A Long Strange Trip by Dennis Mcnally Page A

Garcia’s heroes, the Redwood Canyon Ramblers. Neil Rosenberg, Mayne Smith, and Scott Hambly were all classmates of Phil Lesh’s at Berkeley High School and veterans of
The Midnight Special.
Neil and Mayne had come upon authentic bluegrass while attending Oberlin College, and their Bay Area shows in 1959 and 1960 brought the form to the region and inspired a second generation of East Bay players who would come to be Garcia’s friends, including Butch Waller, Sandy Rothman, and Rick Shubb. Most Berkeley folkies had little use for bluegrass players, dismissing them as technicians concerned with speed rather than taste, and rejected bluegrass itself as “social tyranny,” due to its difficulty. There was even a Berkeley band called the Crabgrassers; the name served as a pointed joke.
    The atmosphere of the fall of 1962 was dominated by the tensions of the Cuban missile crisis. Hunter was taking classes at the College of San Mateo in philosophy and astronomy, which was certainly appropriate: John Glenn had orbited the earth that February, the Telstar communications satellite had been launched in July, and the best-selling book in America,
Silent Spring,
was concerned with pesticides and damage to the environment. For Hunter, this single vivid memory of the missile crisis involved going outdoors to scan the horizon for mushroom clouds at the time when Russian ships were required to turn back from the blockade. The crisis, thought one historian, “imbued the sixties generation with an apocalyptic cast of mind, a sense of the absurdity of politics, and a suspicion of politicians.” True.
    With Marshall back in New Haven, Garcia organized a new band. This version of the Hart Valley Drifters included Hunter on mandolin, Rodney and Peter Albin’s young friend David Nelson on guitar, Jerry on banjo, and a new guy, Norm Van Maastricht, on bass. Nelson, who had graduated from high school in 1961, owned a motorcycle and a twentyfive-dollar ’48 Plymouth, which immediately became band transportation. The Drifters practiced Tuesdays and Thursdays, and their big day came on November 10, when they debuted in the afternoon at an art gallery opening at San Francisco State and then headlined that night at the College of San Mateo Folk Festival. It was Nelson’s first paid gig, and he would remember every detail. At their dress rehearsal the night before, they’d worked into the night and all night. As the show approached, David and Norm began to tire. Grumbling genially about “the rookies in my band,” Garcia produced some Dexamyl, and their energy returned. They arrived at the art gallery, but no one met them. Seeing some microphones, they set up, and after stalling, finally had to play. Nelson suddenly wondered, “Good God, what’s the tune?” Knowing that it would be a banjo instrumental, he looked at Garcia, who had his own nerves to deal with. Digging into the strings too hard with his picks, Garcia suddenly felt a string slide underneath the flap of the pick and send it twirling around. “Heh, heh,” he snickered embarrassedly, and began again. By then, Nelson was “fucking terrified, paralyzed.” But they kicked off without further interruption, and the music settled them. The audience liked what it heard, and filtered in. There were intentional laughs for their between-songs patter, some applause, and before they knew it, they were on break in a closet-size dressing room.
    The CSM Folk Festival was actually a device for the Art Students Guild to raise money for beer, and with one giant poster at the cafeteria, they managed to sell out. It was partly luck: that very week, the cover of
Time
acclaimed Joan Baez a “Sibyl with Guitar.” The audience expected something on the order of the Kingston Trio’s “Scotch and Soda,” but they got a lot more first. One student contributed a protest tune called “The Atom Song.” An Indian student, Ramesh Chan, played Indian folk songs. Rodney Albin played “The IRT.” Then