The Tapers

Rick Fichter: So a canvas walks in and I ask him, what’s the story behind your idea?  He gets nervous and takes off.  I mean, I work one day, one tattoo, you don’t want to lose business, but a tattoo’s more than a splatter of ink on skin.  A great tattoo holds meaning, tells a story, has a voice. So I went pickin’.  Old junk holds meaning, tells a story, has a voice. 

I found a box of cassettes. The girl had spent a lot of time decorating the boxes. I'd say it was a girl, young in the 80s; just a guess. One was from a Taper, or maybe just a Deadhead with a recorder. I remember those days. It was Karma at a Dead Show, the interplay of intertwining fates, the spiritual law of cause and effect. I was a taper, this subculture of Deadheads who recorded shows and traded them. Story goes, Jerry was at Phil's and opened a big dictionary. He saw “Grateful Dead” in big, black letters staring up at him.  “That’s it,” he said.  The name is from a folktale about a wanderer who hears that a pauper died but can’t be buried till his debts are settled, so the traveler pays the debts and continues on his journey.  That night on the highway he’s threatened by thieves when out of nowhere a stranger appears to frighten them off.  It’s the pauper’s ghost, of course, the grateful dead. 

The stories make everything cool.

It’s that kind of spirit that kept us coming back, the tapers, the Church of Unlimited Devotion, spinning like Sufis to Gerry’s twangy guitar, the dragon chasers. I saw them at the Cow Palace and Winterland and JFK, anywhere, everywhere.  I haven’t been able to pin it down, 188 times, maybe. 

I met a guy.  His name was Bran. He heard one of my tapes and said, “That sounds like shit.” It didn’t, not to me. I was there, it takes me there, I can go back again when I want.

There are no bands like that anymore. Can’t break new ground when the grounds already broke.