I suppose for this tale, a little bit of context is in order. For a period of time in the late eighties early nineties, I worked for the Grateful Dead in several capacities. Their mail order ticketing program was handled by a group of people named the Hog Farm, who run Camp Winnarainbow in Laytonville CA. After a particularly nasty beat down of deadheads by the police in Los Angeles, the Hog Farm approached my friend and pot source Bobbo (again, all names have been changed) to start a new program for West Coast shows to help grease the wheel so to speak. This involved two phases. One show up to the lot where the show would be the day before and as fans arrived pass out garbage bags, talk about the rules camping or no camping for example, and just sort of be emissaries to promote good will and safety. For this Bobbo and crew would receive free tickets to the shows, and sometimes backstage passes if there were extras. The second aspect was to scoop up folks that had had a little too much of their vice of choice before the police did, and find a place to make them safe. For this we were exquistly suited, as Bobbo drove a 35 foot International Harvester school bus named Laughing Jack.
Laughing Jack was quite the spectacle. All but the first row of seats had been removed. In the back, there was a huge PA system that could be removed thru the rear exit doors and brought around front. The board for the PA sat directly behind the driver's seat, which had been made to swivel so the driver could simply spin around and become the sound man. Bobbo had also rigged a strong FM receiver to tap the FM board feeds in the show so we could literally broadcast the show inside in the parking lot if we so desired. Laughing Jack was also a sight to see, as it had been completely muraled stem to stern, the most noticeable feature being that the front had been made to look like a giant skull, with the windows for eyes. It was an awesome ride to be first mate on, although we didn't use that term. I, as second in command, was known as "the roller". Among my other duties, if Bobbo were driving, he would twist his fingers in the big mirror up front and I would access the secret stash and twist him and enormous joint.
Bobbo smoked and sold ALOT of weed. He was my connection and I was the distributor, so I was trusted. Now I know a lot of you are envisioning Bobbo to be some thin enlightened veggie long haired peace-nik. I can assure you this was not the case. Bobbo was a vile man, both in physical appearance and in spirit. He was kind of like a nerd biker guy, as he was a computer egineer. Sexist, overly flirtatious, almost spherical, unkempt and just foul. He had a twin dreadlocked beard that joined at the end that he would flip over his head to eat his meat. And he ate only meat, with only maybe the occasional potato to break things up. He had heard that Owsley Stanley was a strict carnivore, and semi adopted that stance. He often reeked so bad it was hard to be near him. And, as I said, he smoked ALOT of weed, I'd estimate a half an ounce a day on average. With all his flaws though, I was in his inner circle, and had been in business with him for years. That business payed for my college mostly, so I dealt with it. Besides, from a business point of view, he was very good at what he did. He was extremely careful, knew the laws inside and out. We never held anything but weed at GD shows, and never ever sold there it was just to big and iconic a vehicle to keep anything but joints on the downlow. Even alcohol was prohibited on board.
We had done this "set up and scoop up" for tickets deal a few times and it was a huge success. There are few stories there, but they are not germane. We had our sights on the upcoming shows in Las Vegas, which sounded like a lot of fun. Something happened before the shows though that changed everything - Bobbo got a girlfriend. I know I know it sounds implausible, but its true. She was a local homeless alcoholic named Vanda. I use her real name, because a) I am certain she is no longer alive, and b) she claimed to have a twin sister named "Wanda". Wanda and Vanda. Um... Ok. Bobbo and Vanda were quite the pair. Bobbo was trying to set her up with a business making incense at shows, printing up labels that said "Vanda's Vapors", of all things, and buying her some essential oils and what not. Vanda made me slightly uncomfortable, as brash insane homeless alcoholics often do, but hey, it was a big bus. Like so many things in my life, I could deal.
I too had a new girlfriend, Zulu, whom you may remember from "Second Date". I invited her on the ride to Vegas, and even though she absolutely LOATHED Bobbo, the allure of free tickets and adventure was too much to pass up. So me Bobbo Zulu, and Vanda packed up our wholistically obtained guatamalan backpacks, boarded Laughin Jack, and head inland to Sin City. As an aside, there was one other person in the caravan who was not riding on the bus and that was Eli. Eli was driving a very normal looking K-Car sedan. Why was he not in the bus you may ask? Well it was Eli's job to transport large quantities of LSD back to town after Bobbo had hooked it up at the show. The bus was a cop target, but Eli and his baby face and boring car were not. Even though I knew, I would never guess that that brown car driven by what appeared to be a Youth for Christ crusader was in fact carrying up to 10 *books* of acid (thats 10,000 hits in case you are wondering). So off we went.
We arrived friday late afternoon at the Sands Hotel and parked in the parking lot. Bobbo went up to meet with the crew and receive our assignments. We were going to be spending the night in this parking lot, and then driving in the morning to the UNLV arena to set things up for the Sat/Sun shows. Bobbo returned shortly from his meeting with some special treats for us all - some rather large hits of "purple gel" LSD. I had only ever seen blotter acid, and this crystaline, translucent thing that looked like a bit of hardened fruit roll up looked ominous My tripping days were almost over at this point, having failed the acid test miserably a few months prior (a great story for another day), but I was in Vegas, baby, and feeling all Fear and Loathing. I was also urged by new girlfriend who was all about the hallucinogens. So with a wince of what's to come, I swallowed the tab and headed with Zulu out to the strip.
One thing one must consider. When given drugs by people affiliated by the grateful dead organization itself, said drugs are going to be of the very highest quality, and very very strong. The mescaline I had been given in Oregon a while back kept me up for a two and a half day lesson on the reason native american art tends to be so rectilinear. This purple thing I had eaten was no exception, and as such, I can only offer a few glimpses into what transpired. I remember the bulk of the trip was spent at Circus Circus, which is why, like black cats, clowns now make me flinch. Though I was sure that EVERYONE knew that I was cerebrally supercharged, I soon came to the realization that, no matter what one looks like or how odd one talks or laughs inappropriately, as long as one is pumping money into some sort of game, no one will pester you - hell they will even give you free tang screwdrivers! So Zulu and I camped out at the nickel slots below one of the circus stages, an enormous bucket of shiny nickels in our laps, watching the most bizarre acts perform languidly on stage. I remember going to one of the buffets and watching the animalistic ways in which the morbidly obese ate their dried up steak breakfasts, like some sort of swollen lion guarding her kill. I remember running into shabby old Vanda at one point, who in an alcoholic stupor and tripping balls was trying to aggressively sell incense in the lobbies of the casinos up and down the strip. "Insent! Insent! Smell good! Insent!" How she stayed out of jail that night I'll never know.
Towards dawn we returned to the bus and tried to sleep a little which was of course, impossible. Around 10 we headed over to the arena and did our thing, passing out trash bags and directing parking as folks arrived. We got our tickets during the first song and went in to enjoy the show. As we got situated, Zulu produced a bag of mushrooms and indicated we should at them. Again, I was reluctant, but I knew that mushrooms and lsd are cross tolerant, and after the intensity of the trip the night before, they probably wouldn't hit me that hard. So as not to be a party pooper, I ate the damn things. They hit me alright, and for the most part, I had a good show. At the end, we stumbled back to the bus to see what was cooking. Well, besides meat, Bobbo had been granted the custody of three acid casualties which we were going to have to drive back into town and attempt to find where they lived. Groups of acid casualties can be either amusing, annoying or terrifying, and in this case we had one of each variety. The amusing one was a woman whose clothes kept 'falling' off and wanted to cuddle with everyone. The terrifying one was a black dude who had unwittingly taken a dose of something and was very angry about it, but couldn't get it together to actually be violent, and the annoying was a man who just kept talking talking talking nonsense. Me and Zulu crept up in the bed in the back and left the three to sort it out on their own. We were tired and I needed to lay down for the 20 minute drive to town. They would be ok. Vanda could deal with them, as she was more at their level anyway.
Just as I was being lulled into a coma by the rhythm of the bus I was awoken by the flashing red and blue lights of doom streaking into the rear window. I peered out. We were in the parking lot of some gas station/mini mart in the middle of nowhere, and had a undercover SUV blocking us in. The cop got into to talk to Bobbo the driver. Apparently he had pulled a three point turn across a double yellow line... in a ginormous psychedelic school bus, which was the real reason for the stop. Bad points for Bobbo for giving them a legit reason, but really, if you were a small town desert cop, wouldn't you be just a little bit curious? The reason Bobbo got pulled off the bus was no doubt the ashtray filled to the rim with roaches the size of your thumb. This was also probably the reason for his road side sobriety test, which was one of the most pitiful things I had ever witnessed. Owing to his short, morbidly obese stature, even if he was stone cold sober, he was simply not physically able to walk a line or touch his nose. At any rate, his sub par performance was what led him to be cuffed and led to the arriving squad car. In fact soon, we had a small regiment of squad cars and police vehicles. I guess, some lights in Vegas are just not so cool, you know?
We were inside the bus, the adrenaline of the reality closing in on everyone had a somewhat sobering effect, even on out guests. We watched the cops huddle up and decide what to do next, which as it turned out was to forcefully instruct us all to get off the bus with our id's. For the next four hours we went through every form of cop trick in the book on the side of that chilly desert road, while what looked like the DEA stormed through the bus, tearing every thing to bits. We had the group interview with the 'good' cop which consisted of them trying to convince us that they knew we were on *something*, and it would be better for us all if we just told them what it was. I could understand. As a group we looked more like extras from the movie road warrior, all dusty and disheveled, but I was not gonna give up. Then it was the 'bad cop' who threatened us harm if we didn't confess our ingestion transgressions. One of the most amazing things to come out of this was, that to a person, no one confessed. Everyone copped to "having a couple of beers", except for Vanda, who when asked what she was on managed to belt out "I drank a liter of Vodka!" in her best homeless rasp. I do believe she was the only one the police had no doubts about. Then it was time for individual interviews with both good and bad cop, where they tried to get us to turn on one another. BAd cop even laced our fingers together behind our back and squeezed hard saying if we did not confess, he was going to break my fingers. I stuck it out and so did the rest, which, given the circumstances, had to be some sort of record.
All during the interview, the DEA guys were pulling random bits of hippy ephemera out of the bus and making a little pile on the hood of one of the cars. Rolling papers. Small bag of weed. Quartz crystal. Stickers (which I think they thought were LSD). End of a bag of mushrooms. So despite our surprisingly unified "two beer" resolve, it looked like we were screwed. But the cops made one critical error. They had pulled us off the bus with just our id's, not our 'stuff'. So by the time the had finished putting the contents of the bus through the blender of justice, they couldn't tell what belonged to whom. Good for us, bad for Bobbo, as he was the registered owner of the bus, and no was legally responsible for all its contents. Especially bad for Bobbo when they found the half ounce of weed that Vanda had stolen from Bobbo and bagged into eigths to sell sereptitously for sending money. Now Nevada has some pretty fucking steep possession penalties as they like to control the means of delusion in that town, but even in the more liberal states, bagged out quantity is "intent to distribute" - and that usually means time. Bobbo was fucked.
The cops took all our particulars, took Bobbo off some jail themed casino, and, after allowing the two girls to go on the bus to grab everyone'e sleeping bag, towed Laughing Jack off to god knows where, leaving us, weary, dirty, traumatized and cold on the side of the freeway. Now as Bobbo had been being put in the car he had shouted some instructions to me. BAsically I was to go to the Sands Hotel and find someone named Peter Smith, who would put me in touch with the Dead's lawyer. So slowly we devised a plan. We went into the mini market and pooled our money and caught a cab into Vegas, to the sands. Arriving there, I instructed everyone to wait for me in the lobby, that I would find this guy and everything would be put right. So I left them in a huddled lump on a bench, and me, looking Mad Max Manson himself, approached the front desk.
Excuse me good sir, do you have the room number for a Peter Smith at this hotel?" I asked, hoping that decent grammar could over come the obvious displacement of my physical presence.
Clickity click click... "No sir, Im sorry, we have nobody here by that name."
Damn I thought. So I tried some other names that I knew worked in GDM... clickety click clickety... "No sir..." "No sir..." "Im sorry sir..."
Things were getting desperate. "Do you have anyone by the name Jerry Garcia listed here?"
CClickety. "Im sorry sir..."
So after going through all of the band members' names, and realizing that I was seriously testing the patience of the man behind the counter, I threw out my hail mary pass. "Look", I said, "do you have ANYONE affiliated with the Grateful Dead staying at this hotel at all?"
"Do you want the Grateful Dead party room"? he said.
"Um... yes?
"Take that elevator in the corner to the top floor"
"What's the room number"?
"Its the whole top floor".
"Thank you very much!"
I gave the molten lump of my compatriots a thumbs up and headed for the elevator. A well dressed man got in with me, and after seeing that I had selected the top floor, he eyed me suspiciously. Dead heads are forever trying to meet band members and sneak back stage to give Phil that special crystal from Pluton 7 that can cause low harmonic telepathy or whatever they cook up in their chemically imaginative brain. "Where you headed"?, the man asked.
"Grateful Dead Party room." I said, matter of factly.
"Um... Who invited you?"
"Nobody."
"Well you just cant..."
"Look, no one invited me, but I need to find someone named Peter Smith, who will put me in touch with a lwyer because Bobbo just got arrested and he's in jail and Laughin Jacks been impounded..." I blurted out in a panic.
And who did it turn out to be that I was speaking to in that elevator? Why Peter Smith himself. He was alarmed and invited me to come up and relax while he made some calls.
OK. Dead shows are about sleeping in tents, getting dirty, eating "kind veggie burritos' that were barely heated on a propane stove... its kind of the deal. But the room I was in now was palatial! There was a huge buffet filled with all kinds of delicious foods. Amazing couches and views and just well, rock star penthouse in Vegas. All the people were elegantly dressed, or at least clean. I ate, I sat. And as word got round that I had the hottest gossip in the scene, I told the story again and again. Peter Smith told me that lawyers had been called and the legal wheels were in motion to spring Bobbo on bail. I was finally beginning to relax. It was then, after about two or three hours of living the lif of luxury, that I remembered what I had left in a dusty heap down in the lobby. I excused myself, and head downstairs to see what was what.
The three hangers on had all wandered off and I found Zulu and Eli in the lobby with very worried expressions on their faces. I assured them all would eventually be as well as it could be. We got a room and decided to head back to Santa Barbara the next day, as there was very little more we could do. I slept the sleep of the dead, as it were.
The absolute funniest thing happened the very next day. I got up and went downstairs to obtain my continental under-ripe melon balls and shitty coffee. I passed a news stand. There on the front cover of the Sunday paper, in full living color, was a picture of Zulu taken through the glass of the rear window of Laughin Jack, accompanying a story about how the Dead had come to town. I bought a few copies, and we all had a good laugh. Later I framed that clipping with our unused Sunday concert ticket and gave it to her as a gift. I dont think she liked it very much though as it always reminded her of a very traumatic scary time. But whatever, a keepsake is a keepsake.
Epilogue:
We all, save Vanda, had to return to Vegas two months later for Bobbo's trial. I will never forget the look on the cops faces when we all showed up, all spit shined and in nice clothes, college degrees in hand. The prosecution cut a deal with the Dead's high power lawyer, and Bobbo paid a $10,000 fine, had to take a Drug Awareness Course by mail, and promise never to return to Vegas. Which was fine, none of us were all that hot to get back there anyway.
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