Thanks, Jerry!

When I was a kid, listening to the radio, I fell in love with country music. Johnny Cash, Merle, Hank, Buck, Loretta. And on public radio I discovered bluegrass. Wow!

Then I found out from my classmates in high school that country wasn't cool. I guess I didn't care. But I started expanding my music and pharmacological and horticultural horizons. The first Grateful Dead record I ever heard was an epiphany. It was Bear's Choice. Not really representative, huh? But man, what a record!

And I discovered the blues, and good old roadhouse barroom rock n' roll. But country stayed cool for me. Real twangy heartachy country. And I got a gig as a country DJ. I worked overnights, and I would sneak in Gram Parsons records, and Dead records, and lots of Emmylou. And, well, maybe some Stones. Then maybe an hour of Jerry Lee Lewis just for grins. Around that time I was one of about three white kids at Edison High in Fresno, where my friends turned me on to Johnny Guitar Watson and Albert Collins. Fresno pretty much sucked, but I made some good friends and discovered great music.

A couple of years later I found myself living in Northern California. Discovered Village Music, now gone. Discovered Bolinas, my home for many years. Discovered Kate Wolf and Nina Gerber. Wow. Damn!   Worked at a funky little free-form station  in San Rafael that  let me play whatever the hell I wanted. Played a lot of Grateful Dead. . New management came in and said "no Dead" . . . but we kept playing it, just called it something else. Like . . . "here's a local band that used to be called the Warlocks." Heh.

And I have a whole library of amazing soul music, mostly 1966-73, most of which doesn't make it onto TwangCity except by accident.  Maybe I should play more of that? I dunno. Some of it is kinda overproduced for this thing we're doing here. Comes from my days working at yet another funky little radio station.  I'm too embarrassed to tell you what I called myself  at that gig.

Anyhow, just listening to the Dead playing right now, and really  enjoying the music. Thanks Jerry!