Steve Silberman - And That's The Way We Live

Intro what's up folks welcome back to the best show ever podcast the podcast where I interview folks about the best shows they've ever seen in their lives I'm your host cam hurt and welcome to the grand finale of season 3 this is the final episode of season 3 if you're just jumping on right now there's been a bunch of great episodes that have come out over the last month with some really really great folks fantastic stories have been told uh but this week is a great week uh for for dead heads if you are a dead head old or young uh these two episodes that we have out this week are are truly fantastic storytelling within the The Grateful Dead world one of those being with uh poster artist uh Danny Evans from this old engine that's out right now that also just came out um he kind of talks about the more modern days of uh The Grateful Dead seeing further and dead and Co and fairly well and things like that but this episode is with I mean dead head Legend and best-selling author Steve Silberman um super super lucky to have Steve on you may know Steve from uh the liner note essays that he's done for many a dead box set many Grateful Dead box sets um also Crosby Still's a Nash and Young box sets as well but also you may know him from his appearance on the long strange trip documentary that you also may know him from the best selling book uh that he had neurotribes um which is the the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity this conversation with Steve is is so I'm so lucky to have talked to him because talking with Steve about live music is like it's like taking a peak into a time of live music that I know that I wish I could visit I know that so many folks wish that they could revisit um and his accounts of attending you know the Super Jam at Watkins Glenn seeing the Sha Stadium festival for peace with Janice Joplin and Miles Davis seeing the peak of the presentation of Talking Heads this it's an incredible episode with Incredible stories of historic live music events and no one could possibly tell these stories better than Steve and so um I'm really excited for folks to hear this one it if you've been listening to the podcast thank you so much for listening if you've subscribed to our YouTube uh Channel if you've rated us on Apple podcast or Spotify thank you so much all of that stuff has really helped uh reach a lot more folks in this season and I I can't thank you enough and if you've done the extra step and you've uh donated to the patreon and become a patreon member thank you so much I hope you've been enjoying the the bonus episodes that we throw on there um just having a little extra fun every week um and I hope you've been enjoying getting these episodes a day before everyone else um with your fancy pants $ four do membership um truly folks like that has made the show happen it's made it run it's made a third season happen at all uh thank you thank you guys so much for listening I I really hope that you enjoy this just treat of an episode to end off season 3 and season 4 will be coming soon let me let me get a C interviews in first but listen to this interview first sit back relax enjoy this conversation that I had with Steve Silberman uh but first here's a little bit of music uh from season three guest himself Cal kho song's called [Music] [Applause] [Music] down what has been up recently what have you been what has been up recent um well Whats up recently uh the thing that's been up for your audience that would probably interest them is that I wrote like an epic length essay For an upcoming uh Grateful Dead box set it's gonna be many me more than a dozen CDs um at least one of the shows of many in the package is one of the best shows they ever played in their entire career um and it was uh it was a complicated assignment for me because it's the box set sort of covers the whole tour and the first couple of gigs are not that good if you ask me but so I had to sort you know ease my way into that but by the end of the tour everybody was having a blast and um I can't say exactly which tour it was because that would be breaking the rules but I will say this the um set structure of drums in space was invented during this period um so I I get way into you know like Mickey's meeting with Francis Ford Copa for Apocalypse Now And how that influenced the development of trims in space and I am a um I'm a type of dead head that would not hit the bathrooms or the or the beer stands when Drums of space came on that was one of my favorite parts of the show and uh even when you know in the very last years when Jerry was not doing well and the shows on the whole were not that uh inspiring the drums in space were were super good as they still are with dead and Company now um so uh it was really exciting to just dig into the history of drms in space and how that happened and then you know the other thing I'm working on is uh I am a medical historian in my day job and so um I wrote a book about autism called neurotribes that became a bestseller in 2015 and what I've been working on since then so like 10 years now somewhat delayed because of the covid uh pandemic is a history of cystic fibrosis which is a rare genetic disease that was universally fatal uh and fatal in youth until a series of breakthroughs um have extended the lives of of those patients and one of my best friends has cystic fibrosis and the moment that inspired me to write this book was realizing that if he had been born like 10 years earlier or whatever I never would have met him he would have died as a as a teenager and so the whole existence of our friendship was made possible by the breakthroughs that I'm writing about uh in this next book which is going to be called The Taste of salt so that'll probably be out in a couple years um but yeah and I'm you know living here with my husband in San Francisco and um you know I guess we're we're making Martha and Alo mad because we're happy gay people happy married gay people but yeah that's what I'm doing incredible well I mean I'm sure first of all I'm sure there are about a hundred dead heads that are listening to this right now that knew exactly the year as soon as you said uh I'm sure they did they're like got it let's not talk about it but anyway but yeah it was fun and I got to you know I got to listen to to many many shows and uh you know really appreciate how they would even if they had done something really great with a you know like Scarlet fire the night before like the next time they played it it would be really different as if they were intentionally subverting their own successes in a sense to try to get to a new place uh which which is great and why we going I was gonna say they had a knack for doing that which seemed to be the formula then which is uh which is Neurotribes cool I I can't wait to to dig into that more with you and I um I have not read neurotribes but I did get to you know read a bunch of your research and and watch your Ted Talk on um your research on autism and so uh this this next book is probably going to be just as groundbreaking is that one because that I mean uh the this the story surrounding it and the like you said uh some of these children who were born in the beginning of this research had they been born 20 years later would have had much different lives in the world of autism um just because people were digging into research that happened 30 years before and so I'm you know sounds like it's a similar case for what's what's coming next for you and in a sense what might be relevant to uh this podcast is that um you know I've written two books I published two books um one of them is neur tribes and the other is a book that came out in 1993 called skeleton key a dictionary for deadheads and uh that was a book that I co-wrote with a guy named David shank and it was really a uh very indepth um almost field anthropology of the dead head Community one of the things that David and I have told each other since Jerry died was that we ended up taking like the most elaborate class picture in what turned out to be the last years of the school in a sense um you know we I mean I knew uh I'm a Buddhist so I always have a profound sense of things passing and being you know impermanent so you know I knew that the dead Community would would somehow disperse while I was writing Skillet and key but we didn't realize it was gonna happen you know that we didn't realize Jory was gonna die so um uh the thing that the thread that that both of my books have in common are communities that are widely misunderstood that found each other in a sense in the sense of dead heads it's you know everybody thinking that we were weird and SPAC down Puli scented you know whatever um in the case of autistic people the diagnosis wasn't even available to adults until the 1990s really so it's like when we say like something that almost everybody forgets that's in my book neurot tries is that when Dustin Hoffman played an autistic adults in Rainman that was the first time that even many autism clinicians had seen an autistic adult on the screen like that was A New Concept right and so with cystic fibrosis what enabled this community of now adults with cystic fibrosis to find each other was this series of medical advancements and that Community would would never have existed without those advancements so in a sense I write about communities that have fascinating histories that are widely misunderstood that are hampered by stereotypes because you know people with cystic fibrosis they cough a lot and so now in the covid era like if they go somewhere in their coughing it's like oh you know they right not great and people don't realize that the people coughing are the most vulnerable because they have cystic fibrosis so um so anyway so there are a lot of societal implications about these misunderstood freaky interesting communities that I write about um and so that's why I get into it it's such a fascinating thread First Concert um to have pulled through all three of those communities that's I mean that's that's wild and I I would love to talk about that uh all day with you but that unfortunately is not um what this podcast is about exactly exactly yes the podcast is about the the shows that you've attended um and I am so excited to get into yours um before we get into your best shows and your honorable mentions and all that kind of stuff um what's the first concert you ever saw in your life oh wow well the first concert that I ever saw let me preface this by saying if you haven't heard of this concert you're not even going to believe that it happened and there have been so many times when I've told people that this was my first concert and they're like that never happened until they check Wikipedia and there is thank God a Wikipedia entry but it was called the uh Shay Stadium festival for peace on August 6th 1970 let me tell you who played at that Festival Janice Joplin it was her second to last gig and even more poignantly she was playing with big brother her original band from the hate and everything um because Full Tilt was doing something else in the city or they were getting ready for a dick cavage show or something but so Janice shein played with with big brother that was awesome but in addition to Janice joffin on the bill were Miles Davis Paul Simon Pacific Gas and Electric steppen Wolf Mountain Johnny Winter um Janice choplin and Deon Warwick sang a duet of what the world needs now is love can you believe that and so there I was I was in sixth grade I was with a very attractive I'm gay but I was with a very attractive woman who was the only girl in my class that had breast named Dorene um and so I I was feeling really like that was probably still I was trying to be heterosexual something you were top of the world of what you thought right exactly and so I'm I'm at this show and because I was uh naive I didn't notice that you shouldn't necessarily drink from all the they were called Boda bags they were like leather Gypsy or something actually that's not a good word anymore but uh leather bag that um uh you know people you could squeeze it and it would squirt water into you the problem was that it wasn't just water yeah so the guy the guy next to me who hit those bags every time they came around they literally carried him out during the show he became incapacitated and so I was probably dosed and um you know I do remember uh I remember a bunch of things about the show but it was amazing experience that was not captured on camera and not captured on on video or audio so there are no recordings uh there are a few pictures um apparently but it's amazing how under noticed that event was and apparently it was because the publicity was bad and uh but it really laid the groundwork for stuff like Live Aid and concert for Bangladesh and farm a and all it proved it was a concept proof of concept for big charity gigs featuring worldclass performers so that was my very first concert um man I mean to to have Miles Davis at Miles Davis your first concert that is the first on the show I got to say that no one else has brought up Miles Davis uh being a part of their concert history that's insane and yeah you know uh to see Johnny Winter in that day I mean such like a pioneer of slide guitar music and he is just like a part of the day you know like even just to see him would have been crazy but yeah I mean that sounds like proof of concept for like live a you know for what would come and be a huge televised event but they just didn't record it right exactly exactly no it's a I mean you know needless to say it's like they could have made a movie out of it and it would now be like this famous documentary you know but uh it just didn't happen so the next uh time that I went to a show uh that really left a deep impression on me uh and I can't swear that I didn't go to any live music performances in between uh the Peace festival in this but it was the Watkins Glenn Summer Jam in 1973 and so um yeah so I was going to go with my best friend named Tom at that point and he had agreed to go and then the night before he called me up and cancelled and I had already had the fights with my parents about you know that I was going to go you know and negoti had already taken place right exactly so what I did was I lied to my parents and said that I was going with my friend which I wasn't and I got on a Trailways bus or whatever and went up to Watkins Glenn and uh you know again I was like I don't know 15 or something I was really young I got there uh two days before which turned out to be lucky because uh you know the next day The Grateful did came out for their soundcheck and played one of the most beautiful completely improvised performances of their entire 30-year career and you know I of course did not notice that you know that they were doing something special or that you know it was going to be this Immortal performance I had mostly gone to the Summer Jam to see the alond brothers because I think Jessica and blue sky and whatnot were like still on the radio you know and um so uh I went to that show I immediately lost all of my stuff like there was like a Mudslide I I brought a sleeping bag you know no you know all turned into a sea of mud um one of the most striking things about that uh event was that there were only a few pisans distributed in the sea of people you know so I remember that I could not pee for like an entire day like I was dying um and when I finally got to the pisans there was this weird cold snap at night and uh so someone set the pisans on fire so the first time in in like more than a day that I had been able to pee I to rush into this Portis that was on fire take a my God yeah it was amazing um I do remember uh thinking that the Dead's music was wonderful the band you know was the Dead the band The alond Brothers the band was also amazing I remember them playing stage fright in a thunderstorm with like lightning arching over the stage so that was pretty amazing uh I guess it was the wall of sound that I was seeing um and you know the the the good punchline of that whole epic story even though I didn't have a very good time at the concert because I was too out of it and dosed over and over and dehydrated and had an aching bladder um many years later couple of decades later when the dead asked me to uh help assemble a box set spanning their entire career with noted Grateful Dead Scholars David Gans and Blair Jackson that I was able to say we should put that Watkins glint soundcheck on this said and so that's how people have it now what I got to hear was because I remembered how amazing it was and um and so I and there was very little chance that it would be put out on a like a dicks piic or Dave's Picks because uh dick who was a friend of mine dick Lala um under as fatally I think underestimated the Watkins Glenn show itself so the following day he he because it was not nearly as interesting as the soundcheck he thought it was bad but if you listen to it it's actually pretty good like it's it's fine you know but at that point dick was still alive and so um I knew that he would never put it out as a dick pix so we put it out on the box head called so many roads and everybody can get it streaming now um so that was great and then um the the next show that I remember going to was the show that I became a dead head uh August uh 6 was August 6th 1974 oh I just realized that's actually four years to the day after the Peace festival at Shay Stadium um but yeah 8674 was you know another legendarily one of the greatest shows of all time um and as I've told uh I'm not even going to repeat the whole story because I've told it too many times like in in the in the movie long strange trip the documentary um but it was when Phil took a base lead during eyes of the world which was the fir the third song in the first set you know that that was the decisive moment you know when I said oh my God you know this is the best music I've ever heard you know and I made a little vow to myself I'm gonna see as much of this as I possibly can and you know I made good on that promise through 1995 yeah and saw them you know several hundred times and I remember I'm ashamed to admit this I saw jar because you know I like moved to San Francisco in parts so I could see them all the time you know and I remember like one night after many different jgb and Dead shows I walked past the stone in uh North Beach and I looked in and Jerry was on stage and I was like ah I've seen him so often this month yeah I mean walking you know you know everyone loves to tell their stories of seeing jir and there are so many people who are just like you who have seen so many shows that I'm sure theyve you're not the only person who's got a story of you know what like it's fine maybe another time and it's exact you know they don't tell that story they don't tell Story the time they did I remember I remember that um you know when the dead were playing a lot around here that you did have you know unless you were insane and you know making a living from selling ice cold veggie burritos in the lot or something you know you you would have to sort of negotiate with yourself how many shows you were willing to see you know I mean and the tickets were what you know $10 the most now they're like a thousand to get into the sphere or something yeah right so uh you had to like if you were an adult you had to and I had you know practically generations of friends like give it up but I still kept going like I remember before I met Blair Jackson and David ganss um I would go to shows by myself and sometimes trip even um and you know I would just be like well I don't care if my friends aren't into it anymore I still am you know and probably probably every dead head and every fish has had that experience as well absolutely yeah I mean I've talked to Deadhead scene you know people who got to see fish in their early days that you know now have no problem going to a show taking a seat you know what you know maybe even tripping to themselves and enjoying the spir experience themselves because they don't have you know nearly the same uh crew of friends they had in the 90s or something like that you know but but what um you know you talked a little bit about the the lot scene like in the early 70s you know in the 74 and you know those types of years what is the what's the scene around Dead shows like what are what's it like to be around deadheads well uh okay Roosevelt stadium was a pit you know awful um but on on 8674 the dead head you know it was the wall of sound but that Phil also had his quad base so he could move his Basse notes around the arena in three dimension like oh they're coming from over there oh they're coming from over there like it it was awesome and then after the show uh which if you look at the set list it was pretty freaking amazing with like a playing Scarlet playing sandwich or whatever like I remember talking with my friends like you know instead of saying like oh well they should have played blah blah blah we were like trying to figure out what they didn't play you know yeah and uh one thing that I definitely remember is that one of the things that I saw for the first time at Roosevelt Stadium on that day was people selling bootleg vinyl out of the back of their cars so that was the first time I saw Grateful Dead bootlegs actually and um there were you know there there were a couple of classic bootlegs I forget what they were but uh so people were selling bootleg vinyl there was a lot of Buzz around the mafia was really getting into bootlegging the Dead back then so like when wake of the flood came out there were these fake Mafia pressings you know all this stuff yeah um but uh the dead dead head scene to me seemed to be slightly rough you know there were a lot of bikers around um you know now that the words Grateful Dead have become associated with dancing bears and jar bear and tiedye and T and you know no The Grateful Dead you know in the the phrase Grateful Dead you know in 1974 it was supposed to scare the normies you know yeah and so you know like people would people who didn't know what their music was like would think that it was like some kind of death metal band but uh you know so it was it was it was pretty rough which gets into by the way my next significant Concert Experience which happened two nights later after August 6 197 I can't believe I had the stamina I went back to Roosevelt Stadium to see Crosby Stills naash and young for the first time and it happened to be the night that Nixon resigned for doing much less than Donald Trump has anyway but uh so so I remember like the the scene at the stadium was not good like there was some kind of crazy Dark Energy going through the crowd maybe it was because of the Nicks and stuff but um so at some point uh Graham comes out and says and I still hear it in my head Nixon's resigned you know this like this roar like feral roar like you know came from a thousand alcohol breathing Ms right and uh and then Crosby SS Ash young came out to play their acoustic set in the middle of the show that's what they would do um and of course that was what I was most looking forward to because they were yeah I mean Neil and Stephen were badass in the electric Champs but um the acoustic set was what they were known for and as soon as they come out David Crosby who was my favorite one for uh various reasons and ended up becoming a really good friend of mine years later um somebody hit him on the head with a bottle from the audience was like bam oh and um then these bottles started raining down on the band and so they left the stage um man it like it was ugly you know and I was tripping of course I think it was maybe the first time I ever took acid at a concert um or on on purpose yeah right and and I was with uh my best friend who typically I had a crush on but he was with his girlfriend and they were tripping too so they spent the entire evening like cuddling each other and talking and ignoring me and you know and all that so I was like yeah it was a nightmare uh I I literally had you know thoughts of self harm uh during that show um but what saved my Cosmic ass was that after csny refused to come out to do an acoustic show Neil came out with his electric and sang a song called Don't be denied which is like one of the heaviest songs that he ever recorded and it's it's very dark but very Redemptive and it was the most intense version and I am not exaggerating because Flash Forward like 20 years or whatever I'm in a hotel room with Crosby Stills and Nash and we're planning um their box set CSN which came out in the early 90s or whatever and uh so there was gonna be two discs and then a third disc of Rarities and so I said well tell me you know if we have it we should get the don't be denied from Roosevelt Stadium August 8th 1974 and Joel Bernstein who was Neil's archist and also Janie Mitchell's archivist said oh my God that was the best performance of that ever but unfortunately the tape ran out halfway through oh my God so we don't have a complete soundboard so if anybody out there has an audience tape of csny August 8th 1974 at Roosevelt Stadium please leak it because you know it was incredible performance so that wasn't a good time but you know I ended up seeing csny actually a couple weeks later I think with the Beach Boys or whatever at Roosevelt Raceway uh which is on Long Island this often causes confusion among tapeh heads and that was like a you know more mellow experience um less bottles yes exactly less bottles um but yeah I mean I I pretty much Neil Young you know like I never diss him because he did Magic he turned you know he turned alamont into Woodstock or something you know by playing this really intense song um yeah yeah on a super intense night and it sounds like I mean like artists are still dealing with that today you know I think that there was a video I saw literally two days ago of Adele having to kind of shut someone down in her audience who's yelling something for Trump or something and you know she's got to stop the show and be like if you're going to do that get out of here and then the crowd Roars and then there's this this weird political moment in the crowd and you know like yeah you kind of have to um uh you have to be a performer that is able to speak to that but yeah I mean what a I'm sure that was a special and charged performance especially who Neil is and was in that time you know right I'm sure there was a lot of emotion that went into that um yeah and his his album I forget if it was out uh by then or not uh but his album on the beach was basically the it was the blond on blonde of the Nixon era more or less it was it was the the Great Dark Masterpiece of the Nixon Watergate era um so he that stuff was certainly on his mind um uh yeah but you know it's one thing that has changed since then that makes the Concert Experience worse I think is that people are so used to just listening to you know like or watching movies at home where they can talk and so people just talk and especially if they're slightly drunk I don't know if you've noticed but there's something about alcohol that encourages people to talk voluminously so so now you just have people who pretend that they're seeing the show in their living room and you know I always want to say like do you know that what you're saying is so much less important to me than the music that the band is playing you know oh yeah and The Talking I you know I've I've been the guy that shushes people before and then you know if you're shushing the or the person who's drunk then it's like now we got to talk about how I shushed you you know now we're talking about the talking and yeah and then it it happens at uh nearly every show and it's like almost like a a rarity when you can watch a performer shut a crowd up because they're so amazing you know right uh it takes a lot you know to to Really lock people in yeah definitely um so I have various other stories to tell um one of do you want to hear the worst performance I ever saw I really would yeah okay okay let me preface this by saying I am not insulting this band or its fans I have enjoyed many of their records um I know that they were basically up to something good but when at the last minute a band called supergrass was substituted by a band called Low opening up for radio head at Madison Square Garden I saw the most embarrassing thing that I ever saw a band do which was um the lead guitarist for low um asked for the lights to come down even more than they were because of course it was already you know m dark um so so they start turning the lights off and he's like no no no those lights too and so uh you know they're switching off the hall lights right and so then they're switching off like the exit signs like until it was absolutely pitch dark and then and he was being really annoying like and people were starting to get unhappy you know people started talk it was going on for so long that people were start and then you hear him say into the microphone oh God damn it I can't see my fingers so oh which if this was a Steve Martin bit amazing yeah exactly exactly you know incredible but so so that that wasn't too good um God yeah then uh the next show that I saw that or well I mean there were many but uh for instance i s for Punk fans I saw um The Clash in the dead Kennedy uh playing a very small place three blocks from where I'm sitting San Francisco kysar Fieldhouse loudest concert I ever saw my head rang for a week um serious Mosh Pit you know um but so that was like I feel like I saw Punk like in its full rageing Glory um at that show uh it wasn't my trip yet I got into it later um then uh I had an incredible experience um seeing the Talking Heads big band so the band from stop making sense which just came out again um yeah with black hoooo opening that had Sly and Robbie on bass and drum Sly and Robbie were you know like the Rhythm Section of Reggae basically and right before the concert started this was at uh what's now called Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco right before the concert started this young lesbian who we didn't even really know dropped a huge sack of mushrooms at our feet and said oh just you have as many as you want so we started eating them like potato chips like we were really not you know controlling our dose and I remember like you know mushrooms can kick in pretty fast if you eat enough of them you know and remember like Sly and Robbie started playing and they were doing uh live dub M mixing you know what that is right where they like fading the instruments in and out and I remember my friend who I went with like we were obviously like really getting up really fast and the music was unbelievable and he turned to me with wild eyes he said electric Babylon man whoa and then Talking Heads came out and um and uh and TomTom club actually played a set within the talking headset um very cool yeah and um the moment that I sort of had you know what Zen people call Satori or moment of Illumination was uh they were singing a David Burns song from the album Katherine wheel called Big Business and um I had never known I had never understood what following lines meant until that moment David burn sings in the song which didn't make much sense in the like hearing it sung in the at home in the studio but he's s he's sang um and we go boom boom boom and that's the way we live and in a great big room and that's the way we live and was like oh my God like I'm here you know like this is it like it it was a moment of being fully and absolutely present um at a show and that was you know that was I had those moments at Dead shows too and fish shows later um wow yeah I mean in Fish that song particularly yeah they kind of snap you out of whatever you're like go boom boom boom those you know flashes from the band and everything yeah all of a sudden you're right you're you're at attention you know right and he was speaking to the living reality of the present moment yeah and and that was amazing um and then am I going through these too quickly or I I like I literally I have a million questions about every single one of these shows that we can't possibly do so I okay I mean uh I I'm just gonna have to have to keep rolling yeah okay all right okay so gr um the next show that seems obvious to talk about was I saw fish um at the Great American Music Hall on October 18th 1991 and I went because I'll be honest I went because uh I've been seeing ads for this stupid band that spelled it wrong p i at the wetlands you know and every time I saw that word like in the Village Voice or whatever I thought fish these stupid [ __ ] hippies you know so but it was like you gotta see Fish you gotta see they're the next Grateful Dead they're the next Grateful Dead so when so when fish came to the Great America American where the dead had of course played one of the greatest shows of their entire career in 1975 later released as one from the Vault um so I go there and Not only was it unbelievable Not only was my future husband probably 20 yards away from me in the crowd but we didn't meet yet and we would not meet for a couple of years but he was there too um it was an amazing show especially because apparently um the children of Ernie Styles who was like Trey's composition coach or whatever teacher was there at the at the show and there was just such a variety of music like everything from I think they uh I remember brother seemed amazing they opened the second set with brother um and I remember distinctly thinking this is the last time I'll ever see these guys in such a small venue because they're they're too good like the next time I see them it'll probably be Oakland Coliseum you know and you know maybe it was well it wasn't Oakland colise I'll tell you when the next time I saw them was but um you know it was just so good I couldn't believe it and I thought like wow these guys have really have a and they sang some I think they sang A Bluegrass thing or maybe it was just posum or whatever but um you know it was great and there there was the good energy and that was also you know 19991 there was a sad time to be a dead head because Brent had died I had loved Brent uh you know I never liked Vince as much sorry um and so for me the magic kind of went out of the Dead uh after Brent died yes they were good shows yes I went on tour anyway yes you know there were some really good jams but never really came together for me a after Brent died um so to see a band that was like young you know just getting their first waves of you know National notice um you know the rumor mill that they were the next grateful that was around and so I I thought wow these guys are amazing you know and so then a couple years later in 1994 um I was assign I was a freelance journalist and I was assigned to do a story on the Disco Revival which I didn't want to do but I needed the money and so right at that moment I met in email my future husband um who wrote to me because he saw an online posting are you the guy who used to review grateful de shows yes I am um and uh gay dead heads were very rare like now there's like you know a whole seating section queer Deads you know I was I was actually the first G deadhead to come out and Print in an article in relics um and you know and people sorry that is that's not a title I would have ever known to attribute to you I I mean that's that's what that's crazy well the interesting thing is that you know now it's like I'll see young dead heads on on Facebook or whatever saying like oh who cares if anyone's gay it's all cool well it wasn't all cool and you know in the early 90s at all Hell's Angels weren't cool about that or yeah no they were not mellow about that and um you know something that most people don't know is that the uh longtime manager of the Grateful Dead like for the Europe 72 tour John McIntyre was closeted and I know that because he told me and um so it was not at all cool to be to be openly gay in the had seen uh yeah pretty to pretty late even after other people were cool it um so uh so anyway so uh Keith said that he was my future husband said that um he was just about to go on tour with fish and invited me along with his friends and that was like GNA be our first dates you know like our first dates were going on tour with Fish And so I wrote to the newspaper that hired me to do the Disco Revival thing and I said wouldn't you rather have a piece on the next Grateful Dead you know yeah um what's funny is I almost got really busted on that tour because um in Santa Barbara uh we're going in and uh they had like brat and Sari security or something like that so this this young girl goes into my socks like she's literally like reaching down into my socks where by the way she found some weed and you know and she she immediately becomes hysterical officer officer come over here you know and so this this guy comes over and he's um wearing mirrored sunglasses and it's at night and one of those guys right one of those guys and so he says um driver's license and I said uh I don't have a driver's license but I do have an ID card I don't know how to drive I still don't um so he looks at the ID card and he looks at me and he looks at the card he looks at me and he says medical problem he banned me from going into the show but I snuck in through another door anyway saw that of course um but then so was the moment that I got fish in the same way that I got in the dead at Roosevelt stadium was um during reeba at spreckles theater in uh on December 18th 1994 and Trey was doing these it was very quiet jamming with almost like these fluttering bird sounds from his guitar and I was very impressed by the command of dynamics that fish had which was the same deal that the dead had had like they didn't almost every band that you see they play at a pretty consistent volume level you know but the de and fish loved bringing down bringing the dynamic range down to a very quiet thing and um so that happened during Reba and uh you know I had like tears in my eyes it was like so beautiful and um yeah yeah I mean with uh with that sort of uh pass off as it ended up being you know it sounds like you were pretty Pro fish from the moment you saw them or or maybe you thought they were dorks at first and then you saw them live and then you're like wow these are impressive dorks maybe um but was that sort of I mean amongst your deadhead friends were people accepting them and going to the shows or were there people who were like I can't believe you're going to see these guys so often or yeah there was definitely both um one of the things that helped me get into fish was uh when when David uh shank and I were writing skeleton key I got in touch with Tom Marshall uh The Lyricist for fish yeah uh and I would go so far as to say The Lyricist of the better fish anyway I'm I'm a little controversial about certain things about fish but as I was with the dead you know um but uh in any case so I got in touch with him and I asked him if he would give give me an interview and he said that he would uh but over email and um so I sent him a bunch of questions and he sent me back answers that were so surreal and so imaginative that it was like this guy is a genius you know and he also turned out to be a really nice guy and I met him and uh oh also during that first tour uh with spreckles and whatnot um I did uh meet uh John and and Mike uh who just would come out I mean that was when they would come out to hang out with the audience after the show like it wasn't a big thing you know they were just there and they were such nice guys and fishmen was hilarious he said that um he there's an album you know who Brian Eno is right and yes yeah right so there's a FR Andino album uh called no [ __ ] footing and it's like you know really heavy duty ambient Loops or whatever and with a track called swasa girls of all things unbelievable yeah and Fishman said so sometimes that album was so heavy sometimes I would just take the cover of the album and just like put it on my desk and look at it and say whoa W you know these guys are great and and I like that they did not they didn't weren't putting on any airs they were very hardworking they rehearsed a lot which you know the dad didn't do so much talk and uh you know they they just seem like Menches as they say in yish real real human beings um and so yeah I got I got into them right away and then what was funny was that Tom and I um became friends but then fish became like super famous and he sort of drifted away and then I became semi famous because of my book so I sort of drifted away and um we didn't really connect until I went to see the ghost of the forest show uh at the Greek and I see Tom and you know he's a very good-look big guy and I thought oh there's Tom but you know I bet he probably doesn't even remember right name and then like a minute later I'm like getting this big bear hug and it's t he's like Steve I've missed you you know so that was cool and through that meaning we uh by that point I was very good friends with David Crosby and we arranged to do a podcast with David Crosby for Osiris media and that podcast was called freak flag flying it was um Eight Episodes six with cross um very very very indepth fascinating conversations unfolding over the course of several months really but um uh anybody who wants to know who David Crosby really was and what his music was really about should listen to free flag flying because it's and we put a bunch of rare music uh on in the soundtrack and stuff so uh that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't met Tom years before yeah I mean Tom is instrumental Osiris in this podcast happening this is you know a part of Osiris and he got to interview him and yeah it's very it's Best Show Ever very cool how um how imaginative imaginative he is in conversation just alone I mean we were just goofing around just talking about some of the shows that he's seen and yeah he's just such a uh like you said he's a mench he's such a good good human to have around and he really asks no questions about this podcast he's just like let rip buddy and and I appreciate it that's cool um thank you I love you you've been a really good pal and yeah and I'm and I'm sure he hasn't listened to not one episode of the no it's he may maybe he's listening to a couple but um do you so I don't know that we've gotten to your best show ever the best concert you ever saw in your life is there is there One Singular there I mean the N dead show that was the best concert ever saw was that talking head show that we talked about oh yeah with bakur but um I'll tell you the show that sort of made the deepest impression on me um I can't swear that it was the absolutely best qu you know it's not necessarily one of my top five Grateful Dead shows of all time but it was Cleveland musicall uh in when was that 78 November 20th 1978 I think um yeah and uh several things made it unusual and great one was that um well I was tripping on superb LSD it was called red dragon which was um there were two there product lines at the time red dragon and green dragon and it was just really powerful really clean LSD I had also I confess now I hope the statute of limitations has passed I Al it was the only time I ever sold LSD to people um I uh sold a you know I think a hundred hits or so uh I was I was a um student at oberin you know with that famous liberal Enclave in Ohio and so you know at least 100 people came up to see the dead there were a lot of dead heads there and um but what and it was very small very very small venue um but what really made it special the whole thing was great but what really made it special was that for the only time ever I think the dead came out and opened the second set with drums in space so Billy and Mickey just came out and started playing and we actually didn't know in the audience you know was the second set starting like what's happening you know and then you know Jerry and Phil came wandering out and they start playing too and they play a jam that eventually goes into jackaroe but it was wild it was like it was as if they were playing a house concert and just sort of wandering back into the living room you know to pick up their guitars and whatever and the main thing that got to me about that show and changed my rewired my brain forever really was that they jammed from song to song all the way through the second set so like after the plan what is it or they go back into the plan repre after something uh they also played if I had the world to give the jam you know they only played it I think twice in their whole career the jam out of if I had the world to give is one of the heaviest things you'll ever hear it's apocalyptic uh and especially if you like slide guitar because I believe both Jerry and Bob are playing slide guitar and it's it's peel the skin off your skull it's unbelievable and but what blew my mind was that because they kept jamming from song to song the individual compositions were like Islands in this sea of music that like you would just go back into the sea you know once you like got off the island so and the the they were so together in their Collective improvisation that it was like you know being watching this group mind it was like listening to God thinking to to himself more or less wow and uh and you said something on a recent podcast that you appeared on where you talked about how certain moments at Dead shows and other shows fish shows maybe you were talking uh would allow opportunity for reflection and meditation and course correction in your life in a way like you would come to some realization about you know your work or you know your relationships or whatever and that those Jam oriented shows created a space where even though from the outside it looks like oh it's a bunch of people dancing together in a collective whatever it actually allows for a deep Solitude because you can reflect on the music and come to profound silent realizations and that was going on in a big way at Cleveland musical um and so that was really the moment when the dead were doing something that no other band did as well ever and you know the setting and the audience and everything it was per it was another perfect moment and so yeah yeah I think if there's someone who is interested in finding that sort of a moment at a a show that drums in space you said that you know that was never a a beer run for you or never a bath run for a bathroom run for you yeah that those are that's a a a great moment for some some private Solitude uh thought to yourself meditation and you know there's a lot of uh while there are probably a lot of conversations going on around you especially now you talked about that now a huge part of the show and it is especially during that part of a show but yeah I mean the the the moments that are were're way out to see like you said or the moments that get you know really really ambient uh for me are super confident moments of creation that I I feel like really lucky to be in the room for and so for for me it's like uh trying to connect to that because I know that I'd like to achieve that I guess or or something along those lines but no no matter what yeah I love those those moments where they can you were talking about um you know what the dead and fish does bringing volume down um those are like some of the most powerful moments of the show uh or or the shows that I've seen at least um and I like yearn for that at the show I love like dancing with my friends and like a big white light Peak is really fun and watching really impressive musicianship when someone's ripping solo whether it's on piano or guitar or something it's always super impressive to watch and I also am going for that but those moments are kind of my uh what I'm seeking at least and yeah I I feel you and something that I an experience that I used to have a lot of chose um is feeling that by being there at that moment it was the one place on Earth that you would want to be at that moment like no matter where you were like okay I want to be standing in front of Jerry Garcia when the Grateful Dead goes into Scarlett bonas's to open the second set like you know yeah it was perfect to be where you were which was great um yeah in a big big room yeah exactly [Music] so that was my conversation with Steve I you really can't get a better conversation about live music than you can with Steve uh his his thoughts around um the the reason people talk at shows now is because we can watch shows in our living room and just talk with our friends and so now we just treat that live music experience similarly is to me the most brilliant I'm like of course that's why uh you know I I thought it was just tall boy modelos but really it's how we've been conditioned to watch shows and um what a what a more beautiful way to think about seeing concerts as you know like going to see The Grateful Dead this is the this is you seeing the Grateful Dead there's not a ton of footage out for you to just rate in your living room and compare to other footage that you see this conversation I truly you know there's a there's a point in it where I'm like I wish I could ask a thousand questions about every single thing that we've talked about that's so true H just listening back to it now I I I there could be a separate episode about every concert that he brings up um and I was lucky to get to chat with him and so I really hope you guys enjoyed this episode I really hope you guys enjoyed this season like I said before thank you so much for any support that's been given if youve if you've subscribed if you've given it five stars if you wrote a nice review all that stuff thank you guys so much for doing it season 4 will be coming out very soon um but until next time guys have a great show