Behind the Lens: Jay Blakesberg’s Las Vegas Grateful Dead Exhibit Larry Michigan is joined by Jay Blakesberg, a well-known photographer and frequent guest. They discuss various topics related to the Grateful Dead, including a specific 1973 performance and Phil Lesh's "Box of Rain." Jay shares details about his involvement in the Dead Forever Experience, a fan exhibit in Las Vegas, which includes a curated photography exhibit called "An American Beauty, Grateful Dead Photography, 1965-1995," and other memorabilia. Jay also mentions his exhibit "Retro Blakesberg" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, showcasing his photography work from 1978 to 2008, which will move to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Additionally, he talks about collaborating with his daughter Ricky on various photography projects and exhibitions through their business, Retro Photo Archive. The conversation includes anecdotes about Jay's experiences, including rare portraits he took of Owsley Stanley and his approach to shooting photos at concerts, particularly at the new Sphere in Las Vegas.
Behind the Lens: Jay Blakesberg’s Las Vegas Grateful Dead Exhibit
Larry Michigan is joined by Jay Blakesberg, a well-known photographer and frequent guest. They discuss various topics related to the Grateful Dead, including a specific 1973 performance and Phil Lesh's "Box of Rain." Jay shares details about his involvement in the Dead Forever Experience, a fan exhibit in Las Vegas, which includes a curated photography exhibit called "An American Beauty, Grateful Dead Photography, 1965-1995," and other memorabilia. Jay also mentions his exhibit "Retro Blakesberg" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, showcasing his photography work from 1978 to 2008, which will move to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Additionally, he talks about collaborating with his daughter Ricky on various photography projects and exhibitions through their business, Retro Photo Archive. The conversation includes anecdotes about Jay's experiences, including rare portraits he took of Owsley Stanley and his approach to shooting photos at concerts, particularly at the new Sphere in Las Vegas.
https://deadforeverexperience.com/
https://www.retrophotoarchive.com/
Grateful Dead
May 20, 1973
Harder Stadium
UC - Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA
INTRO: Box of Rain
Track #3
3:44 – 4:59
SHOW No. 1: The Race Is On
Track # 7
:46 – 2:19
SHOW No. 2: They Love Each Other
Track #11
3:30 – 5:03
SHOW No. 3: Mexicali Blues
Track #15
1:24 – 2:30
SHOW No. 4: Nobody’s Fault But Mine jam
Track #26
0:00 – 1:17
OUTRO: Sugar Magnolia
Track #31
5:37 – 7:03
Larry (00:28.686)
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Deadhead Cannabis Show.
i'm larry michigan michigan law in chicago and today we continue with our amazing run of guests that we have had on this podcast recently our guest today is a fan favorite well -known and not multi -guest on our show jay blakesburg is calling in from san francisco were very happy to have him we're going to be maybe featuring a show from may twentieth nineteen seventy three at uc santa barbara if time permits there's always one or two to good mirrors one of stories to drop in but let's take us back for a minute
51 years ago today, the boys came out and after a couple of warm -up songs, Phil locked into his signature song that soon thereafter we wouldn't hear again for 13 years. So Dan, play what we got.
Larry (02:23.598)
phil lesh box of rain long time ago when he had a voice or maybe if he had a voice back then but otherwise so it's great to hear phil belton out his tune and like i say he played up to july twenty eighth of seventy three at watkins glenn and that it disappeared until march twentieth eighty six at the hanton collie hampton coliseum thirteen years later i was lucky enough to be in attendance that night and had my mind blown right along with everybody else it was great
But we got other great stuff going on. And as I say, we have Jay Blakesburg with us today. Jake, welcome to the show. Nice to have you with us.
Jay Blakesberg (02:56.291)
Hey man, good to see ya. Smokin' a giant doobie and like a little stone, but I'll be okay here on the Cannabis Deadhead Party Channel.
Larry (03:05.71)
-huh. I know you well enough to know that may not be -
Jay Blakesberg (03:07.235)
wait, wait, I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy. I haven't smoked pot in 40 years. I forgot. I'm not stoned. I'm not smoking a doobie.
Larry (03:13.134)
It did make you forget, but some of those pictures I saw from back in the day at your wonderful exhibit in San Francisco, evidence a little bit of marijuana use maybe at one point.
Jay Blakesberg (03:25.571)
Probably. I did plead the fifth.
Larry (03:29.294)
very good and you know it as well as anybody so that is wonderful so Jay I don't even know where to begin there's so much going on but for people who are listening to this show on the day that it has dropped the boys just opened up at the sphere that would be three or four nights ago now we're dropping on Monday that's the Thursday before but really just two days from now for you and I are you gonna be there on opening night?
Jay Blakesberg (03:52.991)
yeah, I'm going to Vegas tomorrow and I'll be there for opening weekend. I got a lot of stuff going on. You know, there's the Dead Forever Experience, which is in the Venetian Hotel. Technically, it might actually be in the Palazzo Hotel, which is part of the Venetian. I think if you enter on the Venetian, on the Palazzo side, it might be easier to get into the Dead Forever Experience, but I believe they're...
Larry (03:55.534)
Excellent.
Jay Blakesberg (04:17.923)
saying it's the Venetian so maybe that's a demarcation maybe that's the beginning of the Venetian right there I'm not sure but anyway they got the Dead Forever Experience which is a fan experience they got a lot of cool stuff going on by the time people are listening to this a lot of people have attended so not letting any secrets out of the bag but there's I think there's like there's a Sirius XM radio studio up there.
There's David Lemieux's tape collection, I believe from the 80s and 90s on display. Mickey Hart has a giant art gallery of his paintings that he's been doing. There's a movie theater where they're going to be playing Cornell 23 on repeat twice a day, the full show, a film that they made. There is a photo exhibit, a photography exhibit.
called An American Beauty, Grateful Dead Photography, 1965, 1995. And that is curated by me and my daughter, Ricky. And that is 145 photographs from 1965 to 1995. And then there's a little tiny section at the very end that we are calling The Long Strange Trip Continues with about 16 photographs of dead and co taken by myself and Chloe Weir.
So that's my exhibit there. There's some nice collages that I built out that you'll see on some walls. And so that's all happening at the Venetian slash Palazzo. Vibe is the company that put all that together. Incredibly wonderful people. And Vibe put together the Dead Forever experience with the band and I'm part of it. And so that's happening there. And then I'll be shooting some shows and...
bouncing back and forth between Vegas and San Francisco. And I'm really excited to see what they put up on the big screens. I haven't seen anything. I have provided a lot of content. I believe a bunch of it will show up on the screens. But I will be surprised on Thursday, just like everybody else when I see it. And hopefully I'll be pointing at those giant 18 story high video screens saying, wow, there's my picture. Wow, there's my thing.
Larry (06:12.654)
Hehehe
Larry (06:37.966)
Have they, have they let you in there yet? So you can like, you know, get a feel for the place and how you want to set up to shoot.
Jay Blakesberg (06:38.371)
So.
Jay Blakesberg (06:43.715)
No, maybe tomorrow I think we're going to go over there and have a little meeting. I haven't figured it out yet. No, there is no quote unquote ever a place to shoot. You create the place to shoot. They don't they don't they don't know they never provide you with a place. They might tell you where you can't go, but they don't never say here's your place to shoot from. I have a feeling I'm going to spend a lot of time up top, you know, I'm going to spend a lot of time up in the three hundreds and the four hundreds.
Larry (07:05.71)
I just
Jay Blakesberg (07:12.675)
and things like that because I think there's going to be a lot of incredible views from up there.
Larry (07:22.031)
Okay, yeah, actually, you know, from talking with friends that we both have who have seen shows on the Sphere, you know, sitting up that high, although you're a little bit farther from the stage, you really get probably the best view of anybody in terms of all the screens and how they're playing out.
Jay Blakesberg (07:37.699)
From where? From up top? Yeah, for sure. I'm thinking I'm hanging out up in the 400s and the 300s, which I'm excited to do because I never, I go up to it at big shows, stadium shows and amphitheater shows. I go to the back, but I spend five or 10 minutes there. But I think now with the Sphere, that's the place to be. So that's what I think I'm going to end up doing.
Larry (07:39.246)
Yeah.
Larry (07:45.102)
Okay, with the comment folk.
Larry (07:59.47)
Okay.
Okay, have you talked to any of the guys that were shooting the fish shows? Did you get any takes from them?
Jay Blakesberg (08:07.523)
No, I have not spoken to anybody that shot fish. I saw a lot of pictures that looked incredible. I haven't shot. Well, actually, I did talk to one photographer, a friend of mine, a woman named Steph, but she was just shooting for fun with her phone. She is a professional photographer and she had her film camera with her to take some film shots, but just doing it from her seat. She wasn't on assignment. You know, they had their own crew there shooting and I just haven't spoken to anybody yet. But, you know, I've photographed.
video screens before so I think I'm confident that I can pull it off technically.
Larry (08:40.718)
Okay, and you'll have, I assume, you'll have a number of opportunities to perfect your craft over the next however many weeks this is gonna run.
Jay Blakesberg (08:49.251)
This is true. I will definitely be able to pivot and learn and experiment and see what I can come up with. So I'm excited.
Larry (08:59.374)
fun. Yeah, this is, you know, it makes it unique for everybody. Now, this is the guys, right? John is back in the fold. He's playing with them. And my understanding is that Jay Lane is playing that Bill is still not part of the group.
Jay Blakesberg (09:12.451)
correct as far as I know that is the story. But you know, so but you know, going back to the photo exhibit, you had mentioned earlier that you saw it in in July. So we had built out a smaller version of this exhibit that was in San Francisco at the H Street Art Center. And that's where the exhibit originally started. And it was called Between the Dark and Light. And we did it specifically during the Oracle shows, because we knew there'd be a lot of people in town and people would be looking for cool stuff to do during the day.
Larry (09:18.03)
Yeah.
Jay Blakesberg (09:40.067)
And so the H Street Art Center is on H Street at the bottom of H Street. It's a wonderful venue. And I'm on the advisory board there. And I pitched them on the idea to do this exhibit knowing full well that people would want to come. And it had 98 prints in it. We were limited by the space that we were in. And it went over really, really well. You saw it. It was great.
And so when, when dead and co approached me and, and, and asked me to be involved with this dead forever experience and do it, I asked them if I could expand the exhibit a little bit. and they actually custom built a gallery for me. They, it's a, it's a, an empty 25 ,000 square foot old Barney's department store. Barney's went out of business, I think file chapter 11, sometime in the last few years.
And so if you've been to Vegas in any recent years, you'll know that every big casino hotel resort has a giant luxury shopping mall inside. Louis Vuitton, Coach, Gucci, things like that. And they had a giant Barneys that sort of anchored this shopping center. And Barneys went out of business. So it's been safe. I'm sorry, but so it's been empty and empty space. And they did a big fan experience there during U2 that was
Larry (10:30.286)
you
Jay Blakesberg (10:59.331)
very well received. From what I understand, they had, I think, almost a quarter of a million people come through the fan experience for U2. And so they decided to build this out for the Deadheads as well, and decided that they should invite me and include this exhibit that I curated with Ricky. And so that's how this is in. And so once we all agreed that we were going to do this, it was an empty floor plan. They said, we're going to build walls.
What do you want? And I laid out a gallery thing and then they came back to me and said, well, this is really cool, but how about this? And they kind of built it a little bit better on CAD drawings and made it flow a little bit better. And it's a nice little maze that starts in 1965 and ends in 1995. And we have a couple of little sidebars, so to speak. We have a deadhead wall. We have a...
keyboardist wall. We have a songwriter wall. We have a wall that's sort of like Mardi Gras Chinese New Year. And I feel like there's another part of that wall. We have a wall that's the Greek theater and the Frost and Palo Alto. We have a section that's just on Megadeth stadiums and video shoots, Touch of Grey and things like that. And then of course we have Egypt and we have the wall of sound section.
you know, so, you know, the first wall is 65 to 69. The next wall is 70 and 71. next wall is maybe 72 is on that wall. Also, then we have 73, 74 and 75 all combined, including, wall of sound making of the grateful dead movie, the show that you're playing today from 73. That was the beginning of the wall of sound. They were just starting to sort of build it out.
And if you see photos from those 73 shows, we have some photos that are in the exhibit from a show they did at Keys are stadium here in San Francisco in May of 73. When did you say that Santa Barbara show was what month?
Larry (13:07.694)
This is, it's May 20th.
Jay Blakesberg (13:10.947)
Yeah, so same week, same sound system. And so you can sort of see the birth of the wall of sound starting to blossom in those 73 shows. And we have a couple of photos. We have one from Watkins Glen. We have one from RFK Stadium in 73. And then we roll into 74 and 75. Of course, The Grateful Dead did a hiatus. They only played a handful of shows. We have photos from some of those shows.
And then we get into 76, they come back from hiatus, play some small theaters. You have some beautiful photographs from 76 and 77 Winterland and English town. My first Grateful Dead concert. And then of course you roll into 78 and what do you get? Egypt, right? 79 Keith and Donna leave, Brent joins the band. So we sort of have the beginning of Brent and also the beginning of the, the beast for the drummers, you know, Mickey and Billy sort of take over, right?
And then you roll into 80, the 15th anniversary. So you got Boulder, which was the first 15th anniversary shows, followed up by the Warfield, Sanger, New Orleans and Radio City Music Hall, acoustic and electric shows. Those were the big 15th anniversary shows. And then we, you know, we roll into, you know, some other subsections from there. Like I said, the Greek and we show stuff from from the mid 80s.
And then it goes into the end and then it ends with the keyboard players. And then we have our little dead and co section at the very end, which we're calling the long strange trip continues. So that's pretty much a rundown of the exhibit. If you get a chance to come to Vegas, please be sure to go. It's free. It's open to the public. You do not have to be a VIP ticket holder to go to this. Everybody's invited and come on down and check it out. I think you'll really dig it. And I think you'll enjoy.
Larry (14:44.942)
Wow.
Jay Blakesberg (15:00.675)
being indoors in some nice air conditioning. There's a bar. There's great stuff to do, to listen to, to play around with. It is experiential, so you can interact with it. So come check it out.
Larry (15:11.862)
Now is it going to be open every day of the week or just the days that Ded and Co are playing?
Jay Blakesberg (15:18.659)
It is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a to 6 p So there's no shows on Wednesdays. There's no shows on Sundays. So it's open on either day bookending. So they're closing it down on Monday and Tuesday to give everybody a breather probably. And, you know, people are leaving Vegas and coming back, you know, on the Wednesday for the Thursday show. So we're back in business and like I said, free to the public and.
And then right around the corner. So if you're in the exhibit at the Dead Forever Experience, if you leave that exhibit and go left and exit out into the Grand Canal shops in the Venetian Hotel, you go into the hallway, you exit, it's the Vibe check -in area. This is the second floor that we're on of Barney's. There's the first floor, which has got VIP check -in and dead and co -merch and Grateful Dead merch. So this whole thing that I just described on the second floor.
If you exit on that same floor into the Grand Canal shops, it's a eight second walk from my exhibit. And then make a left and go to Louis Vuitton and make a left. You'll be at the Anamazing Gallery. And the Anamazing Gallery is a commercial gallery. And I'm doing an exhibit there with Chloe Weir, Mickey Hart, and Stanley Mouse. And we're doing another Grateful Dead, the art of...
Grateful Dead experience there. And that's the for sale version of the exhibit. So if you want to go in and see more work, including Stanley Mouse and other photographs that aren't in the exhibit that we're showing in the Dead Forever experience, you can experience more artwork and you can also buy art from Mickey and Stanley, myself, Chloe. And that's called the Anamazing Gallery. And it's right from
from the American Beauty exhibit in the Dead If Forever Experience to the Anamazing Gallery is probably a 90 second walk. So please come and visit us at Anamazing also.
Larry (17:22.574)
Okay.
Larry (17:26.734)
Now in the photo collection you were talking about who are some of the photographers that were taking the earlier the pre -J Blakesburg photos.
Jay Blakesberg (17:35.011)
So we have, I think, I believe we have 27 photographers in this exhibit. And we have Herbie Green, who's a legend, early Grateful Dead work. We have Ron Rackow, who helped manage the Grateful Dead in the 60s and had a camera, was an incredible photographer. We've got Michael Dobow, a beautiful portrait of Jerry in 71. Marianne Mayer, who was the Europe 72 photographer for the band.
We've got Alvin Meyer with Snooki Flowers, Adrian Boot, of course, did all of the Egypt photos. We have Ed Perlstein, Susanna Millman, Rosie McGee, Bob Minken. We have a lot of different photographers whose names you know, if you follow what we do, then you've seen their work.
Hang on, I'm going to just check the list of names to see who I forgot. Greg Gar shot a lot of stuff in the 70s. We've got a photographer named Snooki Flowers, Jeffrey Price. Mark Norween took a picture of English town. Andy Leonard was Barlow's college roommate and good friends with Weir. We have some shots of his in there. Peter Simon, Steve Schneider, incredible photographers.
Larry (18:40.942)
Okay.
Jay Blakesberg (19:04.611)
Elizabeth Sunflower, we have a photograph that Elizabeth Sunflower shot of Bob Weir behind bars at City Hall in San Francisco when the Grateful Dead got arrested at 710 Ashbury on October 2nd, 1967. So there are a lot of rare photos. Listen, Grateful Dead photography has been out there in the world for a long time. But I will say there are things in this exhibit that a lot of people have never seen before.
and we are priding ourselves on digging deep into the archives and coming up or, you know, some of it was on display obviously this last summer, but we even have more new photos because we added another 50 photos almost to the exhibit. So there are a lot of images in there that a lot of people have never seen and it will be surprising and refreshing.
Larry (19:58.222)
No.
Are you going to have a lot of the same? We saw the one in San Francisco, you had exhibit tables out that showed your cameras and showed, you know, all sorts of different stuff like that. Will you be having those as well?
Jay Blakesberg (20:10.979)
you saw, no, you saw, I thought you saw my exhibit at Oracle in the summer, the Grateful Dead exhibit, the exhibit you're talking about. That is my museum exhibit here in San Francisco, which is a retrospective of my work, not the Grateful Dead exhibit that I showed around Oracle. No, we do not have ephemera in glass cases or plexi cases like you're talking about.
but I did build out a vinyl wall of ephemera. And so,
Jay Blakesberg (20:47.555)
So there is a nice, beautiful wall that's got some really beautiful artifacts that have been photographed and are built out on this wall. That's gonna be kind of fun to see, right, as you're walking into the exhibit. But my museum exhibit that you're talking about, that you came and visited with me, Larry, which is called Retro Blakesburg, The Music Never Stopped. And that's an exhibit that I did again with my daughter, Ricky. She curated it. And that is only photographs that I shot on film from 1978 to 2008.
And obviously there was a big Grateful Dead section in there, but you'll also remember that there was, you know, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Soundgarden and Jane's Addiction and Patti Smith and the Beastie Boys and Beck and, and, you know, the list goes on and on and on. And that exhibit just got picked up by the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. And that exhibit will go to LA in September and be there. Actually, it's going to, it's going to open officially, I believe the last week in August.
and it'll go until the middle of December in Los Angeles at the Grammy Museum. And we're curating that exhibit right now. And I believe it's gonna be somewhere around 50 images less than what's in San Francisco. So if you hear this and you're coming to San Francisco, that's at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which is on Mission Street downtown. And that exhibit is open until July 28th. And that's open Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
11 a to 5 p the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and that exhibit is there till July 28th. It was supposed to close January 28th but they extended it by six months because people were enjoying it and they wanted more people to enjoy it as did you when you came and visited and we did a little tour.
Larry (22:26.638)
Absolutely. And I would just say to any of our listeners out there, if you have any chance to see this retro Blakesburg exhibit, I would make every effort to get there. The pictures.
other jay displays from early in his career or wonderful and fun with wonderful stories behind them the grateful dead stuff speaks for itself all the other rockers that he shot over time it's really just incredible of course i'm still blown away by the the three portraits of all's leak easy and timothy leary one right after the other
Jay Blakesberg (22:57.411)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, the trifecta.
Larry (23:01.742)
trifecta indeed and you told the story this may be one of the only known prints of Owsley.
Jay Blakesberg (23:07.203)
Well, no, Owsley is very rarely photographed because he's, you know, was an LSD manufacturer and dealer. And if Owsley saw you backstage at a Grateful Dead concert with a camera, he would run away from you. And I was up at the Grateful Dead warehouse in 1999 and, and, Owsley was in town visiting Phil who was rehearsing.
And he saw my photo studio set up and said, Hey, what are you doing? I said, I'm doing a portrait of Phil. And he asked if I wanted to do a portrait of him. And I thought, of course, and said that, and he sat down and I got six frames in black and white and six frames in color. And he got up and walked away. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only person ever do a formal portrait of Owsley with studio lighting and things like that.
Larry (23:58.479)
Great story, lovely photos, really a lot of fun. Make a strong effort to get there. Now, something I also want to touch on that I think is really cool, and you and I talked about this a little bit, your daughter's name keeps coming up. You've been doing a lot of work with her. That's great that you've been able to incorporate her into your work.
Jay Blakesberg (24:15.715)
Yes, absolutely. Ricky works on all things photography. So we have a business called Retro Photo Archive, which is www .retrophotoarchive .com. And we manage a bunch of historic archival photography collections. And so we're creating opportunities for people to see these and pop up exhibits.
working with event planners and party people and companies that want to or music festivals that want to display these exhibits. So the original Grateful Dead exhibit from Oracle will be on display at a music festival up in Park City, Utah in mid -August called the Park City Song Summit. And I'll be up there at that.
I'm doing a slideshow of my work as well as a walking tour of the exhibit. And so that's like an outdoor vinyl banner exhibit from the original Grateful Dead one we did in the summer. And so we're taking these exhibits and bringing them out to the people, so to speak, and getting them in front of large groups of people at events and music festivals and things like that. Because it's really great history and we want to connect.
We want everybody, we all love rock and roll and we want to connect ourselves to that history because we're all part of it. And so that's what these exhibits do. And that's what we're working on with my daughter. Besides licensing these photographs to books and magazines and documentary films and different projects like that. So we have all this incredible history. Like, you know, it's not just music. It's not just Grateful Dead. We have pictures of Evil Knievel in 1972 and.
Larry (26:04.494)
Right.
Jay Blakesberg (26:05.443)
You know, in 1970, the American Indian movement took over Alcatraz for two years. We have about 150 rolls of film from that. And we, let's see, there's a lot of stuff of the birth of the modern day stripper movement in San Francisco in 1970 and 71. She photographed this one photographer, Beth Sunflower. She photographed the Rolling Stones in Altamont, but she also photographed the second year of Jazz Fest down in New Orleans.
in 1971, before it was at the fairgrounds. So we have all of this stuff. I don't know if you remember, you're old enough to remember this, Larry. I'm saying you are old enough. When President Gerald Ford almost got assassinated in 1975 by Squeaky Fromm from the Manson family, we have Sunflower got the photograph of Ford being grabbed by the Secret Service. And that photo ended up on the front page of hundreds of newspapers around the country. And then there's a photograph of Squeaky Fromm being arrested by the Secret Service.
Larry (26:47.566)
Yep. Yep. Sure.
Jay Blakesberg (27:03.523)
And so, you know, we have those photographs in our collection. So we have a lot of really interesting sports, politics, rock and roll, pop culture, hippies, protests, things like that. And so we manage all of that stuff and get it out into the world for people to experience and enjoy.
Larry (27:21.966)
It's a great thing to do. Now, speaking of great projects, the other big thing that you were showing me and that we were talking about the last time I was able to visit you was this whole box of, or boxes of, grateful dead memorabilia and stuff that you were able to get from Dan Healy. What can you tell us about that?
Jay Blakesberg (27:23.619)
Yeah.
Jay Blakesberg (27:41.347)
Yeah, correct. So, you know, a few years back, Dan discovered under his house a bunch of boxes of Grateful Dead t -shirts. And these were all in mint condition, never worn, never washed. And they'd just been in storage. I mean, literally, there was a Watkins Glen t -shirt in there. There was the very, very first Grateful Dead t -shirt ever made by a guy named Gutt Turk. He was a Hell's Angel.
and he did the very, very first Grateful Dead t -shirt. And so Dan's daughter Ambrosia, who's in the music business, took the t -shirts, they peeled out a bunch of them and they put them up for auction at Sotheby's. And the one from Gut Turk, the first Grateful Dead one, I believe sold for, I think it was $18 ,000 and really important artifact. And they only put out like, I don't know, 20 or 30 or 40 shirts to sell on the auction. They had seven.
brand new mint condition Cornell 77 t -shirts in the collection. Okay. And yeah. And so they sold a bunch of them. And, but, you know, before Ambrosia sent it off to auction, she asked me if I would do her favor and photograph the t -shirts so we'd have a record of them. And it was the pandemic and I didn't have a lot going on like everybody in the world. And so I drove to LA.
Larry (28:44.462)
Come on. Wow.
Jay Blakesberg (29:05.347)
And it was on the tail end of the pandemic. So people were feeling a little bit more comfortable. And I went and photographed these 400 t -shirts just to have a record of them. And at the end of shooting them, she said, hey, look at what else my dad had. And she broke out a bunch of boxes and there was all this great Grateful Dead memorabilia, thousands of backstage passes and all access laminates. And, and,
there was, tour programs for like, you know, all the hotels and itineraries for all the band and the crew were staying and, and, we found 15 of the original programs from Egypt. and of course you have one of those now. And, and so we took all of that stuff. and so she didn't really know what to do with it. And, and, and, and, and there was a friend of mine who was working on a Grateful Dead auction with a company called Analogger.
Larry (29:48.718)
I do.
Jay Blakesberg (30:02.691)
A .N .A .L .O .G. like analog with the letter R at the end, analoguer .com. And so analoguer asked if I wanted to participate and I was too busy. And then the opportunity to put the Dan Healy stuff in the auction came up and I said, you know what, I'll do this. And I got involved with analoguer. I put a bunch of the Dan Healy stuff in the auction, put some of my photographs that we have from Retro Photo Archive in the auction.
And it actually did pretty well. And so, you know, boom, super exciting. It did great. Analog is back and tomorrow, or if you listen to this on Monday, three days ago, four days ago, the new analog or auction will be live analog or .com. And there's over 300 items of Grateful Dead, ephemera memorabilia.
And there's things in there that are a hundred dollars, fifty dollars. And there's things in there that are five thousand dollars and fifty thousand dollars and five hundred thousand dollars. Like you can buy Jerry Garcia's last guitar rack, amp speakers from the 1995 tour. And I believe it's I think the the reserve is five hundred thousand dollars on it. So you can there's a lot of things that you can buy.
in the analog or auction that's grateful that related. So go to analog or .com starting May 15th and check it out. There's a lot of cool stuff in there. I put an entire set of Dan Healy backstage passes from the spring 77 tour in there. There's never been a full set of spring 77 tour passes before. And now they're in the, in the auction. So check it out, bid on it and go, go.
Larry (31:56.302)
if that's the beauty to me that's all just so amazing that you know the stuff exists and that it's being made available that you don't obviously have to be a deadhead you have to be a fan of all of this for to really be you know that impressive my wife was only mildly impressed when i showed her that i had i had purchased one of the the programs for the for the egypt shows but after you know
Jay Blakesberg (32:18.435)
She doesn't know there was a fucking lunar eclipse happening while the Grateful They Were Playing in front of the pyramids and the sphinx. I mean, come on, like it's the greatest thing ever. What doesn't she understand?
Larry (32:22.35)
of, it was, it was.
Larry (32:28.558)
It was, well she comes around eventually, she's a good sport and that's why I love her. She tolerates all of my craziness like that. But yeah, I mean, to get to sit there with you and just look at some of this stuff and the tour books with all the information about what hotels they're staying at and what flights they're on. It's like almost dead nerd crazy, but that's what it is. Those of us who love that and wanna know everything about the dead just can't get enough.
We eat this stuff up and have a great, I'm still like sitting here now totally focused on the 97 Cornell t -shirts that you're talking about, right? Because those.
Jay Blakesberg (33:05.859)
Yeah, and I think there's still a few of them out there. I don't have those. I don't know what Ambrosia has done with them. I'm not sure if she sold them now privately or what happened, but yeah, there were seven, seven mint condition Cornell 77 t -shirts. OG baby, OG.
Larry (33:22.254)
Wow.
that's that really is just amazing hate let me ask you a question have you had a chance to shoot any shows by this band calling themselves live dead and brothers with mark karen and time constant and
Jay Blakesberg (33:39.427)
I have not shot them yet, I am aware of them but I have not shot them.
Larry (33:43.246)
Well, we had Mark was gracious enough to join us last week on the show and we had a wonderful conversation with him and had a great throwback to 1998 other ones when he and Steve were filling the Jerry roll and I got to catch him at Alpine Valley and.
really saw what was my first dark star I ever saw live, the first 11 I ever saw live, you know, and I was hearing it from them and that's, you know, that's kind of what I knew, but he mentioned that he was playing with these guys and that they were coming through the Chicago area. And this past weekend now really for you guys, two weekends ago, they came through here and they played in Des Plaines in some tiny little theater, very close to my place. Mark was gracious enough to leave some tickets for me at the door and.
Jay Blakesberg (34:26.083)
Mm -hmm.
Larry (34:26.766)
We went down there and saw these guys and I was just blown away. It never ceases to amaze me, all the people who are out there who love to play the Grateful Dead and have really, really worked at it. But we walked in the door and all of a sudden we find out, yeah, Steve Kimmich is making a guest appearance tonight and playing with him. So now we had Mark and Steve Kimmich, Barry Duane Oakley. And that's a great story. It's an unfortunate story, but a great story.
Jay Blakesberg (34:50.403)
You mean Dwayne Dickey, Dwayne Dickey, not Dwayne Oakley.
Larry (34:54.35)
No, no, Barry Dwayne Oakley, he was -
Jay Blakesberg (34:55.779)
Barry was in the band. Got it. Got it. Got it. I thought you were referring to Mark Karen and Steve Kimmach being the two guitars, Dwayne and Dickie. That's why I was saying that. Got it.
Larry (34:58.382)
Yes, yes, yes. Barry was in this bandit and he was Barry Oakley's...
Larry (35:07.438)
understood got it but it was funny so he was there although he spells his name B E R R Y as opposed to his father who was a B A R R Y Pete Lavazello on drums
Jay Blakesberg (35:17.379)
No, no, no, no, they were both, they were both Barry Oakley. They were both B E R R Y. Yeah, they were both Barry. He wasn't, he wasn't Barry. He was Barry. Yeah. Like, like raspberry, strawberry.
Larry (35:22.158)
was he? Okay, okay, well, there you go. Right.
Scott Guberman on keyboards, and then Tom Constantin. Now what was the last time you saw Tom Constantin?
Jay Blakesberg (35:34.079)
Sure.
Jay Blakesberg (35:38.499)
Well, I didn't see him play recently, but I took a picture of him last summer in San Francisco. He was hanging out at Jerry Day in the park, but he didn't play that. Actually, he did play, but I had to leave. And so I missed him sitting in that day. So it's been a while since I've seen TC play.
Larry (35:54.318)
He walked in when the band started and I knew that, I had heard that he was gonna be there, but I was still like, wow, this is TC, this is, you know, this is a direct link to Primal Dead and those, you know, all those performances that really ultimately hooked me. Now he's got hair that's so white, it couldn't be any whiter, just hanging straight down and he was wearing, very funny I thought, a Chicago White Sox jersey with his name on the back.
Jay Blakesberg (36:06.627)
yeah. yeah.
Jay Blakesberg (36:13.475)
Yeah.
Larry (36:21.678)
and a Chicago White Sox baseball cap. And he came down, so they had two keyboard players. He sat down at his keyboard and without any effort, he just was kind of, you know, but making such a difference with such great fills and so wonderful. It reminded me of when we saw Warren was going around doing the recreation of the last waltz. And he brought Garth Hudson in for chest fever and he could barely walk to his keyboard. But once he sat down, he was flying and
Jay Blakesberg (36:41.763)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jay Blakesberg (36:48.803)
Yeah.
Larry (36:51.406)
TC was the same way and I was, I just, there were moments when I was just completely focused on him because I'm thinking, you know, I mean, this is, this is at least for a guy like me who nerds out on it. This is grateful dead history to see this guy up there doing his thing.
Jay Blakesberg (37:05.763)
Yeah.
Larry (37:08.174)
Have you met him before? See a nice guy?
Jay Blakesberg (37:11.107)
I have met him before, but I have not engaged in a lot of conversation with TC. but he was always very pleasant for the short conversations that I had. I was literally running out the door to leave this last summer and the guy that was sort of his handler, helping him get around said, Hey, we get a picture of quick picture of TC. I'm like, of course. And I did that. And the last time I saw him before that, I can't even remember. It's been many, many years. So, but, but, but.
you know, he is still part of the, he will forever be a member of the Grateful Dead.
Larry (37:41.902)
And if for no other reason, it's that harpsichord intro to Mountains of the Moon, which is just amazing. And I really love Mountains of the Moon, but I didn't necessarily like it when Phil was playing it, because he would just be in the middle of a really good jam, and all of a sudden he'd start singing it. And I'm like, if you don't have the harpsichord intro, you're missing half the song. Right? It's like.
Jay Blakesberg (37:47.907)
Yeah.
Jay Blakesberg (38:07.299)
Have you been listening to the, do you listen to the Grateful Dead, good old Grateful Dead podcast, the good old Grateful Dead cast?
Larry (38:13.902)
I have from time to time, I can't say I'm a regular listener, but I do like to tune in. Yep.
Jay Blakesberg (38:16.739)
it's incredible. It's incredible. Very well researched. But they were just doing Unbroken Chain, I believe, was the song they were just doing on for for. They did go song by song on the Mars Hotel is what they're doing now because it's the 50th anniversary and they talk about the harpsichord on. Is it God? Was it Unbroken Chain that that they played it on?
Larry (38:36.718)
50th, right?
Jay Blakesberg (38:46.467)
There was something I've maybe I'm mistaken, but there was definitely something that, no, China Doll, sorry, China Doll, China Doll, China Doll. That's what it was. Also, of course, on Mars Hotel. And so, yeah, so they were talking about the Harpsichord. And, you know, for those of us that are old enough to remember when Brent joined the band and they did the acoustic shows at the Warfield and Radio City in 1980, Brent had a Harpsichord on stage. And when they played China Doll, he played the Harpsichord on China Doll.
Larry (38:48.59)
No, I think that's it, unbroken chain. chainadel.
Jay Blakesberg (39:15.011)
at those Warfield shows. It was incredible.
Larry (39:18.83)
Very cool stuff and certainly Brent was more than capable of pulling that off. Yes, I'm very excited. I've been getting all of the 50th anniversary albums as they come out because hey, I buy anything they release anyway. But I love the albums, but what I really love is they're adding full shows to each one of the releases. So it's just another way to pick up.
Jay Blakesberg (39:39.491)
yeah. Well, when you get that when you get that when you get your 50th anniversary of Mars Hotel, the add on bonus photos in the disk came from Retro Photo Archive. Yeah.
Larry (39:52.718)
Excellent. Excellent. And I just had Rob Bleitstein on a couple of weeks ago. And in the Dave's Picks 50 from the Palladium, they actually have some of his photos in there. So I'm like, yep, yep. That's good.
Jay Blakesberg (40:02.723)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got that one too. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, Larry, I got to wrap it up here because I got a busy, busy day here unless you got anything else pressing that you want to talk about. Maybe you play some music.
Larry (40:18.99)
Jay, I could always talk to you all day, but I respect your schedule and I respect the time you give us. Let me ask you this. Are there any rumors floating around about any surprise guests that might be making an appearance with dead in code during their sphere run?
Jay Blakesberg (40:35.651)
Well, since we are talking about the Mars Hotel, all I'll say is they're just ugly rumors. For those of you that know, you know.
Larry (40:49.774)
very nicely stated, I like that very much. Well put, my friend.
Jay Blakesberg (40:54.915)
You know, they wanted to call Mars Hotel ugly rumors at first. Did you know that? Listen to the podcast and you'll learn about it because that's how I just learned about it last last week. You know, it says ugly rumors on the back of the record upside down and backwards and you look at it in a mirror, but they wanted to call the record and I never knew that. And there's a whole section on I think in the Unbroken Chain episode about how they didn't have a title for the record or an app and they talk about the album artwork and all that stuff.
Larry (40:58.894)
that I did not know.
I'm making a note right now. I've seen.
Larry (41:08.398)
Yes.
Yes.
Jay Blakesberg (41:23.043)
and they wanted to name it Ugly Rumors, but they did not. So I don't have anything except for ugly rumors. Holographic Jerry, holographic Pig Pen, holographic Vince, holographic Brent, Dark Store Orchestra is going to replace them on stage for all the shows, and then they're going to get beamed up to an alien spaceship.
Larry (41:31.406)
Heheheheh
Larry (41:42.926)
They're bringing them all back.
Jay Blakesberg (41:51.107)
and they're going to jam up there in an alternate reality sphere. And then they're going to come back down to a different planet and set up a Watkins Glen. And then they're going to those are the rumors I'm hearing. So we'll see what happens. You know, I think we might be going to another planet.
Larry (42:09.222)
I love it, I'm looking forward to getting out there at the beginning of June and seeing one of the shows, coming through and seeing of course all of the other great exhibits that will be there, including yours, and really having a good time. We will be looking for updates from you and looking for your photos, and it sounds exciting, man, have a great time out there. You're our documentarian for our generation.
Jay Blakesberg (42:31.939)
Thank you, I appreciate that and stay in touch and we'll do it again sometime down the road. See all the sphere and come to an American beauty in the dead forever experience and then go visit an amazing gallery in the Grand Canal shopping center in the Venetian Hotel. They are just literally two minutes apart from each other. Check out what we got going on and come say hi. All right, thank you guys.
Larry (42:54.57)
Thank you, Jay. Be good. Jay Blakesburg, everyone.
the dead photographer extraordinary who's kind enough to give us some time today in his very very busy schedules he prepares for the beginning of the sphere shows which like i say have not happened for me yet but by the time you listen to this you'll have the benefit of having heard all three of them and hopefully they're going to be as outstanding and mind -blowing as we imagine that they might be on the certainly is jay gave us a little bit of a taste there so that to think of how they might pull the
this off kind of boggles the mind because they're creative guys and they were doing creative stuff long before there was a sphere or sphere technology to be able to enhance it all. But it will be great. It will be a lot of fun. I just want to dip back in for a minute here to this show I saw the other night and just focus on this a little bit more for a second because we were talking with Mark about this project and how much he likes going out and being able to play this music and playing with a lot of these guys.
And although I had not planned on going to the show, when we found out from his manager the tickets were there for the taking, my wife and I made the effort after a full day of moving our son home from college to find that second level of energy and head out to the lovely Dust Plains Theater, which is a tiny, small little community theater. And.
you know the kind of place that you would always go to like you know see a school play or something and sit there when you got bored and imagine what would be like man if the grateful dad came in and played in a small little place like this and you know not quite the grateful dad but mark and then of course does it say steve kimmick showed up and to play guitar barry duane oakley the son of
Larry (44:39.63)
Barry Oakley of Allman Brothers fame and fortune. He was there on the bass, Pete Lavazello on drums, Scott Guberman on one of the keyboards, and again, Tom Constantin on the other keyboard. Just how cool to see Tom Constantin and see him come out there still playing and playing fills that were very distinctively his.
as they played through certain songs that really resonated from his period. They came out, started at eight, I gotta tell you, they played from 8 .15 to 11 .18 with one of the shortest breaks I've ever seen at a Dud -related show. The break itself was only about 20 minutes. Barely enough time to run outside, smoke a joint, and come back in, but.
just enough time, because there's always enough time for that. So they came out and they opened with trucking, but not really with trucking. They just launched right into the trucking. I'm going home, whoa, whoa, baby, back where I belong, and played it out from there with a jam, then jumped right into their first Allman Brothers tune of the night, One Way Out, one of my all -time favorites. I went to law school with a guy named Casey who loved it, and we'd get stoned and just play that play One Way Out over and over and over again into a great new Speedway Boogie.
with Mark taking the lead on that, Smoke Stack Lightning with Pete Lavazello, the drummer jumping in back into New Speedway. Another Allman Brothers tune, It's Not My Cross to Bear that I wasn't quite as familiar with. And then Spencer Davis tune, Don't Want You No More, again with Pete taking the lead on it. A traditional China Cat, I Know You Writer. And I have to say it was while they were playing the China Cat that it really hit me that Tom Constantin was on stage because China Cat is a...
Anthem of the Sun tune and he was there and he did it. He was playing it all and it's just absolutely amazing that, you know.
Larry (46:29.646)
any of them are still alive to play, but this guy in particular who added such a distinct sound and brought so much of that psychedelic imagery. And here he is on stage playing as though he was just playing it yesterday with Jerry and Bobby and Phil and the boys. And they really killed it, got the crowd really going. It was one of those crowds that couldn't decide if they were gonna stand up or sit down. Certainly an older crowd, one where I did not even come close to feeling like the oldest guy in the joint. And as people did get closer,
get up and start boogieing eventually. China writer got everybody up. They ended the set with a wonderful rendition of Jessica, the Allman Brothers, great instrumental that just is a classic tune as far as I'm concerned.
after the very short break came back with a full statesboro blues again that was very oakley handling a lot of the vocals on the allman brothers tunes and abbreviated and instrumental only version of whip and post which is too bad because i blue sky and whip and poster probably far away my two favorite allman brothers tunes just some ron and you know killing about whip and post when you hear it that just you know really
pulls you in really quick on the Fillmore East 71 live recordings. It's got a great whip and post, and that's where I really fell in love with the boys. Then they jump in to Dark Star. So again, now we've got a Dark Star going, TC on stage, Scott Guberman coming in and handling some of the lyrics. Handled a lot of the lyrics actually very well. They did eventually get around to singing the first verse, but as my generation of deadheads learned, if you got the first verse of Dark Star, there was no guarantee you were gonna get the second verse, at least not that night.
And sure enough, after a little more jamming and noodling around, they made their way into the other one with Scott again on vocals, a very strong version, into Melissa with Phil taking the lead, and then Phil on Ramblin' Man. And just a great way, the second set was a little more abbreviated, because apparently they did have to end by 11 o 'clock, so we got 90 minutes of first set, just about an hour of second set. They came on and did a double on the encore with Deal, just a great version of Deal with Mark taking the lead.
Larry (48:42.784)
and he and Steve Kimach trading off the guitar solos and just, you just have to appreciate the talent that's up there. And you know, Mark said it and you just really can't, nobody can fill Jerry's shoes. Nobody's a Jerry fill -in in that respect. Nobody replaces Jerry. What you can do is you can go up on stage and you can play the parts that Jerry used to play and you can try and play them as well as you can. And I gotta give these guys both A's. Now they're both very experienced with it, as you know. I mean, Mark has
great experience with not only with the Grateful Dead music but of course playing with Bobby and Rat Dog for so many years and Steve Kimmich has played with everybody and has certainly played in a number of variations with Dead.
guys over the years and just such a strong performance of Deal. Mark taking the lyrics on it and then they jumped into a you know at least a 10 -minute version of In Memory of Elizabeth Reed to close it out and the music on that was fantastic and just wonderful to hear. You know my experience with the Almonds typically tended around Warren playing with them and eventually Dwayne up
Dwayne, boy look at me. Every now and then you have a little mental breakdown when you're trying not to, right? Of course, that's what always happens. Derek Trucks, thank you very much, up there playing his wonderful guitar. And these guys were just killing it. They were just killing it. And Barry Oakley with a big ol' smile on his face as he's doing his thing. And it was just a great night, wonderful energy. And the people there were a little bit older, but these guys were all dead heads. They were up, they were dancing, they were talking the talk, they knew it all. And it's just wonderful to kind of connect with
Deadheads at all sorts of different events. And this one was right on and played very well. And we're going to have to try and get Mark Keran on the show again so we can now talk something really serious with him, including this wonderful performance that he laid down. So that was great. Really enjoyed that. That was really fun to see. On the marijuana side, guys, I just don't think we have a whole lot of time to talk about it today. But I am going to throw out a couple of stories anyway because I think they're funny. The first one comes to us. Thank you to my.
Larry (50:55.68)
my very, very good friend, friend of the show, friend of Jay's, friend of just about anybody in the cannabis industry, Andy Greenberg, who sent me a story making sure that I know that Stormy Daniels, currently most famous for her testimony in the Donald Trump trial that's going on in New York, has her own fame and fortune in the cannabis industry. And she entered the greater cannabis world in 2020, working with Forest Farms, who developed a CBD lube for her.
then a chill strain has been named after the blonde bombshell as I read to you from our story in marijuana moment here for a moment just because they're on top of this stuff too. She has appeared in all sorts of different types of
things associated primarily with the porn industry, but not entirely. she was in a maroon five music video and other stuff like that. And while her lube is no longer on the market, you can purchase a marijuana strain in Oregon named after her. It's known for its high potency and low THC content, making it perfect for those who want to enjoy the benefits, the benefits of cannabidiol without getting too high. You can even buy seeds to grow your own. So Stormy making sure that, everybody out there knows who she is and what's going on. And that's,
Very nice to see. Now speaking of the potency of stormy strain, thanks to our folks over at MJ Biz Daily, we find out that the average THC potency of illicit marijuana flower in the United States is 16 percent, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Now this is well below THC levels seen in commercial marijuana stores, where accusations of THC potency inflation have been circulating for years. The revelation came from the
the DEA's National Drug Threat Assessment Report released this week citing data from the University of Mississippi's Marijuana Monitoring Program, which tests seized illicit cannabis submitted for analysis by the DEA, as well as state and local law enforcement. The DEA noted a decades -long sharp and steady increase in cannabis potency that's accelerated in recent years. The 16 % potency is an increase of 29 % from 2021, according to the DEA. The potency of THC and leafy marijuana is at an all -time high.
Larry (53:13.344)
time high, increasing the potential risk of negative effects on users of any form of the drug and on children who may consume edibles made with these substances, according to the agency. Sources of seized marijuana include illegal grows operated by transnational criminal organizations, including Mexican drug cartel, as well as Asian drug trafficking organizations that hide behind state marijuana laws, the DEA noted. So, you know, we've got all sorts of things going on there. And, you know, it's nice to see that
it's at 16 % because if you think about it.
That's a lot lower than what a lot of the commercial grows are telling us that they're coming in at. And it's not really that much higher than the THC levels from the marijuana that everybody talks about when they try the old, this is not the marijuana you smoked back in your father or your grandfather's day or whatever. And how this marijuana has THC that's risen to a level that makes it far more dangerous and potentially evil than the stuff all of us
grew up on way back in the day. But this is a statistic that's saying that's not necessarily true. And we have talked about stories of fraudulent THC readings that have in some cases come from labs themselves who for a little extra money maybe were willing to fudge numbers. And it's also come, I think, from growers and dispensary owners in some states who look at it as a means to.
compete in the marketplace this idea that thc levels is is everything and i certainly don't think that's the the case and certainly when nick erickson was on the show and nick a gentleman from full moon farms up in mendicino who i was lucky enough to meet the day that jay took us all around his display at the museum in san francisco and you know nick talked with us as well about how you know everybody wants to talk about thc this thc that and
Larry (55:13.568)
What we heard from him and we've heard from others is, you know, maybe these days when they want to talk about marijuana that's a little more potent, maybe that's because people have recognized Terps and things like that, and that those are all getting factored in on a level that they probably never were way back when, you know, we were buying marijuana from whoever we were buying it so far back in the day. But, you know, this is telling us right here that a lot of these, you know, screaming politicians who come in and warn that legalizing marijuana is about to
to bring on the end of society as we all know it, I think is a pretty good way to push back and say, you know, that's just not really necessarily as true as you'd like to think either. And in that same vein of thought here, and people who are regular listeners of this show know, if nothing else, we love to burst the bubble of the prohibitionists over and over and over again because they don't really know what they're talking about and the scare tactics get a little bit crazy. But this is a scare tactic that goes back all the way
way to the day and one more thing here with marijuana moment. So get ready for this. A new study on the effects of frequent marijuana use challenges a number of cannabis stereotypes with researchers finding no association with paranoia or decreased motivation among habitual users. They also found no evidence that marijuana consumption causes a hangover the next day. Among the results that authors deemed surprising, data showed that when chronic users got high, they were no more a motivated, no less motivated for extrinsic or intrinsic
reasons and no less willing to objectively push themselves. So okay, you know, now yes, people who have reported negative emotion and greater impulsiveness in the past, that doesn't necessarily work for them, but for people overall.
This was a study published in the Journal of Social Psychology and Personality Science, and the results overall contained both expected and surprise findings that challenge sometimes superficial beliefs about marijuana's effects. Much of this myopia comes from its historical criminalization, preventing a neutral and clear right evaluation of cannabis harms and benefits alike, they wrote. This led to a distorted view of cannabis and cannabis users to the point where contemporary ethicists seriously claim that recreational marijuana use is unethical,
Larry (57:30.528)
morally illicit and never warranted. Such moralization helps clarify why cannabis users are stereotyped as lazy, uneducated, and possibly criminal. And anybody who listens to this show knows we say bullshit, and that's where it ends, right? This is what they want you to think. This is what they want to say. This is what we were talking about last week when our good friends down in Florida, including the governor down there whose name shall never be mentioned, was telling us, you know, most people who say they support marijuana
marijuana, really don't know what they're talking about when they say they support marijuana. They don't understand what it means. They think that you're just, you know, possibly getting a pill in a controlled setting from a from a nurse. They don't know that it means you can go out and you can actually buy marijuana and come home and put it in a pipe and smoke it. no, they'd never be in favor of that if they knew what it is. Right. And so, you know, here's more people just repeating the myth over and over again. Right. All the adults in the world who, if you mentioned, if you ask them if they've ever
seen, reefer madness will laugh and laugh and laugh. But if you talk about marijuana with them, you will find that they are in fact a sounding board for reefer madness and are echoing the exact same crazy stereotypes and made up stories of horror that were being used for years to try to discredit marijuana as a legitimate alternative adult relaxation substance for those who don't like drinking a lot of alcohol, who would prefer to stay away from
cocaine and heroin and you can just have your nice marijuana. It works out really well. People love it. Rockstars love it. Even grandmothers love it. It's something that should not be taken lightly by those in control and those in power. You really, really hope that as time goes on and...
we find that studies aren't necessarily what the lawmakers thought they were at the time they passed the laws. So this is a positive story, right? You guys were all afraid that everybody was gonna quit their jobs and sit home and just get stoned all day listening to Grateful Dead records, eating Cheetos, and driving Domino's to the point of practically running them out the door because they couldn't keep up with all of the orders. And of course that hasn't happened anywhere. And maybe people don't know, why well now we do? Because this very,
Larry (59:51.488)
common belief of what would happen actually was no belief and had no more substance to it you know than the old wives tale about not going swimming for 30 minutes after you eat food that every Jewish boy's grandmother told him over and over again but in fact never really turned out to be the way things really are so these studies are great and I hope that people read them with an open mind and I hope that people don't try to pass them off because it's not consistent with what they believe expand your mind marijuana
is not the dangerous, terrible thing that it was made out to be when you were children. And it's certainly not the dangerous thing that we find right -wing politicians in Kansas and Florida and a few other places still trying to tell us that it is. We know better. We know. We know studies. We know.
people who have studied things for years people who have researched it people who have done all sorts of things with marijuana to come up with more enlightened views of of the substance that so many of us love and that we take our right to be able to use it freely very seriously and people who sit around and try to plot ways to block out those freedoms are bad people in my opinion and not people who are really ultimately deserving of holding public office but of course
course that's just one man's opinion and I don't get to vote in Kansas or Florida for that matter or even down in Georgia and Marjorie Taylor Greene's district but I'm hoping that the folks in Colorado are finally ready to get rid of the other one. What's her name Lauren Bo Baer and Miss Beetlejuice who was seen vaping and you know isn't it fucking funny that you know now they haven't told us exactly what she was vaping and maybe it was just tobacco but for the hell of it I'm gonna imagine that it was marijuana and you know I can I can deal with Ann Coulter getting high.
I can deal with Tucker Carlson doing mushrooms at the 1984 Grateful Dead New Year's show, but I'm just not sure that I'm ready to cross the bridge where Lauren Bobert wants to sit down and get high with me too. And I applaud her friend who was with her because it sounds like they're a perfect couple for each other and maybe they have a bright future ahead of them. But these are not the people who are our friends in the marijuana industry. And even if they like to use marijuana, they're not the people who are our friends in the marijuana industry.
Larry (01:02:08.096)
industry. You know and everybody has their own list of issues that are important to them when it's time to go vote. You know and from everything from all the current protests we see on college campuses to people's finances to foreign relations to everything else under the sun. Well if you're a believer in marijuana and a believer in marijuana rights it's
couldn't be more imperative for you to have a working understanding of the various candidates who are going to be up for election on the areas where you're going to vote, both on the local stage, the state stage, and the national stage, that you need to know who these people are and what position they take with respect to marijuana. Are they going to be favorable for this industry? Are they going to hinder this industry? We don't want to elect someone who has thoughts, let's say, similar to Mr. DeSantis about
whether or not.
the legal sale of marijuana is proper and whether the people of his state are intelligent enough to make that decision on their own with all of the modern research and studies and medical information that's available today. Don't take these rights lightly. Don't take these issues and just kind of pass them off and say, hey, I can go into a dispensary. All is good in the world. Now, no, you know, that's not really the case. We're still dealing with the substance. Even at schedule three, that's federally illegal. It makes a lot of states act very wacky about how they want to handle it.
and it's important for people who take this seriously and really appreciate these rights to make sure that you stay in there and you stay part of it and you know you really do everything you can do to make it going well
Larry (01:03:49.102)
There's no real bad news on a day like today when we have a guy like Jay on with us and we have a chance to talk about so many fun things and great projects that he's involved in and that the debtor involved in. Even if just a little bit of what he says about the expected light shows turns out to be the case and I have no reason to doubt him at all. The people who are there are going to find it to be a very amazing experience and you know for dead heads who have seen the dead for 40, 50, maybe even 60 years.
This is going to be like a whole new phase for them, a whole new way to see the Grateful Dead and to enjoy the Grateful Dead experience in the form of Dead and Co. all getting together again. And hey, if they can project an image of Jerry up on the stage and make it look like he's really up there with them and they want to go into a great morning dew, go for it, man. I got no problem with it. But I am looking forward to seeing an amazing light show and with all the wonderful dead iconography that exists out there.
there and all the images they can pull out of song lyrics and just everything. It promises to be a real treat for deadheads everywhere and deadheads of all ages. And this may be the way to really solidify that intergenerational familial, grateful, dead experience if it's in the cards for you. So that's it. We have run out of time for today's show. Thank you, as always, again, to Jay Blakesburg. If you make it out to Las Vegas, please, please get out.
see his stuff. If you make it to San Francisco before the end of July, please, please get over to the...
the Jewish Museum in San Francisco and check it out. You will not be sorry that you made the effort to get over there. It's really incredible and really a lot of fun. On the way out today, we'll just leave you with the Sugar Magnolia from this show. It comes on right at the end. It's just a great version of Sugar Magnolia. A fun day outdoors in Santa Barbara. Well, actually, that's not right. They're in the stadium there, Harter Stadium or whatever they call it in Santa Barbara. Although, maybe it was an outdoor stadium.
Larry (01:05:57.024)
They don't have a football team anymore, so who the hell knows what they do. But at the end of a long, fun day in Southern Cal there at Santa Barbara, Bobby gets up on stage. They close with sugar mag. We're going to leave it with you. Everybody have a great week. Enjoy the shows in the sphere if you're headed there. Be safe, and as always, enjoy your cannabis responsibly. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next week.
Jay Blakesberg (01:06:22.947)
Thank you. I didn't hang up because I didn't know if it would mess up your recording. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. See you later. All right. Bye.
Larry (01:06:26.83)
Well, we're happy to have you there.
Thanks Jay. Talk soon.
Larry (01:06:43.182)
Okay, so we're done then? You can play the music, you don't have to play it. We'll just do the, I'm just adding the sugar magnolia in there at the end as the outro music.
Larry (01:06:57.646)
and eliminating the four Show1234 tunes.