22 Years Ago Today

I dosed with 4 friends and spent the night next to San Mateo Creek(Southern California). We had a few drinks and burned a bunch while listening to the radio. I was the only one who hadn't seen Jer. 

It's ok. I ate lots of acid and saw the Butthole Surfers four times in '96. 

They're playing LA the weekend before Halloween. New album next year. 

I used to know a dude who lived with the Butthole Surfers, back when they lived in Georgia. He said that the band would sit around, dose and listen to the Dead.

It's a full circle.

My first butthole surfers exposure was around 1983 at summer camp in Texas. I was sitting in the ER at Charity Hospital in New Orleans when Tom Brokaw came on the TV and told me that the fat man had moved on. Went home to the riverbend and sat underneath a willow tree and cried.

I was sitting on a glacier in the middle of British Columbia and had no clue what was going on.....and wouldn't for a few more weeks. 

Back in my Earth First! days, and prior to Jerry's passing, there was a mean trick that some people would play on Deadhead activists working on a campaign out in the woods of Central Idaho.   There were isolated "satellite camps" way back in the woods where folks would work for extended periods of time.   The mean trick was for people delivering supplies to those remote camps to tell Deadheads working there that Jerry had died, something that was generally expected and wholly plausible considering the man's declining health and drug problems. 

My cousin tells of how he heard the news and felt compelled to set up a temp. shrine to Jerry in front of the Bangor Opera House, as the Dead played there in 1971. He said people were acting very weird to him and gave him some grief about it. I couldnt tell him the Dead played the Auditorium, not the Opera House. What a fool.

I was at a jobsite and my close mate called me......"are you sitting down?"

My son was about 6 months old. We were vising my parents in CT, and had just come back from Caldor, where we got a new front-facing car seat. It was on the TV when we got back.

Heard it on the morning news.

I was in shock for a few days, maybe weeks, even though I was quite aware of Jerry's problem for many years.

I remember getting calls and condolences from non head friends, which was nice.

I was at work and saw the the news come across the DowJonesNewswire on my screen. Gathered with some friends and other fans down on the Mall in D.C. after work. Sad day for sure.

I have heard of The Butthole Surfers.