[net.music.gdead] Dead in San Diego

nm34@sdcc12.UUCP (nm34) (09/18/85)

                San Diego Edition of the L.A. Times    Sept. 16, 1985 


                       DEAD HEADS GRATEFUL FOR BIG TREAT

              Nostalgia Rides High at Bands Southwestern Gig


     By Janny Scott, Times Staff Writer

   Chula Vista - Among Dead Heads, Bob Otto is an original: he went to his
first concert before the Dead even called themselves the Grateful Dead.
Now he is the patriarch of an entire Dead Head clan - three generations
of Dead fans.

     Last week, the clan took a few days off from work to celebrate
Otto's son's birthday over three days of Dead concerts in Oakland.  Then
Otto and his son , daughter, and 7-week-old grandson headed south for
the Sunday afternoon concert at Southwestern College.  

     "It's a way to get rid of your hang-ups, your headaches," said
Otto, 46 who runs a sound-equiptment business in Souther California.
"The establishment's way works when it comes to making a living and
financial independence.  This works as relaxation." 

     Full-time Dead Heads, part-timers, closet Dead Heads and virgins
poured in Sunday to the southernmost campus in the U.S. in convoys of
painted school busses and rolling tie-dyed t-shirt shops, the sounds of
bootleg tapes filling the air.  

     They began arriving Friday, many straight from Oakland, checking
into local campgrounds and being chased from the college parking lots.
By Saturday night, they were permitted to pitch camps on the asphalt.
There were parties, scateboarding and forays to the 7-Eleven.  

     Sunday afternoon, the 20-year-old-band that became famous in San
Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love and has reportedly played more
sellout concerts than any other rock group, took the stage before a
crowd estimated at 14,000 in DeVore Stadium.
  
     From above, the floor of the stadium becaome rolling sea of bodies
- men in bandannas and straight haired women in tie-dyed shirts merged
in floppy, free form dance, the hot breeze spiked with the smells of
barbeque and dope. 

     Men in wheelchairs along the periphery bobbed in rhythm.  Babies in
diapers rode on parents' sholders.  A white-haired woman watched through
binoculars in a yoga position under the football scoreboard.  A few
spectators turned pale and quietly passed out.

     "It's a chance to Bozo and Bozoette with someone."

     "You start to tingle! That's what it's all about."

     "You only need five words:  Mellow.  Loving. Further. Why not.?"

     Many said they came for the music - the country, bluesy, folksy
rock, epitomized in songs like "Truckin'" and "Uncle John's Band".
Several said they liked it because it was "American" and "not
processed".  Others liked it simply because it was The Dead.

     Many said the came for the crowd - described as mellow even by
some among the phalanx of football players dresses as security guards.
People said they liked the group's diversity, tolerance and lack of
inhibition.  Like a big picnic, one said. 

     "It's the people.  Yeah, definitely, it's the brotherhood," said
Greg Lister, 21, who explained that he spreads love and joy for a
living. "You know what I mean, people looking after each other.  You
know, sharing.  All that good stuff."  

     "You go to see Ma-don-na," seered a man who identified himself only
as Brent.  "And everybody's drones."

     All along the quarter mile from the parking lots to the stadium
Dead Heads and others hawked the Dead-abilia that some use to
support their peregrinations from concert to concert and state to state.

     There were Dead tapes, Dead decals and bumper stickers.
"Supposedly worn by members of the band," crowed a man displaying six
Dead t-shirts on hangers.  Generations of t-shirts loped past:
Deadercise.  High Sierra Dead.  Club Dead.

     Lori Wahrenberger, 24, a Dead Head from Pittsburgh relocated to Los
Angeles, said she always wanted to grow up in the '60s: "It seemed new
and young.  There was a lot of youth in the government - Kennedy was
young.  There was a lot of civil rights.  

     She figures she has been to at least 100 Grateful Dead concerts.
At one point, she said, she traveled for several months with other Dead
Heads, following the band and selling Dead bumper stickers for some
spare change. 

     They check with the East and West Coast Dead concert hot lines,
catch rides, camp out and make friends in every city, she said.  She
recalled 5000 Dead Heads once descending upon Boise, Idaho.  It is an
education, she said; eventually, she'll get serious and go into radio.

     "They dont feel like selling out and working," she said of the Dead
Heads' motivations.  "And you learn a lot spiritually, about how to work
with people."

     Christe Ferguson, who was born four years after the Grateful Dead
was formed, spends her entire $10 a week allowances on the Dead.  A
high-school student in Palos Verdes, she heard them in Colorado last
week - during a carefully timed visit to her father.  

     "Because they preach nonviolence," she explained.  "They're happy
with their lives."

     "Some of these kids are 16 years old," marveled Barry Reed, a
bemused 37-year-old glass-blowing instructor from San Marcos.  "They
must have gotten into encyclopedias to learn to dress like this."

     Over the years, seasoned Dead Heads said, little has changed.  The
audience has broadened and diversified, the drug use has diminished.
Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia's leonine mane has turned silvery gray.
"Jerry's got a little heavyer," Reed conceded.  Just a fact of life.

     Time and circumstances have edged some old timers into
semi-retirement.

     Michael Hinson, 40, traveled as a Dead Head in the mid-1970s but
cut down his intake to about one concert a year.  "Because there is the
rest of your life to get on with," he explained apologetically.  "Thats
a controversial statement in itself around here."

     Bob Otto figures he's been to more than 300 concerts since the
original Warlocks concert in Boston back in the mid-1960s.  In the
meantime, he said, he's gone from hippie to cocaine addict to 
successful businessman.  But he hasn't dropped the Dead.

     Now his son and son's girlfriend, his daughter and her husband, and
their young son are all in the Head Head clan.  "I think they get the
same thing out of it that I do," he said.  "High. Hopefully, naturally."

     Nearby, Natasha Goodwin, 22, flagged down a Dead Head she had met
on the Phone Mart in Westwood.  "There's Dead Heads everywhere," she
explained to a stranger.  "And its instant bond when you meet."