Grateful Dead: Skeletons from the Closet

I'm about to admit something that I'm not particularly proud of.  Back in 1995 when I heard that Jerry Garcia had died (it's one of those times, I remember exactly where I was... I was driving on the dirt road to the summer camp where I worked, it was a warm, sunny day in August and I was coming back from my day off listening to the radio when I heard the news) I remember thinking, "at last". What was my rationale?  I had seemingly forever lived with Grateful Dead obsessed stoners who thought of little else but the Dead and weed.  At camp, the handful of us who were not Dead-Heads had to fill in for the unbelievable number of staff who requested the weekend off to attend the historic Dead concert in Highgate, Vermont.  My college suite was constantly awash in reefer-smoke while strains of the Dead and Phish came thumping through thin dorm walls accompanying the smoke that drifted from under the doors.  A part of me thought that if Jerry Garcia were dead, maybe all the madness would end.   

Now 20 years later I'm left feeling rather bad about my initial reaction and now that I'm able to listen to the Grateful Dead on my own terms, not those of my room-mates or co-workers I find that there is a lot about the Dead that I can appreciate.  For one is very lightness of the music, and I don't mean in an adult contemporary or easy listening kind of way.  The harmonies, the chord progressions, the melodies and the grooves, Skeleton's From the Closet is nice way to spend part of your weekend whether you partake or not.  This album is like listening to a great batch of old Americana recordings except they're not tunes pulled from the 20s and 30s but from the 60s and 70s.  I also find that this record pulls at my nostalgia strings quite a bit.  Like I said I heard these tunes many, many times during my high school/college career and, whether I like it or not, these songs bring about memories of summers spent with friends, bonfires, music pouring out of cars parked in the dark woods with folks having fun and spending summer nights together.  I would also throw into this lot the music of Cat Stevens and Van Morrison.  Seems I spent a lot of time with hippies.  All these albums now live in my collection and when the weather is below freezing and it just seems like the snow will never go away I can throw on the Grateful Dead and all of a sudden it's summer again, my hair is longer, I'm a bit skinnier, there's a fire going in the middle of the woods, the beer is crappy but everyone's happy.