to me. But somewhere along the line something got through and that something was Chuck Berry. I had to hear Chuck Berry before I could hear Dixieland. Before I could move on to Miles Davis. Before I could take my “ Down in the Valley” harp and begin wailing blues. At two a.m. we’ re out in the rain again, walking into a 7-11 to buy some provisions for the next day. It’s as busy as a high-noon Safeway caught in a time warp, filled with ‘60s freaks stocking up on cheese, oranges and Twinkies. Outside again we’re greeted by three longhairs. .“ Headed for Autzen Stadium?” one of them drawls. We wind up on a large parcel of hard- packed ground that sweeps away from the back of the concert stadium to the edge of a wooded area. A woman in a yellow slicker takes our five dollars and directs us to where someone is waving a flashlight. I pull alongside and find myself looking into a face with an ear-to-ear grin, three days growth of beard, glasses about half an inch thick, and wild knotted hair. “Where have you been?” this apparition wants to know. “We’ve been waiting for you!” He laughs at the confusion he sees in his flash ligh t beam. I think “Whoa, where have I been?” He dances off, motioning us to follow him down a long row of cars, campers, brightly-colored out-to-pasture bread trucks and live- in school buses. He waves us into a spot between a Datsun pick-up and a small red Honda. We sit quietly in the dark. As our eyes adjust, we notice that the Datsun has a camper insert on its bed, and the Honda has a diminutive black man behind the wheel. That’s right where he is, both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. He’s still on I-5. Maybe he’s too far gone to get off the freeway. Next to him on the seat, a full-sized cardboard poster advertising a harlequin romance, a picture of a Jean Harlow look- alike holding the book nestled against her bountiful bosom. The two men in the Datsun radiate good-old-boy vibes—a dog on a leash that lunges and barks; a case of Schlitz in a cooler; that certain macho swagger. We’ve been placed between two psychotic pieces of wonder bread like sacrificial lunch meat. But it’s okay, there’s heavy magic out here in this mud-puddle haven behind the stadium, magic that has no trouble neutralizing a little mainstream psychosis. ’ # # # We wake up with the sun in our eyes, the camp coming slowly alive around us. Already at 7 a.m. lines are beginning to shape up behind people who’ve slept overnight in front of the entrance gates. There’s the aroma of coffee brewing on a Coleman stove, a group playing flute, guitar and bongos, a woman nursing her baby. Jugglers and clowns and a gaunt boy in wizard robes walking with his arm around the shoulder of the black man from the night before, whispering, “ Don’t you know it ain’t no good, you can’t let other people get your. . . kicks for you?” We fill a pot from the water truck and turn down some acid. Brew some tea, eat some fruit, brush our teeth, and we’ re ready for the day. Around eleven o’clock we put some carry-in items in a day-pack and approach the stadium. Words like “mellow” and “ vibes” have been beaten to a pulp over the years, but they apply here. The scene is mellow, the vibes are good, and the crowd is seasoned and diverse. There are people down from the hills, leather-skinned men with iron-grey beards and clear-eyed women in long gingham dresses whose very comportment tells you they churn their own butter, plow their own fields and birth their own children; they stand out among the camouflaged people, the ones trying to live alternative lifestyles within the lifestyle they’ re proposing an alternative to, people caught in a complicated web of finesse and nuance, appearing bohemian in the straight world and just a little straight in the asteroid belt that is beginning to spin an orbit around the stadium. Members of the Rainbow Family are here and scores of Dead Head camp followers, people who have tapes of every concert since Day One, the Dead Hotline in magic marker on their van visor, com pu te r read-ou ts on changes in Dead status-quo. And then there’s the Youth. They have more to deal with than the youth of twenty years ago, you won’t see any of these kids going to San Francisco with flowers in their hair. They’ve got a ‘50s edge I can identify with, that Blade Runner look in their eyes. We had that look back then, Mert and I and the crew, riding our Harleys into Hartford to our first concert. Maybe 1,000 raging kids in a movie theater, a stage full of sweat-soaked cross-over race-music blacks in polyester suits, toning their act down in their play for fame and fortune and blowing the lid right off ours. The whole thing was unadorned and drugless, the lighting white and bright. We tore the seat bolts right out of the concrete floor and stormed the stage. . . . You know what good vibes are? Good vibes are having Lana slip into line beside you after not having seen her for half a year. Lana was seven during the Summer of Love. Since then she’s been around. A year on the Dead Circuit, a year backpacking in Central America, freight trains from Miami to Montana. A wanderer to her marrow. She left to sail on the Golden Hinde, and the Hinde is anchored at Newport, e ighty miles across the mountains. “ There’s not a day goes by I don’t think about the world blowing up in my face,” she told me one day in the snow along the banks of the w " $ COME VISIT PORTLAND'S UNIQUE BOOKSHOP We have hard to find books in a variety of subjects Architecture / Design - Classical Music - The British Isles - Mysteries - Literature - Cookbooks - Wonderful cards and open daily 228-2747 THE NOR ’WESTER much, much more BOOKSHOP 5 N 8 e S w W M 2 a n rk d e A t v V e i . llage Portland, OR 97202 10 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1987 Yakima. I knew what she meant. I’d watched the nightmare be born. 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