The world needs Deadheads

The final live show of the Grateful Dead has come to a close at Soldier Field in Chicago.

On their 50th anniversary, the band calls it quits.

The "followers of the Grateful Dead", as deadheads are typically called, have filled the stadium in Santa Clara, CA, last week and congregated in Chicago for the final run over the 4th of July weekend.

For those of you who don't know the band's music, go to Youtube and look at some clips from live shows. To deadheads, it is no secret that their live shows have always been what made the band special.

Deadheads, somewhat mistakenly called "fans", are an eclectic, wildly diverse crowd. Yes, there are the tie-dye t-shirts - and socks, and baby onesie's and hatbands and blankets and and ties, and pins and more pins, paintings, silk screens and 3D art...and cover bands...

Largely unnoticed by the mainstream, some Grateful Dead songs have become embedded in the wider music of the United States.

These days, you find Southern Bluegrass bands as well as symphonic orchestras play songs like the marvelous Ripple.

While the band was touring across the U.S. until we lost Jerry Garcia in 1995, the Grateful Dead had the equivalent of a touring circus of Deadheads in tow. Some towns embraced the thousands of travelers, other towns shunned them. The band itself went through periods when fans were seen more as a burden, at one point sending copyright goons out into the parking lot to confiscate rose t-shirts. Which were just rose t-shirts despite the rose being an icon of the band.

But in the last decades, the remaining band members embraced the small time Deadhead parking lot vendors, the bustle of Shakedown Street (named after one of the Dead's songs).
For many thousand youngsters in those days, the Tour was literally the only family they had.

Some of the most hilarious and some of the most heartbreaking events you can imagine played out in the Deadhead scene, Much of this heartbreak was caused by drugs --- not necessarily the drugs themselves but the inevitable crack down by local police and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Here is an archive of some of that heartbreak.

The non threatening, peaceful Deadheads were a lure the cops could not resist. Like fish in a barrel. No weapons, no meth head with a potential of exploding into violence, just hipppies.

They even wore Birkenstocks.

Hippie shackles - try running from a predator in Birks.

Politically, Deadheads are often seen as radical liberals, which is an over simplification. As a group, the Heads are very much community oriented, grass roots type folks.
And, yes, we hitched a ride once from a show to the airport with a group of white guys whose pickup truck sported a huge Confederate flag.

Feeling safe - that's one of the characteristics of being in a group of Deadheads. They tends to let people be who they are, no questions asked, including so many celebrities, you'd be surprised.

Sure, in the days of smartphones, there have been tweets with "oh, Bill Murray is here" or so. But Dead shows have been always been places where celebs who could not normally go anywhere without a body guard would simply hang out and be themselves.

Deadheads have been a very inclusive community, welcoming others in an often polarized world, and for that, we owe them if not gratitude, then at least a nod.

A big thank you to the Grateful Dead and to the Deadheads.

We are everywhere.