I arrived on campus the day of the Furthur show to find San Diego State invaded by intrepid travelers from another realm.
With kaleidoscopic rainbow- colored attire, copious amounts of untamed hair and a strict aversion to footwear, I could quickly tell this wasn’t just another fraternity vainly parading around the school. These free-spirited strangers practiced enough civil disobedience to make Henry David Thoreau blush. Blowing caution to the wind, they fumigated the school with bottomless satchels of tobacco and sage as well as other herbs. For the random passerby, it was surely a lot to take in. Local bartenders quickly found they had more tabs inside than customers. There was more consciousness expansion taking place on campus than a soiree in the netherworld hosted by Terence McKenna and Timothy Leary. To my astonishment, the band’s arrival in San Diego transcended state festivities beyond throwing small plastic balls into red cups.
The band Furthur is comprised of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, the psychedelic pioneers of both the jam band scene and the social revolution of the ‘60s. Formed in Palo Alto in 1965, the Grateful Dead introduced its eclectic style, combining a comprehensive fusion of genres with a masterful capacity for improvisation. The death of lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia in 1995 marked the end of the Grateful Dead, although many side projects have followed. Since 2009, bassist Phil Lesh and rhythm guitarist and vocalist Bob Weir preserved the band’s music and culture through Furthur.
Finch, an undaunted psychonaut and seasoned Deadhead I met outside of the gate, gave me the lowdown on the band.
“The scene is still very much alive. A lot of people didn’t know where to go in 1995 after Jerry Garcia died. A lot of them dropped out of the scene or joined other countercultural communities,” Finch said. “But now that it’s grown and people have realized that it is the Dead tour, the scene has exploded.”
Granted, I never actually made it into the show, but who needs a seat when you can hear the music outside the venue for free? Sound waves aren’t the least bit concerned with how much money you shelled out for Ticketmaster’s “convenience” charge. Furthermore, the truly eccentric characters roamed the outskirts, including my new crony Captain Mountain Bob.
“I live on a sailboat. Johnny Depp ain’t got (expletive) on me,” he said. “He robbed me of all my lines and I got no residuals but it’s business, so I guess that’s the way it goes.”
Surely these were not just vagrants too impoverished to afford a ticket, but virtuous revolutionaries boycotting the musical disparity between the bourgeois and the proletariat classes. The music of the Grateful Dead composes some of the most euphonic sounds ever to sweep the surface of this small blue planet and to restrict it from the people who need it most makes for some serious bad vibes, man.
One of the attendees I encountered at the show between Open Air Theatre and Adams Humanities was a stylish young musician by the name of Fungi.
“Well, right now I’m looking at the medium barrier that exists between the rich and the poor. This is significantly strange to me. How we all sit here behind this fence, this imaginary socially constructed wall that we build up in our minds, the wall between us and our experiences,” Fungi said. “They’ve got this physical fence we see here, but then they’ve got this other fence. The fence of money.”
Another noble comrade, The Landshark, expressed his manifesto regarding the depraved public demonstrations taking place outside of the show.
“We’re sitting out here barefoot, taking our shirts off, drinking some Jameson. I’m just worried about this fence here, wondering why they’re trying to keep these lovely people out of here,” he said. “I think we should burn down all kinds of fun stuff, you know. Fences, clothes, virginity, everything!”
Whether you attended the show on the grounds of a civic uprising or simply for the tasty jams, I think all will agree it was one wild, legendary night of howling, shaking and dancing in the streets.
