Heather Ainsworth : Dead Photos come Alive !

I would be unable to tell you how it happened, that stroke of singularly serious serendipity the other day, but totally by chance I stumbled on Heather Ainsworth's blog while blog surfing, and I would encourage you to stumble over to it too, as fast as your legs can manage. . .
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I know there are a few of you readers out there who have listened to a little, or alot, of music by the Grateful Dead, or by their more recent derivatives such as Phil & Friends, The Other Ones, or now, just plain "The Dead". Well, The Dead are on tour, and they played in Albany, New York on 17 April, where Heather Ainsworth just happened to have a Press pass, a Nikon camera, and a clear notion of what she was looking for in terms of powerful images. . . and by golly, she got the goods, she bagged "The Dead", and brought them back alive !
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Heather's "Dead" photos, which you can see a few of on her blog Freewheelin' (link above), and which you can see a whole photo gallery of on the Utica Daily News site, are some of the best live music images I've ever seen anywhere, bar none. She is right up there in the same league as Annie Liebowitz when Annie photographed Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, or the Rolling Stones. Heather Ainsworth's photographs are dripping in musical energy, a crystal clear transmission of that magic which has always resonated around the Dead's music. . . go take a look, like, immediately. That's an order ! And while you're on her blog, take a look through her other work, she has done some excellent photo journalism on a number of compelling subjects. . .
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Here is just one of Heather Ainsworth's "Dead" photos from the Albany show, which she very graciously gave me permission to publish here, for all you good people's collective pleasure. . . Thank You Heather !
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PS And I just now realized there is more of her work visible here on her website as noted in the watermark in this photo !
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California Earthquake . . .

Having just figured out how to embed a YouTube video into this blog, I'm going to do it again here, but I promise, I am not going to make a habit of it, I mean, jeez, if you want to find videos, I'm sure you'll head straight to YouTube or Daily Motion or wherever, without needing my help... having said that, many below posts have mentioned the Grateful Dead, or related artwork, and this video brings back memories of one of the most amazing of all the Dead shows I went to way back when. . . when Jerry was still alive. . . I liked the line near the start that says "It blew the living daylights out of the Owens County Seat... which gave it a personal touch for me. (Seriously, how many songs ever written mention the name "Owen" ? ? ?)
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This song, California Earthquake, was written by Rodney Crowell, you can find the lyrics for it here. The Grateful Dead only played it two times, both in October 1989, a few days after the October 17th, 1989 earthquake near San Francisco that caused severe damage around the Bay area.
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Dead Ahead...

If you can find it well below here somewhere there is a photo in shades of green light of the Grateful Dead on stage in the Zenith Theatre, Paris, France in 1990. In case anyone had any doubts as to the veracity of that story (of course I know you didn't !... but then again, the internet is chock full of frauds and trickery of various sorts) here is the ticket stub ; illustrated with quite an assortment of wildlife... well, every Grateful Dead show was a little bit of a circus, a zoo, a menagerie, a carnaval, a magic lantern show, a magical mystery tour, a voyage to the end of the night, an epiphany. . . may you rest in peace Jerry. And may I find you sitting in a roadside cafe playing an acoustic guitar someday in that country, wherever it is that we are all going to visit someday... and may the music be sweet and never stop.

Red Rocks Dead

I did not take this photograph, as much as I would have liked to have been there, I was not... I did, however, purchase this image, which was a postcard I sent to my soon-to-be but not-as-yet wife in early 1992. The postcard does not say who the photographer was, so I can't give credit where credit is due, but it does specify that the picture was taken at Red Rocks, Morrison, Colorado, on September 5th, 1985, during Estimated Prophet. I followed up on this postcard by taking my soon-to-be wife to two Dead shows at Deer Creek, Indiana on June 28th and June 29th, 1992. And those were the last two Grateful Dead shows I would ever see... as I moved to France definitively in October 1992.
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So, sadly for me I never saw the Dead at Red Rocks, which was reputed to be a magical venue. I did get to see them in Paris, France; Oxford Plains, Maine; Compton Terrace, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; Las Vegas, Nevada; Deer Creek, Indiana; Pittsburgh & Philadelphia (Civic Center, Spectrum, & JFK with Bob Dylan) , Pennsylvania; Landover, Maryland; Giant Stadium, New Jersey; Albany, New York; Madison Square Garden, New York; Nassau Coliseum, New York; and RFK Stadium, Washington DC where a Dark Star was played; all things considered, I had a pretty good run there for a while, and many of those shows left indelible memories as they picked us all up and swept us away to other worlds in other galaxies for entire evenings at a time. The old saying, "there is nothing like a Dead show" was absolutely true... and from that cup no more. R.I.P. Jerry...
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