A Wheel Turning Around, But Not On a Truck

Song 225: Picking a track from the Grateful Dead catalog to follow last week's Six Days on the Road, Truckin' would seem like the obvious choice, but instead, for some reason, even while writing last week's post, I had in mind The Wheel by Jerry Garcia, written by Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzmann, as the followup. I couldn't have guessed then that by the time this day rolled around, I would find myself in a situation very much like the chorus of the tune, caught in a storm where I could do nothing to escape or remedy the present circumstance, so that if I did manage to avoid the thunder, then the lightning would surely get me. While I can do nothing to affect the wheel spinning around me, my present problem is in reality much more mundane than thunder and lightning, as most life predicaments generally turn out, but this song perfectly expresses that sense of finding yourself caught up in a swirling moment beyond your control, whether a major or a minor one. I remember when the Garcia LP hit the stores, and Sugaree got a lot of radio play, which it deserved, plus I heard Deal a few times as well, so I figured that I'd probably like the album, but when I heard this track and Bird Song, I knew I had to have the record, though I still didn't quite expect that Garcia and Bob Weir's Ace would end up being my 2 favorite Grateful Dead records, as they have. As well as the lyrics, I really like Jerry's pedal steel work on this song, which in my imagination draws musical sketches of the vast western American desert, with soaring rock formations, ghost towns and big, rolling skies. On a side note, the visual for the linked YT video of this recording is simply a still of JG's right hand print, reminding us that he only had about a third of his middle finger, having lost the rest at the age of 4 in a woodcutting accident. As many people have said over the years, "Imagine if Jerry had had all of his fingers", because he was a pretty impressive player by just about any standard, but knowing his lack of a complete middle finger makes his playing all the more impressive. On a further side note, I will admit that the verse about Round, round, Robin run around did inspire me a bit in writing my song Round Robin, which I recently completed a lyric video for, and you can see that video here.