Our natural reserves of absurdity are inexhaustible. Even though they eventually won a fan base big enough to play The Hollywood Bowl, the jam band phenomenon never really took root in Southern California. It’s unclear whether they’re the best of the worst or the worst of the best, but Shakedown Street always needs an address. Within a few years, Phish consolidated their reign as pipers of the candy flipping and hippie twirling hordes. Old people died, especially ones who shot heroin. When I first heard “Scarlet Begonias,” I thought it was a Sublime original.

The band’s skull logo was more recognizable than their sound. It was a Northern California, Colorado, and Northeastern cult-give or take the occasional Midwest narcotics depot or college town.Ĭlassic radio mostly ignored them. I didn’t know a single person into the Grateful Dead. It was the early 90s and no one needed the 60s. For a semester in 7th grade, I sported Airwalks, flannel, and briefly fucked around on a Girl skateboard that I could barely ride. If gangsta rap didn’t catch you, you had a grunge phase. We all missed Wishbone’s Uncle Charles, y’all… If you were 13 in LA, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “Crossroads” video was the only bittersweet eulogy you needed. We rocked Tommy Hill and Polo with size 38 waists to conceal the glocks we didn’t own. How was he going to compete with the stab-you-in-your-nose-bone ominousness of Mobb Deep or the cocaine ice cream of Chef Raekwon? That was the “Summertime in the LBC” summer. The obituary of the chubby skeleton from the “Touch of Grey” video meant nothing. When Garcia’s heart stopped in ‘95, I was too young to see them in concert.

Maybe you’re one of the hundreds outside with a cardboard sign that reads: “Hoping for a Miracle.” Entrance meant that you won the lottery, sold spare appendages on the black market, or finessed the Patchouli circuit plug. The Golden Road to Devotion now costs a couple mortgage payments. And there may be more floral garlands here. Somehow, four old guys, Bruce Hornsby, and Trey from Phish sold 65 percent more tickets per show than Taylor Swift-more than every summer festival except Coachella. My friend on the train car turns to me and loudly wonders, “Why do these people think this is cool? Jerry Garcia is dead!” The mob would point to the shirtless Trustafarian torso and say that Jerry still lives in “our hearts.” A noble concept, but Ticketmaster doesn’t accept love as currency. The Jerry impersonator from Half Baked was waylaid with prior Independence Day plans. A Jerry hologram was planned, but couldn’t be properly brought to fake life in real time. During intermission, the field will split open and he’ll ascend in a floating mausoleum, wax mannequin covered in tie-die, exhumation costs covered by the largesse of Ben and Jerry.

On most Sundays, the Grateful Dead are my favorite rock band of all-time, but this seems destined for pure farce-a Necrophiliac spectacle where the hallucinogenic ashes of Saint Jerry spike the Fourth of July fireworks. Ask me why I’m here and I can only give you elliptical answers. This is the exit for Chicago’s Soldier Field, site of “Fare Thee Well,” the last three shows for the band formerly known as The Grateful Dead. We’re clacking and lurching on a Red Line car to the Roosevelt stop.

Grateful dead dancing bears band tattoo