Dead Lot>
Saltlick Of Desire
Room "dead lot>" created by John
Dancing Bear
The Washington Post Style Section, page H1, 10/15/94 Author: Elizabeth
Kastor
Night of the Baby Deadheads
They May be in Strollers, but They're Truckin'
Six-year-old Ashley Binsted has been to 52 concerts. Two-year-old
Phoenix Rising Horn has been inside to hear the music at 15, and has hung
out in the parking lot at more than 50. Even his brother, Spiral Walking In Balance Horn (Walking In Balance is his middle name ), has been to three shows--and he's only 5 months old. They are the tiniest Deadheads. Strapped to their fathers' backs,
nursing at their mothers' breasts, swathed in tie-dye, they make the trip from wherever they call home to wherever the Grateful dead and the man they call "Jerwie" (lead guitarist Jerry Garcia) are at the moment. During the band's recent three-day
appearance at USAir Arena in Landover, kids raced through the parking lot before the show and danced in the hallways while the band played inside. Babies slept, despite the din, lost in the murky, unrousable depth of infantile slumber (some, no
doubt, able to remain undisturbed thanks to the plugs their parents had wedged in their little ears). One boy in a green tie-dyed T-shirt looped his way down the hall Tuesday night, bouncing a matching green balloon over his head with intent
concentration, He could have been anywhere.
But he wasn't. He was at a Dead concert, and to some that might seem a little unusual. The parents who cart their kids along are used to being asked why they do it, and not necessarily asked all that nicely.
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"We're socializing our children to our culture," said Jennifer Binsted, mother of Ashley and 11-month-old Sadie, and a social work student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "You take them to what matters to you--like a religion,
almost. You don't go to church and leave the kids home." This is how people talk about the Grateful Dead. "The Grateful Dead is not a passive experience," said Dennis McNally, who handles the media for the group. "It's a lifestyle, ultimately,
where you participate in a large thing, and kids are welcome." One regular said that at some concerts there will be 35 or 40 strollers wheeling around and the band members have had their kids onstage for years. Although the music can be loud, it is
rarely assaultive. The band has its feet planted more firmly in the folk, blues and jazz camps than that of rock-and-roll. There's always a lot of talk about peace, love and understanding at a Grateful Dead concert, and taking a kid to one is not
the same thing as carting her off to see Guns N'Roses. I think it's a great place for a kid--it's a good example," said Binsted. "I don't want my kids to grow up with the social things--'It's not okay to look like this or that,' or 'If you're a
certain age you can't jump up and down and dance.'"
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Sadie, a smiley baby in psychedelic cotton. Ashley went off with his
grandmother Dori Binsted to get a hot dog, clutching a $5 bill. He
returned euphoric. "They gave it to me free 'cause I'm a kid!" For him,
as for many children, the appeal of the concert seemed to be the
shifting, colorful lights flashing onstage: "I like when you look down
at Jerry and all the other people--I like the colors on it and stuff."
He said this and went off for a soad--and got that for free too. Life
was good. "It's like a door of discovery," said Janet Benson of Ann
Arbor, Mich., at the concert with her 3 1/2-year-old daughter, Eden
Rose. Benson, a jewelry designer, has been to 20 or 30 shows this year,
but said: "We have a house. I make sure we keep a house and she has a
home base." "She's learned a lot of things," Benson's friend Lisa Moser
said of Eden Rose. "Like not to hate people." And, apparently, how to
talk to adults. "I found a little kid yesterday," said Eden Rose when
asked what she did at the Monday night concert. "We took a walk. Want to
see what's in my dress?" ?"She pulled down the top of her prim lavender
corduroy dress a quarter of an inch. "Teddy bears," she said, revealing
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Having impressed her audience, she folded the corduroy back up. Although
Benson and Eden Rose always return to the house in Ann Arbor, others never
stop travelling. One women sat in the restaurant at the Days Inn a mile
from the arena, her 17-day-old baby sleeping next to her on the banquette.
It was 4 in the afternoon. She was eating raisin bran and looked as if she
had either just woken up or desperately needed to go to bed. The baby is
named Autumn. The mother did not want her name published. "I've just been
travelling for the past year," she said, following the band. When the
Grateful Dead wasn't' touring, she went to Canada. She was no more specific
than that--just Canada. She had no particular home. A man with lank hair
and a lanky body sat near her. "Anyone want an onion ring?" he asked. It is
possible to look at the parents at a Dead concert and see that they do what
everyone does: They had kids and immediately began working to turn these
small, malleable creations into version of themselves. Whether it's the
Grateful Dead or yuppie favorites like Raffi; itty-bitty tie-dyes or
itty-bitty Redskins sweat shirts or itty-bitty Baby Diors; a live-in van
from which they sell vegie burritos and hemp necklaces or a massive home in
Potomac from which they plan their next tennis game--the training begins
early. On the other hand, it was impossible not to notice that on Tuesday
night there was at least one scrawny guy lying prone and disoriented on the
ground outside the arena while others wandered bleary-eyed through the
crowds. Inside the currents of air alternated between the lung- scraping
smoke of cigarettes and the heavy sweetness of marijuana, and not all the
balloons were there to be poked overhead--some held nitrous oxide.
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Jennifer Binstead said she tries to keep her kids away from the drugs, and
Joy Beckerman, mother of Phoenix Rising and Spiral, has a firm set of rules
about what her kids will and will not be exposed to: Although she did LSD
before getting pregnant with her first, she ill allow no drugs near the
kids; they see "only one show a venue," and if there's too much smoke, she
heads for the doorways. Beckerman is, she said, an
"emotional-psycho-spiritual therapist." She and her husband, James Horn,
met while living on the road, following the Dead. They've settled down now
in Woodstock, N.Y. Beckerman and Horn come to the shows for the community
as much as the music. "It has spiritual and metaphysical power, something
that needs to be part of the human experience at this point of human
evolution," she said, and it is something she wants her children to
experience. Like many parents today, she sees the world outside her door as
threatening, violent, corrupting--it just happens that the life she has
chosen may differ slightly from the mainstream's. "Neither of these
children have any babysitters--we don't do anything social except this,"
she said. "I don't intend to lose control of what is being fed to them."
And she is determined to feed them the Grateful Dead and the new age
culture that surrounds the group. But much as she loves the scene, she is
worried by much of what she sees among the parents on the road. "I
experience maybe two out of 10 who are as conscientious as we are-- on the
mission--not just your basic Deadhead," she said. "The other eight out of
10 people we see are beautiful people who are raising their kids probably
with more love than many people, but there are other denials going on. I
find myself in judgmental mode, which I really don't want to do. But it
never ceases to amaze me that there are other people just continuing on the
lifestyle with the babes." Beckerman and Horn left the following day to
return to Woodstock. The Grateful Dead's next appearance is in New York.
The strollers will meet them there.
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