Mary Eisenhart brought this to my attention. It’s from the Deadheads of Europe topic in the DeadNet Forum. The author was kind enough to give me permission to repost it here.
Frankly
Posted: January 13, 2008 – 2:39am
post communist europeHi everybody!i am living in the czech republic and i want to say that even if there never was an opportunity to see the Boys playing live over here there are amazingly many deadheads over here.and the more we missed the concerts the more we cherished tapes,vynils etc. With the uprising of the cd we could start to listen to high quality live recordings that, beside the regular albums, were never or very rarely available. but i want to tell you about a very sad day in 95 we all remember. sitting in a bar in the center of prague thunder and lightning hit me as i opened the paper and read the news. but to my surprise many people who knew about my interest into the DEAD came up to me to show their support and understanding over that tragic loss! Even more, as the evening went by, a taxi-driver (which are the greediest human beings in town) offered to play a tape i had with me on his giant car-stereo in front of the bar!!! the tape i had was the Boys at red rocks and it was played again and again until 3 o ‘clock in the morning with dozens of people hanging out, dancing and having a great time. It was pure magic in the center of town… even a russian mafioso, who has been to the states for a while hugged me with tear in his eyes and we had a J together looking at the moon and listening to Jerry playing FRANKLINS TOWER!! Yeah even prague said good bye to Jerry in a way that suited this man. P.S. As this was happening in the center of town, neighbors must have called the cops more than once (the stereo in the car was just BIG) but the guy had a remote control and every time the cops drove by, he simply paused the music just to start it again when they were gone… and the name of the bar was The Singers Place!!!