A couple of days ago I was at work listening to the cd’s of a 12/30/94 Radiators show at the Double Diamond in Aspen, Colorado. I had a huge smile on my face thinking about the whole trip surrounding that concert and the next night's concert. I was there with my then-wife Lona, my best-'man’ at my first wedding Debbie Hentches, and my buddy Sean Morrison. This is one of the great things about live bootlegs...you can pop a cd into your boom-box at work, strap on your headphones, kick back with your feet up on your desk and suddenly you are right back at the show 20 years earlier with a rush of memories flooding your brain. Again, I do not condone any of the stuff we did, but it happened.
With the death of Bill Graham in 1991, the Grateful Dead's extravagant annual New Year’s Eve shows in California had come to an end. Needing a new outlet to satisfy our NYE craving for music and good times we turned our attention to the Radiators. We had made the journey down to New Orleans in 1992 and 1993 seeing the Rads there at Tipitinas both years, but in 1994 the band decided to mix it up and do their NYE run of shows in Colorado. They were in Vail on the 28th, Aspen the 29th and 30th and then Denver for the grand finale on the 31st.
Well I guess we were going to Colorado then, so I asked my mom for a snowboard for Christmas. I had always wanted to learn how and what better place than Colorado? Lona and I put out feelers to see who wanted to come with. Our friend Debbie who lived nearby us in Madison agreed to come, and all it took was a quick phone call to carefree Sean up in Minneapolis for him to say: “Of course, when are you picking me up?” With family Christmas obligations and a long road-trip between us and Colorado in uncertain weather, we decided we would just go to the 12/30 and 12/31 shows.
Debbie was on probation for a DWI and was not supposed to be driving but she had the best car. So on Thursday morning 12/29/94, Lona and I piled into Debbie’s car with my snowboard strapped to the side and we made the 4-hour trip to Minneapolis to pick up Sean. After dinking around in Minneapolis for awhile we finally began the 1100 mile trek to Aspen with Sean's snowboard strapped to the car as well. Taking turns driving we arrived in Denver around 11am on the morning of the 30th where we stopped for lunch and a beer. We still had another 200 miles up to Aspen and after getting into the mountains it began snowing heavily. Night fell quickly and we had a ways to go as the travel was extremely slow in the mountains. We were worried about missing the show and we got lost, but eventually we made it to Aspen an hour before show time.
We were sitting in Debbie’s car, parked in downtown Aspen chilling out and thinking about getting something to eat. Deb was in the driver’s seat, Sean riding shotgun, and Lona and I in the back. Sean cracked his window and lit up a joint. The area was well lit with people walking by on the sidewalk right past the front of the car. It made me nervous but Sean did not seem to care and was just happily puffing away when two cops with cowboy hats suddenly walked up and asked Sean to step out of the car. Oh no...Sean had a long history with cops, and Debbie was sitting in the driver’s seat with no license. Thankfully the cops were totally cool. They told Sean to put it out and be more discreet in the future. We happily ran across the street into the Double Diamond bar and had a great time dancing to the Radiators and bouncing around on the super-bouncy floor. Was it really a trampoline-like floor or did I just imagine that? I still do not know.
The concert ran into the wee hours of the morning, so instead of paying for a hotel that we would barely use we decided to drive the 200 miles back down to Denver after the concert. The sun was up as we approached the signs off of I-70 for the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre just 10 miles west of Denver. None of us had ever been there, but we had all heard of it of course as the place had been hallowed grounds for the Grateful Dead for many years. We decided to check it out and in the middle of winter on a Saturday morning the place was completely devoid of people. We figured out how to get in and wandered around in awe at the beauty and history of the place. Eventually we made it to the stage where on the new-fallen fresh snow that carpeted everything we proceeded to jam out on our air-guitars, playing for 9,000 imaginary fans who were going wild. It was great thinking about how we were standing and ‘jamming’ on the same stage that the Beatles and the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix and countless other heroes had also played on.
After a bit we got back on the road to Denver, although we were actually heading to the awesome house of the awesome parents of my long-time awesome friend Cire Wonhsak. I have known Cire since I was 3 years old when our dad’s first met at their jobs at General Electric in Schenectady, NY. Even though we have not lived in the same city since I was 10 years old we have remained in contact ever since, drifting in and out of each other’s lives around the country at opportune moments. This was one of those moments. His parents lived in a huge house in a very nice suburb of Denver, and they were out of town for the weekend.
We managed to find Cire’s house later that morning on 12/31/94. It was large and amazing and Cire made us feel welcome. After getting some much needed sleep we were ready for the Radiators that night at the Ogden Theater in Denver. Spoiled by our spacious surrounding which sure beat sleeping in the car as we had done the past two nights, we were in for even a bigger surprise as Cire told us he got us a limo to the show that night! His new girlfriend Amy Yamasaki arrived early that evening and the night began. It would be Cire and Amy's first and last date.
Cire had one more surprise for us. After the six of us piled into the limo he pulled out a small glass vile of liquid LSD. Clean...pure...the real deal. It was a full vial which is about 100 drops, or hits, of acid. We all had plastic cups of beer, so Cire handed the precious vial to me first to carefully pour a drop into my beer and pass it on. In the dim light and shaky ride however we hit a bump and I accidentally dumped the whole vial into my beer. ‘Holy f*cking sh*t’ pretty much summed up the mood as I confessed to Cire that most of the expensive contents now resided in my beer glass. We held the vial up to a dome light and sure enough, it was almost empty. What now? It is not like we could save what had now become the world’s most expensive beer for another time. We all stared at the mysterious liquid for awhile and then made a solemn decision. We did not know what else to do so the six of us split the whole beer.
After taking turns passing the beer around and nervously taking sips until it was gone, we arrived at the Ogden Theater. It was an extremely cold night and supposed to get much colder and snowy. The limo driver assured us though that he would be waiting right outside after the concert so we left our jackets in the limo. It was a fantastic show and of course very trippy with the massive amounts of acid running through our brains. I do not remember seeing much of Cire, Amy, Sean, Debbie or Lona during the show though as I wandered around the beautiful theater taking in the whole scene while riding the musical wave of the Radiators.
After the show the limo was nowhere to be found. It was insanely cold and we were wearing nothing but jeans and tee-shirts. We waited in the lobby of the theater for the limo as long as possible, but eventually we got kicked out. The cold was weird in that I knew it was incredibly cold, but I just willed my body to not be bothered by it. I was 28 years old and was beginning to figure 'life-stuff' out, including the fact that everything seems to work out if you let it. So I just decided to relax, and...let everything work out. This was before cell-phones were standard, so we went across the street to a gas station and waited inside while Cire started making phone calls. It took awhile but eventually he got through, just in time as the store-clerk was getting sick of us and was trying to kick us out. When the driver showed up Cire gave him a piece of his mind, but we finally made it back to the house.
We spent the rest of that night/morning hanging out in the large downstairs basement/rec-room with the trippy green carpet and the big TV with the video games. Unfortunately Amy started losing it after awhile and was not happy with the whole scene. It was her first time tripping and not only was the acid strong, but I guess with the large amount that we all took it shook her that it was seemingly never-ending. I felt bad for Eric having to deal with that while he himself was tripping, but eventually we all went to sleep for awhile. The acid was strong but it was so clean (not cut with speed or any other crap) that we could go to sleep, get some rest and wake up still tripping.
A couple hours later that morning on New Year's Day Sean woke me up and said he wanted to go snowboarding. He said he felt fine and that he would drive. I was nervous as I had never boarded before and we were in the Rocky f*cking Mountains. I was still feeling the acid and at first resisted but Sean is hard to so say no to. Plus now that we had been tripping so long, that state of mind was now the norm so I decided to just go with the flow. After a bit of convincing Lona and Debbie agreed to come as well and we all piled into the car and headed for the Arapahoe Basin about 60 miles west of Denver. The girls decided they would just stay in the lodge and have a few drinks by the roaring fireplace, but Sean and I boarded all day.
I do not know if it was the acid that made it possible, but snowboarding for the first time ever in the Rockies while trying to come down from 15-20 hits of liquid acid seemed fairly easy. I just stood on the board and let gravity do the work. Sean tried to teach me a few things but the words he was saying did not seem to transfer into actual advice that I could follow so I just nodded and let nature and instinct take its course. It was simply awesome and we had a blast. I had no major crashes and was feeling pretty good about myself until we decided to head back down for good and meet up with the girls in the lodge. While boarding on a snow-covered wooden walkway from one section of the hill to another I cracked my knee hard on a wooden railing and it ballooned up like a bowling ball. Sean had to help me to the lodge and when we got inside he carried me around on his back. We had a drink with the girls and then headed back to Cire's place.
That night we headed to a local bar to watch the Minnesota Vikings take on the Chicago Bears in the Wildcard round of the playoffs. Amy was long gone and was never coming back, so it was just the five of us. I felt bad that I'd had a hand in ending Cire/Amy, but he was cool and we had a great time that night eating bar food, drinking pitchers of beer and playing pool. The only downer was the fact that the Vikings were 6-point favorites and ended up losing to the Bears 35-18. Dammit. Seemingly every year of my 48 years of life the Vikings have invented some new cruel way to break my heart.
We went back to Eric's place, got a good night's sleep and the next morning on 1/2/95 we loaded up the car for the trip back to Minneapolis and Madison. We still felt the acid a little bit that third day after taking it, but we could tell that it was finally wearing off and we were feeling somewhat normal. We made it back to Minneapolis, dropped off Sean and then headed home for Madison.
Just seconds ago I got off the phone with Sean who still lives in Minneapolis but I have not seen in a couple of years. We had many laughs over the memories of that trip and vowed to get together soon. I hope that we do, but with my young kids and his young grandkids time is precious and limited. I love Sean and that crazy carefree time of my life. Thank you to the Radiators and my friends for making those times possible.
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