28 years gone...Brent Mydland

Damn.  Hadn't put the date together.  Thanks for the reminder.

IMHO the "Glue" of the band since shortly after joining the band. It was never better before or after his membership.

Hhheeeyyyyyy! 

Let's just say that that is a highly debatable proposition.

(Cough) 1972

Very very few good shows after he left us.

I was hanging out with friends on Lake Winnipesauke when I heard the news. If I remember right  a couple of my friends had tickets for the fall European tour, and I naively thought they would cancel the tour and maybe go on an extended break. I was wrong about that.

I also just realized that Mayer was 13 in 1990

I was 14.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaKNuELl1tM

Saw my first show in 1980 - Brent was the keyboard player for my core GD years

Brent would be 66 if he were still alive.  It's hard to picture him as an older person.  I think it was Blondie who sang "Die Young, Stay Pretty".  

I mentioned in the JFK Stadium '89 thread that Brent was always as high as I was, I found that endearing, you could count on it like a watch from Switzerland, he was the driving force behind the psychedelic renaissance that was the 80's, I remember one night where the Whalers played hockey, not Bob Marley and the Wailers, but the Hartford Whalers played hockey the day after St. Patrick's, Brent telling Bob what to do with his hen house...he was just always "superhigh" you could always walk in as high as you've ever been in your life and Brent would be just as high.

https://youtu.be/MHU5FywUBEk

https://www.c-span.org/video/?448966-2/washington-journal-news-headlines...

https://youtu.be/Un2aomUFlk8

I remember the night before this recording drinking green beer at a bowling alley outside Hartford 

https://archive.org/details/gd1990-03-18.141913.FOB.Schoeps.Mattes.Mille...

The next evening, Hartford

https://archive.org/details/gd1990-03-19.Nak300sSenn441s.Fitzy.Keo.12562...

I was driving when I heard that a member of the Dead had died. Went to a commercial and I pulled over saying over and over, "Not Jerry, Not Brent!, Not Jerry, Not Brent!"

I was devastated. And so was the band.

Time flies.  Saw his 5th show with the GD at Layette College in Easton, PA May of 1979 and the last I saw him was the Buffalo show 1990 with CSN opening and a few hundred in between. Got to have a beer with him when Go Ahead (his Krutzman band when Jerry was in coma recovery) played Philly I think in 1986.  I miss you, Brent.

I saw most of the shows in the summer of 1990 from Shoreline thru Tinley Park (none of the shows north of RFK). I was 19. After getting back from Chicago I hung out with a buddy who I saw some with, we were talking how summer shows were not as good as Spring '90 but still tons of fun (of course we had THE FUN). The next evening we were at another buddy's house mourning Brent with about 8 other heads. Such a GD shame.  

Tried to type this the other night...

Saw Brent's last show, I was stylin' the lot out on my veggie sandwiches, later in life I had a buddy that told me I sold a veggie sandwich to him at Tinley Park, he was a great musician.  So there was a rumor on the lot to end all lot rumors that the Grateful Dead were playing Red Rocks as Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, so after the show

[I remember the lines of "Far From Me" that he sang the night before, "this times the last time I want to say so long...this song's my last song for you"  https://youtu.be/WqjyYd1ollM ...when Jerry sings the backup lyrics "so long" it almost seems like he's giving Brent an emotional goodbye.]

...me and the crew, headed west towards Morrison Colorado on a rumor, I was with Brokeback Danny, Doug, Sparky, and others, I remember Danny picking up the check at breakfast and thinking that was the first time someone other than a family member bought me a meal, I was fascinated by that.

Eventually, we ended up outside of Denver staying the night at private residence, I woke up before everyone else, quietly stepped out to have breakfast at a diner around the corner, grabbed a copy of the Denver Post, sat at a booth and ordered coffee, I read the above the fold headlines and flipped the paper over and saw a photograph of Brent, at the end of the article it said "Ironically the Grateful Dead were to have played 3 surprise shows at Red Rocks in Morrison this weekend".

I went back to the house, everyone was still asleep, we ended up camping at Left Hand Canyon Road for a few days, most of the group decided to go back east, me and a guy named Red decided to hitchhike to the Jerry show at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, Doug drove us all the way to the I-80 in Wyoming, we ended up getting a few rides here and there but ended up stranded on the high plains of the I-80 in Wyoming throughout most of the evening, it was in the middle of absolute nowhere, "the highway the moon the clouds and the stars", when all of a sudden a school bus comes out of nowhere and pulls over, in was Mikaeus, with a large blue school bus, headed to Berkeley for the Jerry show, there were two girls in a Ford Eclipse traveling behind the bus, they asked if me & Red could drive their car so they could ride on the bus, we politely agreed, so within moments me and red are driving a car towards the Greek Theater listing to Weather Report Suite on a '74 Louisville cassette the girls had playing truly grateful for our fortuitous turn of luck!

https://archive.org/details/gd1974-06-18.sbd.miller.89690.sbeok.flac16/g...

It seemed as if we barely made it, I busked the main drag in Truckee for a spaghetti dinner for the group, that was a genuine "moment" for me, we had a grand feast!  Eventually we arrived in Berkeley, it was Brent's wake, the first family event after Brent's passing, Jerry sang "Tears of Rage", people were quietly weeping, Brent was truly mourned that day.

It was never ever the same, such is life, Brent was a good human being and a sublime musician, he had a hand in changing America, thus changing the world.

Far From Me

Tinley Park 1990

https://youtu.be/WqjyYd1ollM

Edit: Ford Eclipse was a Ford Escape 

One of the girls in the Ford Escape was Melissa who a lot of people knew from Hawaii, one of the most beautiful human beings ever on Grateful Dead tour, I hope she is well.