Jack Straw

1976 Grateful Dead loading in at the foot of the Sphynx

Grateful Dead songs are playing in my home this morning. I'm not sure why, but it's what my tastes require in music for the start of the day. By the way, I haven't smoked pot in years and that can be verified by many. So, don't worry!

I've never seen the Dead nor any combination of any surviving members live, though I wish I had. But that's water under the bridge.

My brother, was a huge Dead Head. I, of course, became familiar with the music as it was always playing and my brother was trying to finger the guitar section. What I like about it was it's folk style at times. You don't hear much of that now. Also, the Dead were good at crafting some great music.

The song Jack Straw I have always enjoyed. Years ago, my brother and I were on our way to Scarborough beach and this song was playing on his newly bought Radio Shack 8-Track deck as we we're on Point Judith road in South Kingston. We were flying down the highway and you could start to smell the mixture of cut hay by that horse corral on the right with the salt air. This is a clear memory I have from July 1978. I'm not sure why it stuck. I suppose that it was a fun day with just us two on our way to the beach. I was fourteen and that would've made him nineteen.

At nineteen, he was nearing the height of his life, but he didn't know that would be the highest summit he was going to achieve. He was doing very well at Providence College, had a job, his first real girlfriend and in the “Felbs” band with others from the college playing the new, New Wave music. The real name of the band was taken from the light/sound guy whose name was Felber. Ok, the name of the band was, “The Paul Felber Mutha-Fuck Yo' Ass Brown Bitch Biscuit Blues Band.” It was an inside joke amongst the players, stolen from the National Lampoon magazine article about Billy Carter. Remember, this is 1978...Jimmy Carter ring a bell?

Before you freak on the band's name and it's racial overtones, don't forget political correctness hadn't been invented yet.

So, my brother was having the best time of his life and I got to sponge a bit off of that as well. When I could, I was adopted as roadie to hump that damned heavy equipment into bars and other venues around Rhode Island and Massachusetts. This got my 14 year old self into nightclubs and...beer! Do you know what a sound board weighed back then? It was all large transistors and hundreds of feet of copper wire. That thing was heavy and it wasn't the most cumbersome piece to move either!

One of the best times my brother and I had was when they were playing the then Rathskeller at Rhode Island College. The Rathskeller was a bar/hang-out joint in the bottom floor of the Student Union. In 1978, 18 year olds could legally purchase liquor. This meant I could partake in this as no one was stopping me, the roadie, from lugging equipment into the place and then acting like I was working the sound board. Well, I did operate the monitors as Paul had taught me how.

The Felbs had a bit of luck that early summer. They had written a song “Stop and Go World” that was getting airplay on WBRU for a few weeks and WVBF out of Boston as well. So, the crowd in the Rathskeller was pretty huge and things were looking up. Their set list consisted of any music the band members liked, with a heavy dose of covers from New Wave as well. The whole night ending with their minor local hit of Stop and Go World.

One of the songs my brother had the band learn was Jack Straw.

I can remember it being played that night and enjoyed it as I sat amongst the equipment, drinking cheapo college beer. It was a great time at such a young age. I was illegally drinking in a college, being “part” of a well liked band and seeing REAL shitfaced college girls acting like harlots. These were the few times when being a teen and realizing you're cool as shit matter.

The other memory I have of this song may seem sad, but it wasn't to my brother's friends nor I.

After the church service, the funeral procession ended up at Mt Saint Mary's cemetery that's on the Blackstone river as it widens out dramatically. After the final sayings of the priest, one of us had the sense to bring a Boom Box along and played Jack Straw for one final time beside the just dug grave. It was December and quite breezy that day as the cemetery sits on a plain overlooking the river, with nothing blocking the wind. I can remember standing there with my tie flipping over my shoulder with this great song being played by those who knew, as well as I, that this was Ken's most happiest time. It was one of mine as well.

It was a fitting gesture of recognizing and knowing him well enough that we knew what those few years in his early 20's meant to him.

Jack Straw will not, nor will ever be a sad song to me. It's too damn good with too many great memories.