The early days of this blog contain lots of information about the Grateful Dead, especially the Europe 72 concert tour. Why is that?
This blog was born in early 2020. Like in the spring. The COVID pandemic had arrived in full force and we were all encouraged to stay home, to flatten the curve. Just for a couple of weeks. Remember that? It was pointed out that staying home was our civic duty. I’m not an epidemiologist, but I remember thinking even then that the more we flatten the curve, the longer this thing is going to take to play out.
But I digress.
At any rate, around this same time I had begun to appreciate the musicianship of the Grateful Dead. Sure, I had heard about them. American Beauty. The Skull F*ck album. Working Mans Dead. Casey Jones. All of that. But I wasn’t a Deadhead. Had never seen them in concert. I owned a couple of albums on CD. That’s it.
Just before the COVID shutdown, I found a local library system that had an extensive Dead collection. I reserved 50 CD’s! Also around this time a friend let me borrow his Europe 72 box set, containing 73 CD’s. I had over 120 CD’s to listen to. I picked up all of the CD’s.
And then the library shutdown for COVID. I didn’t even have a return date for the CD’s.
So, I focused my attention on the Europe 72 box set. As a COVID shutdown project, I decided that I would listen to and review one CD per day. This would take 73 days. So, I created a blog called 73 Days of Dead. The purpose was to store my daily observations.
I then realized that this is too limiting of a subject for a blog, especially one that might have the promise to be ongoing. So, I pivoted, made the 73 Days of Dead a project, created a free blog on WordPress called magicalartsandotherfunstuff. I included Grateful Dead stuff, book reviews, recipes, and so forth.
However, I stopped updating the blog around 2 years ago. Not sure why. I probably thought that I was running out of stuff to say, but at the same time I was still busy reading, writing, and creating. Just not on my blog.
Fast forward to January, 2024. I have renewed interest in writing, since it’s an important part of being a Life Long Learner, created a new website, and here we are.