My First Grateful Dead Concert

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My First Grateful Dead Concert On the day of my first “Dead show”, in April of 1989, I was awakened in the morning by the sound of my mother’s voice screaming “David…telephone”. I was slow getting to the phone because I had not gone to bed that night until after 3:00 AM. I said “hello” and to my surprise it was Scott, a friend from work, on the other end of the line. He asked “do you want to go see The Grateful Dead in concert tonight in Michigan?” Since that moment, “What a long strange trip it’s been”. I didn’t say yes right away because I had just came home from seeing R.E.M. in concert the night before in Detroit, and now he was wanting me drive back up to Ann Arbor. I asked Scott if he had gotten the tickets already and he said not to worry, that we would get tickets when we get to the concert. I said “okay, if you say so”. Coincidently, we were both recently fired from our jobs, and we had to go pick up our last paychecks that day. I told him that I would pick him up in an hour. We cashed our checks at a local bar and we were on our way. On the road I told Scott how much fun that the previous night’s R.E.M. concert was and he just laughed and said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”. I told him that I didn’t even like the Grateful Dead and that their music sounded “too country”. He said, that I have a lot to learn about music. Being a musician myself, I took offense to that statement. Nevertheless I succumbed to his wishes and allowed him to play his Grateful Dead cassettes all the way to the University of Michigan. Upon arrival at the venue I saw a parking lot full of tents and small campers. There were tie-dyes everywhere. I thought that I had entered some kind of time warp and ended up at Woodstock. There were hippies everywhere. Before exiting the vehicle Scott said “listen to me, don’t buy anything from these people, we’ll be taken care of
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