Thursday, September 4, 2008

A friend of the devil.....


Just a quick post, I was down in the basement on the treadmill, and of course I got the whole iPod/Nike thing going, you know, the wireless transmitter I put in my Brookes running shoe (I took an Exacto knife to cut the rubber foam to drop it in there as opposed to buying a special Nike shoe with the indentation already built in) that sends a signal to a receiver hooked up to the iPod that tells me my pace and distance covered. I did 2 miles, (I'm not going to say I ran or walked, I'm too embarrassed. Oh damn, I guess that kind of gives it away huh?) and the last song that came up was "Friend of the Devil" by the Grateful Dead. (Q. What did the one Deadhead say to the other Deadhead when they ran out of pot? A. "This music sucks!")

I do like them though, when I was studying at DLI at the Presidio of Monterey, in the beautiful barracks, (I almost hate to call them barracks, they were more like 2 man suites with a great sunset view over Monterey and Pacific Grove) there was only one radio station I could pick up on my clock radio, and that was KPIG 107.5 FM, Freedom California. They played a pretty eclectic mix that included Hank Williams Sr. AND The Grateful Dead among others, so that's what turned me on to them. KPIG streams from the web, you should check it out, the playlist is amazing!

Anyway, sorry for getting off track, but as I'm coming up on the elevator after my work out, the sounds of the Dead are ringing in my ears. Thing of it was though, I had my ear buds out, so was the song literally stuck in my head? Before my workout, I went out onto Gay Street again, and it was another "Swinging Thursday", with the vendors, and the Politicos, and the bands. (Read about it in one of my older posts.) Last month was disco, this month the bands were an Irish Folk Rock band (Think U2 and Dave Matthews) and a Classic Rock outfit. As I walked into my apartment, I turned down the TV, opened a window, and sure enough, the band playing on the street was playing "Friend of the Devil"!

Ok so maybe it wasn't that much of a fluke, after all, on my iPod there are at least 5 Grateful Dead songs, and that band outside of merry old hippies probably have more than a few Grateful Dead and Van Morrison songs in their repertoire, so it was a coincidence that in fact was pretty likely. But, considering there are almost 400 songs on my iPod and I happened to be within earshot of the band playing the song at that moment, it was a kind of a cool thing that happened, no?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My station at DLI was, of all things, the high school station, Radio Stevenson, Pebble Beach. Of course, those kids had cash so they actually had a great little station. Very eclectic taste in music as well. They turned me on to a lot of groups and songs that I otherwise would not have heard.

In fact, I still have a "Radio Stevenson" Mix.

Good times...



But hey, I'm giving KPIG a listen!

Andrew Rodriguez said...

Yea, I remember that station too, I couldn't pick it up in my room on the clock radio, but I did have it saved on my pre-sets on the old yellow Nissan King Cab I had so I could listen to it while tooling around Monterey, Ft. Ord, Pacific Grove and Carmel, acting all hip and bohemian as one gets while wearing BDU's.

I'll never forget that's where I heard the name of a new band, "Toad the Wet Sprocket". I thought to myself, "Isn't that a bit from Monty Python?" and then I remember feeling great shame that I was right, that I knew it was a bit from Monty Python.