Song of the Day 9/13: Old and in the Way, “Wild Horses”
Joe Biden – you might have heard about this – is old. He’s been old for quite some time now, having been born in 1942, but the media has just noticed this, probably because Republicans won’t shut up about it while they prepare to challenge him with some fat tub of goo who wasn’t born until 1946.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Uncle Joe was threatening to shove his rosary beads down someone’s throat, and I’d pay a stack of folding money to watch him do that to, oh, say, Newt Gingrich, another fat tub of goo who wasn’t born until 1943. Nonetheless, there are plenty of Democrats who think Joe’s too old for the job and are agitating to replace him with someone younger. Joe’s not leaving, though. To coin a phrase, wild horses couldn’t drag him away.
Old and in the Way’s eponymous 1975 LP was one of the best-selling bluegrass albums of all time, mainly because of its banjo player, a fellow named Jerry Garcia, who was born the same year as Joe Biden. Garcia put the group together in 1973, at the creaky age of 31, recruiting well-known bluegrass players David Grisman on mandolin, Peter Rowan on guitar, John Kahn on upright bass and Vassar Clements on fiddle. Grisman, Rowan and Garcia shared vocals.
The band played bluegrass tunes and a couple of originals, including the Grisman song that gave the group its name. They never recorded in a studio, but they played several dozen gigs, mostly in and around San Francisco, in 1973. The shows were recorded – Garcia’s full-time band, the Grateful Dead, had been taping its concerts since 1967 – and the LP was culled from those recordings.
The band didn’t last long, reportedly because of squabbling between Grisman and Rowan, but they reunited after Garcia’s death for a brief time. Two more LPs of 1973 were released, but the original album remains the best. Now out of print, its a collector’s item that will set you back the best part of a Benjamin, even on CD. Grisman, 78, and Rowan, 81, are the last original members still standing, but nobody has accused them of being in the way.
