MOUNTAIN JAM - (A SNEAK PEEK)

This is a sneak peek at a portion of a book I'm working on chronicling the members of the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.  This particular excerpt is the entry planned for The Grateful Dead - each of the other members will get an entry as well.  This section tries to emulate the well-known extemporaneous nature of the Dead's concert stylings.  Hope it works.  

The Grateful Dead   - Inducted 1994 – Representative Song – “Bertha” (Live, Watkins Glen - 1973)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sntaQxf8I00

The Grateful Dead are as much an experience as a band and, through the years, the principal manner in which their devotees shared that experience was via concerts.  The Dead played long, improvisational songs in a set list that changed, not just from tour to tour but from night to night.  Because the way a song was treated may be completely different for any given show the band’s fans, affectionately known as “Deadheads”, would trade copies of tapes made of the individual performances (allowed and encouraged by the band), with everyone having a favorite which they would expound upon at length to anyone who evidenced the slightest interest.

“Man, I’ve got a copy of Springfield 1979 where they do an incredible “I Need a Miracle” that goes into “Shakedown” – awesome – Jerry was flyin’”.

“I got Springfield from ’78 where they do Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” – wild”.

Conversations like that could go on for hours.  That was kind of the point – the Dead would play a song like “Not Fade Away”, which was 2:21 in its original Buddy Holly version, and riff on it for 35 minutes.  Fans would then talk for three hours about how that 35 minute version compared to a 27-minute effort from six years previously, what they were doing during the weekend of that concert (and the one following, which they would travel to with four guys who they just met at the first one), and then they’d play the tape of the concert which would include a bit of a jam session that they’d had in the parking lot of the stadium afterwards.

I’m no exception – I have great stories about the run of six shows in Boston from 1991 when the Dead filled the Garden every night and the Deadheads would spend the nights before and after the shows jamming on stage at a local Irish pub called “Paddy Burke’s” where the house band would play with the various fans for hours on end.  I’d go in right after work (I worked in an office just next door to the pub and knew the owners) simply to hang out and listen to the music. How were the Dead shows themselves you might ask?

I don’t know – I never went.  It helped, but wasn’t really entirely necessary, to actually get in to the venue to experience a visit from the Grateful Dead.

I had other times where Grateful Dead concerts impacted me without actually, you know, being there.  One of them is the concert represented by the attached link, the Watkins Glen festival of 1973.  I could give you the short version of how that touched me – but that wouldn’t be representative of the Dead, so we’re gonna improvise a little. 

I can’t tell you what parts of this are 100% verifiable, and which parts are conjecture, but like Huck Finn’s description of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, there’s a few things I’ll “stretch”, but I’ll tell “…the truth, mainly.”

(Now listen, this will be about the Grateful Dead, eventually, but we’re just gonna go with this for a while.)

To know about Watkins Glen, you gotta know about New York.  Specifically, you gotta know about where people from right around New York City go on their vacations. 

I’m not talking about world travelers here, or “favored tourist destinations” like Disneyworld.  I’m focusing on the places where working people in New York, back from around the 1920’s through the ‘70’s, (after which air travel started to get much cheaper), hopped into their cars and went to get away from the city for anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks. 

Because New York was the cultural center of much of what was going on in America through that time, these places have, to a certain extent, all become engrained in the American psyche.  Radiating out to the east, south, west, northwest and north there are five main destinations for NYC vacationers to be considered (for the purpose of this exercise we’re ignoring the close by “day trip” spots like Coney Island, Far Rockaway, Jones Beach or the Pallisades). They are:  Long Island, the Jersey Shore, the Poconos, the Catskills and the Berkshires.  People will argue that “Connecticut” or “upstate” destinations like Lake Placid should be included, but further upstate than Albany was not as easy a place to get to as you might assume, and the Connecticut towns like Greenwich and Mystic, along the Sound, were less vacation spots to spend a week than bedroom villages to aspire to someday get a house. No, I think you can safely confine the list to those five.

Each of these places had their own characteristics.  Long Island, while physically the closest, was, (until Robert Moses began his building program and opened the Parkway to Jones Beach), one of the more difficult to access.  Once it did open up it became a sliding scale of economic status, with the closer places (such as the aforesaid Jones Beach) being largely working class, and Bayshore, Sayville, Bellport, etc. becoming increasingly exclusive until you get to the Hamptons and Montauk, which are largely play areas for the super-rich and the Gatsby-type crowd.

From early on the Jersey Shore was serviced by trains and roads (such as the Jersey Turnpike from the late 1930’s) and was easy enough to get to for college kids, young singles and family’s looking for weekly rentals to which they could make a relatively quick and painless trip.  It was built up fairly rapidly with numerous cottages and bungalows and the shore towns became famous for amusement parks and seaside bars.  The RRHOF has a good few members who cut their teeth on the Jersey shore.

The Poconos somehow became the preferred destination for honeymooners.  Known as the birthplace of the heart-shaped bathtub it might actually have been easier to get to the Poconos than some of the other places on this list.  The roads leading out to this area in Pennsylvania were good enough (and still relatively uncrowded) for much of the 20^th century, which has led to the region now being more of a commuter center for the greater NYC area than a current holiday destination.

The Catskills were the home of the family resort and the dominion of comedians and established music acts.  Known as the “Borscht Belt” or the “Jewish Alps” the area thrived on the sort of “return every year” clientele that eventually gave rise to remembrances like those reflected in “Dirty Dancing” or large parts of shows like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”.  Other ethnicities may have derided the Catskill tradition but they can only wish to have the kind of cultural memories that were built up in those retreats.

Then there were the Berkshires.  Not quite as easily classifiable as the other destinations, New Yorkers would go to the Western Massachusetts idyll for culture (Tanglewood opened in 1938, numerous writers from Edith Wharton to “Ball Four’s” Jim Bouton decamped there, while Jacob’s Pillow hosts the country’s premier dance festival.  Additionally, numerous actors cut their teeth in summer stock plays in town’s like Stockbridge).  You might have also gone there for fishing, golf, skiing or other outdoor sports (my older cousins still talk of running in to Babe Ruth at a local store when they were young). Summer camps and Catskill like resorts thrived for much of the mid-20^th century.  The Berkshires were a noted spot for the beginnings of “Bed & Breakfasts” or, more likely in the earlier days of the century, country inns, where licit or illicit weekends could be spent.  This kept a fairly steady flow of people, largely from New York, coming into the region, either up the Henry Hudson Parkway or I-84.

By the 1920’s this influx had started to fuel an actual “tourist industry” in the Berkshires.  Because of all the resorts, ski areas, summer camps, inns and restaurants that were opening there was a need for trained chefs to manage the kitchens associated with each.  “Trained chefs” meant more than just the ability to cook.  There were plenty of people who could cook.  It meant being able to control a kitchen, hire help, handle multiple seatings, feed huge crowds of people, know where to access food at a rate that kept the offerings profitable, build a reputation in a business where that was everything and having a calm enough personality to deal with difficult management or customers in a way that did not involve the illegal use of a meat cleaver.

 (Yes, this is a piece on the Grateful Dead, we are getting there, trust me.)

 Now, along about this time my grandfather was growing up in Pittsfield Massachusetts, one of nine children in a typical Irish-Catholic family.  A household of that size, back in those days, in that area (where the “Roaring Twenties” and the Great Depression weren’t really separated by that much) everyone needed to chip in.  All of the kids brought different skills to the table and one of the things that my grandfather could do exceptionally well was organize and cook the meals when needed.  It was just something that seemed to come naturally.  There would be eleven people, plus probably a few friend or cousins, and they would need to be fed. He’d get it done – and not just “get it done” – but manage to make something very good out of the ingredients at his disposal.

 That “at his disposal” part is key.  As the twenties ended and the depression afflicted thirties took hold the ability to manipulate scarce ingredients – and to stretch them – became even more critical.  Families had to be fed on less, so things like French toast, meatloaf, Salisbury steaks, macaroni and cheese, creamed beef on toast, franks and beans, fried bologna, stews of all kinds, and pasta combinations that went by different names everywhere, whether “American Chop Suey” or “Hungarian Goulash”, became the stuff of budget meals.  These survive as near gourmet quality “diner food” these days – but the ability to take lemons – and make “lemon stew” out of macaroni, butter, milk, some cheese and lemon slices – was really important back when nothing could be wasted.

 My grandfather was evidently an expert at these concoctions and just about every other dish that could be imagined.  That eventually led him to the hospitality trade, where his ability to turn out all kinds of dishes and manage a kitchen (a skill honed with the busy kitchen he grew up in) gave him what amounted to a profession in the Berkshires, where the tourist trade from New York, while significantly diminished, still existed.  There remained good (actually very good) restaurants in the area that needed chefs who could run the kitchens in towns like Lenox and Stockbridge - places where visitors from the big city would come to dine.  Charlie Higgins quickly established a reputation as one of the best at the trade.

 Don’t get me wrong – no one was getting rich doing this – but back in the day someone who knew how to handle a kitchen, run staff and keep things purring could make a living, eventually buy a house and raise a family off the work. In an era when any kind of a job was like dragon’s teeth – that was much better than many people with an “education” could even hope for. There was a lot to learn, but my grandfather was not a lazy man, and he set about mastering his craft.

 That meant taking many jobs, in many areas, and it was in the course of such employment that he met my grandmother, Catherine Prescott.  They married and moved back to Berkshire County, where, in 1941 my mom was born, followed in short order by two more girls, my aunts Kathy and Helen.

 (I assure you – this is leading back to the Grateful Dead – we’re just going to do so in a bit of an “improvisational” manner).

 My grandfather continued to work at a number of establishments, getting to know the ropes.  Part of that was learning who to hire for the short-term.  Back in those days, and really for some time after the height of the depression, “kitchen staff” meant hiring from what would be considered a “transient” population.  These type men (and they were all men) were sometimes called “hobo’s”, “tramps” or “railroad bums” but they called themselves “Knights of the Rails” or “Kings of the Road”.  Their numbers had swelled in the 1930’s, and they were experts at hopping freights, avoiding the railroad police, hitching rides and knowing where to go for a meal or short-term job.  Many of those jobs came from restaurants, where there were potatoes to peel, pots to scrub, kitchens to mop – for off the books payments before moving on.  Back then restaurants didn’t hire people full time for those jobs, it was cheaper to see who was around and pay them.

 The responsibility for knowing who to give a job to fell to the head chef – and people like my grandfather had to know who could be counted on to show up if they said they would, who would drink (most of them) and how to pay them so they didn’t blow everything in one day, which ones were hot-tempered and how to talk them down without getting a kitchen knife thrown at you, where they gathered, what you could (and could not) ask of them - generally becoming trusted in their unique fraternity.

 This he did, and the extent to which that took place is something we’ll explore in a bit more depth later, but first there was the matter of that house that needed to be purchased as the Higgins family expanded.  That was on course until the Emperor of Japan put himself squarely in the way.

 Yeah, I know – the Grateful Dead – we’re getting there.

 The general supposition is that following December 7, 1941 all able-bodied men in the United States went straight to their recruitment office and signed up.  That isn’t quite true.  Many did exactly that – but they were mostly single and/or childless.  Those with families knew they were going to enlist (or be called up) – but there were matters to be put in order first.  For large families, like the extended Higgins clan, the sharing of living space became almost communal as brothers, sisters, cousins, and in-laws planned amongst themselves where everyone would go once the various fathers, sons and brothers had joined the service.  My grandfather was 33 years old when the war started and it took the better part of a year and half for him to assist the rest of the family and get everything sorted.  Then, in 1943, after affairs had been put in order, he was ready to enlist in the Army, which he did.  My mother, grandmother and aunts stayed in a few different places while he was away – but there were always family members to take care of the clan as a whole. That’s just what people did back then.

 While that was taking place on the home front Grampa was adjusting to Army life.  You might think that knowing of his civilian expertise the military would have immediately made Private Higgins a cook – but from what I understand it didn’t quite work out that way.  Instead, he had to actually get to Europe before reality kicked in and someone set him up in his main area of expertise, but once there he quickly rose to the rank of “Technician 4” or “T-4”, which is where those with specialist skills were ranked in WWII.  This immediately bumped you up to the equivalent status of a Sargent (which is how you were addressed) and your job, in addition to toting a rifle at or near the front lines, was to be ready, every day, to set up a mess operation on the run, scrounge whatever you could in the way of food, feed scores of famished soldiers, break the damn thing down, get it moving and do it all over again somewhere else when required.  All while not getting shot or blown up.  It was enough to make you long for the days of New York tourists.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the supply operations implemented by the T4 specialists in World War II constitute one of the great military miracles of history.  Stephen Ambrose, who chronicled the European campaign in such books as “Band of Brothers” and “Citizen Soldiers” has stated that the movement of U.S. troops across Europe has never been equalled in war.  From a June 1944 landing in Normandy the Allied Army on the western front found themselves in the area of Munich just ten months later.  Along the way the troops remained well fed and supplied and this was done without terrorising the local populations.

It’s probable that his training in the kitchen of a huge Irish-American family and helping run depression era restaurants staffed with drifters prepared Grampa for the tasks he now faced. Whatever the cause he was, by all accounts, very, very good at this job. By the end of the war he would have to be, for on the 29^th of April in 1945 the infantry unit he was assigned to was nearing Munich when it entered an outlying town with the name “Dachau”.

(Yes, this is still a post about the Grateful Dead, but we’re just gonna go with this for a while.)

On the outskirts of the town the approaching troops discovered three rail cars filled to overflowing with dead bodies.  Following the tracks they came upon the main concentration camp, which was quickly surrendered to a contingent of American soldiers who entered the grounds.  What they saw there shocked them to such an extent that several men went mad and gunned down the SS guards who had surrendered the facility.  This is obviously not to be condoned, but if there were ever “extenuating circumstances” for a war crime, this was it. 

Dachau was not a “death camp” in the same sense that word is used to describe Auschwitz or Treblinka.  Instead, it was the earliest example of a Nazi “forced labor” camp, where internees were essentially worked to death.  In many ways the lack of an organized “extermination process” created more suffering for the prisoners.  The internees were only fed enough to keep them functioning and had become living skeletons by the time of liberation.  Without adequate nutrition disease ran rampant in these camps (a typhus outbreak was underway at the time of liberation) and thousands died even if that wasn’t the main “function” of the camp. The Nazi commanders in charge of the operations still butchered people, particularly as the war ended and they attempted to cover their tracks.  The rail carriages that were found in advance of the camp’s liberation evidenced one such attempt.  Another took place at a Dachau “satellite” operation in Landesberg, where prisoners were packed into a shed which was then set alight, roasting the captives alive.  This was the hell that the troops encountered in late April of 1945.

Shortly after these original troops entered the camp medical and food provisions were requested.  I don’t know if this happened, but I imagine someone who knew of my grandfather’s expertise pointing to an aide de camp and saying “Get Higgins up here”.  Then, once he arrived, that same person would turn to him and say “Feed these people”.

I do know that Higgins got "up there".  My grandfather was one of the initial relief troops in Dachau.  I also know he helped feed the starving internees of that camp, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.  He never told anyone about the medal, it was found out by someone who saw his name listed in a newspaper back home. 

You had to be very careful about how you fed the survivors of the forced labor camps.  In addition to typhus other diseases ravaged the victims and giving people who had starved for so long foods that were too rich could kill them.  The American troops, my grandfather amongst them, worked doggedly to save those that they could, feeding them in a manner designed to return them to strength.  I don’t know if Charles Higgins killed a single enemy soldier during the war, but I’m pretty damn sure he saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent lives. 

While he didn’t talk about the medal, he did later on talk about the camps.  His children, when old enough, would be shown pictures of the internees, both those dead and the living skeletons who survived.  That presentation would be accompanied by words to this effect: “This is what human beings can do to other human beings if they let themselves forget how they are supposed to behave.  Never let yourself forget”.

Tech 4 Higgins stayed on in Germany for a time after the war as part of the Allied occupation. (Most of the enlisted men fully expected that they would next be sent to Japan – only the events of August 1945 eliminated that possibility).  He continued to feed people – soldiers, camp survivors – and the post-war German population as well.  It seems that, in his view, all people needed to be kept alive if there was going to be any end to the madness he had witnessed.  There are two primary “war souvenirs” that came back from Europe with my grandfather.  They are artwork.  One is a painting of the alps that was given him by a German family to whom he had shown kindness.  The other is a sketch done by a grateful camp survivor.  Both hang in his children’s houses today.

This is the sketch done by the internee and presented to my grandfather.  The use of the Roman numeral “V” for the month of May may very well stem from the use of that letter as a symbol of resistance – the “V” sign was everywhere in those days.  The fact that the date reflects the latter part of May, post VE Day, and a location of Dachau – means that my grandfather was clearly in the area for the relief and support effort and not just the liberation (the liberating troops had moved on within days of the 29^th of April).  There is a possibility that the artist was a Croatian architect who went on to continue a distinguished career after the war.  It’s quite a keepsake and is obviously a great family treasure.

Then the war stopped and everyone went home. 

The end.

 

Well, not quite.  There was still the matter of getting enough money together to buy a house and get the family going again.  It took a while for the house to get sorted (the kids started up fairly quickly) but on the 21^st day of February, 1949 the Higgins’ closed on a property in the Berkshire County town of Sheffield, Massachusetts.  It was a big, rambling five-bedroom affair with a wrap-around porch, big garage and barn out back.  It still is.  This is what it looks like now, and that’s pretty much what it looked like then.

 

 

 

My uncle owns the house these days, but the time has come for him to sell it.  For me, given that I remember things like being allowed to “drive” a car up that long driveway, and planting that large birch tree on the right with my grandfather (over 50 years ago now), the asking price would be approximately, I don’t know,… $5 billion.  However, if you make my uncle an offer, he's a good guy and he’d probably consider taking less. 

I still think you’d be getting a bargain at $5 billion. 

The best part about the house, and something that I think should really be appreciated these days, is that in addition to providing a safe place to raise a large family (one of whom was my mother – that’s her playing with the yo-yo in the homecoming picture), all those things could be done on a cook's salary.  Don’t get me wrong – my grandfather was exceptionally good at what he did, and worked in some fine establishments, but he was not a sous chef with a degree in restaurant management.  First of all – I don’t even know if that degree existed back then, second – while he may have done some cooking in France it was probably of the “Man, that guy can sure do some amazing things with Spam” variety.

The fact that someone who worked hard and did a good job could make a decent living and provide for a large family - even in a field that (to put it mildly) was not known for high wages – speaks well of how the country distributed its wealth back then.  Not through direct government intervention but because there was simply less disparity between what people and professions earned in those days.  The local lawyer or doctor might do well – but they lived cheek to jowl with the policeman, teacher, or, indeed, chef, in the same community.  Right now, when I look at some of the towns and (in the case of a city) neighborhoods in America I don’t know if that is at all the case.  How many Brookline cops live in Brookline, Mass.?  How many Greenwich teachers live in Greenwich, Connecticut?  Do the people serving your food walk home after their shift is done or take three buses to get somewhere they can afford?

But this is not a political discussion – this is a post about the Grateful Dead.  (Remember the Grateful Dead? I just want to repeat, this is an entry about the Grateful Dead). 

My real point is that my grandfather continued on in his chosen field and did so successfully.  One of the reasons he achieved his success is because he also maintained a good relationship with the kings of the road who would stop in to wherever he was employed looking for a bit of work, a chat and maybe a bite to eat on a cold night.  Now that he had a house there were times when those same type of people might show up at the door, in various states of sobriety, looking for the same sorts of things. There were few to none that were ever turned away.

That sort of thing did not go unnoticed in that particular brotherhood of transients.  Just as when he was in the service – my grandfather (and grandmother in this instance) developed a reputation of dignity and respect amongst the hobo crowd.  This was evidenced most directly by a series of symbols discreetly left in front of the Sheffield house, in a place where the travelling crowd would know to look.  They were done in a secret “language” shared amongst the members of that group, one that is now largely lost but which you can find described on a number of internet sites.  The symbols outside the house, I am told, looked like this:

This is said to mean “A good gentleman lives here and will give you food and work”.  There may be no better thing to have people say about your home.

My grandparents lived in that home for twenty years, raising eight children, before a particularly harsh reality kicked in.  When I was five years old, just after planting that birch tree, Grampa was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease.  I wasn’t yet seven by May of 1970, when it claimed him. I have strong memories of looking at the hollow left in his favorite chair, where he had to spend most of his last days, because that awful disease robs you of the ability to move while leaving your mind sharp and aware.  But I have even stronger memories of the man who put mud on my first bee sting, let me run around in the middle of a downpour like it was the world’s biggest sprinkler, who cooked the Sunday dinner and would let you pick the cucumbers out of the garden.

He was a good man who would give you food and work.

This is a post about the Grateful Dead.  We’re getting there, but we’re gonna improvise and ramble a bit more yet, sort of like a Dead concert. But, yes, we are getting closer.

The period during which my grandfather passed away was a turbulent one.  Both of my uncles were off in Vietnam (there is a story in that as well, I shall spare you), people were landing on the moon and it was the heyday of the “rock festival”.  Most everyone knows about Monterey, Isle of Wight, Woodstock and Altamont – but fewer know of Watkins Glen.  That’s unfortunate, because if there was a contest ranking festivals based solely upon musical merit – Watkins Glen might just win it. 

Held on the 28^th of July 1973 at a speedway in the reaches of western upstate New York the Watkins Glen festival was attended by an estimated 600,000 people, dwarfing Woodstock in terms of numbers.  For a long time the Guinness Book of World Records listed it as the largest audience of this type and it may still qualify as the largest single gathering in U.S. history. The average age was put at between 17 – 24 years old, which meant that one out of every three people of that age group in the region stretching from Greater Boston to New York were in that single small town listening to music.

The music that they listened to was the stuff of legend.  Unlike some of the other festivals named above – there were only three bands at Watkins Glen.  Those were The Allman Brothers Band, The Band and The Grateful Dead (see, I told you we’d get there).  Each of those groups is in the RRHOF and, in 1973, each was arguably at the height of their powers. 

The concert was scheduled to be held on a single day but the fans started arriving the day before and the bands needed to do a soundcheck.  The Allmans and The Band did a few numbers, to the delight of the assembled crowd.  The Grateful Dead then took the stage for their “soundcheck”, which proceeded to go on, in much the tradition of this entry, for nearly two hours over two sets, including one extended, wholly improvisational jam.  It is not an exaggeration to say that, of all the Grateful Dead concerts, the one bootleg recording that may have been most sought after was not a concert at all, but this soundcheck.

The next day the Dead opened the concert proper with the version of “Bertha” that can be heard in the attached link. The concert itself disappointed no one – with historic sets by each band (The Band followed The Dead and then The Allman Brothers closed the show).  After the Allman’s set an impromptu encore took place with members from all three bands on stage for an extended jam – probably one of the greatest collections of rock talent on one stage ever. The event is described in this Wikipedia entry:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Jam_at_Watkins_Glen

The festival was indeed historic – but like all such events it had to come to an end, and that meant that approximately the entire population of Detroit hopped in their cars to return home.  The result was a traffic jam of historic proportions.  The route directly back to New York was jammed solid, so a number of cars, vans and pickup trucks full of fans headed east towards the Berkshires (where many of the concertgoers had, in all probability, vacationed with their families).  They did this thinking to take a route around the worst of the traffic and then head due south towards New York along Route 7 (which goes right through Sheffield) or along other back roads.  That sounds like a good option, until 35,000 cars get the same bright idea.

So it was that on a weekend in July of 1973 I was witness to thousands of hippies slowly parading past my grandmother’s house.  I was on summer vacation and spent much of that time in “the country” (which was a bit misleading since we had just moved to a town that was even smaller than Sheffield).  In addition to longer hair than the norm these kids in the stop-and-go caravan had a few common characteristics – they hadn’t slept much all weekend, they had little money, what they had they needed for gas – and they were hungry. 

My grandmother had shifted houses just a bit since my grandfather’s passing, but she was still on Sheffield’s Main Street, and she still lived up to the standard posted in front of the old house:

So, she started making, and my aunts and a nine-year old me started bringing, sandwiches to the hungry fans of the Grateful Dead.  Bologna, peanut butter, cucumber, tomato and cheese, ham, tuna fish – whatever would go between two pieces of bread.  When the bread and fillings ran out someone went to the local store and got more.  There was no shortage of takers and I think we lived up to the hobos’ version of Michelin stars that day. 

So, that was another Dead concert that I experienced without ever having actually seen the band. There is no other phenomenon quite like them in rock history – of course their music is of paramount importance, but “their music” is so hard to de-couple from the experience of listening to it, being around it, meeting other people who listened to it and re-hashing (that word was chosen for a distinct reason) what it means. 

What it means is letting it take you where it will, even if that means long discourses on New York City vacation destinations, depression era foods, World War II, concentration camps, hobos, income disparity, sandwiches and grandparents.

Just go with it.

(As a bonus here’s a link to a place that includes the full two days of Grateful Dead music at Watkins Glen in 1973, including their concluding jam with the Allmans and The Band.)

https://www.jambase.com/article/600000-people-see-grateful-dead-allmans-band-summer-jam-watkins-glen-1973