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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadhead |
During this very important "Year of Mercy" (as ordained by His Holiness in Rome), Our Most Holy Father has actively encouraged us to speak out against a culture of death that seems to grow stronger with each passing year. Back in the 70s and 80s, the biggest hippie band in America was a rock band called "The Grateful Dead", with skull logos emblazoned on as many items as a wealthy "Trustafarian" without a full-time job could comfortably buy, in between supplemental cash sales from the drugs they used in their psychedelic world. If you've ever heard their sets from back in the day, you'd know why you needed a lot of artificial stimulus to listen to it: it's repetitive and redundant in the extreme, always with the exact same sound.
A lot of other rock bands suffer from an uncomfortable distance between studio tracks and performing live because most of their talent is coaxed out by the excellent producers and sound guys who stay up all night hitting lines of coke with the band to get one or two decent riffs, let alone an entire track. It's really hard work making great music. "The Dead" took the opposite tack, by relentlessly sticking to the same type of meandering playing, as soon as they felt sure their audiences' acid trips had kicked in. Oh, good! The kids have finally zoned out. Let's play whatever we want.
Don't get me wrong. I like their music, but the whole scene was like a cult to me, and that totally turned me off. I know tons of great songs and artists from the exact same time period, but listening to their sound wasn't exactly what this band sold. They wanted you to give up your life to follow them on the road, because what better way to make a living then off a generation of kids raised without parents who are vulnerable to strong outside influences? That's what. And that's exactly who my first real "Deadhead" friend Michelle was back then, and still is today, as I found out during our obligatory "let's meet for after-work drinks after reconnecting on Facebook" routine that marks our life in this digital age of social media.
After blowing her gasket as a publicist at someone elses' PR firm for the fashion industry in the city ("I got a freakin' picture in 'Vogue' fer crissakes! I deserve more money than her!!", jerking her finger at the other junior publicist sitting in their bigwig's office, as she told it to me in a regretful tone, after a drink or two), her rich and totally absent daddy sent her a lot of money to start a fancy business in Midtown, with cushy offices to match the pricey real estate with the obligatory trendy loft apartment to launch her successfully into the future. She dated a really well-known chef who was younger and he lovvved cooking for her at her place, but they just broke up. She was then talking to me about freezing her eggs. Oh. That sounds really expensive....still waiting on that check for me, by the way.
Anyway, it was the exact same deal as when I met her late in our high school careers, alone and scared and almost bullied to death. Some of the "popular girls" started a rumor that she slept with one of their boyfriends, and after that, the cheerleaders turned on her ruthlessly in the open hallways and bathrooms of our huge New York public school. She wasn't safe anywhere and in her desperation, she turned away from the posers to seek out better friends among kids who had real power, like me and my group of diverse, smart kids from tough homes.
I took her into my social life, but my friends instantly hated her. She was (and is) a breezy, well-practiced con artist by necessity of her home environment, not that she took much from me but an ill-given $45 at the Jersey Shore for a bag of mushrooms bought at the WaWa grocery store on LBI, as an act of revenge for cutting her out of our senior trip to the beach. I shudder to think what that group of adult teens running New York homes with jobs, cars, keys, and futures would have done to her, but at the time, she wasn't thinking straight.
She was almost gang-raped by a sports team from school, for being foolish enough to be lured over to their fake "house party" that quickly became a group of drunk guys looking to take advantage of the girl "everyone" hated, by blaming it on her bad reputation. I didn't feel that way about her at all, and I told her a few years back at our mini reunion. She never stole any of my boyfriends from me, and even if she did mess around with one or two of the boys in our crowd, it was all water way under the bridge. We don't see them socially anymore anyway. No harm, no foul.
But the redhead from high school that she pissed off then was deeply in love with her teenage boyfriend, and she wanted Michelle tortured for the rest of her school career. I took her under my protective wing, like I've done with many a foundling ousted from the comfort of an empty nest that wasn't ever really all there. I don't recall meeting her dad ever, except maybe for a ten-second brush-up that he would have instantly regretted by blowing out the front door of their family home almost immediately. Her mom was a seemingly ditzy housewife who planned and hosted expensive parties for their clients at their large suburban home. She'd airily invite us to eat the catered Jewish food that was leftover in a fridge full of plastic-wrapped trays in a fake sing-song voice, then leave just as quickly, too. To where? We never really knew.
And that's what all of us had back then: a bunch of empty homes without parents. Michelle had all the time, money, clothes, booze, sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll she could fit into her busy schedule, but no real family. She had a car filled with gas and nowhere to go, and no one to see. It was heart-breaking to see the way her parents cruelly cast her off like an unwanted pet. She floundered like any troubled kid her age would, and then one year she discovered "The Grateful Dead", and she was instantly hooked. Hippies are savvier than they look, and staying on the road to see expensive concerts is a hard gig to manage, even for spoiled rich kids from decent families. Who'd pay for their concert tickets when the money ran out? She came back with connections to a new group of kids she met on tour from Hastings-on-the-Hudson, who were just as bored and rich as she was.
She tried to talk me into going on the road with her one summer while we were on break from college, which was met in my mother's kitchen with a loud derisive snort that my middle bro liked so much, he quickly pulled up a stool to watch the early fireworks. This should be good! Michelle's plan was to sell the multi-colored yarn bracelets we'd make. I had one in my pocket to show as a sample. My mom was completely unimpressed. It wasn't a great plan, but I'd seen Michelle pull money from some of the dirtiest, lowest-rent pockets around. She could pull it off. Yeah, but...can you? Good point! My mom reminded me that I earned the money I put in my pocket during semesters, and that was indeed true. "You need a job!", as was always the case for the desperate, disordered, and chronically needy surrounding me. Who else will pay for your expenses at school, if you don't? It was suddenly quiet in our large suburban kitchen that'd been an expensive renovation for my proud parents of years past.
I spent a horribly dull summer working at a "Herman's World of Sporting Goods" store at the old Nanuet Mall, waiting for my friend to come back from tour, and fitting in about as good as a shiny new apple among the depressing brightly-colored golf clothes for the rich white men away on vacations who did fit it into neatly assigned roles. She came back early, running out of gas, with an enthusiasm for the old hippie band that was met with a much cooler reception here with her home crowd of well-versed natives with a taste for genuine Americana, like jazz and blues music. Why go for some derivative version when you can hear the real thing? It was the same thing at college: my boyfriend was housemates with a group of similarly rich Jewish kids from Long Island, who were also very strict in their faith. They hated me, too, because I didn't fit into their clichéd world of a rigidly defined counterculture that they had borrowed from an older generation almost entirely, with the same Patchouli-scented clothes and wild hairstyles.
What was the point of rehashing it, by stealing it from other people? Dying in a civil rights march back then was not fun, and these lazy rich kids knew nothing about that. I finally went to see a show with my college boyfriend in the city over a summer break, and I was just as unimpressed as I was by their rote memorization of playlists at school, from old tapes passed around since the '70s. Ehhh...I shrugged my shoulders as we talked on the busy streets outside of Madison Square Garden. They sounded exactly like every mixed tape I'd been forced to listen to at his college house in Oneonta. No surprises here! He immediately defended this key facet of his religion to me, shaken in his faith as he was with me. We were in the middle of a city thrumming with life all around us. Who had time for those old geezers and their lame rock? It was played out! It all sounded the same.
He stammered, citing such magical experiences as a certain "California Dreaming" type of fantasy he'd heard on many a mixed tape gone by, with mystical shows on sparkling west coast oceans he'd never actually been to, explaining that the guys needed to "vibe off " the venue's locale in the same way their fans needed to be stoned out of their minds to be sold on a cult of almost-dead musicians and their skeleton-branded gear. They must've been "bummed out" by the crowd, man! New York City isn't their scene...blah blah blah blah blah. I didn't get it then, and I don't get popular cults now, except that a bunch of insanely devoted kids spent all their money and time following this band, with nothing of note to show for it except maybe an early death by drug overdose, or dying from heart failure brought on by years of heavy substance abuse, just like the overweight singer from the band they loved now playing in the real land of the dead, with a similar name as some famous ice cream flavor. Forever and ever, indeed.
