It was my first show, spring tour, Meadowlands. I had been waiting for months and the anticipation was compounding. Tickets were purchased by phone to avoid scalping. 2nd tier, left side facing stage. We were set.

Fifteen of us from high school went together. All of us were ornamented for the occasion: home-made, pastel tie-dyes, bracelets, bells, braids, beads, flowers and smiles, smiles, smiles! All of us partying it up in the same LIRR train car, then, also, all bewildered in the throng of Penn Station, trying to find the bus to the Brendon-Byrne Arena. But it was OK, some of us dosed, but no one was out of control.

We met up with some other lost Heads, no one we knew, and tried to collaborate on an idea to find that bus to New Jersey. After a short while of getting nowhere fast, my boyfriend at the time, Mike, (and husband now), had enough of the conjectural rhetoric and removed ourselves from the crossfire. We didn’t get far when out of the mileau drifts a woman draped in flowing white. She stood before us with the gaze of a true believer, smiled, admired and complimented the flowers in my hair, and asked if we were married. "Right, bright eyes," I thought to myself, "sixteen, painted, lost and wed!" We politely answered no and returned her blessings of peace.

We were still laughing and coughing out the remainder of our laughter, when a man in a vividly, tie dyed shirt (a novelty at the time) and bare feet ran past us like an Olympian flame-bearer screaming, "This way to the bus!!!!" We followed behind the group already chasing him, leaving a trail of ringing bells, patchoulli, laughter and smoke.

I was getting the feeling that we were attracting some attention when, from the walls of racing background someone screamed out after us, "Lemmings! You’re all friggin lemmings!" Well, the guy had a point. That bearer of the invisible torch could have been stampeding us off to a population-controlling death. Highly improbable, but possible enough for us to laugh at the mob now following us.

Nonetheless and not to worry, brothahs and sistahs, we were led to where we wanted to go. We found the bus. We found our seats. And the transformation began to take place....

We were all strangers with that in common, that and the music. Hey man, I just need a little space here...thas right... Hello, how are you?

Then in no time, we strangers upon mellow strangers poured off the bus and were THERE. We found our seats. We waited. They tuned tuned up. These dischordant bars of new beginnings found their shape and began to unfold their symmetry. The music filled us. We became a single entity, that lover to whom the Dead always played. A pulsating sea of harmony, all of us given over to the same wish - to take it all in and be freed.

I only knew the songs off of American Beauty and Terrapin Station then, but the rhapsodic spell was still complete. Bird Song, though I didn’t know its name then, took me far, far away...

Just relax and let the music take me. Whoa, I’ve never done this before...its a little strange....hey, look at her move her hands! They’re dancing! It’s so beautiful. Just move with the flow. Just let it all go. A clear headed solo-flight. Is this flight? Or is it sailing? Wind currents, sea currents, electric currents...its all the same. Pulsating, sweating, dancing, boppin’ freedom. Moving surrender. I’m so tired I never want this to end.

I screamed as the stage lights swung outward into the explosive heat of the penultimate song ("sometimes the light’s all shining on meeeeeeee") and was drained. I was shocked and I was changed.