Exploring Grateful Dead's 4th of July Celebrations and Bob Dylan's Tribute Larry Mishkin discusses the Grateful Dead's celebration of the 4th of July and highlights a show from July 4th, 1989. He praises the band's performance and mentions the release of the show as "Trucking Up to Buffalo." Larry also mentions Bob Dylan's recent cover of Grateful Dead songs during his tour in Europe and expresses his admiration for Dylan's choice to play their music. Additionally, he briefly discusses the enforcement of marijuana laws in New York and the seizure of unlicensed cannabis products. Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-show Larry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin Jay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesberg Recorded on Squadcast
Exploring Grateful Dead's 4th of July Celebrations and Bob Dylan's Tribute
Larry Mishkin discusses the Grateful Dead's celebration of the 4th of July and highlights a show from July 4th, 1989. He praises the band's performance and mentions the release of the show as "Trucking Up to Buffalo." Larry also mentions Bob Dylan's recent cover of Grateful Dead songs during his tour in Europe and expresses his admiration for Dylan's choice to play their music. Additionally, he briefly discusses the enforcement of marijuana laws in New York and the seizure of unlicensed cannabis products.
Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-show
Larry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin
Jay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesberg
Larry:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Deadhead Cannabis Show. I'm Larry Michigan of Michigan Law in Chicago and as we head into our nation's birthday here tomorrow, July the 4th, the question naturally arises, what do the Grateful Dead do to celebrate the 4th of July? Well they did quite a lot, including this show from Rich Stadium in Orchard Park, otherwise known as Buffalo, back on July 4th, 1989. Let's get it rolling. Yeah, Birth is one of those great openers. Summer show, big outdoor stadium, 4th of July. That was kind of half to come out and open up with Birth, I think, in that situation. This was a wonderful summer tour in 1989. I was lucky enough to catch a few shows at Alpine Valley that summer, and the boys were really firing it on all cylinders. It shows. This particular show we're listening to today from July 4th, 1989 was actually released by the Grateful Dead. uh... as trucking up to buffalo a uh... official grateful dead release was released back in july of two thousand five so for god's sake it's already been eighteen years since the show was released let alone uh... tacking on another uh... however many years to get it so it's been a while uh... but uh... they released it and it's great they also have a cd i think if you get the uh... the official release it comes with a dvd excuse me so you can even see the performance. It's a great summer performance. As I recall, Jerry's wearing shorts which he always does right around that time of year. And you know, always makes you hope to get back inside soon and have him get his pants back on. Bobby wearing the short shorts, always a little too short, but maybe better than the capris. I don't know, I'm not a fashion guy, but trucking up to Buffalo is a great, great release by the Grateful Dead. You should definitely get in and listen to this entire show. In fact, why not have it teed up for tomorrow and when you get your company over outside waiting for fireworks to start or maybe they've already started or maybe they haven't stopped, throw this show on and just enjoy it even more because it's really made for the fourth. Any track from this show would have been good enough to feature today. It's not an easy task picking only a few of them, but Dan says we can't just play music the whole time, we have to talk. So we had to make some choices and I think Bertha is a great one to start with. What I love about this particular clip of Bertha is that you can hear Brent joining Jerry on the lyrics on the Test Me, Test Me lyrics. It's a great sound. By this point in time, Brent is such an intricate piece of the band that he's welcomed by Jerry to join in on one of Jerry's most famous tunes that normally Jerry sang by himself. Bobby might chime in a little bit here and there, but Brent was really pushing his voice and it just rhymed. matches up so well with Jerry's voice, I think. And they both really belt it out there. And a great way to start a show, anybody who's listening to that is saying, yeah, this is a good day to be here. And right they are, because it really is a tremendous show. While we're talking about it, let's just dive right into the next one here, which is the first of a couple of Bob Dylan covers that the boys played. So this was, I'd like to say, the first two Dylan tunes they played that night when I paint my masterpiece. A 1971 song by Dylan released originally by the band who recorded the song for their album, Cahoots, which was released in September of 1971. And those of you who are old enough to recall or just into this kind of thing may know that Dylan and the band had quite a tight relationship back in those days. So no surprise there that it would be the band who might record one of his songs. Dylan, however, came back and recorded the song himself at New York's Blue Rock Studio. He was backed by Leon Russell and session musicians, including Jesse Ed Davis on lead guitar. Those recording sessions ran from March 16th to 19th, 1971. The song appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Volume 2, released November 17th, 1971, with Russell credited as the producer of the song. Douglas Brinkley, while interviewing Dylan for the New York Times in 2020, noted that when I paint my masterpiece was a song that had grown on him over the years and asked Dylan why he had brought it back to the forefront of recent concerts. Dylan replied, it's grown on me as well. I think this song has something to do with the classical world, something that's out of reach, someplace you'd like to be beyond your experience, something that is so supreme and first rate that you can never come back down from the mountain, that you've achieved the unthinkable. That's what the song tries to say, and you'd have to put it in that context. And saying that though, even if you do paint your masterpiece, what will you do then? Well, obviously you'll have to paint another masterpiece. Uh, in this version of it again, I love how, you know, Jerry steps up and he joins in on the vocals with Bob, uh, on the, uh, on the chorus lines. Uh, Jerry has had played and recorded this tune on his own. Uh, so very well familiar with the lyrics. and a really great voice combo. Masterpiece was always one of my favorite Dylan tunes that they would cover, and they did a great job of it on this day, and it really needed to be included. Just for the Dead Geeks at home, the Dead first played the song on June 13th, 1987 at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. They played it a total of 146 times, and it was last played on July 9th, 1995, the Grateful Dead's final show. at Soldier Field. So you can't get much more than that. Making it all the way up to the final show and always a great set piece and one that the fans really like. A Bobby tune that we all look forward to and everyone's excited about. I just wanted to note really quickly because we talked about this maybe a month or two ago, I think in April probably sometime, and we were keeping track of Bob Dylan. who was on a tour in Japan and kind of going around the world. And now he's made his way to Europe. And even though, uh, previously he had, um, He had, he had, we heard him play broke down palace, truckin'. One or two other tunes I'm not remembering off the top of my head, but lately, including just the other night, Bob is back to covering grateful dead tunes. On June 23rd, in Barcelona, he laid down a really great version of Stella Blue. And only because we're focused on this other 4th of July show. I don't have the clips from that today, but I can probably get him in the week or two ahead and we can go back and listen to that because it's always fun to hear Bob do his best impersonation of Jerry Garcia or whatever he tries to do. But he broke out Stella Blue in Barcelona on June 23rd and then on June 28th in the Arena du Paz of Provence, and I'm not pronouncing that right I'm sure, France, he broke out West LA Fadeaway. And Dylan had actually covered West LA fade away before, but he hadn't played it since 1999. And again, it got a really, really good review. And I love this because he was in Japan. He played some tunes. Now he's in Europe. And once again, here's a guy who's the greatest, maybe the greatest songwriter of all time. Uh, if not our generation, and certainly not if rock and roll and pop and folk and all the genres that he dabbled in with a catalog of tunes so great. He could go on tour for a month and every day, you know, play a certain number of his songs and probably never have to repeat any songs. Now that doesn't mean that they're all as well known. And we've had other stories about Bob Dylan where, uh, the dead kind of had to inspire him to come back and play some of the tunes that they had really taken a liking to. Um, but, but he's got so many, so many, so many songs. And he's playing the Grateful Dead. He also played one of Bob Weir's newer tunes last time, one of his cowboy tunes from an album I think he put out with the Wolf Brothers not too long ago. But I love the fact that this is the way Bob Dylan goes. He needs a couple of tunes to fill in. You know, when you're Bob Dylan, you could play just about anything by anybody and they'd be honored. And here he is really focusing on the Grateful Dead. I think it's a real tribute to the Grateful Dead, to Jerry and Robert Hunter. to Bobby and John Barlow and the guys who have created these tunes that a genius like Dylan has decided rise to a level where he wants to be a part of it and he wants to play it. And I always like to think that, you know, perhaps way down deep inside Dylan was a closet that had maybe like many of us always kind of running to find out what they had played and what was going on, where they were at and what was happening, you know, when he had a chance to finally get up there and and wail away on some Grateful Dead, well, why the heck not? And so, if you have an opportunity to see Dylan, I don't know exactly what his touring schedule is at the moment, where he's gonna be or what's going on, but I would go to see him just on the off chance that you might actually have an opportunity to hear and break out a Grateful Dead tune, and that's kind of almost worth the price of admission these days with Bob Dylan, I think, because you're gonna get some classic Dylan stuff, he may not sing it very well. But that's OK, it's his tune. He can sing it however the heck he wants. So Dylan, tune number one on the day for the 4th of July Revelers up in Orchard Park, New York. And good fun for them. Before we dive back into the album, I've got a little marijuana news I want to go. Dan? Yeah, we're into that. You know what? That's good fun. We love that song. We love Dylan. As long as we're talking about him, we're going to let him introduce the marijuana stories on the show for a while. So as he's saying, everybody must get stoned unless you live in New York. So we talked about this before, right? New York has adult use. It's been passed and licenses maybe have been given out, supposedly have been given out or in the process of being given out, but not very many of them, if any of them, have even really opened for business yet. So New York being New York, you know, we talked about how, uh, there's weed being sold in, especially in the city and, uh, in other parts of the state in the city, there's bodegas, there's smoke shops. Um, there's herbal stores and all sorts of places where, uh, you can go in and you can buy good old Delta nine THC and get stoned to your heart's content. And even though the stories of the stories have been around for awhile, and we know that this has been going on. Nobody seems to be really too concerned about it because New York has gone ahead and legalized it. Maybe not with these people being the ones authorized to sell, but hey, New York State, if you pass a law and you don't ever do anything about it, people get tired of waiting. And in this case, the industrious business people, which we know New York is full of, have taken it upon themselves to provide marijuana. Now the truth is you could always find marijuana, especially in New York City. There were some very well-known designated places. sometimes in the daytime, sometimes in the nighttime, but there was always places to buy marijuana. It's moved a little bit out of the shadows now because of the state's adult use law and into some places, you know, like a bodega or a smoke shop, which aren't necessarily the kind of places that are going to be visited by young kids or your standard tourists, but are going to be the places where, you know, if you're kind of a savvy New Yorker or out of town or who's been to New York a few times, you kind of know where to go, you know where to look, or you know who are the right people on the street. who you can ask. And so that's been going right along and horror of horror, shock of shocks. All of a sudden the authorities in New York realized this was happening and we heard all sorts of things that we talked about a week or two ago about how they were going to now step in. They're going to start enforcing. They're going to start trying to bring this under control and by God now they can do it because there's a law passed that says you can't sell marijuana without a license. Otherwise it's illegal, which just blows me away that they had to do that. However, we got a... A great story here from our friends over at MJ Biz. And here's what they're saying about it. That the first two weeks of ramped up enforcement of illicit marijuana operators in New York, now listen to these numbers carefully, led to 33 inspections, dozens of violations, and the seizure of 1,000 pounds of unlicensed cannabis products. Okay, well, 33 inspections, you know, by almost any measure doesn't sound like a lot. It would help to know how many potential marijuana sales points there are in New York right now, but we got 33 inspections, dozens of violations, which can mean anything more than 12. Maybe it can mean 24, I guess, or 36, but we're not hearing about violations in the hundreds, let's say. The seizure of 1,000 pounds of unlicensed cannabis products. Well, I'm not going to lie, 1,000 pounds is a lot of pounds, but it's really not a lot of pounds in terms of... trying to remove products from the streets of New York. They may very well have pulled a thousand pounds out of just a handful of these stores. I don't know how much they all keep in stock, but these aren't numbers that are gonna typically make you say, oh my goodness, like when they bust a big cocaine cartel and they have thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds of uncut product lying out with guns and this and that and everything, we all say, ooh, look at that. You don't get that same impact with a thousand pounds, but let's keep going here. The efforts are carried out by New York state's office of cannabis management and the department of taxation and finance. And they were authorized under a new law enacted last month by the governor. So somehow they got an adult use law and they hadn't quite planned for this. Now listen to help rein in thousands of unlicensed stores, trucks, and bodegas selling illegal marijuana products. Okay. So let's see what kind of a job they're doing. They're telling us. that there are thousands of purchase points for illegal cannabis in New York. They conducted 33 inspections. They pulled out dozens of violations and they seized a thousand pounds. So, you know, that would be like saying, if assuming they even got to everybody, a pound per unlicensed store, you're not putting anybody out of business doing that. So you come and you talk about all these inspections like everything's going on, but no, you're not even scratching the surface of the surface. This is like, if I'm New York City, I don't know that I'm walking around trying to take credit for numbers that are this low. So here's what the governor has to say. Under new powers that I fought for in this year's state budget, this is the good part, we can now conduct enforcement against businesses illegally selling. cannabis. What? Excuse me? I'm not aware of any state that needed to have a separate law passed once they introduced adult use to be able to enforce against illegal products. In fact, that's the whole point, is that you are always supposed to be enforcing. That's how you make sure that you have a compliant program that keeps the federal interests out of your state under the Cole Memorandum when it was still around, which I still think is basically speaks for what the federal government wants to do. How can you be a state that at this stage in time did not have a law on the books to allow you to arrest and prosecute illegal sales? How is it not spelled out in your adult use statute? Notwithstanding the statute, all prior marijuana laws in this state shall remain in force and effect and blah, or however you want to edit it. But to hear the governor of New York get up and say, uh, you know, at the end of June, 2023, under the powers I fought for in this year's budget, we can now conduct enforcement against businesses, illegally selling cannabis. That's just a striking statement on any level. And I, I'm, I, I don't get it. She says that I'm proud to say that in just the first three weeks of our first three weeks of our efforts, we've seized nearly 11 million worth of a listen, illicit produce products off the streets. Well, Maybe I'm not good at math, so I can't tell you that a thousand pounds could be sold for eleven million dollars. That seems like a little high for me in terms of what it would work out to money-wise. So that kind of raises the question that if you have eleven million dollars worth of illicit products, why are you only seizing one thousand pounds of unlicensed cannabis products? Again, I don't really see those numbers matching up, but I'm not the governor of New York either. Governor Hockle went on a hot show. I don't know how to pronounce your name. I'm sorry. I'm just gonna do my best. I'm just gonna call you governor. That these unlicensed businesses violate our laws, put public health at risk, and undermine the legal cannabis market. And with the powerful new tools in our tool belt, we're sending a clear and strong message. If you sell illegal cannabis in New York, you will be caught and you will be stopped. Ah yes, the new tools in the tool belt couldn't have done it before. So we're gonna let all of these people get totally integrated into the city. And then over two weeks, we're gonna run out and inspect 33 of the thousands of unlicensed stores. Okay, well I've got a better answer than that. How about if you just push your process along and open the legal dispensaries already? How about being like Missouri, 87 days, from legislation to opening up their program? This is New York for God's sakes. New York and Chicago, Illinois, you know, two states that like to pride themselves on being huge business industry states leaders, and they can't seem to get any of their stupid programs off the ground, and the governor of New York has to go have a law passed to allow her to enforce the law against people that don't have a license. So. Okay, now here it says though, since June 7th, the state agencies issued violation notices to 31 illegal cannabis businesses. So if they had 33 inspections and 31 illegal cannabis businesses, I guess that means that at least two of the ones they inspected were legal. I don't know, maybe there are some legal ones out there selling now, or did they go in and just forget to check? I don't know. Interestingly, by the way, these 31 illegal cannabis businesses are spread out amongst New York City, Binghamton, and Ithaca. So let's talk about that. New York City is a place, when they talk about there being thousands of unlicensed stores, trucks and bodegas, I don't know how many bodegas you have up in Binghamton. I don't know how many big trucks you have driving around Ithaca. But I can tell you that it sure sounds like they're pretty much talking about New York City. And 31 illegal cannabis businesses in New York City is like half a block, right? And one of the largest cities of the world. So big deal. Binghamton and Ithaca are both very nice smaller cities. Binghamton was a very popular stop on the Grateful Dead's traditional fall or spring tour through upstate New York. And Ithaca, or High Sea as we used to call it, home of the puppet hit, where good buddy Mikey went to school, is a place where you could always buy marijuana, but at least from my visits there, it always seemed to be pretty available, which is why Tubby's Sheet Pizza did such a brisk business. but uh... yeah okay i i'm not sure when you work is really going with these stories and uh... and you know what they're really trying to accomplish here uh... but nevertheless will let them plot along and try and figure out what they want to do uh... in uh... the biggest city in the world or whatever it is at this moment the current plan doesn't really sound like they have it all together and given that they are among Americans in the whole world, I think they would really do themselves a good favor reputation-wise to really get themselves up and running already. It's the summer again, you should be having dispensaries, selling at a brisk clip everywhere throughout New York City in Ithaca and Binghamton, in Syracuse, in Buffalo. You name a place in New York and there's no reason why people should not be able to buy legal marijuana. There's no reason why New York should just for the first time be trying to go in and say, oh, I wonder if we can punish people who are selling illegally. So let's contrast New York with our good friends in the Ukraine, who are by any measure going through a very, very difficult period right now. And Ukraine's president comes right out and says that legalizing medical marijuana in the Ukraine can and will help people impacted by the trauma of war with Russia. Well, we know about the war, we know with Russia, and we know the Russians don't play nice or fair. And if you've seen or read any of the reports coming out of areas of Ukraine that were hit by Russians or occupied, even if briefly by Russian soldiers, the citizens of Ukraine have had quite a bit to put up with. And the psychological terror that I can only presume comes along with living in a country in which a war is being fought and other much larger countries trying to roll over you cannot be easy. So the president of Ukraine is calling for the legalization of medical marijuana to help cope with trauma in the ongoing war with Russia. In an address to the Ukrainian parliament on Wednesday, President Vladimir Zelensky said that all of the world's best practices, all of the most effective policies, all of the solutions, no matter how difficult or unusual they may seem to us, must be applied in Ukraine so that Ukrainians, all our citizens, do not have to endure the pain, stress, and trauma of war. Which is a fascinating quote, right? All the world's best practices, all the most effective policies, all the solutions, all no matter how difficult or unusual. So he's basically, you know, calling out marijuana there for everyone, trying to couch it in words that might be a little more acceptable. And then basically coming out and saying that we need to do this. He goes on in particular, we must finally, fairly legalize cannabis-based medicines for all, so those who need them with appropriate scientific research and controlled Ukrainian production can get them. So he's really talking about going full scale here. He wants it like... everywhere else, of course, he wants to grow and produced in Ukraine, which it should be. And he wants to get it up and running. He stressed again that providing access to medical cannabis could provide a therapeutic option for citizens who have endured more than a year of intensive conflict after Russia first invaded the country in February of 2022. During his presidential campaign, Zelensky also voiced support for medical cannabis legislation, saying in 2019 that he feels it would be normal to allow people to access cannabis. droplets which may just be translation but presumably references marijuana tinctures or other non-smoking options. His cabinet has taken steps to legalize medical cannabis. They've approved draft reform legislation last year that still must be passed by the parliament. The minister of health care, Victor Leaschko, said the bill would permit the circulation of cannabis plants for medical industrial purposes, scientific and scientific technical activities. to create the conditions for expanding the access to patients and the necessary treatment for cancer patients and post-traumatic stress disorders resulting from the war. He understands there are negative consequences of war in the state of mental health and the number of people who will need medical treatment as a result of this impact. There's no time to wait. And this is wonderful to see. Now, they go on to point out that what's happening in Ukraine is in stark contrast to its long-time aggressor Russia. which has taken a particularly strong stance against reforming cannabis policy at the international level through the United Nations. The country has condemned Canada for legalizing marijuana nationwide. The Foreign Affairs Minister says it's of serious concern for us. It's worrisome that several member states and the European Union are considering violating their drug control obligations. And of course, we can think of Mark Fogel, the American who's serving a fourteen-year sentence in Russia. prison over possession of medical cannabis that he had obtained as a registered patient in Pennsylvania. And we can't forget Brittany Greiner, who is now thankfully released and back in the United States, and finally get to playing basketball again and making all of her fans happy for having the equivalent of a couple of vape cartridges worth of oil. So Russia is definitely not the place to be if you have marijuana, if you have any interest in marijuana, and they play dangerous games with it. uh... thank goodness for people like so let's see in the ucraine uh... who understand and really this may be one of the very first wars to be fought in what we call the modern age of cannabis right were legalization of it and legal sales have really started in the kind of wonder what it might have been like if uh... single cells of marijuana were available during world war two uh... you know if legal cells of marijuana world of loud during the vietnam war or other wars in europe to help people in the United States or other parts of the world where the wars are being fought to calm down, to relax, to give them an option as to ways that they can de-stress. All you have to do is go watch any of a million Vietnam movies that have all been made, whether it's coming home or whether it's... any of them, sorry, Apocalypse Now, there's a lot of drugs involved, Platoon, right? All of these movies, it's not necessarily that they're showing the marijuana to highlight it or to make it cool, they're showing the marijuana because it was a daily fact in these soldiers' lives. Here they were on the other side of the World Fighting Award that none of them really seemed to understand and they shouldn't have understood because there was no rationale for it. And they knew that basically they were cannon fodder out there on the fields in a lot of instances. They saw their buddies getting killed, they saw terrible things happening to people they knew and loved, and they were faced with the mental consequences of what the Army was doing to the Vietnamese population and whether those people were really innocent or were they cleverly disguised to drop bombs or whatever the case may be. Soldiers need a way to unwind and they need a way to unwind fast. And marijuana seems to be a way that works for all of them. And so, you know, it's good to know. that countries like Ukraine are now bringing it to the forefront. We don't have to hide it. We don't have to be embarrassed or ashamed about it. And in fact, we can promote it and promote its healthful habits in those types of situations, especially if you're going to be locked or confined in your house. It's no question why marijuana was so popular during the pandemic and why dispensaries stayed open and had basically drive-through service. Because if you're in your house and you're going crazy, you get high, you can relax, you can watch TV. not be so concerned that you're not getting outside and doing whatever else you want to do. It clearly has these benefits and some places are just smarter than others to see. So let's take our attention back now, I think, to our July 4th show from Rich Stadium. And we're going to dive in to the next song, which is the final song of the first track. And veteran deadheads already know what it is before they hear it. Yeah, there's really, if you go to a Grateful Dead show and the first set opens with Bertha and it closes with Deal, it almost doesn't matter what they played in between. That right there defines a perfect first set of a Grateful Dead show. Coming in with Jerry, going out with Jerry, just jamming if you're listening to his guitar there. It's absolutely fantastic. And this version has a number of great jams in it. So again, another reason to make sure you go back and listen. Jerry's voice is strong, his guitar playing is even stronger. And like any good deal, it sends everyone into the set break with a smile on their face, anticipation in their hearts for the second set, which is really the way it should be at a Grateful Dead show, right? Now you can go out in the hallway or whatever they have in Rich Stadium in Buffalo, and maybe people are just going to get out of the sun, find something to drink, go to the bathroom. They can't sit still because whatever they took is really kicked in by now. and they gotta keep moving so even though there's no music, they think they're hearing music, it's all good. And that's actually one of the nice things about one of these huge stadiums is that they are really so large that they can accommodate people who want to be outside in the hallway if you will so that they can be dancing. And if you're sitting in the upper deck of one of these stadiums, it can get pretty steep. It doesn't really lend itself well to dancing, especially if your brain is a little addled from something that you might have taken before on your way in. or once you got in and it could create the experience that maybe a little too much weight one way or the other and you're tumbling down the aisles or whatever the case may be. But all you have to do is go down the stairs, go through the portal and back out into the hallways and these things, it's nice because they're open air so you're getting all the benefit of being outside. You've got a ton of room to dance. They set up speakers in there for you and if you don't mind not seeing the band in some of these places like in Wrigley Field, I think. They have the TVs that show the baseball game all during the game. I've never gone out really much, very much during the music playing to see if, you know, that those TVs have the concert on. But since it's being flashed up into a large screen, maybe they do. Um, so yeah, you get a deal. You're outside in the hallway and you're dancing and you're having a great time. And, uh, you know, the time can go by really fast on these great days when, when everything is clicking and It's an hour, typically an hour for the boys, but it would really seem to fly by very fast. Before you knew it, people are wandering back in. People are running to make their final bathroom stop or try to get a bottle of water if they can. Somehow, your internal clock just kicks in and says, yeah, now is probably a pretty good time to wander back in and see what's going on. You do and they come out and they have an amazing second set. Just again, tremendous song after tremendous song. But right now I want to play you one of my favorites from that second set. It's the second Dylan installment of the day. And let's give it a listen. You know, if you're gonna play two Dylan tunes on the same night, the Grateful Dead, they picked two winners, two just tremendous tunes all along the watchtowers is also another favorite. And I think it's probably a favorite of just anybody who has ever heard it or who knows Bob Dylan or more importantly, Jimi Hendrix's, we'll get to in a minute. This is a great one. This is just a great version. The prime Jerry jamming in there as they close out the musical segue into the lyrics and Bob just, you know, screeching at the top of his voice. You always wonder how he still has a voice after all of that. They're bringing the energy, they're bringing it all. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful live performance piece by the dead and one that everybody always liked to see. The song is written by Bob Dylan. It's on his eighth studio album, John Wesley Harding released in 1967. And it was written by Bob and produced by Bob Johnson. It was covered by a number of artists and probably most famously and most strongly identified. with the interpretation given to it by Jimi Hendrix with the Jimi Hendrix experience on their third studio album, Electric Ladyland, which was released in 1968. The Hendrix version released six months after Dylan's original recording, became a top 20 single in 1968, received a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001, and was ranked 48th in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004. Dylan first played the song live in concert on the Bob Dylan and the band 1974 tour which was his first tour His first active tour in a long time his life performances have been influenced by Hendrix covers to the extent that they've been called Covers of a cover the singer has performed the song live more than any of his other ones with over 2250 recitals boy even for Bob Dylan. That's got to be a tough blow when one of your most famous songs is known for the recording of it by another guy. Now, Jimi Hendrix, of course, is a true legend, and he's one of the people who really operates in that rarefied air of Bob Dylan, although he unfortunately was cut short, and we never had an opportunity to see a whole lifetime of his work like we did with Dylan, but we'd like to think that that's where he would've gotten with it. But he, you know, Jimi just took this song and ran with it, and I'm sure for a lot of people, it was probably a surprise to learn that it wasn't a Jimi Hendrix tune and that it was in fact a Bob Dylan tune. But yes it is and it's a great one. Dylan, when he plays it, he sings it really well. He really likes it. But when the boys are singing and when they're hot, it was great. The Dead played it for the first time on June 20th, 1987 at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. They wound up playing it a total of 118 times. The last one was on June 22nd, 1995 at the Knickerbocker Theater up in Albany. And although that's not the last show or the second to last show, that's getting close. That's on the final tour. So even all along the watchtower from when it was first introduced, had real staying power in the dead's repertoire and made it pretty much all the way right up to the end, I'm sure much to the delight of the Deadheads. I'll never forget the first time I heard it. It was actually in Alpine Valley. And I believe that it was in 1987 when they came to Alpine Valley after the Greek theater shows in June of that year. And my good buddy, Larry Van Oker was in town. Larry is a friend of the show and he's been on. We've had a chance to interview him before and we'll get him back on here one of these days. And he was talking about how great it is and what a great version of it is and everything. And all of a sudden, there we are in the second set and he's talking away and boom, the next thing we know they're playing. And like on cue, everybody just shut up, turned around and looked up at the stage and said, wow, this is, wow. It's a song that just comes at you with energy. And as far as the cover goes, everybody knows it, so it's an instantly recognizable tune. And you can tell when the boys are playing it well, and they were. So again, Dylan plays the boys, the boys play Dylan. It's a great relationship, and everybody's really happy with that. I want to swerve here for a moment and dive back into a little news on the cannabis scene. And as we always try to do here, we like to give you all sides of it. Uh, the good, the bad, the ugly. We've already heard some of that today, but this is a story that I'm going to go with because God damn it, I'm going to go with it every single time I see it. And I don't care if people get tired of hearing it because nobody believes it. You tell it to people and they look at you and they say you're crazy. They don't believe it. And yet once again. Youth marijuana use declined in 2022 despite legalization and COVID restrictions lifting a Rhode Island survey finds. But it's not just that survey. Youth marijuana use in Rhode Island declined significantly in 2022 compared to two years earlier, even as legalization went into effect and COVID related social isolation restrictions were lifted according to a recent state study. The Rhode Island, and I'm sorry, let me just stop and say I want to make sure that these later news stories I'm giving credit to Marijuana Moment and Kyle Yeager. We love them too and really appreciate all the hard work that they do. Right, so the Rhode Island Student Survey from the State's Department of Behavioral Health Care, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals asked more than 20,000 high school students in 23 districts about substance use trends. Several national surveys have identified recent drops in teen cannabis use, even as more states enact legalization. It's a trend that's been observed over the past decade, but experts have said that the precipitous declines that were seen in 2020 and 2021 were partly attributable to social isolation amid lockdown orders from the coronavirus pandemic. With that, one might expect to see a slight bounce back in marijuana consumption as students transitioned back into in-person learning last year. Yet the new Rhode Island data shows a statistically significant decrease in the use of cannabis. Alcohol and e-cigarettes among high school students. Past 30-day use of marijuana stood at 15% compared to 17.2% in 2020, according to the survey, which is done every other year in partnership with the Department of Health and the Department of Education. Also, about 15% of students have used marijuana by age 16 compared to 20% in 2020. Lifetime use among high school students similarly declined from 28% in 2020. to 23% last year. And while Rhode Island legalized marijuana in 2022, with possession becoming lawful for adults in May of that year and the first retailer's opening in December, students say it's become more difficult to access marijuana. So what was especially notable about this data is it found that high school students' use was trending up from 2009 to 2013 before legal marijuana dispensary started opening. but has been generally on the decline since then. The first state recreational legalization laws were approved by voters in 2012, with regulated retail sales beginning in 2014. Wow, well these trends conflict with one of the most common prohibitionist arguments against marijuana legalization, despite their claims that legalizing cannabis for adults would drive up teen usage, studies and surveys, including those conducted or funded by the federal government. have repeatedly shown otherwise. One more time, have repeatedly shown otherwise. Quick survey here, quick survey of the surveys. One, National Institute on Drug Abuse funded study that was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last year, also found that state level cannabis legalization is not associated with increased youth use. The study demonstrated that youth who spent most of their adolescence under legalization were no more or less likely to have used cannabis at age 15. than adolescents who spent little or no time under legalization. Okay? Two, yet another federally funded study by Michigan State University researchers that was published in the journal PLOS One last summer found that cannabis retail sales might be followed by the increased occurrence of cannabis onset for older adults, but not for underage persons who cannot buy cannabis products in a retail outlet. Three, meanwhile, adolescent marijuana use in Colorado declined significantly in 2021. A study out of California last year found that there was 100% compliance with the ID policy to keep underage patrons from purchasing marijuana directly from licensed outlets. Five, the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Education and Regulation, an alcohol and tobacco industry backed marijuana policy group also released a report last year analyzing data on youth marijuana use rates and the state level legalization movement showing decreases. Six. Another federally funded study, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, was released in October, showing that youth marijuana use dropped in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, and as more states moved to enact legalization. Seven, further, an analysis published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2021 found that enacting legalization has an overall impact on adolescent cannabis consumption that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Eight. The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics also analyzed youth surveys of high school students from 2009 to 2019 and concluded that there has been no measurable difference in the percentage of those in grade 9 through 12 who reported consuming cannabis at least once in the past 30 days. Nine, there was no change in the rate of current cannabis use among high school students from 2009 to 2019, an earlier Center for Disease Control study found. When analyzed using a quadratic change model, however, lifetime marijuana consumption decreased during that same period. 10, another study released by Colorado officials in 2020 showed that youth cannabis consumption in the state has not significantly changed since legalization in 2012, though methods of consumption are diversifying. So, if I'm counting right, that's this study that's the main study of the article, plus another 10 that are right there. Legalization results in a decrease in youth marijuana consumption. It might not seem right. It might not make sense. You might just not like it. But it's a fact. It's a fact. There's been no studies by any group that disprove it or prove to the contrary. And every government, federal, and state study that has come out has consistently demonstrated that with the legalization of marijuana, the youth consumption of marijuana does not go up. And in many cases, it goes. down. We can say it till we're blue in the face and we do say it till we're blue in the face and we still run into people who tell us, nope, I don't want my kid to be smoking marijuana. Well guess what, if they want to they already are and if they're not you should want legal marijuana because they're less likely to do so. And until somebody comes up with a study that points to the contrary based on reliable evidence, I think that we can consider this issue put to bed but I will start, I will continue to promote it to the world. any of these studies as they come out because we know the truth. We know what the government wants us to believe. We know that there's plenty of people, adults, children, everybody out there who just say no just because. With that, I roll into my final news story of the day because this is perfectly fitting and this is one of those stories that if you had to say what is the least surprising thing that I could tell you about marijuana, here's what it is. decriminalize marijuana if elected president. Stop the presses. This guy who is a national embarrassment, royal pain in the ass and never found a civil right that he didn't like to abuse or stomp all over, acts like the first amendment doesn't apply, goes to war with one of the largest companies in the world. It's all about making people happy just because they dared to say something bad about him. I mean, this guy is a baby and a baby and a baby. And I'm not gonna get into the whole political thing with him, but he's not it. He's not the answer on any level. He's the answer if you're looking to roll back everything and pretend like you live in 1930s America with a guy who doesn't know how to have any fun. Not what I would do. But let's take a look at this for a minute because when we just get done saying that marijuana does not result in the increase in youth smoking, what does Governor DeSantis say? When asked if he would federally decriminalize marijuana if elected to the White House, he said, nope, nope. I don't think I would do that, arguing that cannabis use hurts the workforce, inhibits productivity and could even lead to death if contaminated. Statistics please? Any statistics on that? No? Well, we've already talked about statistics that show that cannabis results in far fewer mis-employment days than alcohol, nicotine and caffeine and other psychotropic drugs that are available and prescribed to people. So when he says something like this, he's just, as my grandmother would say, talking out of his ass. At a campaign event in South Carolina, a person who said they were representing wounded veterans asked DeSantis if he would please decriminalize cannabis as president. And again, he said no. DeSantis then talked about Florida's medical marijuana program that was enacted by voters saying veterans quote, are actually allowed access to cannabis under that model. So they're getting, he said, but he said the issue is controversial because obviously. There's some people that abuse it and are using it recreationally. Well, I don't know how you define abuse it, uh, because he hasn't told us that. Um, and if he's excited that it's going to veterans, uh, and he, you know, is a veteran and likes to say he supports the veterans, I don't know how he could be saying that, and if he's saying people are using it recreationally, Hey, guess what governor people have been smoking marijuana in Florida recreationally forever, forever. When they're all down there in Fort Lauderdale on spring break, what the hell you think they're doing? right? And all those college campuses up and down the state, what do you think they're doing? You know, I mean, to hear this is, you know, borders on such a level of preposterous that the only thing that could be any better than that is what he says exactly next. DeSantis rattled off numbers of concern he has about cannabis use, starting with the potency of marijuana that they are putting out on the street and his understanding that illicit products are laced with other drugs such as fentanyl. Okay. What doesn't work here in the logic chain? Well, President DeSantis, President wannabe DeSantis is yes, potency, everybody raises potency. Next please. People who never smoked marijuana before and never smoked their grandpa's marijuana, to them this is marijuana. They build up their tolerances, whatever they do. Yes, it's very potent, we understand. A lot of alcohol is very potent and that doesn't seem to be a problem for anybody. And now we have to look at Governor DeSantis' understanding that illicit products are being laced with other drugs such as fentanyl. If you do something with that, it could be good night. Right then and there he said you could die just by ingesting it. So I think that's problematic. What's problematic? That people are buying illegal weed laced with fentanyl? I have an idea. Allow legal marijuana sales, then people don't have to worry about whether the marijuana is tainted with fentanyl. If you say, I'm not going to allow marijuana sales, then people who have always been smoking marijuana and are not going to stop, now do run the risk because they're buying it on the black market and they don't know whether the product they have purchased has been laced with fentanyl. The answer is to make it legal and allow people to produce it with state control and state inspections and state safety regulations so that you don't have to worry about going into a dispensary and purchasing marijuana and having it contain fentanyl or any other illegal drug. or any other damaging toxicant or harmful, anything that could hurt people that could very well be put into illicit and black market sales by the people who are only looking to flip a quick buck and don't have any rules that bind them in. Right? This is as dumb as the governor in New York. I mean, you can't sit there and talk about it being problematic when you're the cause of the problem, when you're the one who's standing in the way. So he says, I think we have too many people using drugs in this country right now. I think I'd hurts our workforce readiness. I think it hurts people's ability to prosper in life. He said, adding that people in heat, he knew in high school who used marijuana suffered. Okay. Well, I don't know who Ron DeSantis hung out with high school, but I imagine as our friend Ross Dothat would say, it wasn't the cool people. He was probably with the squares. He knew people who used it in high school who suffered. Are there people who started drinking in high school and suffered? Yeah. Are the people who started taking hard drugs in high school and suffered? Absolutely. People like Ron DeSantis who don't really know what they're talking about immediately default to people I know in high school who used it suffered. It would be a fascinating thing to go back and actually check around with the people that Ron DeSantis went to high school with and see if the people who smoked marijuana back then did suffer or if Ron DeSantis suffered because he was such a stick up his ass guy who wouldn't even try for a minute to think about doing something. that might lighten him up a little bit and actually make him fun where people might enjoy him instead of his need to go around banging them over the head with a big hammer. He plugged a Florida program overseen by his wife that involved sending athletes to schools to warn students about the stakes of using some of these drugs nowadays and that is not something you want to mess around with. These drugs, which drugs? Yes, kids don't mess around with cocaine. Kids don't mess around with heroin. Kids don't mess around with other hard drugs. kids shouldn't be smoking marijuana, but when they're old enough to make an informed choice, that should be their preference. We've talked about it over and over and over again. So if you're going to sit there and tell us that they don't hurt lives the way alcohol do, they don't hurt lives the way other prescription medications do, so why are you saying this as though marijuana is an outlier? Because you're Ron DeSantis, truth doesn't matter, and you're going to make the laws you want because you just assume everybody wants them, and if they don't, then the problem might be with them. However, people in Florida are not sitting still. Former Florida Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried, a cannabis reform advocate who now chairs the State Democratic Party after unsuccessfully running for her party's gubernatorial nomination last year, reacted to DeSantis' comments by pointing out that polling shows widespread public support for legalization and decriminalization among Floridians. Over 70% of Floridians want legal cannabis, and almost 100% want legal cannabis. One, it decriminalized. Ron doesn't care what people want. 70% of your state wants something. 100% wants it decriminalized. And the man who's trying to run for president is I know more than you, so I'm not going to legalize it. I don't care what you want. I don't care what you think you're getting. You're not getting it. You elected me, so you lose. Everybody should understand this. A vote for Ron DeSantis is a vote for a loser. somebody who will not do anything for you and who will stop on your rights. He doesn't care what you think. He doesn't care what your neighbors think. He cares what he thinks. And this is a great example. It's just a great example. Uh, you know, other Republicans are dancing around the subject as well. Uh, you know, and they all need to be able to take a forceful step on this as much as anything else. You know, we've talked about how much marijuana is out there. Now we talk about how marijuana has been around forever. We talk about how kids are smoking it, whether or not there is legalization. We need leaders to step up to the plate and make representative and purposeful statements that set a good example, that model good consistent use of marijuana like we should be doing for alcohol and every other type of intoxicant and substance out there that people use for those purposes. This is just craziness to pretend like it doesn't happen that only bad people smoke marijuana, that only people who do suffer. So Ron is going nowhere with that. I didn't think he was going nowhere anyway, but again, what do I know? So Ron, get your act together, figure out what the people in your state really want, and if you don't know something about a subject, please don't talk about it. It just aggravates everybody who really does. Enough of that, we need some good karma, Dan, so we're going back to the show right now and for a song that knocks in good karma for anybody. You know, when morning dew comes on, the crowd stops, people stop talking, people come back running in from the bathrooms, people come running back in from the concession stands, even the people dancing in the hallway come running back in, because for that 10, 11, 12 minutes, however long Jerry's gonna stretch it out, there's no other place that anybody wants to be. I wanna be in the room with Jerry playing morning dew. It's such an incredible tune. Everyone is just as happy. listening to all the incredible jamming verses, all the jamming between the verses. And yet the verses are beautiful. Bonnie Dobson who wrote the tune did a great job. It's a wonderful tune. We've talked about the history of this song before. But in this voice, in this version, Jerry's voice is so crisp you can hear him enunciating letters his T's and hitting all the high notes. It can't be ignored. This is a time still in 1989 when some people think Jerry's on the downside, and maybe some days he is, but not this night. I would advise again, all of you listen to this entire version of this song. It is outstanding. It is a real highlight of this show. And it may be a highlight for one of the best morning do's of all of 1989. It's hearing a version like this that led a lot of us, you know, who were starting to get worried about Jerry think, Hey, you know, No, Jerry's still got it. Jerry's still going strong. And a morning dew like that would do nothing to dissuade that notion or point you in any other direction. It's classic Jerry, it's classic Grateful Dead, and it's beautiful morning dew, appreciated and loved by all. Nope, tonight wasn't the night they made you listen to Black Peter, Stella Blue, or Warfard, all beautiful, wonderful songs in their own right. But when they come up paired against a morning dew, especially one like this, They all just kinda seem to take a slight step backwards and this one really rises to the top. And well it should. Jerry's done a masterful job with it over the years, creating it and building it up to a show stopper and a song that people will base an entire tour around. I'm gonna go to shows until I catch my morning dew. It's just that simple. And it's great. So a great version of it, always fun to listen to. Um, we're getting to the end of our show here today. Hard to believe how quickly an hour flies by when we're having fun and bashing around to Santa's, but yet here we are. And, um, uh, tomorrow obviously is the 4th of July. So I'm hoping that everyone out there has a fun and safe 4th of July. If your jurisdiction allows fireworks, please be careful. Don't let your kids use them. If your jurisdiction does not allow fireworks, please be careful. Don't let your kids use them. Um, and you know, there are people in the neighborhood who go to bed at certain times. So do try to remember that. But I think that if you smoke a little weed and you put on a little Grateful Dead, particularly this show, you might find that, you know, running outside and shooting off those fireworks isn't such a priority for me right now. And they're not going anywhere. We all know that people do it the whole week, the few days leading up to, a few days leading out to, and then in my neighborhood, it seems you hear fireworks all the time. So just be careful with them, but enjoy the Grateful Dead. And you know, folks, what better way is there to end the Fourth of July show? with this Grateful Dead nod to patriotism in their own unique way. Some say it was overplayed, I say not enough. Evolving from Wave That Flag, basically a collection of rhymes with the Wave That Flag chorus already completed. It eventually morphed into this song that we all know and love. This is a great version and there's really one of my favorite versions is the one of the Grateful Dead movie as they're switching from the opening animation to the full crowd at the Winterland Summertime done, come and gone, my oh my, how true. Summer is gone before we know it. Enjoy it while it's here. Have a happy, safe celebration. Listen to some dead, smoke a little weed, excuse me. Be safe. And as always, enjoy your cannabis responsibly. We'll be back next week. Thanks everyone.