I was talking to a younger Deadhead about the hours I spent – literally hundreds of hours – copying cassette bootleg Grateful Dead shows years ago.

Now, every show is available at your fingertips. That’s a good thing, of course. But that old magic of scoring a rare show is gone.

I remember exactly where I was when I found the bootleg of Red Rocks 7/8/78. I was 18 and came across it digging through a free bin at a head shop on Broadway.

That sequence of songs –Estimated>Other One>Eyes – hearing it for the first time on my Walkman, blew my mind.

Just now, tweeting this thread, I found these old Ratdog shows in a drawer. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😂" title="Face with tears of joy" aria-label="Emoji: Face with tears of joy">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="❤️" title="Red heart" aria-label="Emoji: Red heart"> These shows are personally meaningful to me: The ‘95 one, the night Jerry died. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😢" title="Crying face" aria-label="Emoji: Crying face"> And I took my boyfriend to his first shows for Halloween ‘99 at the Paramount in Denver.