Music Monday—My Dead Day

Last week I alluded to posting about my days day as a DeadHead and today I am gonna make good on that.  It’s Monday and it’s about music.  Let me forget this moving business for a minute.

I was in grad school at Eastern in the late 80’s and made some really great friends.  It just naturally happened that the people you spent so much time in class and study sessions and labs with, also became the ones you spent your limited but fun free time with. 

(Yes, my education has included English, but I do like to end sentences with a preposition.  Just bein’ me, typin’ like I talk.) 

You’ve heard over and over about best friend Candi, but there was a whole group of us.  There was Skip.  He was from Rockford and his mom proclaimed herself a witch, like a true one that could lay curses and spells, etc. 

There was Todd from Shelbyville who was Mr. Conservative Christian and wow, did that introduce some diversity to our EIU-in-the-80’s wild scene; Barb from Effingham that dreamed of starting a home for behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children (and they called me Polly Purebred?); Debbie from Farmer City that to this day can trigger a mutual laughing fit just by saying “Stattler,” an inside joke that is now twenty-one years old.  And then there was this special fella we called Sutes.

John Suter was his name and he was from Springfield, Illinois, and just a couple of years older than me.  He was this smiling, totally laid-back, ultra-kind guy who was funny and played tennis.  He was, overall-in-general, such a cool guy (overlooking the chewin’ tobacco).  I spent so much time hanging out at his place of action with his interesting roommates, this huge, ancient house not far from Old Main, so typical for off-campus housing in Charleston at that time (maybe still?).  John Suter had a Ben Stiller build with dark hair, but insert a stubbled baby face.  That’s him.

Sutes was the closest I had ever come to a real-life DeadHead.  He talked Grateful Dead bootleg tapes like I talked my Clapton discography.  He was responsible, a very smart and serious student, but whenever he had the chance, he followed the Dead, and had since he was in high school.  Jerry Garcia was his god.

The group of grad school friends remained close, especially through our internship year, despite being spread across the geographically long state of Illinois.  Even after graduation and landing jobs, at least once a year we were guaranteed a chance to get together at our annual Illinois School Psychology conference.  Once there, we hung out together non-stop--the kind of friendships that just pick up where they left off and it feels like no time has passed.

Candi and I had always been intrigued by the stories of John’s Dead life.  We decided we must experience the phenomena with him,  so John got us tickets for when they came to Riverport Amphitheater in St. Louis, July 1995.  Candi’s husband, good sport Doug, came along for the ride, too. 

From sitting in the backed-up traffic trying to enter Riverport, I could tell this was going to be a long, strange trip (pun intended).  Individuals were standing along the road, all alone except for maybe a backpack and a sign printed with something like, “Got an extra ticket?”  They were dressed in flowing clothes and I thought looked a little haggard for being young.  Here they had made it to the next venue on the tour, but didn’t even have a plan for how to get in to the show.  Well, I guess the plan was actually to find someone, friend or stranger, who would get them in.  Apparently that worked at least sometimes since there were several doing that.  Me, being all Ms. Plan-it-out-and-know-exactly-where-my-next-meal-is-comin-from, just so could not work that way, but now I recognize that was part of what made the atmosphere of the community.   

We finally parked and then, like tailgating happens at sport events, there’s the Dead version.  People were cooking, I guess chicken?, kebobs and other foods on the trunk of a car and selling them.  There were braided string bracelets and other goodies that people sold, I guess to fund their way to these shows and to live off of.  John saw friends he knew at almost every step it seemed. It was definitely a different culture, and I was brand new to this. 

But I liked it!  Everyone was nice and mellow.  And I loved the clothes. 

The show started and it was fun.  Grateful Dead shows are notoriously improvisational, so while I recognized Truckin’  (linked above) and a few songs, they had a different sound and seemed to go on and on forever. 

I am certain it wasn’t their best show ever, but still it was easy to lie back on the blanket and look up at the stars and just let the music get into your head.  I totally got into the whole climate, so much so that it only occurred to me later that it was probably a gross thing to go into the restroom barefoot.  Multiple times. 

Candi and I each bought matching t-shirts that night.  To those helping us move, do not be shocked but…I still have mine.  It’s my Sunflower Terrapin, worn just a few times, but so treasured in my box labeled Keepsakes:

It was so strange to hear of Jerry Garcia’s death just a few days following.  They had two nights of shows in Chicago following us being there in St. Louis, and then he was dead of a heart attack.  I always felt lucky that I had the experience to actually see a real Dead show and get a taste of Sutes’ other life, if only just one night out of Jerry’s thirty years of doing it. 

Nice sweats, man

Maryland Heights, Missouri 

July 1995