garrison beau scott

If there is a heaven/nirvana/utopia/paradise/comfort inn with 72 virgins waiting, and I’m granted entrance, and for some reason the great creator decides to let us chose our own version of said bliss, well, I want it to go something like this.

I’m transported back in time to a place called Magoo’s Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park, Californaia, circa May 1965, the 5th of May to be exact. Just in time to catch what was one of the very first live performances of a band called the Warlocks. But not the very first show, for that I would have to pick Menlo College sometime in April. Date uncertain. But Magoo’s sounds like a cool place, and besides, they have pizza there, which is what anyone who’s designing their own heaven would list in the top 10 of things to be sure to have.

And then I’d make sure to be at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on December 10th, 1965 when the Warlocks became the Grateful Dead. And then I’d go see them the next night at The Big Beat in Palo Alto. A week later at Muir Beach Lodge and then every show after that all the way up to 1995 after they had played 2,317 concerts. Not one of them the same.

After it was all over, and Phil closed up shop with the final Box of Rain, I’d go back and do it all over again. In between shows I’d walk around a perpetual Shakedown Street with my OM-2 and an infinite supply of TMZ, eating gooeyballs and grilled cheese sandwiches, trading smiles for stickers for patches for tape covers for sticky, for a ride to the next show.

And taking lots of pictures.