because if you have replay, you have conversation. That's when the game stops and everybody talks. and so like I'm really anti-taunting but maybe the NFL is looking at it like hey they're talking about us all pub is good pub

before the NFL because they're not going to turn it off I mean bears defensive penalties were terrible I talked about him self-imposed but when you rough Ben and then Justin gets drilled you don't say anything the low block penalty the taunting just a bad night for the refs and and a tough night for me I lost a bet but also Cassius

Marsh, who Mina Kimes said looks like me. She said, me and Cole Beasley made Cassius Marsh. He kind of does look like me. He's got tattoos. He wore 91 in Seattle. When I was in St. Louis, and by the way, I love this kid. He's a great kid. People were like, oh, he's a little C long.

He weighs a lot less than me. But yeah, I mean, he's got tattoos. He wore 91. He's a pastor. He's a white pass rusher. Got it, guys. You guys think he's a white pass rusher. You think he's a white pass rusher.

Just by the way, you think he's a white pass rusher. Jokes on you, Batman. But Cassius and Robert Quinn, my old rush mate, the guy that was my bookend in St. Louis, and we did numbers together for years, and that's my bro. Like, talked to him the other day. Now Cassius Marsh is trying to take my spot.

And I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Tattooed white guy rushing opposite Robert Quinn? And Robert Quinn bailed him out the next play, just like he used to bail me out. After that penalty, Robert Quinn, you know, gets Ben's ankle. Robert Quinn still got it, by the way, basically two sacks to his name last night. A couple off sides. Got to realize Robert Quinn has a huge head.

Robert Quinn's head is like a size nine head. The helmet is the size of like a microwave. So he doesn't know that he's off sides. Okay, so people are like, I just don't understand Lewis Reader. He's like, I don't get what he doesn't get. He's in his 11th year. his head's not getting any smaller and these fucking O'Lyman

back up further and further off the ball it's disorienting when you look across like where's the line of scrimmage to tackle six yards back and by the way T.J. Watt complained about JP leaving early and the tackles for the bears leaving early like how T.J. Watt complains after a game like that

where it was gift wrap for you. Come on, DJ. You're a great player. Awesome game. Just maybe leave it. The tackles leave early all the time. Cassius Marsh this whole time. Chris Long looking ass. Robert Quinn hanging out with ass. Walks over to the sideline.

And this is the part that tripped me out the most. And I'm on a gummy here. He starts talking to Alec Ogletree. He's talking to all my old friends. He's rushing with my old bookend. He's hanging out with my old friends. These tattoos. Everybody thinks he's a white pass rusher.

Intellectual property. IP. IP, Cassius. But yeah, Bears' defense gave their best. I want to give a shout out to the interior of that line. They play great, especially in short yardage. They pummeled Pittsburgh's interior. Like you get in fourth and one, Pittsburgh kept going for it.

Their numbers are bad on fourth down, and that was a bad matchup. Like, they were crushing those dudes up front. So, you know, if you're a Bears fan, my takeaway is you deserve like a metal. because like I said, they're usually on the small TV. Last night they were on the big TV. There's only one TV on Monday night. And I had a rooting interest in y'all. And you would have delivered had I just bet the Bears, but I teased them.

I might stop teasing for the rest of the year. Just go with my gut. So Bears fans, tip of the cap to you for enduring that shit every week. I mean, I was tweeting it, y'all, is it like this every week? And for the Steelers, they're back in that, you know, kind of mosh pit that is, the AFC North. I mean, Steelers in the playoffs. I don't know. Feels normal. It feels like NFL playoff football. We'll see. All right. Today, I have two dudes who know the Grateful Dead very well. Rich Mayhan and Jesse Jarnow. They started the good old Grateful Deadcast. This thing is really

informative now. If you're like me and you're very self-aware and you realize you're not a dead. Like, there's always going to be a bigger dead head. Like, if I ever be, become a dead head. I think I need to put in like a decade as a Grateful Dead fan. I might call myself a dead head, but I still never saw him, you know, play. I never, I don't know all the live shows. I can get in these conversations that I'm in over my head. But if you listen to the Grateful Deadcast, you can almost pretend to be a deadhead, which is a really tough thing to do. If you're ever going to be like an undercover police officer, you're going to be like, you're going to be like a spy trying to blend in. I feel like a room full of deadheads and a conversation starts is

really hard to keep up. It's really hard to pretend like you know something when you don't know something. So if you're ever looking to fudge it or if you just want to learn about the dead, check out this podcast. And these guys were really gracious with their time, talked to them a couple weeks ago. But it's one that I really enjoyed and one that was informative for me. So check out their podcast. If you like the dead, keep listening. If you don't like the dead, if you were like me for most of my pro career, like I said this, I lived a very conflict-oriented life. like everything was like competition being pressed being pushed like pressure all this stuff like i didn't feel like the grateful dead on its surface was welcoming to a guy like me day in and day out

now i like some of their music but i never really dove in in fact i plane didn't get it until i was about 32 so it's been a fun four or five years learning the dead and uh hope to learn more about the dead and listen to a lot more of the dead because different songs pop up every month that I didn't get before and I totally get now. It took me years to love Dyer Wolf. I probably listened to Dyerwolf more than any song I listened to this month. It just clicked for me. So every month will be a new thing and I'm excited to be on that journey. I hope y'all enjoy hearing from Jesse and Rich as much as I enjoy talking to them. So if there's any deadheads out there, hopefully I don't, I don't fuck this thing up too bad. I don't sound like a cop, a narc, total poser. So hit me up,

let me know what you thought. Y'all enjoy. We'll be back Friday, your Friday with Stanford Steve, James Coe, the whole, the whole gang. So, uh, and obviously Macon, making took the day off today. There's too many drugs involved in the Grateful Dead podcast. So he was like, I don't want to be anywhere near the studios, too many drugs. If you're in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, Tennessee or Virginia, and you haven't yet tried the WinBet app. I've got great news for you. WinBet is now offering a 200% wager match for new users up to $1,500. That's just an incredible offer.

WinBet is basically giving you double your first wager in free bets. Don't pass it up. Download the WinBet app today. Terms and conditions apply. It must be 21 or older and present in a state where WinBet is available. Gambling problem in Arizona call 1,800 next year. step in Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia, call 1-800-Gambler, and in Michigan, 1-800-2-7-1-17. Tennessee, y'all too, 1-8009-9-9-7-8-9. All right, guys, as I talked about,

I'm not really a big podcast guy other than I do the shit for a living, but I've really been into the good, old, grateful, dead cast. I am learning about a band that has come on strong for me late in life. I'm getting smarter in my old age. I've got Jesse Jarnett. and Rich Mahan. How are y'all doing? Doing great. How are you? Oh, man.

I'm great. I'm excited. I was just joking offline that I'm in the deep end with you too when it comes to Grateful Dead. So don't drown me or don't make me sound dumber than I am. The first question I probably ask you guys before you guys tell me about your background and and kind of your podcast for people that are listening, what constitutes being a deadhead? because I am not a dead head.

I'm a dead fan. I get a lot of people because I wear a t-shirt or they talk about the dead on the pod. They're like, I didn't know he was a dead head. And then I end up in conversations that I can't hold my water in. So what constitutes being a dead head, first off? That's a good one.

Yeah, where do you cross that line? Yeah, no, if you think you're a dead head, you're a dead head. You might be a dead head head. That's one thing. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's a great question. Um, it's really all about self-identity, I think, at a certain point.

And being willing to call yourself that if you want to. But, you know, people, people might identify you that as that. If you, if you, if you can talk about a live show, maybe that, maybe that's the qualifying line. You know, like if you, yeah, if there's a specific live show, it doesn't even have to be a favorite one. Just you have to just know about one. Then you're a deadhead. Like, oh, yeah, they did this thing in 77. Bam, you're in.

It's a low bar. I was going to say it's a pretty low bar. I mean, we want everybody. It's not like we're trying to disqualify people here. It's a big bus. It's an intimidating bus, though. For a dude, like, I don't know if it was football was obscuring my vision, as it did with a lot of things.

But, you know, like I was living a conflict-oriented life. And on the surface, the Grateful Dead sounds like to somebody from the outside looking in that it's this rosy, happy thing, which we'll talk about in a little bit. There's a duality there. But, like, I just didn't get it for a long. time. And at about 31, 32, with the help of a buddy Tom Paquette, shout out, I just started diving in. So now I'm confident enough to have you two on the podcast. So I thank you for being here. Tell me about your backgrounds, respectively, and how you came upon doing this pod. Yeah, I mean, we've both been

dead fans for many, many years. I mean, Rich saw them twice with Garcia in 94. Rich, some many, many more actual dead shows than I did, which I'm sure he'd be happy to talk about. But, you know, yeah, I saw, I saw a couple of very, you know, late grateful led shows. And like everybody, you know, including you, including people we've talked to who saw the dead in 1972, I felt like I got to the band really late. And that, you know, and that's a, that's an amazing universal thing that we're finding out. Everybody thinks that. No matter when you discover them, it's like, I wish I found them, you know, 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And I just fell way into the culture, which was such a huge thing where I grew up on Long Island.

It was in New York, it was just deadheads were everywhere. And I find out more and more about that as I get older. And I just stayed really into it and became a music journalist and started writing a lot about the dead. And then eventually got to write grateful that liner notes, which was an incredibly huge honor. Wow. And that was sort of what fed into getting to do this podcast with Rich. Rich, how about you, buddy? Man, I don't know. I grew up on a spot too also, but on the West Coast, opposite coast, called Palis Ferdes. And for some reason, me too.

You grew up in PV, dude? Yeah, well, until I was eight, I went to Rolling Hills. Get out of here. I went to PV High. Oh, look at us. We're like rivals, man. Oh, boy. As much as Palis Ferdis kids are like meeting up in the alley. Yeah, we had it tough. To settle the score, man. Really meeting up in an alley to smoke a giant, really.

But yeah, but it was like there were two main bands, man. It was the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. And it was one of those things that it was just always around. And my mom and dad played the Grateful Dead. And it was funny, they went to one of these shows that's on this new St. Louis box set because we spent a little time in St. Louis when I was growing up too. But, yeah, I caught my first show in 85 at the Long Beach Arena. Wow.

I lived in St. Louis too, Rich. We've got a lot in common, man. Oh, wow. What a trip. Eight years. Yeah. Yeah, Clayton. What a trip.

Yeah. Oh, okay. I lived out in town and country right by Queenie Park. Here we go, man. Yeah. This is awesome. Nuts. Oh, no.

So, yeah, and I went to one show and was just like, man, there's something different going on with this. I'd been to a few shows by that, but I was only, what, 15 or 16 years old when I went to to my first show. And I was like, there's something different here. This feels. different. It's, you know, I could tell it. It was a whole different world that I would just kind of pop the top on. And then by 87, I was going to every show that I could get enough money to get

out of town and go to, you know? And it's funny. You talk about when do you think you're a dead head or what constitutes a deadhead? I never considered myself a dead head. I was just a fan. And then all of a sudden, they came up in conversation and I hear my sister say, oh, yeah, Mitch is totally a deadhead. But I turned and I went, maybe I am. And that was sort of a proud moment, a big realization. Yeah, a little bit. I just kind of realized it's like, yeah, I guess I am pretty into it. I looked at, you know, I looked in my truck and there were two rows of live cassette tapes.

Like, oh, yeah, I may be a deadhead, you know. That's incredible, man. Maybe it's the first time someone accuses you of being a deadhead. So congratulations, you're a deadhead. That very well could be. I actually ended up in one of those situations the other night. A guy told me he was a big deadhead. I said, I'm not a deadhead and we proceeded to talk for 30 minutes about the dead.

I think you might not be a deadhead, but I think you might be in denial. Deadhead denial. It's real. All right, well, your pod is really cool because it's not just conversational. It's kind of like an investigative journalism pod that's also conversational, which is really rare for me. So it's like nice. It's highly produced, but it's also low key and chill. And I think you guys pull a really cool thing off. Some of these stories, I'm blown away by like the CSI, Grateful Dead type of projects you guys do. Like the Bar Mitzvah and St. Louis? Bar Mitzvah, yeah.

Can you tell my listeners that story in some sort of? Yeah, sure. Wow. So I'll start by saying, so the Dead put out this amazing new box set of shows from St. Louis from 1971 to 1973. So a lot of what we do is guided by the newest Grateful Dead release. So I know a couple of people from St. Louis who are like serious music fans. And one of them is Joe Schwab, who owns an amazing record store in St. Louis called Euclid Records.

And he's not a deadhead. Yeah. Not a deadhead. Fantastic. Yeah. Not a deadhead particularly. But I know him from like record collecting world, which is another part of my dorkdom. And I just asked him if he knew any rumors about, you know, what he knew about the dead in St. Louis.

And he's like, oh, yeah, I saw them in 71. I don't remember much about it. And he told me a couple other things that I'd sort of knew about. There's like an old rumor that the dead were going to buy the Fox Theater. And lots of people told us that. And that's another story that we investigate a bit.

And that's one that it's a, you know, Deadheads love folklore. And there's lots of it. You know, all these like, you know, oh, I heard this or, you know, oh, this isowsly ass. Or just all these like little bits of things

that maybe they're true. And so there's lots of that floating around. and the Fox Theater one was one I had heard. And then he said, when I was in high school, there was this story about that the dead played a bar mitzvah. Have you ever heard anything about that? It's like, nope. News to me, man.

And I got to say, I doubted him because it was, at this point, I feel like I've heard a lot of that stuff. And it was like, it's a hit rate on these being true. Right. It's like, okay, sure, buddy. And a few days later, a week later, or whatever, he emailed back.

He's like, no, no, here, I emailed my, friend and his older brother was the drummer in the band. It was like, what? Excuse me? And from then, it just sort of like opened up and we, oh, you know, but part of it is like that CSI thing. He's like, okay, we got a name. It's Richie Gerber. And, you know, so I like plug that there, you know, these databases you can look in to see like, you know, names and where people were born. It's like, oh, yeah, there's a Richard Gerber born in, you know, wherever in St. Louis, you know, in 1558. It was like, and December 1958, which means he turns 13, the first week of December 1971, when the debtor in town. So it's like, okay, this is, this is true.

You know, and then found Richie, you know, he's an attorney in St. Louis. That, you know, that took a couple rounds of, that was sort of like cross-referencing like, you know, anyway. But it's where it got CSI is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's sort of, so the story is that this guy is kid, Richie Gerber. this kid, by the end of the day, a man, had a bar mitzvah in St. Louis in 1971, and they had the party at the airport Hilton. This was like the day after, two days after. So I guess he was no longer a boy.

He was a man by this point. And during the party, his older sisters, like out hanging out in the lobby and starts talking to these, you know, these guys who are, you know, kind of flirting, kind of hitting on her. And she knows she knows who they are. They're the members of the Grateful Dead, who had just played in St. Louis. And she, I love this part, and she kind of turns it around on them. Like, they're like, you know, you know, they're clearly hidden on her.

And she's like, oh, but my little brother's having a bar mitzvah, why don't you come say hello and, you know, maybe play a few songs, you know. Like, the story could have ended so badly. Yes. And it doesn't. It ends with a happy ending. Halsome.

Yeah, relatively speaking. And they come and they crash. And it's they do, they, they, they, they, there's a high school band playing, uh, the spring rain, local bar mitzo band playing, you know, James Taylor and Crosby stills and Nash and like Elvis tunes like you know whatever you played our mitzv in 1971 dead get up and it's not everybody uh there's no jerry garcia and no pig pen

but it's bob weir and phil lash and keith godshow and uh marmaduke from the new writers of the purple sage and they get up and they play you know set and then they jam with with the kids and go off on their merry way um and it's amazing it's like a you know can you imagine in the social media age, the Grateful Dead, just rolling up to, that's what makes the whole phenomenon really special to me too, which is a sidebar we'll get into, is the fact that everybody was so, like, you were famous, but you couldn't get online and see what that person looked like. You know, you couldn't, you didn't know much about their life, you know what I mean? And that was a real cool thing about music back in that day. So to meet somebody like that by happenstance, it's probably like meeting a

a god among men. Right. And that's where all this stuff, this folklore stuff comes from because the dead were like big in the 70s and the 80s when you, like you said, you couldn't just go online and like, look it all up. Um, so these stories kind of like a crew around them, you know, because it's just, it's like an oral tradition. All these people are following the dead around and they're, you know, killing time and, you know, telling stories and parking lots and on long road trips and things. And it's, you know, legends and myths. And if you were a video. crew maybe following the dead you might be on acid by accident or intentionally. Yeah, accidentally on your end. This is the interesting part to me. I know Jesse you wrote a book

on psychedelics. I did. It's called heads, a biography of psychedelic America. So you wrote a book on acid. You were on acid writing a book or is it a book on acid? There were, I did have to stop to think about it. No, there was no writing done on well on acid. It's a book about psychedelics and their impact on American culture, global culture as well, but really American culture. And kind of only up through the point that I was writing. The last five or six years have been, that's kind of like a whole other book. Right. And the origin story seemed to intertwine pretty naturally with acid. So for people at home that don't know how the Grateful Dead started, talk about the acid tests and kind of those shows that they were headlining or how would you put that?

Participating in. They were the house band. Yeah. Yeah. They were. But they said a lot of times it wasn't that they were the focus. They were just part of it. Yeah. Most of the time, actually. And it started before that. Actually, you know, it's like you can spin this theory. Here's like, we'll back into this one. But the Grateful Dead would not exist. without the U.S. government's help. And you can back into that because the grateful, you know, came out of these government experiments where they were testing LSD on people to see how they could use it one way or another. And some of the early people that were at these tests were Ken Kesey and Robert Hunter. And then you had Ken Kesey goes, do they know what they're giving us? And so they start the merry pranksters.

And then he wrote, you know, one flew over the cuckoo's nest and got all this money. and was able to fund all of this amazingly creative, just what it was shenanigans. They're the merry pranksters. And so that turned into the acid tests and the Grateful Dead were there at that same time. And they all just kind of blended together and showed up and hung out and gave birth to this amazingly creative period. Yeah. You know, the acid tests kind of grew out of like, you know, a decade and change of sort of what we're called like happenings, these sort of multimedia things that that sort of grew. out of the, you know, art scenes where all these different people working in different medias,

mediums, kind of collided and collaborated in real time, just sort of like getting together in a room. And acid kind of just blew that up to the next level. And psychedelics are, you know, a really powerful thing for an individual to take, you know, and they're amplified in a lot of way when you do them in group settings, you know, a lot of people doing them together. A lot of, you know, crazy shit happens. And that's really what the acid tests are is this incredible burst of creativity when all these people kind of do this.

And it's chaos. It's fucking chaos. You know, if you've ever taken acid to the group of people. But it's really it's fun. I mean, I was not at the acid test. I can only based on my own experiences, imagine. But it comes through in the tapes of what there is

in the film and just these little scraps of evidence that are kind of left over. that it's just this massively creative fun thing that's happening. And yeah, like Richard said, the music was sort of incidental to, but not unimportant, you know, it was,

you know, they played, they were playing like clubs elsewhere. And, you know, they took that stuff really seriously. Like they, they actually said,

you know, they wouldn't even like really jam at the club shows. They were in the, the asses were very, that was how they learned to get loose. That was sort of their, that part of their origin story. And actually the specifics of their origin story is the topic of, well, what will hopefully be out by the time people are hearing this, an episode about their relationship with Owsley Stanley, Bear, who was the chief underground LSD chemist in the United States for then, you know, making, you know, really the first making high quality LSD.

When it was still legal, we should add. Yes, when it was still legal. and they met him at one of the acid tests and he became their benefactor and their sound engineer and they all bundled up together and moved to L.A. for a few months where they all lived in a house and bare tabbed up acid in the attic and the dead practice downstairs. And, you know, it only kind of existed like that for a moment, but that is, you know, that's their origin story, you know, taking acid multiple times a week, probably at that point. They talk about a science fiction novel called More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, that's right, where it's about

these kind of weird mutants who are all like individually, they're all defective in different ways, but when they get together, they create this like powerful group mind, and that was kind of their model for what was happening, for what, for what they were and who they were. And they weren't micro dosing for people listening. Okay? Like they were, and they were dosing each other or in dosing the people around them. Like, you know, dropping acid into cups of orange juice and not saying anything. Like some of this sounds like literally stuff I would fight somebody over.

It's complicated. It's complicated. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, well, that was just it. You knew if you were at a Grateful Dead show in that point in time, there was a high percentage. If you drank, if you set your Coke down. somewhere and didn't watch it for a little bit,

that somebody might come by with a dropper and electrify you. Yeah. I mean, but the music, but the music was great. Like, music was great. And,

you know, but one thing also to point out is that, so the acid tests in the timeline of the grade for the drafts were that, the acid tests are 1965 and 1966. Yeah. It kind of took them a few years to really like, for their music to actually kind of catch up with that. Like,

you listen to the recordings of the earlier and it's, it's fun. It's great. but it's kind of blues jams. And I like and you know, it's starting to get a little jazzy. But it really took them like a lot of serious work and, you know, practice, like real serious discipline to like get to the point of like getting from the acid tests to like a 25 minute version of Darkstar.

That took that took like three or four years. So they didn't just roll out and do Dark Star for almost. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's worth adding too. There's so many recordings of the band that. exist because Bear was Owsley was recording their shows. So, and for a long time, right after the show

was over, they all got together and listened to that evening show to analyze what they did. And they did that religiously. So not only did they practice a lot individually, Garcia was known to practice for hours every day, playing guitar or pedal steel or banjo, whatever he was fixated at the moment, but they studied what they did as a band, you beyond just individual self-betterment musically, they listen to what they did every night to try to improve what they did every night. Yeah, it's like, you know, playing football. I hate football analogies, but here one goes. Like, what good is it if we don't break down the film afterwards? There's a practice now in psychedelics and sort of this mainstream version of psychedelics.

Integration. That's what you do after you trip. You know, you go through it. You go back through it and talk about what you experienced and what you felt. and that's sort of how you make it last and make it, you know, work in whatever way you're hoping for it to work. And the dead kind of, I think the dead really did that just instinctually. And that's a lot of what you're seeing is that they went through this chaos, whether it's the acid test or just like the night's gig and went back through it and really like, you know, play by played it, basically. You know, the sports analogies are totally valid, I think, with the dead. Oh, absolutely. It's, yeah, more often than not, because you think about it, it's a

group. It's a group effort. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the whole listening to each other thing really stood out to me watching long strange trip. Like one of the biggest like buzz sentences that I heard was the key was really listening to each other because that's something I think that's always assumed in conversation. And probably, you know, the instruments talk to each other as they put it. But they were intently listening to each other. Just one or have. A little piece to die. The Black Peter story is one of my favorites. What happened? Robert Hunter got dosed,

and there's a drug dealer with a diamond hand, and there's a whole situation. This is the song Black Peter is inspired by this whole chaotic night in San Francisco. Yeah, so, yeah, like you were saying, And there were a lot of dead shows where people got dosed intentionally, unintentionally, sometimes somewhere in between. Sometimes you didn't, you know, you knew the punch was spike, but you didn't know

with how much. And that was kind of what happened in this situation. You know, Robert, you know, I think it was a night where I think multiple people had had dropped LST in the same beverage. Like, oh, I'm going to be the person who doses the apple juice tonight. Bling, bloop. And there was already somebody that had. given it a healthy portion before him.

So that's what happened. And who knows how many of these Dixie Cups Robert had of it that evening. Right, right, right. He got there. And this is a pretty notorious week. This is like the week when supposedly, you know, if you add it up, it seems like this is the week that Jerry Garcia got two dose to play on one night, which is, which is, you know, that's a rarity.

Like, you know, Jerry Garcia, too, to tripping too hard to play. You know, that's something that really only happened to the acid tests. that's why he talked about why the acid tests were important because he was like there was no pressure we could play or not and in this case it was a real gig he got too high so um so later in that week yeah this happens to hunter and he has basically the trip to end all trips he talks uh is i mean he talked about it was just the worst

possible bad trip you could imagine he said he i think his interview line was like i witnessed every major political assassination in history from the perspective of the person getting killed. Like, it's just like, oh, my God. And they, like, find him in the street, like, like, raving about lobsters, some, some crazy or some craziness. It was Franz Ferdinand for a second. Yeah, man.

Holy shit. Here's the thing about that story, though, that blew me away is that, obviously he needs somebody. He needs a guide because he can't be left on his own. So it came to the point, whoever was watching, it was one of the Hells Angels, I believe, for a little while. But then they split. And then Jerry and Mountain Girl are tasked with taking him from San Francisco back to Marin. But here is the thing. Oh, no, they're already home and they have to come back to get him. And they're dose to the gills too. So can you imagine? Like, sometimes it's all you can do just to turn on this area, you know. And they've got to go back and pick up, Hunter.

all you can do to turn on this there. Well, so that's a simpler back then. You didn't have to connect to Bluetooth or anything like that. But at least actually like an interesting historical point because we have this like interview with Jerry

where he's talking about it. And he's like, oh yeah. And then we went there and I, we were like listening to the crowd, that first, that Crosby stills and Nash record that had just come out. And so then we listened to that over

and over and over again and just sort of imprinted while we were waiting for Hunter to come down. And it's like, oh, okay, well, we can identify. that we know that incident happened then in June 1969 and it becomes this sort of little turning point in their own musical history so all these incidents kind of like feed into each other in ways where it's like here's this crazy thing that happened but then Hunter then took that insane

like terrifying experience and turned it into this beautiful song yeah it's like really just intensely emotional piece of writing and apparently he intended to be kind of funny but it turns out it's not. I mean, it is, but it isn't. And, and yeah, and it actually really kind of initiated a new phase in their songwriting in that way. Yeah, exactly. I think it's fun. There's so much kismet, and there's so many, you know, branches that intertwine in this world that really that story is about Hunter. But if you look at a really important aspect of it, like you're saying, they listen to that Crosby Still's and Nash record ad nauseum that night. And it got imprinted and six months later, they recorded an album that has some of the best vocal harmonies. And then six

months after that, another album with incredible vocal harmonies. So it, you know, would they have done that if Hunter hadn't a trip balls and had a way too much? You know what I mean? That's a really good question. Yeah. And did I learn that Jerry played on like teacher children on y'all's podcast? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Just little nuggets like that. You could pick that up on their podcast. So check it out. And Robert Hunter, mysterious character still to this day. Would he be the interview that you guys, if you could wave your magic wand? Like, yeah, I mean, or, you know, not cat and Jerry, but yeah, either of those guys are to me, you know, like the real, just the core of the whole thing. We were talking about how much we really want to get Robert,

do an interview with Robert, and then, of course, he passed. So, yeah. So, yeah, we know, another part of the origin story of the dead cast is that we actually started this like two years before it debuted. And it kind of got a little derailed. But we did a whole bunch of it. We kind of like made a whole plan and plot and life took other courses. Like everything else in Grateful Dead world, it develops on its own. There is a plan already.

We just haven't seen the map yet. And so it took us two years to find the path. And yeah. And really once you like if you look at the, if you like listen to the episodes in order, like there's there wasn't really much of a plan. Like they really the the way it worked really evolved right still evolving and I'm really intent on not hope Hope we don't fall into formulas and hope it's just you know keeps you know find finding new new new new pads and new structures for us to to play around with if you could interview robert hunter like what the what the fuck would you're asking because he was he was like he wasn't big on the interviews i guess no well it's funny he went through it depends who you were and when you

interviewing him and what you were asking him because he was there are a couple of places where he would talk a lot he had an online journal for when I was in college in the 90s he was posting online every day and he was in his email address he would just post his email address like email me I remember that and at the time I'm like I don't know what to ask him and I but I have friends who had email dialogues with him and it's he was just an email buddy to a lot of people so there he kind of went through depends who you were about access How about like the relationships in the band when it came to having preferred songwriters, right? Because was it was Robert Jerry's guy and or Bob's guy? Which one was it? He was Jerry's guy.

He started off as everybody's guy. He started off as the Grateful Dead's in-house lyricist. That was his his jobs. The fur, he, the dead started in 65 and he was friends with Jerry going back to the early days in the focus scene. But he was kind of off doing another. things for the first few years. And in late 67, Garcia invited him on board just to be the lyricist because he was a poet and a writer. So he wrote lyrics for Bob Weir and for Phil Lesh and for, you know, just for pig pen. He was just expected. He was just the guy who wrote the songs, but he was very precise in particular about what he was doing. And Bob Weir ultimately wanted more freedom in terms of like what, you know, somebody had to use set of lyrics. As a musician,

he wanted to be able to kind of like move them around or whatever you do to make it into a song from lyrics. And Hunter was not always so gracious about what Weir did to his lyrics and, you know, sometimes to be fair. And so Weir eventually found his own songwriting partner, John Perry Barlow, who I did get to interview a couple times. They're never really about lyrics. He was a fascinating guy who was into a whole lot of other stuff. And I wish we could have talked to him too. he was incredibly intelligent and interesting. Well, I didn't lean in like I leaned in any other time

watching Long Strange Trip is when Barlow talked. Like when he came in and he was talking about that culture in that band and how macho was and like it would have been okay to just fucking cry. Like, I don't know. He had this gravitas that like I didn't know who he was when he started talking. But I was like, oh, this guy's interesting. And I don't know. As somebody from the outside looking in, I really want to know more about him.

He's, man, talk about complicated. So he was, he was born to be a politician and kind of always was, even though he never held elected office. That's one way to describe Barlow. He was a really, really gifted orator, really just incredible thinker. So grew up Mormon in Wyoming as a son of a cat, son of a son of a son. cattle ranchers. And he was a, he was a cattle rancher until the late 80s, early 90s, while he was doing a lot of this writing for the dead. He was also a cattle rancher. He was also extremely active in state politics and was a conservationist. He was an environmentalist.

But was, shoot, I'm confusing the Republicans from Montana now, worked on it, not Cheney. Who is the other evil guy from Montana? Oh, fuck, dude. Which one? but he worked on it so parlo was a republican in the 80s and worked on campaign you know it was like a Republican shocking yeah

yeah but yeah but he was libertarian the libertarianish of the Republican yeah libertarian libertarian psychedelic end of the Republican thing and eventually you sort of you know shed that I think as as as the Reagan era really got going but the libertarian

party kind of leaned into you and eventually founded the electronic Frontier Foundation, which is sort of like the ACLU of the internet. And he founded that in like 1990. He was like really an early online person and had a lot of really powerful effects on online culture, both good and bad. He was a very, very early free speech advocate. The work that the Electronic Frontier Foundation did was incredible on that front in the first, like the early years of the internet. We're talking even like pre, before the worldwide web even. They were kind of thinking about privacy online and encryption and all this stuff that really didn't become part of the

mainstream conversation until 25 years after that, really. I had no idea this guy was in all this. Yeah, and wrote all these really powerful articles and editorials and things about it. But like, you know, and this is something that I would revive, you know, shade differently in my book if I could, you know, was very corporate as well. Right. in a different way because sort of leaning, like I said, leaning libertarian. And a lot of sort of, you know, the sort of internet having corporate, you know, the internet

was a government project, as everybody kind of knows by this point. And event, but now he's people like Barlow is kind of why it's so privately controlled. He is sort of at that, that pivot point. Damn, dude, this guy. I mean, I just thought, and it was funny, you said Orator, like, they're interviewing him in his Bronco or whatever it was, like old vintage car. And it almost sounds like he wrote what he was. saying. I mean, he's so, he was so well-spoken. I was like, damn, this guy's like, yeah,

he's a songwriter. This guy's deep. And then they roll up to Pigpen's Grave, I guess. And he's like, these fucking idiots, why would you put guitar picks on Pigpen's grave? I mean, a keyboard. So, like, I just thought he was quirky. Like, he just seemed different. Yeah, definitely. He's a free thinker. It's one way to put it. You know, he, you know, Edward, when Edward Snowden, you know, had all his revelations in 2015, 14, wherever that was, Barlow was like one of the people that he was, you know, paling around with. That was definitely, you know, so, you know, he stayed really at the forefront of that. So then I, you know, he died not, you know, a year or two ago, not that long ago, but like, I wish,

I wish, you know, he's somebody I wish we could talk to because he was, he had very, you know, he had very libertarian positions, very what, you know, things that. have been criticized kind of harshly, you know, since he passed. But he was also, he really was open-minded and broad-minded. And I do, I am curious at how his, has, his thoughts would have evolved. Yeah, like over the last two, three years, because nothing before the last two years is the same anymore. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Talking about Jerry, like in earlier, I kind of, I put it this way. Like, to me, outside looking in, there's this duality to the music that's really provocative to me. It's

it's not just Cherry Garcia and like dancing bears and tie-dye. Like there's a darkness kind of right under the surface and I didn't realize that Jerry had such like a you can call it a dark childhood losing your dad the way he did and that sort of thing

and the way this band kind of grew together and lost people. They're talking about after 1973 it was just you know people were dying left and right in and around this band. is it that his brand just kind of gets in the way of this darkness or are people not listening you know like because I didn't realize it for a long time yeah I mean there's a very

there's a cuteness factor that happens with with around the Grateful Dead yeah you know the dancing bears the the the the tide eye like you were saying that you know the the sort of the sugar magnolia good time boogie down Grateful Dead and that's real you know that's that's certainly a very dominant thing about what they were. But the Dead were a really serious band, like in the early days. Like we were saying, they incredibly disciplined,

incredibly powerful, incredibly just really worked at it. And all that stuff is there. They were, you know, the cutie stuff was there, but that's not how they were presenting. You know,

the Bears were, I mean, the Bears originally were on a grateful of that album. They were on Bears' choice in 1973. But the way the dancing bears kind of became synonymous with the dead was sort of deadheads they were on bootleg shirts the dead heads kind of more amplified the bear so i think a lot of that vision of the dead really comes from the celebratory thing that they became in the 80s and 90s but when you really focus in on the

stuff that they're doing in the 60s and 70s the celebratory part is certainly there but it's so complex and so i mean that's what you know robert hunter is that's what the that's what songs like Black Peter are. It's this richness of human experience that includes you know, death, death and horrifying things happening to people and you know, just complex moral choices and

you know, freedom. What happens with freedom, basically. And that's all there right from the start. You know, their name is the Grateful Dead. It's the imagery that fucks you up. If you're not a Grateful Dead fan, you're like, oh, you know, it's everybody's on drugs and it's happy. The first bunch of years. And you look at their album covers for the first, say, 10 years of the band. And

there's some dark, weird shit on those things. They were in the early part of their career. I think they were thought of as scarier. You know, they were, you know, before there was heavy metal. I mean, there was certainly metal in those days, you know, not taking anything away from Sabbath and all that. But there was the Grateful Dead coming to your town. You might get dose. You might. Yeah, there might be a biker at your door. I don't know. Exactly. You might get abducted by the angels, whatever. is going to have you know you might get sucked into a commune and never be you know change your name you might end up in india who knows and and so there's that that factor was of these crazy anarchists

coming to town and the dead were crazy anarchists i think that's a thing that gets lost jerry garcia actually that's like when you if you asked jerry garcia about his political affiliations he would identify as an anarchist and he knows what anarchy means like in the the self-governing sense It's not the burn, burn the McDonald's sense. And they, they, he was, he was so fucking serious about that, about that stuff. And so the cute stuff happened, I think when he kind of, he can, I mean, Jerry kind of took his foot off the gas at a certain point. You know, he did slip.

That darkness did sort of overtake. You know, he was, he was an addict. And that really, you know. He was probably, he was an addict long before he was an addict. That's sort of how addiction is. And by the 80s, that was sort of that kind of became his life. It's the thing is that he was still Jerry and he still practiced all the time. But he really, he really turned a little, he turned more a lot, a lot more inward in the 80s.

He became somewhat reclusive, you know, except for gigging all the time. But he didn't, you know, he wasn't just showing up at random, you know, not that he crashed that bar mitzvah, but he wasn't crashing bar mitzvah. Yeah, because he's too big a deal anymore. I mean, probably you compounded obviously by the. addiction, but maybe they play into each other. It's like, I could not imagine being Jerry Garcia in the 70s. Like for a while, it was probably awesome, but then eventually it probably really sucked. Yeah. Well, it did change through the years. I mean, I think a good example of that is we were interviewing Graham Nash. And Graham said, Graham knew him back in the day. You know, he gave him

that stratocaster that became one of Jerry's first custom guitars, alligator. That was given to him by Graham Nash. And he said, it changed as he got older. One time later on, what was it, late 80s, Jesse? Crosby Stills and Nash were opening for the Grateful Dead. And Graham walked on stage and the roadies came up and said, you can't stand on that carpet. That's Jerry's carpet. So Jerry kind of became almost like a Dalai Lama,

rock and roll Dalai Lama in a way, very revered and more than a person almost to the right group of people, you know. That's got to be hard for the band members around him, maybe, or no? I think the, yeah, I think all of it was. I get this. I think the addiction was probably a lot harder than the deification. Right. Because, you know, he was kind of already a guru in the 60s and 70s when he was very present

and very around. And that was Jerry. You know, he was just, he was, that was, that was why it all happened. And then I think, yeah, it really, a lot of that happened because of how passive he got and just sort of, you know, and there's a beautiful period, which is when Rich was getting to see the dead when, you know, you know. when Jerry did get clean again in the late 80s and early 90s for a little spell. And, you know, it's not like he was totally dropping into random bars to jamp with bands,

but he was extremely present and active again for a couple of years. Yeah. That was when the Garcia-Grisman record started to happen. Oh, my God. What a great good one. That's some awesome stuff right there, too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you had, you know, those Jerry Garcia shows back then, like 87, 88.

I think 87 was the, he would do the, an acoustic set like the dead used to do with a Jerry Garcia acoustic band, and then we'd come out and do electric. Yeah. And I saw him once at the Frost do that. No, actually, the Frost weekend, it was Frost Greek. So the Frost show was on a Saturday. It was the acoustic band, and Sunday was the electric Jerry band at the Greek.

That's wild. What a great yin-yang. I mean, it was beautiful. That is awesome. Yeah, I mean, I got a couple of their songs on my Spotify from the late 80s, but it sounded different, you know? and not in a bad way, it just sounded different because probably the way you,

I mean, definitely, and you guys are the music heads, like the way you recorded these shows changed, the acoustics and buildings change. That was another thing is like, I love playing in old stadiums as a player. Like I was like really into going and playing a candlestick or Soldier Field. Like, fuck these new stadiums, dude.

And I feel like a dead show, if they could just teleport back, it'd still be awesome. But the stadiums are so sterile now. Like, they had to play some, really cool places that the acoustics were different and maybe challenging to record stuff. But the 80s sounded way cleaner in a way that I just am like, eh. Well, that's really cool.

That's really interesting to know that you like old stadiums. I never, it never occurred to me that, I mean, I have that feeling about venues, like, whether there's stadiums or theaters, I love the old funky stuff way more than the new things. And the dead certainly loved that, you know, the new box set. There shows from the Fox Theater, which is this rundown movie theater. that apparently, like I went through all the old underground papers from St. Louis, almost nobody played there but the dead, but they loved that place. So they, they love that kind of thing too.

The sound of the band did change insanely. Like that was part of my fascination when I became a deadhead in 90s, which is I saw them and it was like, and I kind of had like, I guess I, you know, touch of gray was an enormous hit in 1987, just ubiquitous. And I knew that song from the radio. And then I got like some older. I was like, this doesn't sound anything like that. And I saw them.

And at the same time in 94 that I was starting to like listen to the Grateful Dead hour and hear 70s tapes. And it was like, how is this even the same band? Dude, yeah. Like how? I don't. And I, which is kind of, so I do a listening project on Twitter where I'm listening to every single Grateful Dead show. I've started in the 60s. I'm up to the 80s now.

And just hearing how it changed. And it was because that they were so, because they were so present in whatever moment they were in, everything was always in flux. And that goes to the gear. Like they were always like up into the next level of the equipment. And the song arrangements like, you know, you could do whatever you wanted. There was no fixed part. You know, you had a baseline and you played on the album that everybody knows. You don't have to play that. You know, it's like. And it's so you listen to the way they play the songs in the 90s. And literally, most of the time, the parts that are playing, you know, they resemble the parts that are on like the original versions from the 60s and 70s,

but like only in a cursory way. It's like they're not committed to. And that's really that thing about being in conversation. That's kind of what that is. It's like being in the moment because you can be in a band and have your song and like, okay, this is how the song goes. You know, you play it this way, this tempo and then there's a change to this section and then we all sing the vocals together and then it's done.

And I've played in bands and sometimes we play songs like that. And then that's, that's not what the dead were, you know. They were always in the moment. I felt like they were covering a different band. And I mean that really respectfully. Like, they were a cover band of themselves, which I think is really fucking cool, dude. Like, you know, I get bored. I've run out of music.

Like, I can't stop descending into this rabbit hole. It's just deeper and deeper. And I think that's really, that's one of the biggest draws for somebody who's, who's just figuring out. I mean, I love it. I love the fact that everything was varied so much. But you talked about in the late 80s, one of the things that blew me away the most was that you go from this band

that in the early 70s was like these concerts are a living organism, and it gets kind of out of control in the late 80s, and they actually have to be like, write letters to their fans to say, hey, guys, you can't set up cities around these nice new stadiums. It's not 1972.

Yeah, they just got so popular, literally. And I mean, I was right on that before and after, because 85, it was mellow. Yeah. And then when in the dark came out and Touch Gray was a huge hit and they had videos, they were getting played on MTV, they reached this whole new audience. And everybody started coming in and there were people that didn't respect the traditions. And so they did.

The band reached out to core deadheads and said, look, it's a, you know, you've got to teach your children here. You've got to spread the word about how things go or else we're not going to be able to do it. And there was that internal dialogue in the tribe where it's like, hey, man, you got to chill out. There were a couple times where it was a deer run where they overran the back fence and just, it was mayhem like thousands of people just got into the show. I mean, it's crazy. They changed so much.

You can't put Pandora back in the box, man. You can't put the genie back in the bottom. It was like, no, no, no, no, we're the grateful dead now. It was kind of the idea I got like, we're all the grateful dead, man. You can't, you can't stop this thing. So I wonder, though, as you know, bands age, creativity wanes, like chemistry can be strained, all that stuff. Like, hey, how many bands get better as time goes on, which could be a whole other

sidebar. You guys could probably do a whole pot on that. Like, who actually got better as time went on? Who he got on your shirt? Yola tango. Oh, nice. Okay. So, so I'm just saying that like, it's hard for me to imagine another band being the Grateful Dead, like, ever again.

I just don't think you can recreate the vibe they had for a few reasons. One, it's one in a million, you know, from the synthetic, rather the chemical inspiration to, to the time period where, like, you looked at these shows. I was watching with a colorized history kind of like the grainy old footage. and I'm like, not a motherfucker has their phone out at this show. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Like just, it was the perfect time for the perfect band.

And I don't even know if you could ever recreate that. Yeah, you can't. Because, I mean, another thing that I think gets forgotten about the dead and lots of their contemporaries in the, in the 60s in San Francisco is that music was really only just one little component of this like insane thing that was happening like on all fronts that, you know, music was, was equal to. just the street culture that was emerging and, you know, art and in San Francisco, things like the diggers who are kind of this, you know, anarchist socialist group, as you can kind of imagine, more anarchist

and socialist. But it was, it was all part of this enormous movement where, you know, even bands in the punk scene in New York, that was a music scene. That was like, that was sort of where it kind of emerged from. It wasn't a counterculture in quite the same way. And just the conditions of all. of that at the same moment, like you were saying, it's just the perfect explosion for this thing. So the dead were, you know, the dead were a band, but the way they operated inside American culture wasn't like other bands. It wasn't. And people recognized that at the time. Like you see the cover, like the way the dead were covered when they would come to some like random town wouldn't be the same as if, I don't know what another comparable act would be.

You know, Crosby, Sils and Nash, I guess. Crossbe Sills and the Dead say playing the same, same, same arena in the same town. I don't even know if that ever actually happened, but the Crossfields and As treated as as rock stars as like as people who have these enormous pop hits, the dead were treated as kind of like the representatives of the counterculture representatives of this. I mean, in the 60s, what seemed like a revolution, what seemed like this like crazy thing that was happening in the dead were kind of the musical vanguard of that, you know? And so people, you know, like you look through underground newspapers from that era and the dead are treated with, even if, you know, they weren't big. There were many, many bands in the 60s who were bigger

than the dead. The dead, you know. That's the part to me that's a mind fuck because they can't exist in any other realm than the one they do today. But they, but they had the cred. They had the credibility. Like even in the 60s, like people just like the acid tests was really kind of like, that was the word of mouth. It was like, oh, these guys are in with the acid tests. And, And it just gave them that like an authenticity that was, you know, that nobody else had. You know, they just had a thing that nobody else had. They were the acid test band. And that, you know, makes them more than just some band here on the radio.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Totally. They're the guys from the acid test. But also musicians respect them, yeah? Like, who was the most random, like, I love the pictures of old musicians hanging out with musicians that you wouldn't think they'd hang out with. Like, that's the coolest thing in the world to me.

Like, who's the coolest thing in the world to me? a guy or a girl that would frequent a dead show that you'd be like, oh, shit. Black flag. Oh, wow. Henry Roll and, you know, break in and Black Flag. I see Henry Rolls getting into it. Then somebody, so they Black Flag broke up in 85, 84, whatever year they broke up, somebody was saying that they were like, saw them in the parking lot at Alpine Valley,

and they were like on their way back from the tour where they had just broken up and they stopped to see it. That's incredible. We're breaking off, which I think is hilarious. It's like, that can't have been a fun band ride, right? Just like, imagine, like, hey, you're in a van with Henry Rollins and the band is just broken up. Like, not good vibes.

Okay, guys, stop and see the dead. Let's stop and see the dead. Okay. Are they the greatest American band of all time? I mean, I should phrase that better, the most American band. Yeah. They certainly take all the different musical influences and incorporate them from you know, jazz to bluegrass, to folk, to rock, to rock and roll. I mean, it's, they definitely

draw from every well, but at the same time, they're unlike any other band. Are they the most unique American band? Absolutely. I would say yes. Most impactful, probably. I mean, I just saw the stones a few days ago. They still got it. They're massive. The way they bring it is just mind-blowing. Keith Richards' voice sounded better than probably the last two times that I saw on them. That was my fifth show. You know, I'm like, is this the great, still is this the greatest rock and roll band? Because that's the way they build themselves for a long time, right? And Sam Culler came up with that line, I think. Well, that would make sense. It's Sam. Greatest rock and roll band in the world. Right, right. Well, they're pretty damn good. But you know what? It's like,

the stones maybe are in my top five list of greatest concerts I've ever seen. But, there's probably three dead shows ahead of them. Yeah. No, and that's saying something, because you're seeing gods on earth, dude, when you're seeing the Rolling Stones.

It's like, I mean, for me with the dead, it's like the scope of what they were doing in terms of how deeply plugged into American traditional music they were. You know, Jerry was like way into the folk, like deep into the folk world before he was in the dead.

Like there were pictures of him like in the front row at the Berkeley Folk Festival. He was a tape collector. They were like, he was really embedded in that. He was part of that. And that the level that they were playing at in terms of, you know, Jerry playing with, you know, people like David Grisman and, you know, with folk music, but also with like electronic music and experimental stuff with people like Ned Legend in the 70s.

And then in the 80s and 90s, they started experimenting with like midi, you know, and like, really like noisy stuff that electronic producers use now. they were kind of, you know, that was being integrated into their setup in the 80s, you know, into the drummers and, you know, the guitarists. Just the scope of that with how popular they were. Like those two things multiplied, like their, the scope of their influences with how popular they actually got, it's just incredible, like how just you, it's really hard to go places in American music without kind of touching on that.

I mean, hip hop, that's about it. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's next. I don't know. I mean, hopefully. Yeah, I hope so. So where can I find more olden in the way? Because it just popped into my head, like you're talking about all this stuff that, because I've got my Spotify and I've maxed it out and I'm like, there's got to be some more fucking records somewhere.

Okay. But we just were talking with Starfinder Stanley and Hawk, who are the Starfinder is Owsley's son, Bear's son. Okay. And they run the Owsley Stanley Foundation. There is a massive catalog of recordings that Bear. made. Wow. And for a period there, Bear was focused on Olden and in the way. How many shows did he record, Jesse? It's a massive number. I mean, my understanding is that he recorded virtually all of their rehearsals and their shows. I mean, they only existed for about a year. And I think he recorded

maybe, you know, if not 100 percent, then at least, you know, 80 percent of that. Well, those ever see the light a day? Possibly. They have, they've saved all the tapes. They've been preserved. Okay. And the Sonic Qualism. of these recordings that Bear made is absolutely fantastic. I mean, I just got, just to decide, I just got the official Alisley Stanley Foundation release of the

Ammon Brothers in February 1970 on vinyl and listen to it three or four days ago. It's amazing. It's amazing. And they're just stoned on acid. And you hear at one point, you heard Dwayne say, it's okay. It's okay. What a good friend.

so fucking high. So hopefully we will see these recordings. I mean, I think there's a lot of people that they need to talk to and get releases to get them out. But if we're lucky, we'll see a bunch of Olden in the Way releases. But I will also point out that, you know, deadheads and Bluegrass fans, which intersect very much in Olden in the Way are tape traders. And Jerry and Grisman, tape traders back in the day. So there are lots of Olden the Way live tapes floating around out there. Floating, just float in, like little clouds.

It's more mystique, man. It is. They're on BitTorrent, actually. If you really, I can barely update my iPhone. I'll be able to just navigate the fuck out of it. Torrent. I'm good. Hold on.

I'm just typing it in here, buddy. That's the thing. It's the thing. But that was the thing about being a deadhead is. You kind of had to want it. You got to learn it. It's not just you got to learn. You got to want.

There's a great, grateful ed lyric. You ain't going to learn what you don't want to know. Yeah, exactly. And then John Perry Barlow. It's a really profound thing. And if you wanted to be a deadhead in the 70s, in the 80s and into the 90s and you wanted those tapes, you couldn't just go on Spotify or YouTube or whatever. You had to trade tapes.

So easy now. We're so lazy. I'm so lazy. I love trading tapes. It was so fun. Like going to my mailbox. It's like here's this package of like five or six things that I got for free that are going to fucking blow my mind.

Yeah. One of those in there was going to be your new favorite tape. Post office brought this shit to me. It's like they sent me drugs. It's like they sent me drugs. They should be looking for the fucking fed. Not like. They did.

Audio drugs. Audio drugs, man. So I want to finish with one thing. That's cool. I got, my fans are always, if I have fans, I have listeners, football fans that listen to my podcast. They like to mailbag me all the time. What's your favorite Grateful Dead show?

I don't have a favorite Grateful Dead show, but I can give you my five favorite Grateful Dead songs. And I want to see if you guys have any good facts on them as I rifle through them. My first question would be. be is where does ship a fool's rank in the chalkiness of grateful dead favorites? I've had people tell me it's like chalky. It's probably a consensus top 10. And then I've had people tell me it's like, oh, that's a deep cut. I don't think either of those are true. Which one is it? That's one that Jerry loved, man. He, so he would drop that one into second sets, which is sort of like the stellar

framing for it. That's like the heavy point in the show where it's like you've already warmed up and you want to, you know, you want to give them a statement. And Chip of Fool's lived in that spot. So I wouldn't call it. He played it a lot, but it's, it does live somewhere between a deep cut and something that played like a lot. It's a heavy song. That's my favorite.

Man, that's one that, that lives deep in my head a lot over these last few years. Yeah. People also say it's about the Grateful Dead. It's about the Grateful Dead crew and things, how things were getting overwhelmed. That was 1974 is when that song came out. And that's kind of when the Wall of Sound.

was coming in, that's when things were starting to become overwhelming with too many crew members. And Hunter, especially, even more than Barlow, didn't like that vibe. Robert Hunter used to travel with the band to every show and eventually felt like he was, the vibe was a little too weird for him. And he sort of retreated and even moved to England for a few years. So Ship of Fools, I've seen ascribe to sort of that attitude. I wonder what his proposition was. You know what I mean?

I love the song. My two-year-old, I sing to him almost every night and in the rotation, the ship of fools, he knows about two verses. So pretty good for a two-year-old. Wow. How about? Yeah, he's a dead head.

My two-year-old is a dead head. Raisin him right. We try to avoid the contact high part of that, but he is a dead head. All right, so Dark Star. This is a Robert Hunter song. Yeah? Is this?

It's a group composition. Robert Hunter lyrics. I mean, that's the dead song. I mean, that's the jam. That's Darkstar. There's a, there's a, so there's a great single, there's a great,

there's a version that they recorded on a seven-inch single in 1967. That's like two and a half minutes. It's like a single. Yeah. And over the course of between 67 and 69, it expanded very gradually, actually, from two and a half minutes to like 20 minutes,

25 minutes. And then basically in 1969 on, it was like the dead's jam song. and that's the magical place, the magical place, was Darkstar. Yeah, I love Darkstar, man. And the short studio version, I wanted to be longer. I wish to just go back and make it longer.

Yeah. I love the vibe, actually, in the short studio version. We are actually here, I do have a tiny bit of insanely detailed trivia about that. There's the drone on the studio version. It's a Tampora, an Indian instrument. The person playing it is a woman who was named Hedy McGee at the time. Her name is, eventually, her name was Hedy McLeague. and she married Angus MacLeese, the original drummer from the Velvet Underground.

Oh, wow. And went on to be an influential person in like the weird subterranean music art world of, you know, sort of the India-New York connection. Yeah. Yeah. There's some trivia for Dark. There's some Dark Star trivia. She features into an episode that Rich will be editing soon.

I feel like we're going to have a George Harrison conversation at some point here. But I just, I just love the song. It's my favorite version. think it's 25 minutes long. I forget which one it is. There's a bunch of versions from 72 that I would probably jump to as April 8th in London and August 27th at the Veneta Fairgrounds. That's the Sunshine Daydream movie is the August 27th, 72. The other one is on the year of 72 box set. The one that's on the new Listen to the River set from Cleveland, excuse me, from St. Louis, 72, also an incredible classic.

Lots basically anytime they started playing that song in 72 classic version. Okay, this is one. I'll get that dark stars from every year if you want. Okay, good, yeah. I have this one dark star that when motherfuckers ask me, like, when I meet a deadhead and they're like, what's your favorite show? I'm like, oh, Bickershaw. Bickershaw.

That's like, that also a great fucking dark star, man. And then they back off. They back off, man. And then we're like, we're talking about something else. Back off. Bickershaw, man. I don't even know where it is. That's, England.

That's a, that's a, that's a great. Deep cut Darkstar, Ellis Costello and Joe Strummer, both of that show. That's my badge. So Bill Frizzell, who's an amazing legendary American jazz guitarist, did an amazing version of Darkstar into comes a time with James McNeue, who's the bassist in Yolatengo band Who shirt. There you go, yeah. But they based it on the Bickershaw version.

They apparently passed that version back and, exactly right. Pass that version back and forth. and kind of not learned it, but kind of used that as their inspiration. Okay, Cosmic Charlie, that's not a popular song, but I love that song. Man, I have an acoustic guitar around the house, and that's one that I've learned to play somewhat recently. It's so fucking complicated. I know exactly why they dropped it.

So many court changes. But that's a thing about a lot of grateful songs. They don't sound complicated. They don't sound complicated, but when you start to learn them, you're like, what the? It's like they are Why would they do that? So smooth. It could be the most intricate, weird change, but it just sounds so smooth.

I mean, that song has two bridges, both of them with like these really weird chord sequences. Yes. Yes, dude. And I hate bridges. I sound like an idiot talk, but I fucking hate bridges. Bridges as me as a music fan have like a 200 batting average. This is not baseball. Fuck bridges.

But the bridges and that song. there's at the end and I don't even know if this is a bridge but you know the when the guitar changes up in the last minute and a half and it sounds like water cascading down and of course I was on mushrooms on the river and right when it kicked in we we hit the rapids three quarters of the way through that song and I'll never forget the song because of that and the importance of that song to me and I love the song so maybe a deeper cut continued kismet with the grateful dead music and what is going on in your life yeah it's true it does sync up I love the early versions of that song. There's some raging ones from 69 that are just, they slowed it down

at some point in there, but the first two versions are just at like breakneck tempo and it's just, that's great. Okay. Rap the baby in scarlet covers on your own. St. Stephen, which they opened, I mean, that's fairly chalky. They opened a long strange trip with that. So what is that song about? It's about St. Stephen, but who the fuck is that? I could Google harder. I feel like that song in a lot of ways is sort of a birthplace of like Robert Hunter's philosophy in some ways. He kind of sort of he's kind of

cosmic psychedelic philosophy. The Gravelyde had a newsletter in the 70s and they would like send these dispatches about this guy, this mythical character St. Dilbert, who's the patron saint of hypnocracy, which is sort of like you know, cosmic, self-negating humor religion or something.

And St. Stephen, I kind of see a whiff of that in there. kind of this sort of funny, you know, you know, wherever he goes, the people all complain kind of thing. Kind of this sort of like, there's a, it's a, there's some heavy cosmic wisdom, but it's also pretty funny, you know, that kind of thing. I love that damn song. I love the, like, the organ or whatever it is in the background. Yeah.

That's probably my favorite part of that damn song and the guitar too, which is for you guys, very basic analysis of a song. Well, no, but I think the lyrics in that song are a great example of, you know, a lot of songwriters will work on writing one, co-co-exam. he's from start to finish the song. Yeah. That St. Stephen has these stanzas or couplets that are complete thoughts unto themselves. One man gathers what another man spills.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. We were just talking about that one. Yeah. He has all of these completely compartmentalized thoughts inside of his songs, but then they string together to create an entity. It's really, you know, you can dissect them. and walk away with as much of a gold nugget as the entire song itself.

Right. And there's a whole scholarly world of Grateful Ed people who are in like academia who get together and talk about this stuff and go really deep into like the teachings of, you know, maybe not the teachings, you know, the logic of Robert Hunter or the, you know, what philosophers he's kind of accidentally or intentionally hinting at, you know, that sort of thing. I'm really interested in the psychology of these guys. I'm really interested in what they prescribed to intellectually. It's pretty damn cool.

We could go on for a while. My last one is loser, but mainly because of the Cornell version. Ooh. Yeah. So shout out to my buddy Tom. He turned me on to this song, which is obviously probably one of the more prominently known

Grateful Dead songs, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, Jerry, love the shit out of loser. Who doesn't love loser? Loser's great. That's another thing. Were they some gambling dudes?

because you had gambling lyrics and card imagery and you had like a bunch of songs, right, had kind of even in the titles. Yeah. I mean, that was, that's Hunter. And I don't know if he was so much actually a gambler or that was kind of his set of metaphor. That was his set of language, you know,

like, you know, that's, that's his modern way to relate to people is through, you know, that's where, you know, that's where the cosmic bill gets settled.

this at the poker table, you know, something like that. The cosmic poker table, not the literal one, yeah. Yeah, it's like, it's just sort of a language that kind of, and you know, fit in with the sort of the dead, I think kind of evolved into that what the country vibe in the early 70s. And I think the card plane kind of went along naturally with that. Though there's some of that actually in some, you know, some of the psychedelic tunes too. So it was already there. But yeah, really the conceptual, some conceptual continuity for Hunter.

Well, there you have it, guys. You guys can stop hitting my mailbag with. what are your top five Grateful Dead songs? I thought you guys, I thought I was going to get tomatoes thrown at me. Well, these guys didn't think they were that fucking bad guys.

So, those are great fun. Yeah, if you need it, if you started out with ship of fools, come on, man. The first two chords or whatever

notes to that song are just, they give me chills, bro. Yeah. They give me chills. I think Phil once introduced it as a heavy duty song in D minor. D minor.

Yeah, I don't know anything about me. It's the status of all keys. The saddest key? Okay. According to spinal tap. Oh, spinal tap. Good spinal tap reference.

Jesse, Rich, thank you all so much. You've been gracious with your time. Again, I'm just telling you a lot. Like, some of the things I learned listening to this podcast in just three or four pods, I mean, have been remarkable. If you like diving down the rabbit hole, these guys will take you there. Good old grateful dead cast. Appreciate your guys' time so much.

Thanks for having us. Thanks for listening. Yeah, man. We will keep listening. and you at home should too. Cheers, guys. Take it easy. Hey, y'all, we want you guys to interact with us more on social media here.

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