Life lessons on two wheels to the tunes of the
Grateful Dead
Robert Hall Weir, né Parber,
October 16, 1947 – January 10, 2026
Let the words be yours, I’m done with mine.
I first saw Bob Weir on October 19, 1974 with the Grateful Dead at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. I last saw Bob Weir on June 14, 2024 as a member of Dead & Company at The Sphere in Las Vegas. Over the course of almost 50 years, it was my privilege to see Bobby perform countless times as a member of the Grateful Dead, Kingfish, Ratdog, the Other Ones, The Dead, Furthur, Dead & Company, the Weir Robinson & Greene Acoustic Trio, and probably others that I have failed to remember.
Other Posts
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 43 – October 25, 1979
Maybe the dark is from your eyes
There are few opening chords in the Grateful Dead repertoire as recognizable, or as welcome, as the sustained, and then repeated, D-minor of Shakedown Street. Often positioned as the first song of the set, the tune never failed to evoke an amplified sense of excitement, especially as the crowd began to anticipate the extended, often brilliant instrumental jam to follow the final recitation of the mantra, “You just gotta poke around.” Among the many fine versions of this anthemic piece, there are few that rank higher than the one performed on 10/25/79 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, CT, the Deadhead Cyclist’s pick for T.W.I.G.D.H.
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 18 - May 1, 1977
I don’t trust to nothing
As we continue our focus on the Spring ’77 tour, we run head-on into five shows at the Palladium in New York City, April 29 – May 4 (with a well-deserved night off on May 2). The 3000-capacity Palladium played a storied role in rock music history during the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, when the property was purchased by New York University and converted into a student residential hall, affectionately referred to as Palladium Hall.
This Week in Grateful Dead History: Week 16 - April 12, 1978
Is there anything a man don’t stand to lose
I was first exposed to bigotry at the age of five when my family unwittingly became the only Jewish residents of what proved to be a passionately anti-Semitic neighborhood in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The year was 1960, and the hateful echoes of the Holocaust were still plainly audible, particularly among the already settled Scandinavian and Protestant Anglo-Saxon population, which made no effort to conceal their displeasure at the significant influx of Jewish families to the Twin Cities.
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