Smile, smile, smile.

The Sirrius/XM merger hadn't really had any impact on me or my XM listening habits, until this morning. When I checked my email this morning there was some XM spam about the new channel line up. Well, well, well...the grateful dead channel, channel 57. 24/7 Grateful Dead. I headed for the receiver & sure enough there it was, 24/7 Dead. My usual listening habits are XM 84 (the chill) which is trippy electronica or XM 81 (BPM) dance music or XM 43 (XMU) which is indie/college/unsigned.

So why am I fired up about the Dead 24/7? In another life I actually was a follower. Saw my first show at the Aladdin Theater in Vegas in '82 & over the next 10 years saw them probably another 50 times, mostly in the mid 80's. The last couple times I saw them was Giants stadium in Jersey & Madison Square Gardens. The Giants Stadium show Sting opened, wierd. That was like '91 or '92, can't remember. The Garden shows were the same time frame, they were doing like 12 nights or something epic, again can't remember exactly.

The farthest I traveled for a show was probably from Boulder to Portland, Maine at the Cumberland County Civic Center. The best part was we went all the way there & didn't even have tickets. Managed to get tickets & had a great time, I thing I paid $120 for 2 tix. It was worth it because it was pouring rain outside. The next night was in Hartford, I had tickets for that show. Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Red Rocks (many times), Sacramento, Oakland, The Greek Theater in Berkeley (sweet venue, again had no tickets but got in), Milwaukee all come to mind.

Another life.

When I came home for lunch today I tuned in & listened to Hartford '74 for a bit. When I got home from work, Holly had left it on & the dog's had been chilling out to the Dead when she went to work. They did seem a little mellower than usual.

Nine mile skid on a ten mile ride, hot as a pistol but cool inside.
Cat on a tin roof, dogs in a pile,
Nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile!!!!

Peace,

TK