Who ever got the flag that I'm with y'all? I'm with y'all And Grave will lock you up and play football I'm a fanatic You see we got the magic And you and my boys are savage An open challenger man YouTube team keep it clean What's going on? It's Engraven here with another video Before we get into this video Make sure you spread positivity man Protect your energy You see somebody trying to kill your vibe Just move on Or just give them positive vibes And give them love man A Steelers fan on Twitter today In my response to the Alejandro Villanueva news I love that name by the way But he tried to kill the vibe I was like no He tried to make it a confrontation But I turned it into a conversation But anyway Team keep it clean I love y'all and I appreciate y'all Keep it going The Ravens They are scheduled to host Former Pittsburgh Steelers Alejandro Villanueva That is such a cool name Imagine hearing that come through the PA Welcome Alejandro Anyway Sorry to anybody that's listening for a headphone Anybody that's listening on your TV Probably end up breaking your speakers just now But He is somebody that's played Both sides of the tackle position He's played interior of the offensive line as well And with him What he would provide Would be multiple things And I recorded this video in 4K Just so we would have a clear understanding Of what this could mean for the Baltimore Ravens Now my internet is a bit rough So y'all probably not gonna see this for a long time But anyway So One of the first things that I thought of That came to my mind When I saw that they were bringing him in for a visit I thought Oh Orlando Brown Junior That trade is on the way Very very soon And it could mean that Because You gotta think about the timing of everything Where are we right now With the whole Orlando Brown Junior thing Well I thought that the deadline to trade him Is the first round of the draft By the end of the first round of the draft If he's not traded I don't think he's going anywhere And really I wouldn't be mad at that I would actually prefer that we keep Orlando Brown Junior And just have him at right tackle Because I don't want to make something that's not a problem A problem And the Ravens could probably solve it But still And right now Just We've been hearing about some different rumors With Orlando Brown Junior Some different teams being interested in Orlando Brown Junior But Nothing's happened yet So We just gotta wait it out and see But the timing right now We're about a week and a half away from the draft Now Would be the time Any time between now and draft night The first night of the draft Would be the time to trade Orlando Brown Junior So you can get that additional Draft pick Almost a comp pick I'm just Ravens just so ingrained in my mind I almost said comp pick But you can get that additional draft pick Or draft picks actually Cause Orlando Brown Junior You ain't gonna just Command one draft pick It's gonna be multiple So it will be a first and some change And Ravens They could even depending on what that first is They could even possibly give up some Back end draft picks But we'll see how everything works itself out If it does work itself out But And I know so many of us Are just ready for the draft I know I'm ready for it All the speculation and wondering Who the Ravens are gonna get Who this team and that team is gonna get I'm ready to just be done with I'm ready for the draft So we can just get through it But anyway Then see this is why I love y'all and y'all are much smarter than me Shout out to my guy Cole Jackson Who we had on the show A few weeks ago Maybe it was about a month ago He brought up something that I didn't even think of Because You know us Ravens fans We can be very very crazy Very very crazy I know I can be crazy Y'all can be crazy We can be crazy And we can think of a lot of crazy stuff A lot of crazy stuff can be our initial reaction When we see certain news And not that the Orlando Brown Junior Trace scenario Is a crazy That's a crazy reaction Thinking that this potential signing of this visit Could mean something for that Because it could But Another logical standpoint was brought out And I know I've seen some other Ravens fans Bring out the same point And it is a great great great point What my guy Cole Jackson said Because he was the first one that I saw say it He said Well this visit Could also be an indication Of where Ronnie Stanley is In his rehab process This could be an indication that the Ravens Could be looking for sort of an insurance policy For Ronnie Stanley just in case He's not ready to go And that's something a lot of times That when it comes to our offensive line situation Is something a lot of times that I don't think about But it's something that we have to think about Because And this is another reason why you just I think my guy Sonny brought this up But this is another reason why keeping Orlando Brown Junior would be great Because what if Hopefully this isn't the scenario But what if what would happen if You just traded Orlando Brown Junior And then Ronnie Stanley wasn't ready to go At the beginning of the season Now we expect him to be ready to go But what if you got to think about these things We got to think about these things as fans But even more importantly the front office Has to think about those things Would you put yourself in a situation Where Orlando Brown Junior is traded You got the draft fixed now nice But then Ronnie Stanley he's not ready to go So what do you do What do you do You got to have an insurance policy This is why it's important to have Plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D You got to have backup plans Just in case that plan A It doesn't go through So it's just um That is something that is very concerning So that it could mean that as well But right now Again it's just a visit And we'll see where this thing takes the Ravens I am very glad that they're doing this There's some options out there At the tackle positions Because even if Orlando Brown Junior doesn't get traded Again you could bring them in Some other guys out there too But you could bring them in as potential Insurance policies Also another thing too If they do sign them For them Ravens Steelers games If he does play he will be blocking Like throughout the regular season He'll be blocking like that I'm trying to protect them more Jackson But for them Steelers games He's going to be going like that Looking like E Honda man You know it's coming So we'll see what goes down Team keeping clean I love y'all so much I appreciate y'all so much Let's go out and have a great day I see this guy he's trying to sue Lamar Jackson for using For Lamar Jackson using photos of himself So this guy, well I guess he's a photographer He took pictures of Lamar Jackson in college And Lamar Jackson used those photos He probably made some money off of them maybe But now the guy is trying to sue Lamar Jackson for using Lamar Jackson's own photos But anyway that's a whole other story Team keeping clean I love y'all Appreciate you Please tell somebody you appreciate them And please keep spreading positivity Don't let anybody kill your vibe today man Don't let anybody kill your vibe Have a great day I will see you all later Ravens press conference at 11 The pre-draft press conference There's full screens in there So be on the lookout for that But I will see you all there We are out


I'm sure everybody in this room it would be very surprising if not if everyone in this room doesn't realize that three blocks That away is Harrington Street where Jerry grew up So that's one of the reasons why the Excelsior Library does this and and why Jerry Day makes Sense and why it's been you know, just is righteous low-key fun sweet event that that I'm That idea that this is sort of connected to and part of and Which is why I'm very pleased to be here. So thank you and thank you to the public library system I was teasing Daniela a minute ago by saying what I truly believe which is that all say all librarians are saints goddesses or gods and the I'm dead serious when I say if there's something better in our mixed-up miserable civilization Western civilization if there's something better Than putting all the information that we have collectively Into a place where it's freely accessible to everybody If there's anything more civilized than that I haven't found it yet and I do think that the public library is like the best thing we've come up with yet as a civilization So this you know, it's a privilege to be here I'm gonna mostly ramble and tell Jerry stories Which is I figure what frankly most folks want to hear about and most of them are kind of funny. I hope You'll have to tell me And then I've been this is kind of cruel, but I decided rather than As they say shoot, you know, give the way the best stuff at the beginning. I'm gonna say for the end As part of all the doodah of this Year of the 50th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of Jerry's passing Jerry's estate Asked me to edit together Transcripts of the interviews that I did with him in the 1980s actually in one of the 70s That you know, we're part of my research when when I finished the research Or some years later, I took all those cassettes as well as all my other virtually all my other files and most of most of my junk From Grateful Dead and all those t-shirts and all you know, we got a lot of t-shirts when you worked on the road You pretty much got a t-shirt a day There's a limit down many Grateful Dead t-shirts a man can wear or a woman And I gave them to the Archives at UC Santa Cruz and eventually the estate came upon these cassettes and said, why don't you make a book out of it? And so I did and it's called Jerry on Jerry and it's Well, I think I think you'll like it.  I Don't know what happened to them but There are you know, this is what what we got and that's some some great stuff including Tangents these great tangents that had nothing to do with Grateful Dead per se That even then I was thinking this is great stuff But it doesn't you when you're trying to write a book that's already going to be 500 pages or whatever it was You can't put it all in and I didn't and I cut it And it hurt and now you get it and you get it both in written form and better still in Audio form and so there'll be books on tape and I got to say that listening to Jerry rave is You're gonna like this. I promise like I think I can guarantee that and I'm gonna give you a free sample What I'm done because otherwise you might run out on me So There's gonna be so as I say I'm at the end. I want to play a little bit of Jerry talking about one of his favorite musicians Having said that for an introduction. I want to talk about Jerry as a You know as a human being The further away we get from his death The more people I know that you know me that are in awe of his music, but in some cases in many cases It's amazing running across people that never saw him play but still think of him as sort of godlike which was one of the things that troubled him most and and caused him to sort of want to cancel out The long story short for my background and all this is I wrote a book about Jack Kerouac I'm in the process the guy that helped me that gave me an important shove really important shove into writing it specifically by Kerouac was also a deadhead and turned me on to the Grateful Dead and took me to my first show and Gave me my first hit of acid at that show. Just good start, you know good combination and And by the way, I'm gonna interrupt myself a lot I just got hired yesterday to write the liner notes to my second show Which was in Springfield, Massachusetts in March 28th, 1973 good god those guys could play and But at any rate said I wanted to do this book about the Grateful Dead and I saw all these connections Neil Cassidy being the obvious one, but but I didn't know how I was about supposed to reach the Grateful Dead and To make a long story short and by the way that story is is in this plug Okay, now I'm plugging the new book Jerry on good Jerry, but but very briefly Eventually I met Jerry and Mentioned the book and Kerouac and on the road was a really important Moment in his young life. He's he's 15 16 He's a kid going to art school at what is now the Art Institute. It was then called California School of Fine Arts Hanging out in North Beach. He was he always thought of himself as the youngest beatnik. He wasn't a hippie He was the youngest beatnik and that what Kerouac had to say about life and Ginsburg and the rest was Really important to what he called his ethics his sense that you know life was to be lived For the spirit and for the fun and not for the bucks as it happened he managed to pull off the nice trick of Getting it both and and he felt by the way about money that as long as he spent it faster than he had it It was you know, it had no effect. It was just And he died waiting for the next paycheck, you know, you think he was rich, but never saved any which Except there was one large sum he got and his lawyer Accountant said to him. We're stealing this money anyway.  He said he sent a couple of guys to me To meet with me and they said Jerry says why don't you do us? Which is to say why don't you write a biography of the Grateful Dead? And I was trying to be cool and I said, oh, that sounds like a good idea. I'll give it some thought And then I went home and got drunk and started typing Jerry wants me to do this bus Among the higher moments of my life. I would say So I started that and then eventually I was running out of money and rocks golly had finally been sent to rehab and It took them about three months to notice that he was gone Because he hadn't really done much as a publicist at that point for quite a while and One day there was a band meeting and in the Grateful Dead a band meeting was everybody all employees And when it was just the band it was called a board meeting And One of the rules of the band meeting was that at the at the end of the night The You know the floor was open and everybody who had anything to say could say it you know gripes suggestions whatever and The receptionist raised their hand and said look We keep getting these media calls And nobody calls them back And they have to understand you know the media can understand it if If donald trump doesn't return your call because he's just been caught making a really insanely stupid mistake But generally speaking in the entertainment business people love that attention and they're very you know, they courted it. They need it The Grateful Dead didn't exactly And At any rate at that point the manager was overworked and didn't like the media in the first place So literally nobody would call So then the media would call back annoyed Proceed to annoy the receptionist who Truth be told could annoy pretty easily So She raised the question and jerry said get me now need to do it.  I'd once done a book tour So I understood that a publicist called up members of the media and said say something nice about my clients Now that was 30 some odd years ago and frankly, I haven't learned a hell of a lot since I know more people but you know That's pretty much publicity.   He blamed He blamed what he'd helped create which is namely the Grateful Dead um for Not being And it wasn't I mean these these were six guys that acted toward each other like kind of 19 year olds, you know Like they knew how to give each other shit Warm and tender and not so much and and responsive to everybody's needs shaky And brend had these This is one of the other great puzzles of the Grateful Dead jerry garcy. It was one of the most perceptive Subtle understanding people I will ever know How the fuck he could pick four times in a row The same damaged personality type that went with great talent Um for his keyboard player is one of life's mysteries because they were all the same per Different but the same per each of them had terrible issues of self-esteem which they proceeded to to self medicate And eventually one way the other killed themselves uh God only knows And uh pigpan you're counting pigpan keith brand and vince Uh, and we had two same same ones that that are still alive in in in between in bruce and tc um jerry was pretty distraught after after uh brandtide and and uh They just sort of they couldn't the idea of auditioning people was Made him crazy. I mean this idea of sitting in judgment. You're good. You're not It horrified him the whole thing So they got through four guys and it was like dear god He can he being vince he can you know do some high harmonies and play some keyboard We'll be having bruce and bruce wants me in another you know 10 shows eight shows whatever it was Take him so It was a hasty and and ultimately kind of damaging decision on any number of levels, but It was made and I went up to him after this this uh meeting and I said, uh, how do you want to announce it? And he has said, um I thank we're not going to announce it. I the hell with it.  We know when they when when we do our next show, they'll see who it is Okay, right So we're going to be in cleveland and the cleveland plane dealer is going to scoop the entire nation with who the new keyboard player for the Grateful Dead is I don't think so jerry. Well, obviously I didn't say that. I just went right So then I'm sort of speaking. Okay. How do I deal with this?  I said because then you're going to call your good buddy mickey heart and mickey who doesn't listen to jerry In any case and loves to see his name in the paper mickey will tell you exactly who it is And you'll have your story. There won't be any problem. Trust me if I may say so. I was right So I said his name has been swellman End of story Now jerry didn't care that it leaked because of course, you know, there's nothing about the world of the Grateful Dead They didn't you know Immediately leaked to 50 people. You know as soon as you turn your back He just didn't want to be bothered So, you know prime I didn't bother you. I just did it my way Which sort of leads to the final conclusion about being a publicist, which is that Despite that thing about not sucking up and I tried not to The fact is that you find out after a while that when you're a publicist, you have two clients You have those lovely people that sign your paychecks And then you have the media that you work with because you form a relationship with them And you trade favors and when they want something if you can do it They get it and and when you want something that's when you know Get out the thumb screws and remind them of all the favors you've done to them in the past and get it done Let's go back to jerry who as I say The further we get from his death, uh, you know the more hazy people sort of think of him Godlike but they They take him far too seriously one time We his daughter annabelle arranged a kind of a Not miracles. What's the uh When eternally ill kids or sick kids make a wish. Thank you Make a wish kind of situation with a kid in in a wheelchair. He wasn't terminal, but he was you know, and I got you know, I was asked to To monitor it when when it actually happened and the kid was sitting in the I had him in the room where jerry was going to come to and he's sitting and he's he's high He's hyperventilating.   I said he's human being if you Stay in quite the excited state that you're in he's going to get very nervous and you know And in about three minutes he's going to find an excuse to leave He's absolutely happy to talk with you, but you got to talk to him like a person and not like You know the president And he I might add for once he did the kid did and jerry did and it worked out very nicely Um, but among my favorite Jerry's Jerry's stories Is the one about my wedding My wife Who's a very fine photographer by the name of susana millman? Okay, this is a plug, but at least it's not for me and if you happen to be cruising on the internet, uh, her email address is or her Website is at mama razi dot com m a m a r a z i you've heard of the paparazzi. She's the mama razi Uh, and there are wonderful pictures in there both of the grateful dad and a lot of other stuff. That's too much to She likes to take travel photography too And she had known jerry before I knew her She actually taught jerry his first lessons in mac and talk She was the first adopter of a mac computer.  But that was a little two seventh grade. So she just Kept her mouth shut. Well, eventually we decided to get married And her father had passed when she was four. Um, so she asked jerry to walk her down the aisle The the other person that she would have chosen was out of the country And he said, okay, but but I gotta warn you, you know, none of the weddings. I've ever been part of I've ever worked out And we're up to 30 years now. So 30 years next next month. So, um, I guess it worked out Um, but that's not the story. We we get to the wedding day and Jerry um as the father of the brides father of the bride is uh Sitting in the room with the the bridesmaids and the bride and uh, he is obviously scared shitless And these are all people who I mean all these bridesmaids are other friends of his and old friends One of them had believed that I had dated pigpen in the day. She was about 17 Didn't know any better, but you know and um, she turns to jerry and said you You're you're nervous with no What?  He said I I don't have my axe. It's my magic shield And it was true. He you know with the guitar in his hands It's like susanna with a camera, you know, she'd face charging rhinos with a camera in her hands without it not so much It's a great wedding. I'm my dad The the kicker was my my dear mother-in-law who's Who was not young and and was working in the had been working in the garment district in new york city for about 60 years um went home and and is chatting with the the young people of the company and um, she says, you know, my daughter she got married This nice young man mr. Garcia Was you know part of the ceremony Guys think garcia Yes, my my son-in-law he works for this crazy band called the great Okay, so everybody's ears go up And she says yes, the Garcia was such a nice young man. He helped me on with my quote And one of them says that coat. She said yes Can I touch it? That's when she started learning What the grateful that what her daughter had gotten involved. Well, I had already been Involved with her a long time uh But I repeat in my running theme here is going to be jerry was human.  It's just as well. I've repressed it But it's it's a very bad movie And it's about an incident that did happen in which Lucian killed the man long story and I don't have time to give it fair reading but He paid his debt to society. He got out and he proceeded to be a an editor at united press international for about 50 years And he was my first interview when I did the carowac book And he became a bit of a you know, my father have long since died and he'd become a bit of a father figure to me And we stayed close friends Till you know till he died as a matter of fact, I had dinner with his widow last night who came out to visit. Um, and um Jerry knew lucian's knew very well who lucian was and lucian had moved to dc So I invited him to the show and I said to jerry, would you like to meet lucian car? And he said oh absolutely, but then as it approached he actually you know, it was visibly he was visibly nervous and He he shook hands and and made a wisecrack using the name that he that carac gave him in one of the books He's ah the the real role in major and they talked for a few minutes and then jerry sort of Found an excuse to do well. He had to go to work till this is before the show But I always found it interesting that that you know, that was that was the About the only time Al Gore no problem, you know vice president of the united states Wasn't a problem But uh, but you know lucian car this Interesting, but you know But the fact is that he had to do with the with the beat generation and and that was you know, that was jerry's heroes That was jerry, you know, so it was a genuine hero and and he felt that way But now that I mentioned al al gore Uh one of my favorite moments with garcia Was when we visited the white house Now you have to understand this is 1992. So we've been you know, clearly Banned from the place for the previous to the previous administration was bush and what was before bush one previous 12 years There was no interest in the grateful dead and going to the white house And so 19 this is now spring of 93 and we're coming to dc And a guy named denis alpert who's actually a distant cousin of richard alpert. Otherwise known as baburam das he was Al gore's what they call in politics director of advance what I would call road manager and uh a dead head And a friend of mine And I literally got a phone call saying hi It's our house now you want to come and play So I say to the man, you know who wants to go get a you know insiders tour The white house and we did and That was fine and we get into Vice president clinton was in atlanta that day doing something or other Maybe chasing. What's her name? But um, uh, we uh, vice president gore, you know greets us and and you know I'm standing there and then we he'd come to The show that summer as a matter of fact as senator as merely senator senator's fact. We had plenty of those But he had come and I knew he'd met people but I decided the the situation was formal enough. So Mr. Vice president, you know, mr. Jerry Garcia Down the line of the band everybody was there except bobby For something bobby was lobbying over the at the interior department. He was he was on it, you know Finally, we had a democratic administration that they might listen to him And vice president gore takes us into the oval office, you know, that's It's a hell of a room to walk into obviously And those of you who are my age, which is a lot of you may remember not all May remember that president clinton selected John kennedy's desk Which was at the smithsonian for his and for those of you old enough to Be somewhere near my age You will remember these very famous pictures that were in life magazine In the camelot era of john kennedy of john john who's been about three Plant this desk had a sort of secret door and he was playing hide and seek with with the desk And i'm standing in the corner of the oval office and there's Jerry and vice president gore Talking about this desk And I really had a flash and the flash was this Jerry was wearing sweatpants And some kind of Very grappy to ill it had long sleeves, but you know the equivalent of a black t-shirt There was beard dandruff all over his shirt He looked like an unmade bed And the vice president is wearing a you know a million dollar suit. I mean, you know impeccable The greatest thing about this is the two of them are talking with each other and neither of them I'm sure that the vice president did not speak with anybody nearly as slobbish that week Nor did jerry talk with anybody that well dressed that week And both of them didn't give a shit. They didn't care They were interested in each other's minds and they were just talking to each other and it was really lovely I you know, it's like completely non-judgmental as somebody who's who's since become buddhist i uh I think of that as a great example of Of non-judgmentalness Uh that they both they both achieved um Jerry Was a genuine lover of san francisco One of the things that in his whole life he only did once was not uh Was specifically and only because he loves this city um, and that was in the spring of 1993 The giants came this close to jetting off to tampa bay um and uh peter mcgowan and other people uh swiftly bought them And kept them in san francisco and then hired berry bonds A lot a lot was going to happen later, but let's let's leave that to the side berry bonds You know this incredible young star who has familial connections to the giants And we come to opening day at candlestick park 1993 and we were on the on tour And one of our uh one of our Co my one of my co-employees was the production assistant guy named eric colby who is completely Looney Tunes baseball family His wife among other things worked in the giant's ticket office And he says to the band This is a band. It's now in 1993 23 No 28 years in existence And they've never done the national anthem Now it is a union requirement When you are an up-and-coming band there are two things you have to do you have to do benefits And you have to sing the national anthem and events. It's just it's required and for most people is oh, yeah, sure Not the grateful dead. They've you know, it just had never done it and eric Says to jerry Would you do it or it goes to the whole the three of them were sitting at four of them Phil was not available that day. So it was jerry bobby and vince and bobby says i'll do it and jerry says yeah, okay, i'll do it And vince says oh, okay, of course i'll do it.  I became the road manager of this event I was in charge And it gets to the eyes suggest to jerry several times. What do you think about scheduling a rehearsal?  It's pretty good for grateful That they they never had that rehearsal to a performance ratio in their entire lives And for those of you who don't recall this or didn't follow baseball They went out And they killed it if i say so myself um, and it was it was just One of the moment i mean i was a giants fan myself to aid to get to stand on the field is kind of cool um The day before one of the crew members from shell remain nameless Turned to colby and said They're gonna suck tomorrow and it's your fault The grateful that are not gonna go did not go into the rock and roll hall of fame based on their singing. Okay You know we'll concede that um but With a little work and a and a decent arrangement what what vince called straight sons of the pioneers, which was the band that backed up Roy rogers Was it glennon? No Gene autry gene autry and the sons of the pioneers anyway legitimate old school four-part harmony or in this case three-part harmony and It was it was a beautiful day. I must say and the giants won and Barry bonds hit a home run his first at bat as a giant at home and I was sitting behind Jerry under these seats they put up on the stage and he's turning to his Then girlfriend and wife to be and saying that's very that's very bones. This is actually important but the punchline to all this is We have a press conference before the the game in the and the line up in the which was fine because i had been like Tap dancing and juggling balls in the air to To distract them from the fact that they had to be there at 10 o'clock in the morning for soundcheck But the game wasn't till one And for and I wasn't there was no way I was letting them leave the facility and go out in that traffic I'd never see them again.  So we're was like You know just over the moon And then they and jerry's meeting willy mccovey now I to this day I'm pretty sure willy didn't have a clue who jerry was but willy mccovey is among the more Manorly and decent human beings on the planet and he's you know, oh, it's a pleasure to meet you mr.  He's going to sing the national anthem No, and then he starts yelling at the other guys. Come on.  I I once saw him We were in a a Hyatt, you know with the glass elevators and and I watched him get in the ground floor and the ground floor and he was going up And from where I stood on the floor Every time the elevator stopped you'd watch him visibly tense up because of course there were millions of dead heads And they were going to get on the elevator and they were oh jerry and that that you know And it's just like at the moment he just wanted to you know shut up You know drink his coffee, whatever And uh it stops And I literally I watched him tense up And then my wife happened to get on well, you know, this is an exception. You know, she's just as high jerry shuts up and You could just watch him relax Stop one more time And again tension And three latino maids Hotel maids get on And again, you just watch this relaxation pour through and it's like these people do not know who I am They don't care who I am and this is the way I like it So it's understandable Uh A final story about that day with it with the giants. We're doing the uh The press conference. They're sitting in the dugout And I look over and I noticed that an attractive woman has suddenly out of nowhere slid into the dugout sitting next to jerry And it has his has her hand rather high up his thigh And then I realized it's only angela aliotto and she's a politician and you know politicians can't stand the idea of anybody Getting an attention from the the media without you know, sort of easing into the camera So I didn't take it very seriously And finally somebody said well jerry, you know 28 years you've never done this before, you know Why are you doing this and he said well, they asked us and he says well, why do you think they asked you and he says well It's like old whores and bad architecture. Senority will get you everything after a while Which was true Told that story I'll tell you a couple more stories and then I'm going to let you listen to jerry, which is frankly Great improvement on me um the Among the more interesting conversations I ever witnessed jerry take part in again talking about In this case not I want to say he's godlike but talking about one of his real strengths was which was a stunning knowledge of Several subjects one of which is the american song all of it. We're not talking about uh, just the blues or just rock and roll or All of it remember his father was a musician. He went back. He knew old jazz. He one time I Had I've been listening to the europe 72 album approximately a thousand.  I've been listening. I've listened to that 50 times Aha And you you you definitely played it as he said oh shit man You know and you proceeds to give me the complete history Of the woody woodpecker theme which was performed by the woody hermon band And he goes into it in considerable detail The best example of that And I also on my dad saw him um Actually get really disappointed because we were in the basement of the swissonian, right America's attic and we're in the basement with all the good stuff that you know They just don't have room to show you And in their instrument collection Except of course these instruments weren't they were just sitting there So they weren't in tune and they weren't really all that well taken care of and he couldn't play them I mean he was like picking up these ancient banjos and thinking ah, but so but at any rate One of the great moments I ever I ever had with them and it was just really quite a wonderful thing to witness We were uh, uh, it was a Garcia band show and we were at um Madison Square Garden and Jerry's roadie and confidant and and Everything the guy named steve perish And steve had a cousin Some distance removed because the guy's 90 and and steve was then you know, whatever 40 Um named Mitchell Well, Mitchell perish was the man who wrote stardust and stars fell on alabama And a number of American classic songs He was one of the early presidents of the as ask cap, which is the songwriters association Mitchell perish was a big deal. He's also a very ornery guy Which is why he kept changing writing partners Like, you know, he did one song for hoagie car michael, but you notice he didn't do a bunch or maybe he did too so unlike Some of the great, you know rogers and the hammerstein and low or whatever, you know, he tended not to Stay with with his partners and this possibly why he's less well known, but you know stardust alone is one of the gems And uh, he was 90 he came to the show came backstage to the show He uh, had worn out his knees.  This is after the show he and jerry get into a wrap and Mitchell perish starts it off by saying When I wrote the songs For the marx brothers show coconuts in 1923 and you can bet I looked it up and he wasn't bsing It's like, okay, you know, this is like 1993. So that's 70 years later. We're listening to him I was just it was astonishing Outside of the fact that anybody who worked with the marx brothers is you know godlike And they're going so they go into this wild conversation about songs and sorry what what is amazing is Mitchell perish lived it. He knew those people jerry matched him Word for word story for story song for song. Oh, yeah, that reminds me of Just out of his ears And what was really funny is, you know It's like it's like one of those silent tennis games where there's two people, you know, there's 30 people in the room Every chair is taken. It's you know, there's everybody who could get into the room has gotten into the room and Nobody's saying a word. Everybody's just listening to this this conversation because it you know, frankly, it's worth it It's it was remarkable Including the vice president barrister records Who can't find any seats? So he's sitting on the floor wearing a $2,000 suit, which I loved Both that you know that that he couldn't find a seat and that he was willing to sit on the floor Even with his beautiful suit. Roy was actually a real A real person and I found that charming um I'll just finish by saying If you wanted a lot of guidance Jerry Garcia would have been a terrible boss because you weren't going to get any um Unless you screwed up and I didn't want I Coytsman grabbed me said get him to sign this now And I said, okay, what Billy Coytsman Steps over to you and says get him to sign it now. You generally want to go along with the program Um Except that I hadn't looked at my watch and it was literally, you know, they were just about to go on and Jerry signed it for whatever reason But the only time you ever glared at me where he was like, you know that this is wrong And I looked at my watch. I said, oh, you know, sorry He did compliment me twice um I'll I'll be egotistical enough to share them because it's a little embarrassing, but This is sort of the way you work. I mean I worked for him for 15 years we did a Mickey Mickey put out a cd Um of What the hell was it called the voices of the rainforest I think and it was these jungle chants Mostly in languages that that were The people that all died that you know, literally these obscure languages that didn't even literally no one still spoke What you want to call this a fairly obscure record So he says what are we going to do about this? They said, well, you know There's there's frankly only one thing to do about this if you want, you know a lot of coverage It was in association with the library of congress And I said the only way we're going to get any kind of coverage of this is a Ask the band to shill for you and b um What was the other thing? Oh and get a lot of political friends there So he said sure Okay, I'll ask the band Um, and the whole the whole band came, you know for at least briefly um and I've been doing the publicity at that point for a fair number of years and I had It was it was like one of those games where where I had eight significant media say or 10 And five band members plus a couple of other people from the library that were important And I had you know, it was like one of those puzzles where I had to get everybody to meet with everybody else And I had half an hour or 45 minutes to do it And I couldn't raise my voice and I couldn't run I had a scurry fast, but I couldn't run because because I had people in different corners of The great hall of the library of congress, which is an amazing room and um I I handled it that day. I only glared at one person this this Kid who worked for a senator who you know It was like running around with a brownie camera asking all the band members to take pictures It's like and I finally looked down.  I came reasonably close. It was a good day Good night and got it all done. I was walking Jerry out to the vehicle and he said, you know You you know, you sort of figured out this gig In the last how at that point had been 10 probably 10 years nine years that I worked for him And I thought that was like one of the great compliments that I ever got the other one Was the greatest compliment I ever got which was the bammies so God help us all with the grateful dead in 1987 We put out an album called in the dark and a song on it called touch of gray The grateful that's one and only hit when I Walked I I was the lucky boy who walked into the dressing room in September of 1987 at Madison Square Garden and said guys, I have some serious news and they'll also look at me You now have a top 10 hit your the song is number nine And Garcia looked at me and said I am appalled and he meant it. I mean, it was something just too strange about having this hit Among other things one of the results. Well, he didn't mind cashing the checks. I might add And he did march out as a result of that hit and by The 16-cylinder BMW that could do 140 or something and he enjoyed that and hunter bought a new house You know, everybody was okay with that part It led to crowd control problems that is a whole different subject It also led to the grateful dead winning every single award at the next march is bammies Bay Area Music Awards, which was our sort of local miniature version of the grammies And you know, theoretically Well for starters The point is it's theoretically at least it wasn't really it was fixed. It was a competition You know, it was the the public voted and the whole idea of a competition and music Struck Jerry is insane, which is why for instance when the grateful dead were Inducted into the rock and roll Hall of Fame. He wouldn't go. He just said why you know, no it's Competition, you know some get in and some don't no leave me out I this was by 93 and I might add that by then he was sliding into the depression that he would be in when he died and He was in 1988 it was a lot. He was, you know, still sober from his The diabetic coma he had in 86 and he recovered and you know, 87 was a great year of health and and Success and fun and and everybody was in a wonderful mood And um, it was still that way in the spring of 88 and I I just kept looking at him and saying No bless oblige You've got friends that you've been playing with Friends you've been seeing around the city for 30 years. They want to celebrate you And finally went all right, I'll do it so We get to that night and the rest of the band is all you know dressed up in their black tie And of course jerry looked like a joe schmo the schlub thank god, but He he pulled up in the back of the of Civic auditorium Got out of the got out of his car Walked up and looked at me and said man I just this is the best compliment I ever got he said I just couldn't figure out a way to leave you holding the bag And I went I thank you for that And there was just everything about it, you know the comp there was an element of competition There was also the fact that they were going to make him play on somebody else's on a Standard amp, which is what as a musician he was really busy about um And in general it was going to be you know 12 people on the stage. It was it was we called it the grateful news It was all of the grateful dead and all of hui louis and the news Playing good morning little school girl, which you know, I mean hui is Absolutely competent to do that both as a harmonica player and a vocalist um When you have you know two of everything or three counting drummers and we had plenty of those to start with It gets less, you know, it might be fun theatrically, but it's it's less than great music. So That said um I want to leave you with gerry As I say, uh, this is going to come out in november and it's called gerry on gerry Come on Thank you. Um And in it there, you know, there's there's historical chapters and then at the end of every historical chapter There's a place where he just sort of Starts raving about something. Uh, there's one about community and one about politics and one about lsd and Rata rata lots of different Ones This one is um Him talking about a man named scottie stoneman scottie stoneman Was the fiddle player for the kentucky kernels scottie was maybe 10 years older than gerry the kernels were his age They were actually the family was from somewhere appropriate But they'd lived in los angeles oddly enough But they were part of the this is in 1963 and they're very hot young bluegrass players and great friends of gerry and scottie who was this Sort of a version of hank williams. He he was not going to live very long Because he drank anything heratonic. You name it that that kind of thing But he was brilliant and I picked this for you if not if only because It is gerry raving about something he loves and his Enthusiasm quotient is at about 100 101 out of a scale of one to ten Which is saying something. I mean he could get enthusiastic about a lot of stuff But this is about the most enthusiastic. I ever heard him It was from scottie stoneman Oh, yeah, well scottie stoneman was one.  It would be some crazed Idea that stretched all the way across that. I mean he he was like the Coltrane of country fiddle really I mean have you ever heard him play? I'll have to find you some tapes of him playing really outside. I mean he played so soulfully his playing had so much pain and And uh beautiful You know and plus incredible Sensibilities, man. I mean the incredible freshness and meanness and Of his ideas of just oh, I mean he he's played some of the coolest solos and bluegrass music bar none You know, I mean some of them are so fresh and so exciting I'll have to play in my uh That there I've got one record somewhere. It's a reissue of The kentucky kernels where I do the intro it's I do a live intro from a show that I put on of them and when Scott summons was playing for him and There's some there's two or three tunes on there where he's and this is one he when I heard him play He was sick. He was dying He died from drinking hair tonic You know, he's one of those guys that was now alcoholic by the time he was 14 15 You know another thing and uh, and he died from drinking hair tonic and when I heard when I heard him play He was sick and dying in fact and man his play was so gorgeous and and uh I knew guys that that learned from him Richard green that fiddler learned from him and he he'd asked scottie how he played something scottie would just say I just play it lonesome Beautiful it was interesting because of course your your predecessor when at least when you're playing banjo I think you would acknowledge that one of the guys you were super conscious of Was bill keith simply because he was the the city guy who would you know made it into the real bluegrass world Right, and of course his trip was was you know playing fiddle or banjo Yeah, so and and what I what I liked more than that was the wonderful sense of rhythmic intuition and syncopation He had this plane that was more subtle. It was in his roles And his fiddle stuff was not that I didn't get off on it that much although I learned it of course Uh, but it was his other stuff that knocked me out. I mean he had a fantastic Way of playing things that syncopated in surprising ways and went on and on But had but did it really gracefully boy. He had some cool back up his backup playing The plane that you don't it's not out front that he did was what was really a knockout boy I listened through the singing to what he was doing and just go. Oh my god. You'll listen to that guy, you know Yeah Shoo, you know, I mean that's what I really learned from I learned the gesture of his playing You know something else I can't I don't even know exactly what it is But the thing of being able to extend ideas a little more and to have a Fresh notion of how to syncopate things and that and he did it. I don't know where he got that stuff But boy it was so cool, you know as He brought something to banjo playing for me I mean he influenced me in another way much more than that solos than that fiddle style Although the fiddle style is important It for me the other part of his banjo play was because it was more like the traditional shrug style in it in sense you know, uh But it had another thing all together and that it kind of actually other banjo players didn't pick up on it It's what it's a little detail of his playing that kind of missed the boat, you know The other guys didn't catch and it and it basically comes out of rhythm That's what I feel. Yeah, that's what it belongs to. That's where it's just where you place the notes Where you put them rhythmically And uh and that you know, it's something that's It's affected my playing much more even I mean it's still in my guitar playing and I hear it even if nobody else even if I could never trace it down I hear it, you know well, it's just What you just said is is in a sense a rewrite of a paragraph that I wrote about carowak and parker And actually enchapson pollock in which the response to the modern post world war two world was And again, and it's the natural consequence of going into improvisation and into the intuitive is You you can't necessarily on the intuitive level When it all blows away rhythm is what's going to take you there. Yeah, and and it's That bebop thing for them. It was that bebop thing. You're right about that And the thing is sort of thing mon rose bluegrass is to me On a historical on a cultural speaking as a cultural historian is exactly the same thing as charlie parker Namely, it's white bebop. It's white bebop. It's taking it's taking the old, you know, the basic old stuff pop music gospel blah blah blah And speeding it up. That's right taken in the 1940s and like max roach told me The only thing it doesn't have is it doesn't have the harmonic richness of bebop You know, and I mean, that's that's what it's missing. But it has everything else Well, it really does the direction of the voice and you know But the well like the fiddle playing in the guy like well scottie stoneman was the example of it He was like the charlie parker of country fiddle, you know, I mean you hear him pause all play some stuff for you Sometimes you'll hear it man. You won't will not believe it.  He'd be playing these fiddle tunes and pretty soon every musician on the stage Would be standing there going ding ding, you know, they they their instruments would like turn to water You know, they they they stopped playing almost entirely and they'd just be listening to scottie And he'd be slawing away man.   I mean I For some of the highest moments I had in the audience in fact the model for For getting high musically for me was the thing of being in an audience listening to scottie play, you know I rest my case. Thank you all very much for coming I am happy to answer questions or but I deny everything so Um, I didn't know about it. So it wasn't scary to me. Um He uh, yeah, uh and I'm not so sure. I wouldn't exaggerate it too much because Um So, you know, we went into this coma in august Um I'm not sure murrell saunders sort of came around and started teaching, you know, reviewing the basics of music with him Um, I do know Uh that In october Um, sandy rothman His old friend, uh would would come visit and um Like a week later would come back with his instruments and uh instrument and I think with david nelson if I recall correctly And they played in jerry, you know, he didn't notice anything out about jerry at all So we're only talking, you know, we're talking about a two month recovery time So it was like a blitz So I I think it I think Either that or murrell is just a hell of a therapist. Uh, but I don't think it it took too long. Um, he Uh, there's an interview. Um, and he talks about it Um, that's in the book, uh stuff that made made it into the book where I did an interview with him I'm not sure uh precisely when but I think it was in november of 86 Which is to say and you know, he was Spot on but he was also talking about The meltdown is the way he referred to it and and and he said that there were certain words or concepts even that he he'd go And he'd have to turn his people and say what's the word for?  He's lost a few brain cells in the interval. That's uh, you know He's he he recovered pretty quickly. Thank you. Thank you lord Thank you. Grateful dad. Thank you whatever Gods you wish to invoke Anyway, else His dad played a band. There was only records of did he play the war field? Is there any ads and old newspapers or anything like that? I think that you have a job that you just assigned yourself. Uh, not that I'm aware of and I think it but you know, and it's a darn good Question and somebody with even more time than I had as a you know The folks at the archive should assign an intern to go plow through The and look for the name. Jose Garcia in the 20s and early 30s by the middle The story the family legend was that eventually he got booted out of the union for violating some rule And open and in fact did open a bar Uh, uh, zoom will be called joes on the corner first in Harrison, which At different corners as different buildings got built or torn down He he and and then his widow um, uh, mrs. Garcia had until Late in the 50s and that's where jerry, you know jerry would work there and during high school time So But the answer is uh, no, you know, he played the clarinet and other reeds And as jerry said he was a genre player like I am And Don't believe it when jerry says a I heard him playing because he was four when he died and b Don't believe him When he says I saw him died. He died drown he drowned fishing It seems pretty clear that jerry was He heard about it so much as a kid. It's sort of he created a memory, but At any rate he was there. It was around The only time I ever caught him lying Because you know he really went evasive on me when I brought that up The problem for him had been that I had I had Interviewed bobby freeman at a Some play he was playing at some club If it wasn't in the stone's town gallery, it was somewhere in that corner of the city you know a grim gig For well, he was a you know a two hit wonder, uh, but at any rate, uh, and I asked him You know to jerry garcyer And he's well his first response was there wasn't any guitar on that record And I said well everybody else seems to think so and Anyway, whatever it was. It was definitely not jerry garcyer It was clearly a mild little fib That in the early days like when he was you know high school or early sixties The kind of thing that a guy says, you know bob dillon claimed to have recorded with bobby ridell You know etc It was a harmless fib when I asked him about it. He just sort of went I don't remember It's the only time he ever said that to me. So no Like I say, I believe that he did say that to people. No, I don't I don't think so Oh a couple things one can you talk about his relationship with david grissman and also What was he most proud of as far as maybe a collaboration a tour an album music? He was there something that he was really proud of the first four ninth notes of teacher children well He said I hit that And you know all that came in the conversation in which he was talking about um doing the love theme from michelangelo antonioni in zebriski point and Doing one take and antonioni saying brilliant. Thank you And he went no, no, no, I'm just getting started. No, no, no, you're fine Actually david carsby did the same thing to him in the the licks on teacher children. Well, but On reflection jerry said I don't think I could have done it any better that one that one. I got right Grisman 10 seconds Uh, well, he loved david Um, what happened was of course that um David their relationship fell into the aftermath of the collapse of grateful dead records when um Rack out run rack out took the 200 000 that was supposed to finance the record company for the next year and split um and You know that Everybody knew jerry included that that rack out was You know what he referred to himself as a barracuda He was a thief and then you know, he had no ethics but everybody assumed that you know That might work, you know that he might Do you know negative things to people outside the scene but not us right and but to quote rack out, you know Uh, I just I'm a barracuda and I did what barracudas do and after a while you turn on the hand That's feeding you and you bite it and you split um As a result of that and I'm sure there are many other substories But one thing is that grisman had been um owed. I think it was 10 grand, but whatever a figure Significant figure to him Um for his part in producing olden in the way The record And he didn't get it There wasn't any money left Well, you know god loved jerry, but Confronting embarrassing moments was not his strong point And he ducked You know, he didn't he you know, I don't know about him.  That's 1974 16 years past uh Jerry I'm not sure of the sequence of all this, but Jerry arranges uh for david to get a rex foundation grant of 10 000 things Well, it may take a while to come around what it does is come around And grisman is very pleased and then they run into each other somewhere.  I spent a lot of time in those sessions um It was uh, you know They both loved to get stoned and play music simple. That's that's what they did um And the first time jerry was there he walked in and and said I figured it figured it out man You know the way this will make sense is we should just decide we're making a record. So let's make a record and uh and doggy said sure fine and decimal Dave Dave denison who was dog's mixer and and sound guy and recording engineer Turned on the tape recorder and you know, they had the first three songs down the first day Even before It was able to get the rest of his band in to you know to back them up um It was a very sweet scene.   I haven't listened to in 30 years You know and the albums, you know, it's pretty most pretty pretty much most of them. I mean When was the last time you listened to his first solo album? I don't know about you, but it's been a long time And boy, is it good by the way in case you were wondering and I also listened to To some not for kids only which is another one of my absolute favorites Especially the when they do the the comedy the comedy howdy stranger routine, which is just hysterical But at any rate, um, so yeah, that that was their relationship and it's stayed sweet Till the last music Jerry ever played was in dog's house recording blue yodel number nine for um A tribute to jimmy rogers that bob dillan was putting together Yeah, all that.  I'm sorry Teddy bears picnic all that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it was just this little, uh, it was the probably I imagine it started out as two bedrooms downstairs Uh, and they you know knocked it into one fairly large room divided so there was a control room in a recording space and not very big not very fancy, but Whoop, sorry good enough and good enough to get some good sounds and they had a lot of fun.  No, I guess it was his sister um monrose Sister. Yeah, right. Yeah. Dave's dark BAM Anyway, um, yeah all that Some more couple more Yeah Very close to where he was stationed in the studio. Is there any records? It's public records all these army records, I thought San Bruno possibly has them. Is there any photos of him in the army or any records? Um, None that I you know, my father was in the army for 20 years. I knew just enough to know I'm not wasting my time trying to get you know, um, there there's him. There's a wonderfully funny package I repeat. I'm not plugging honest, but The gerry on gerry he he gets into a rap about the army that's hysterical His service in the army and how ridiculous it was and The punchline being that that of course, um, you know, here's here's this kid, you know, 17 Clueless joins the army. He drops out of high school and joins the army, which is standard practice in 1959 or 60 Thinking well, I'll you know, I'll see the world. I'll get around as he put it Shit, I barely got out of san francisco county gets all the way down to fordord And lands at the presidio, which as I said to him, you do realize that that was the best assignment in the entire army Okay, my father 20 year man spent You know, I mentioned this to him once and he was like It's the best duty there is it's just you're in san francisco and you're You're taking care of then and just it's a headquarter situation and blah blah blah And um, there's gerry driving the garbage truck and and uh, and a wrecker and um I'm working on missiles over on marina on the headlands in marin So I looked at my said dizzy, you know That'll really reassure you about the quality of the united states army. Can you imagine gerry garcia working on a missile? Hard to hard to accept but the answer is yes. I mean he was there. I believe him and and I have no doubt of it Um, but as far as records go, I don't know Okay, a couple more He wanted Who was who was in it with him? Whoever was in it with him. They needed the money and he went Shit, this is you know for an afternoon of my time to be able to tighten them up for 10 or whatever thousand dollars that they got Strictly for that reason. He certainly didn't do it for you know to put anything into his pocket Was it the hardest publicist in those last couple of years when the band's Uh, you know performances were lacking. So much as they were gerry and poor health I mean will you find yourself up against?  This guy's barely on the stage And and um Never once did I get a question like that and I should have absolutely should have uh The first show we did and and this is a little early Although it started there in the fall of 90 we did the europe tour and The story I got from steve was that um Jerry did not have any drugs and so uh And you know, of course, we were all jet lagged. It was it's still and we've been in europe at least two days already but We were zoned and um, anyway, he just took a chunk of hash and ate it At any rate he was barely on the plan at that night Um and the number of people that came up to me and told me how brilliant a show it was was like It's like we and the funny part was Vince This was like vince's 10th show or something early on in the process And he came off the show stage probably at intermission And he was distraught.  It's the band. Trust me.  There was that was one of the great nights. Somehow it was the sweetest moment of We had that we all People gave you champagne.   You could see the opera house the paris opera house, right family opera the whole the original It was it was needed We had We drank all the champagne and you know looked at the opera house.  This is the second night. I guess in london maybe the third and uh In the course of doing all my little political nonsense in in In dc I had met this woman Who was like this? She's now a lobbyist as they all become Who's a real political fixer and she was a good buddies with a member of parliament who I'd gotten to know really nice guy Neil Abercrombie and I had said to him As long as they're not tories you can invite anybody you want And uh, one of the people there was tonic Blair who was still it was you know, margaret thatcher We're still prime minister. This is a year or two before he rose and he had played in a rock and roll band at cotton college, you know, so and um So there's about 10 members of parliament. I'm surrounded by the back state.  It's a good way to end. Um I happen to go that not this is halloween And I happen to go I hope generally went in the first vehicle to to go to the venue because I wanted to putter around and Meet the security and tell them who they were working for and what they were going to do Um, and so I get there early and jerry always went first so jerry and vince and I are in this bus for 10 Um, and we're we're crossing london and of course, you know, there's no freeways So it was slower than it should have been because wembley's Way the hell ain't going on in the west of london and and we were in uh, this very lovely hotel in mayfair um And we get about halfway there and jerry starts mumbling fuck Grumble grumble grumble And because what vince goes what and he says We got to do werewolves of london And vince go, you know vince, I don't even know if he knew the song, but it was like It's halloween. It's london now. You know, how can you not do this song? And of course vince is gone. I don't know the song It's all right. I'll teach you and um And he does And you know, they do the show um, you know, and It's a good show It's always been my theory, by the way, if you feel free to evaluate my opinion, uh, for what it's worth But it's always been my theory that the last show of a tour Grades very high on the premise that, you know, they consciously want to leave, you know, leave it on the floor Leave it leave it leave it there play, you know blow it out Because tomorrow you ain't gonna be working um and uh They come back out and of course the entire audience is going okay Play put where it was of london, please and It's funny because I mean I've listened to it a couple of times and analyzed it. It's very interesting how They adapted and jerry loved warren zevon warren zevon. I might add open for the grateful dead boy The weirdest opening act the grateful that ever had it was in santa barbra. I was there He was drunk as he admitted. He was drunk at every show he played for the decade. I have a very bad problem and um The audience, you know, it was like he was made welcome at the beginning and he played very badly And after a while he started abusing the audience and the audience being dead heads.  I when he brought her out. I thought wow they do a song of hers Maybe, you know angel from on company. That would be really cool. No. No, she's brought all the way out Just so she could do awoo during where it was of london, which Jerry had loved, you know, I mean because these these they start playing it um So anyway, they they what I realized that night in london was that um the the melody On as you'd expect on the warren zevon version of course is the piano because the That's what warren was playing and it's his song But jerry of course Transposes it and he's playing it on the guitar Which gives it a snap? frankly that warren's Really didn't have it was in fact, it was great. I can't sing it the way warren did but um But you know, it's a great weird song and um and the grateful day were Pretty good cover band. So it was a great moment. Anyway, um Support your public library and support jerry's day and thank you all for coming


If you interact with APIs, you've probably heard of JSON Web Tokens before. This compact way of exchanging information made its way into most of the major web frameworks out there. And if you're wondering how to parse and validate JWTs in Python, you came to the right place. I'm Justin Porau, a developer advocate here at Thira. If you need to understand the basics of JWTs, I recommend you watch my previous video on how to create JWTs in Python. Linked in the description below. And without further ado, let's write some code. I already created and activated on Python environment. I already have PyDWT and iPython installed. But if you need to install it on your M, you can do it by running this command. This will install all you need. So PyDWT is the most popular library for dealing with JWTs. And we are going to use that today. And iPython is an interactive Python console. It has a few features like code completion and syntax highlighting that I really like. But feel free to choose whichever interface or Python console you prefer. So let me clear this and start my console. iPython and I'm going to import JWT. Now, I already have a token that I want to verify the signature. Let me copy that. And it is this token here. And with PyDWT, this will take one simple line of code. Yes, only one. You just need to use the decode method from the JWT module and pass the token and the secret. And that would be it. So this would be JWT.decode. My token is secret. And the algorithm used for signing the token. Of course, this only takes one line of code because I already know everything that is to know about this token. And you cannot hear that the output of this command is actually a dictionary with the payload of my token. And this is printed out because this token was successfully verified. So that's the only way we can see the payload. So I will show you what happens when the verification fails in a bit. But let's say you don't know how this token was generated, right? So one thing that you could do is copy this token and paste it on our friendly JWT.io. And here's JWT.io that I opened my browser and it already has an example token. I can paste my new token here and you can see the header, the payload and that the signature is not verified because I didn't fill out the correct secret for this token. But what if you want to use Python to check this out? The way to do it is actually using PyDWT once more. And let's go over how you can do that. Because PyDWT is such a nice tool that is one method for decoding the header of the token. So instead of going to the JWT.io, you can get the header without actually verifying the signature of the token. And believe me, you could do this manually by taking the part of the string that has the header, decoding it, turning it into a dictionary. But this would take two extra modules and a few lines of code. So I don't want to do that. And PyDWT actually gives me a method to do that. So let's see how that works. So instead of using the code this time, I'm going to use JWT.get unverified header. And I'm going to pass my token. And now you can see here my header. It is also a dictionary. And if I store this header into a variable, you can use that to make your scripts a bit smarter. That's awesome, right? So let me do that and do header data equals what is the result of get unverified header. Now I can reuse this to decode my token. So if I come here and because this is a dictionary, I can access the algorithm. Let me make this a little bit bigger so you can see the algorithm by referring to the dictionary and the algorithm key. And if I run this, you can see the same payload once more. And just like that, looks like magic, right?  But we know the real life isn't like this, right? So what happens if my token doesn't get verified? Let's say, I don't know, it expired. So let's see how you can deal with bailing and verifying the token itself. What happens is when you try to verify a token that is not verifiable, for instance, an expired token, by GWT, you will raise the never. So I got another token that I can use for this. And let me copy that. And I'm also going to copy the code that I already got. Okay, so this token here actually has an expiration date set in the past from today. And because it is expired, when I try to decode it, it's going to give an error. So let's see what happens. And you can see here, it gives me the expired signature error. And if I scroll up, because IPython shows a very detailed traceback, it shows the error happened when I tried to use the decode method. Awesome. But now that you know that, how can you handle this in your scripts? So one way to do it is actually using the errors that comes with PyGWT. And what I can do is actually importing them from the exceptions module. And I'm going to import this expired signature error specific error. And now I can do a try accept clause to deal with this error when they happen. So my code would look a little bit like this. So now you can see here that I have a try. It tries to decode and that it fails because of the expired signature error. It prints out an error, a friendly error. So if I run this and you can see here that instead of having that enormous traceback, I can see that the signature is expired. Awesome. Now, if you need more details on the steps that are required for validating or verifying your tokens, I recommend you read out zero documentation on the subject that is linked in the description below. Now, before I finish this video, I want to make sure that you know how to verify the signature of your token if we use an asymmetric algorithm. And if you don't know what that is, that's okay. An asymmetric algorithm like RS256 is one algorithm that uses a private key for signing and a public key for verifying the signature. So let's do just that. I already have a token here again. I'm going to clean this script because this token is a little bit big. And this was signed using RS256. So let's verify the signature of this other token. So the first thing I need to do is actually read the public key so I can do the verification. So I already have my public key inside of a .ssh folder in my working directory. So you can see that here. So that's that. And I can read it and store it in the public key variable because I want to use it. So the first thing, I open it and then I use the method read so that I can get the bytes version of this key. And after that, I need to do two more steps. So it is important to know that this particular key was generated using SSH key gen 2. And because SSH key gen 2 uses a particular encryption algorithm, I'm not going to go over right now. But that means I need a specific method to be able to load this key and use it. So that takes me to the second step after this one. That is to import the method I need to use to read this key. So this comes from the serialization module from the cryptography package. And the way to do it is actually do from cryptography. And I want the module hazmat, hazmat, primitives. And I can import the serialization. Now what I need to do is actually load this key using the serialization module. So to do that, I'm going to save my key into a key variable because I want to use it later. And I'm going to call this serialization dot load. And you can see here I have a number of loading methods. And the one that I want is actually SSH public key. So what I need to do is pass the bytes version of my key because the red method gave me a string. And the load SSH pub keys actually requires a bytes object. So the way to do this is using code the string beauty method. I'm going to do that here. And once I run this, I get the loaded version of my public key. And now I can use this key to actually verify my token. So let's do that much more. And I'm going to copy my code for my notes. And now I got it. You can see here that instead of using a secret, I now using my key. And I updated the algorithms list to reflect the algorithm used. And now you see the result of my verification. And that's it. You just verify the WT sign with a symmetric algorithm. Yay you. That's all for today folks. Now you know all the necessary steps need to validate your JWTs in Python. If you have any questions that want to see more videos like this here in the channel, leave a comment down below. Also, remember to subscribe to the channel and check out the link session in the description of this video. There you'll find a link for the GitHub repo with all the code that I showed today, a blog post on the same topic and a link for the JWT handbook in case you need more in-depth resources on JWTs. Thank you for watching and I'll see you soon. Bye.


This is the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha, a really nice looking thin design with a crazy glass top, glass button, transparent, you see, transparent, really nice looking.  It's got a 13 megapixel HDR display, it's a 720p. So the touch panel looks really good. This is a nice looking phone, Alcatel OneTouch, cool, cool color, and there's another color, which is also cool, I think, also looks very nice. Right here, and there might even be another one, but that's the same again. So you might buy it in one of these golden containers, and then you have LED magic flip, battery 3400, which is a huge amount, blue juice, and you get the sidekick if you want. So, nice stuff, right here, right in this.


All these other issues are like suppose you take a human being, let's say you have five different health issues, you have a cardiologist looking at your heart, you have another specialist looking at your liver, kidney, another one, another one for different things. But to make all this work meaningful, first thing is you must keep the person alive. Right now that's where we are. We are not understanding everything that we know as life, everything comes from soil. So if we don't tend to this now, it'll go out of our hand and it doesn't take any great technology, nor does it take any great amount of financial outlays, it just needs a focused determined approach.


Now the last project, which is missing, which I promise is for the system warbench for STM32 from the AC6 company Then I will select the SW4 STM32 and I again click on the OK and We can generate the source codes Now here we don't have any option to open directly the file We need first to open the system warbench and then we import our project We click on the close and I will open my project manually Now I'm starting with with the System warbench and then first I need to select the workspace Again, I will select my workspace To the same position when I have my project, sorry too many projects I select here the cube my example projects and the same place place where is my My project for the system warbench Okay, and I open open my project now my System warbench has started. I here again close the welcome tab like in the Atolic You can see I have no project here. Then we need first to import our project Then I here go into menu file here select the import and I need to Select the type of the of the project I have the existing project and I wanted to put it into my workspace Here you need to search for your project Then I will try here The set here my project which I generated selected You only inform me that this project is On the same place as my workspace. It's okay And I will click on the finish. You can see here's also the path to my to my project I will click on the fit on finish Now we can check Again, we have here the main dot C. We need to open the application the user the main see like in the Kyle IR or Atolic and We here put the same part. We will toggle with the LED Yes, I styled with the HL on the score GPIO underscore toggle pin again the pin is GPO a and GPIO pin on the score five This is the number of pin and I put here also delay because otherwise the toggling will be not visible on 16 megahertz will be will be not possible to see it Okay, this is enough for my for my first testing code It's not it's very simple VV go You will go through this this all commands during the next sections Now we build the code here with the button built Expect that everything will be okay Yes, I can check here in the console that built is finished. No problem was reported Otherwise, I will end up with with some error and I will get the list of my of my errors What I need to correct if I have some mistakes in my code But now everything is okay Then I need again to set up more things not not only one In the run I first I need to go to the tab back configuration. I Here need to double-click on the ac6 Sorry Here is the window He asking me to select the the board I Can use the new board if I want or I can use the the old one You can start for example from scratch then I start with the new board you need to select the debugging interface I have the on the new claw st link version 2 1 and my debugging interfaces SWD nice defined new board Click on the okay Can see now my debug configuration was created. It's okay. I check here the debugger Think seems okay. The startup is connect under a set. It will immediately hold the processor then it seems everything is okay Then I click on the apply and I here can click on the debug And he will start for me the debugging. He also asking to save save my resources If everything is okay Then he launched for me the debug interface And switch the view from the editor to to debug a view Then here is one slightly small problem It seems that it's in my laptop and Open OCD doesn't like my USB 3.0 ports And I try to switch switch the interface then I start here again Here I can use this this button and I lose use the last configuration Yes, I want to switch to the debugger perspective Again, you can see I'm on the beginning of my of my main and It's very similar to Atolic I can with this button run the debugging with this stop the debugging with this button I can step the debugging and with this button. I can terminate and leave the debugger I will run my code on my side. The lead is blinking and everything is okay In case you want with this button you leave the debug and Here with this you need to switch the perspective back back to the to the editor Then don't forget forget on this on this part Then this is everything from how to run your first code into In the system for bench


All right. So I thought I would, well, I guess you guys all know, Mike is kind of a polarizing figure. And I wanted to sort of frame my discussion about the 10 years I've had, awesome years I've had working with Mike in this sort of trying to give you a little bit of a sense of what it's like, and sort of maybe help you to interpret the way that he views the world. So I think I was supposed to talk about his impact on New England research. So I thought I'd just say a couple words. It's really hard, I think, to underestimate how much and how influential Mike has been on the sort of New England database research community. I mean, you probably heard from Stan a little bit about the work with Streambase, but the work with Vertica and C Store, the work on H Store, all these systems that have brought a group of us together and are really, it's been a really incredible experience to have these very, very close collaborations here with many of the people in this room. And it just wouldn't have happened if Mike wasn't there to make it happen. So it's just great that he's done this. And I'll try and convey that a few of the things that he has done and some of the contributions he's made in this talk. So as you know, I guess you guys all know Mike says kind of bold things. He tends to take a very black and white view of the world. Either you're in or you're out. Either what you're doing is great, or it's a fate worse than death. He says these things that are just very controversial. So I'm going to illustrate what I've learned from Mike. In three sort of short little vignettes. So the first one is sort of what I've learned about how to be a researcher from Mike. So I'm going to start by just talking about these couple of systems that we built together on the C Store system. So analytical databases. For those of you who don't know what an analytical database is, it runs queries like this. This is a SQL query. So it computes some simple aggregate over a whole bunch of data. So the way that Mike's approaches research problems is sort of like this. This is before C Store and Vertica showed up. This is what everybody else was doing. It was this very kind of gray, complicated picture of the world. Database systems were, oh man, they had all these features like, they were designed to support these analytical queries like indexes and hybrid storage models and materialized views and data cubes and decomposed storage and all this stuff that everybody had been doing for 20 years to try and support this. And Mike said, what is wrong with you guys? This is just wrong and complicated and this is what it should look like. He had this very simple picture which said, we're gonna build columns and no, we're not gonna do it and you said, but Mike, shouldn't we do hybrid data storage? We could group columns to get no, we're not gonna do any of that. We're just gonna build a system and it's just gonna be based on columns. And he had this very clear, crisp ideological view of the world and he pushed it. And the way that Mike does, just relentlessly marketed this idea and just painted this very simple, clear picture of the world. And lo and behold, here we are 10 years after this project. You look at every single major database system that tries to support these kinds of analytic workloads and what are they doing? They're building a column store or they have built a column store. And it's just, it's an incredible, and it's not that Mike was the first person to say you could vertically partition databases. It was that Mike was the one that said, if you do this, it's gonna be 100 times faster than the way that your current systems work if you build it in the right way and here's the right way to build it. And it's just, it's hard. I don't know how Mike does it. I don't know how you like have this clarity of vision. So it's incredible. All right, so that was Vertica and Seastore. I just, I wanted to give, I went back, I was trying to find an example of a quad chart from these days and I found this one email from DeWitt that said something about a quad chart but it was so nonsensical that I couldn't put it up. But I do, I mentioned ASCII, ASCII. So Mike likes to draw diagrams that look like this. That's an actual diagram from the first Vertica paper, first Seastore paper. And I was a assistant professor at the time we wrote this paper and I just said, I can't actually send a paper with this ASCII diagram. So I re-drew the diagram to look like that in the original submission. And if you stare at this for a minute, you see Mike's diagram doesn't have an arrow at all. And I had this great innovation was put the arrowhead in there. But the arrowhead's actually going the wrong way because, anyway, whatever, it was a low point, okay? All right, so the next project I wanted to talk about was this in-memory database work. So this is the work that Mike has done on we call the HStore, but the Volt has been commercialized as Volt. And again, it's another one of these examples where Mike just has this clarity of vision that is really pretty incredible. So these are systems like this, they process, these are transaction processing systems. So unlike trying to compute the total number of shirts sold, we're just buying one shirt now. And the way that these systems have worked in the past is, well, this is what systems like Oracle do. They're these big complicated systems that are millions of lines of source code. And if you look at what they actually run, well, you look at sort of where they're doing, they spend a little bit of time answering queries. And they need to do all this other stuff that the people who build these systems say, say, you, is that right? Yeah, sorry, I got the screens wrong. The people who build these systems say, boy, we need all this other complicated stuff in our database system to support, oh, I don't know what backups and logging to disk and just endless little features that these systems have. And Mike looked at this picture and he said, you know, I could build a system that's 100 times faster than this, and here's what I'm going to do.   So let's get rid of it. And he's run around sort of this vision. Again, then he said, and by the way, here's how to build a system that doesn't have all this crap in it. So he sort of took this little insight and then said, we're going to make all this stuff that we don't really need going. And again, it's just this sort of incredible vision ability to see the way in which other people are doing things wrong and to just relentlessly push towards that goal. So the lessons that I take from this, first of all, it's like it's really easy in research to come up with a million ideas, which are all pretty good. It's really hard to come up with one idea that's really good. And that's what it's a lot easier to sort of, if you can come up with one idea that's good and is the good idea, that's the one you should stick to and you should push with it. Don't write 20 papers and have 20 little ideas. It's much better to have one big idea. And then a related idea is this get some ideology and stick to it. Mike is fantastic at continuously and relentlessly pushing his viewpoint. And you see this over and over again, and it's part of the recipe for his success. It's like, we take this idea, like Seastore. It's a great idea, and he's right about it, and he has a great conviction to make sure the world believes it. So I'll come back to this a little bit later. All right, so the second thing I want to talk about is Mike as a collaborator. And the way I wanted to do this is sort of, Joe stole a little bit of my thunder, but I think you'll still appreciate this. I wanted to, for those of you who maybe haven't collaborated with Mike or are just starting a collaboration with Mike, try and help you to interpret what Mike really means when he says different things, OK? So here's some things that Mike has said to me or to people I know. Like, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard, OK? So when Mike tells you that's the stupidest idea you've ever heard, what he means is I see your point, but I'm not sure I agree. You need to do a better job of making your argument, OK? So, again, it's just a very black and white way of saying things. But because Mike says your idea is the stupidest idea in the world, don't be discouraged. Just try and convince him of your idea. And as we heard earlier, you, in fact, can win an argument that begins with Mike telling you that your idea is the stupidest idea in the world, OK? Let's have a group grow, all right? Part of what's funny about these things on the board is actually many of them Mike doesn't say anymore. He's getting developed some new funny expressions over time. So group growth seems to be on its way out, but it was popular for a few years there in the middle. And it seems to mean something like let's get together and figure this out, despite what it might sound like. There's a related one, which is let's have a come to Jesus meeting, which I think also means essentially the same thing. Let's get together and figure it out, OK? All right, so I like this one. MapReduce is a poor implementation. And I like this one because it's, well, Mike doesn't write code, so it's not. MapReduce itself isn't really an implementation anyway. And even if we're in implementation, it's probably not a poor implementation because it was written by this guy, Jeff Dean. And I don't know if any of you know who Jeff Dean is, but he's considered to be the best programmer in the entire world. In fact, there are these websites about Jeff Dean that say things like, compilers don't warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers. It's like the Chuck Norris thing, where people say these things about Jeff Dean. So Jeff Dean writes directly in binary. He then writes the source code as documentation. That's Jeff Dean. So what Mike really means is MapReduce is not. He doesn't think MapReduce is the right abstraction. And then the last one, well, a couple more. Running Facebook is a fate worse than death. Well, what does he mean? He means I wouldn't have done it that way, but it seems to work OK for them. And finally, when Mike says no, no, no, no, no, which I have several emails that say this, I'm trying to convince people that they're doing it wrong. He means no. All right, so what are the lessons? One lesson I take away from this is that it's actually really, really valuable to tell people what you think. I think in academia, my tendency is to say things like, oh, well, that's a really interesting idea. And actually, it's much better to just tell people that if you think an idea is a bad idea, or if you think that they're doing it wrong, tell them and then have a conversation about it. And it tends to end up at a result that I think is actually much better than being equivocal. Be controversial. I think people pay attention when you say, you see, Mike is able to, obviously, Mike has a lot of gravity. People listen to him when he says these things. But being controversial will get you to people to pay attention to you in a way that, being passionate about what you say, I think there's a lot of value in that. And finally, it helps to be right. And more often than not, Mike is right. And I'm not exactly sure how he is right as often as he is, but it's pretty remarkable. The last thing I wanted to say was just a few words about Mike as an entrepreneur. And I'm hoping that Andy will say more as Mike as an entrepreneur. I think I feel like looking at the sort of startup community in the Boston, New England area anyway. And Mike is about your fifth company, sixth company. I don't know how many companies. But I think he's single-handedly reinvigorated at least a certain part of the database, sort of, or enterprise entrepreneurial community in the Boston area. And it's been a tremendous contribution. I think a lot of people really appreciate Mike for that. I wanted to sort of talk about Mike's style for founding companies. I think Mike has really, he's figured something out. And it kind of reminded me of the underpants gnomes. So you guys maybe know this thing. So the underpants gnomes were the, this was a South Park episode. And the underpants gnomes had this great business plan which began with collecting underpants and ended with profit. And the only thing they had to figure out is what came between underpants and profits. And it seems that Mike has figured out what comes between underpants and profit. Okay? So, all right. Anyway, it goes something like this. We already talked about this a little bit. You identify a greater than zero billion dollar industry.  Okay? And then you ruthlessly exploit it. So, and then you get profit, okay? All right, so that's what I wanted to say. I have something, I have to grab a prop, hold on. All right, so just to conclude, I want to say thank you, Mike. It's been just a tremendous pleasure working with you. I couldn't have imagined a better collaborator over the years. And I'm really looking forward to many, many more years doing this. This is a picture that we took, what was this in October? So, this is five generations of database researchers. So, that's Mike, that's Mike, that's Mike. So, this is Mike Kerry and Mike Franklin. So, Mike Kerry was Mike Stonebreaker's graduate student. Mike Franklin was Mike Kerry's graduate student. I was Mike Franklin's graduate student. Unfortunately, I broke the mold. I'm not named Mike. Dan Avadi was my graduate student, also was not named Mike. But we're all together at this event. So, it seemed like a great opportunity to have five generations of database researchers descended from Mike get together. There's also something else I wanted to point out, which is that there seems to be a trend. I'm a little bit of an outlier here, but if you project this trend forward, we're going to have some very short database research. So, thank you very much, Mike. We have a signed version of the picture. That's all I had to say. So, happy birthday, Mike. Thanks very much.


The Phase 3 Voyage 1 trial evaluated the efficacy and safety of Goosalcumab for psoriasis over 4 years, showing high response rates maintained through Week 204 using different methodologies including pre-specified treatment failure rules, non-responder imputation, and as observed analysis. No new safety signals were identified. This article was authored by Christopher E. M. Griffiths, Kim A. Tapp, Michael Song, and others.


In business news now, the Central Bank of Nigeria plans to introduce digital currency before the end of the year. Speaking at the end of the 306th Bankers' Committee meeting, it's a director in information technology. Rakia Mohamed said the currency will be accessible to all Nigerians. Admitting the risks associated with the proposed digital currency, the director assured that it will operate alongside other virtual currencies like the cryptocurrency. She however cautioned that the CBN lacks control over other virtual or digital currencies as those transacting with such currencies are doing so strictly on personal basis.