On May 7, 1980, when I was a freshman at Cornell University, the Grateful Dead came to play in the cavernous gym called Barton Hall. I didn’t know the Dead’s music well. Unfamiliar songs seemed to meander as I wandered through the crowd. The massive floor, more than an acre, was carpeted with dancing gypsies. Many didn’t seem to be watching the band. I had been to concerts, but never anything so odd.
My first year in college also was bewildering. I was homesick and unsure I was in the right place, if there were a “right” place. The weird atmosphere at the show was not helping. As disorder swirled around me on the gym floor, I felt disordered in my heart too. I was lost and wanted reassurance, to have things put back together, not taken apart. That night, I got something better.
In the middle of the show, noise organized itself into melody. I didn’t know it then, but they were playing “Shakedown Street”, a fairly new song with a strange warning: “The sunny side of the street is dark/Maybe the dark is from your eyes.” But as in many of the Dead’s songs, there are crescendos of hope: “I recall your darkness when it crackled like the thundercloud/Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart/I can hear it beat out loud!”
A pounding bass and percolating dance beat urged the song to rip loose, but the band wouldn’t let it go. Their laconic groove lassoed and rode a musical beast with calm assurance. They created disorder and made it beautiful. I was carried along, hypnotized. Five, ten, fifteen minutes; it didn’t seem like it would end. The effect was transforming. It showed me there is a way home even through chaos, maybe even better for having done so. Across more than fifty Dead shows since then, I had that epiphany again and again.
Years later, I met the Dead’s Bob Weir. Barton Hall was very much on my mind but I felt too awkward to mention it. As we parted, my “thanks for everything” was too breezy, so I quickly added, “I’m not sure you know what I mean….” Before I could explain, Weir cut me off, leaned in, and said, “I know exactly what you mean.”
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