...was by driving to work listening to my absolutely beautiful, new Grateful Dead CD, Steppin' out in England which is a totally awesome 4 disc set of many, many lovely songs in one easy package. Gorgeous. Mellow. Dark and slow. Incredible background music for driving all over southern Bergen county, to and from home, work, client's apartments, delis, ATM's and so on. Makes me feel like I could do visiting nurse work for the rest of my days as long as I have such good tunes in my car to listen to from 9 to 5.
The song Black Peter has been a personal favorite of mine since, like, forever. First of all, this song made itself known to the world on Workingman's Dead which came out in 1970, so it's older than me. My parents have owned that album since before I was born and have been playing it for about that long. Anyway, it's an old, old song for me and I must've heard it about a million or so times. Still, I hadn't listened to it for a really long time too and hearing it again struck up old feelings with a new twist for these times I'm in.
This song is so heavy when you hear it; much more cumbersome on the soul than just reading the lyrics. It absolutely struck me that maybe this was a little bit what my husband felt like when he was laying in his hospital bed during the first couple of days after his open heart surgery when he was on just about a million different drugs, medicinally paralyzed, kidneys barely doing their job, no food or drink, just saline, dopamine, amiodorone, and whatever else keeping his body going, tubes in every opening, lights on constantly, not even being able to scratch his own nose when it itched.
Amazing to me that such an old, old song could have a current application to my life.
If you've never heard the song, please try. I promise it's not bad. Yeah, yeah, it's the Dead, they suck, blah, blah, blah. C'mon. How can they possibly suck if they've drawn such an amazingly loyal crowd over the past 40 years? It's folk music for God's sake! The will go down in history with Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and other similar American folk artists.
So give it a try. It's not all peace, love, and inebriation (which isn't always a bad thing anyway). It's about playing cards, pretty girls, shootin' guns, murder, riding trains, having fun, mourning occasional losses, and strange twists of fate.
More to come on the Dead in the future. Of that you can be sure.
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3 comments:
I have never been a fan of the Dead but I will try. For you. :)
Thanks, that's too kind. I'm kind of used to being the only one around who even likes them anymore. I just think they made some beautiful music in their day.
To be fair, I've never really given them a good listen. Jason likes some of their stuff, so we have some. I'll give you some feedback soon!
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