January 4 – Grateful Dead – Blues for Allah

I finally got around to returning the Grateful Dead and Kinks albums I borrowed from my friend. We had a very lovely catch-up and he asked if I needed more albums. I hadn’t planned on it, but did take him up on his once again, oh so generous offer by saying – okay but no Kinks, which had less to do with the Kinks than it did with the fan encounters the last time around. He went into the back of the bar that he runs and came back with two more Dead albums. I did have fun with American Beauty and the attention the cover drew on my trip home last summer, and even though I’ve never heard of either this or the other album he gave me, nor recognized any of the song titles, it happened again. As I walked down to the end of the subway platform carrying the albums under my arm with Blues for Allah exposed, it caught the attention of a very young man, who I’d say was about twenty, give or take a year or two, and keeping in mind that I am at an age when everyone under 40 looks like a kid. I thought he was going to ask me something about the just-made announcement, which I could not have helped him with as who could possibly have understood it, so what’s the sense in even making it. Instead, he nodded toward the album and said, “I’ve been looking for that album for years. I have all of their albums except that one.” I told him that I myself owned no Grateful Dead albums and these were on loan. “You’ll have fun with it,” he said. I then told him there are still vinyl stores around (though one of the older ones in New Jersey just closed), and he replied that he knew. “I support that,” he said. Ah, so young yet so wise, I thought. While I found the album less than wowsome and only had a smidge of a recollection of one small passage in one of the songs, I have to admire the loyalty of the Dead fans, as lore and love is passed from generation to generation, and serves as a bond between them. It’s very cool.