So there is this kind of inside joke at bluegrass festivals. "Shady Grove!" Sam Bush gets up on stage and some people start calling that out. (Grateful got their start on bluegrass of course
I couldn’t stand how much the Grateful Dead restricted Gerry. Why have Bob Weir “sing” when you have a great storytelling singer in Garcia? Not that I don’t like the Dead, it’s just that I like his other stuff way more.
I am a Jerry G. Fan but no fan of the Grateful Dead. Saw them play at Golden Gardens beach in Ballard years ago maybe 55 years ago. They played on the back of a pick up truck. Pig Pen was still in the band. I took some acid. Not sure what they sounded like. I do know they sure looked weird.
Look for the LP OLD AND IN THE WAY recorded in 1975!
This album is an amazing collection of musicians including Jerry on 5 string banjo. His playing is the best think on the album as far as I am concerned. He just might have been a better 5 string player than he was a lead guitar player. It's not an easy or cheap album to find but well worth the hunt.
Old and In The Way was a college favorite, wore out the grooves on that.
As to Snaggy, he's a legend. Little known fact: Not My Real Name, Ed Lada and SloopJonB all sleep in Snaggletooth pyjamas. The use of matching body pillows is rumored but unconfirmed.
He shaves with a helicopter, jogged home from his vasectomy, makes margaritas in a cement mixer.
Among his many contributions to mankind he invented the glass hammer, upward flushing toilet, spray-on hair, red dye #2, shake weights, the Ford Pinto, lawn darts, Jalapeno Astroglide, Autotune, pop-up ads, email spam, and the extended auto warranty.
He accidently invented the words shitmitten, fucknuckle, fartblossom, twatwaffle and cumdumpster while trying to write champagne, finetune, artistry, whatever and crowdpleaser.
your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Fastyacht, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Fastyacht , there is a Snaggletooth. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Snaggletooth. It would be as dreary as if there were no Fastyacht. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Snaggletooth! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in evere threade on Sailinge Anarche to catch Snaggletooth, but even if they did not see Snaggletooth posting, what would that prove? Nobody sees Snaggletooth, but that is no sign that there is no Snaggletooth. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Fastyacht, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Snaggletooth ! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, fastyacht, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of sailors.
Vassar Clements came to our tiny engineering college in the '70s, inspired a bunch of folks to take up bluegrass. One of my classmates now owns a record label in Austin, Blue Corn, that does roots music, including Ruthie Foster and Grupo Fantasmo.
Snaggy climbs Alp d'Huez in the big chainring while towing a trailer with a cord of wood.