It's hard to believe that Jerry Garcia would have turned 75 Tuesday.
Eight days after his 53rd birthday, the Grateful Dead legend died in his sleep at a recovery center, while trying one last time to shake his addictions.
Garcia was always an old soul: He'd been here before and he knew it. He was already familiar with the rules, yet he defied conventions and created a body of work that many are still discovering and appreciating.
There are countless ways to mark his birthday — Grateful Dead theater meet up, anyone? — but 75 seems like too significant a number to ignore. So here's another tribute: a five-track playlist of different versions of "Dark Star," the song that launched 246 jams over The Grateful Dead's 28-year history. To my mind, it was the song that pushed Garcia and the entire band to their exploratory and avant garde edges.
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