This entry is mostly for makoiyi:

Jerry Garcia interviewing Bob Weir about a children's book he wrote with his sister, Wendy.

Pullout quote--Weir discusses the sounds on the cassette (it was a while ago) that accompanies the book:

BW: We had a ball when we were over there recording all the atmospherics, all the ambience, going into the jungle and sitting down at sunrise and sunset, because the jungle goes nuts at sunrise and sunset. It gets pretty loud in there. The bugs go off, the birds go off, and stuff runs around. So the story more or less came together while we were over there recording sounds. The fruit bats were good - they sound demonic, but they're actually wonderful. We ran across this one guy who has three pet fruit bats. They're about a foot long, and the wingspread can be up to six feet, and they're bats! But they can be cuddly, affectionate pets, too. You scratch them on their belly, and their eyes get all glassy. [JG laughs] They crawl around on you, and they like to play and frisk and stuff like that. You know, this guy would be anywhere in his house, and he just whistles for 'em, and whewp, whewp, whewp!

Also, at the time of writing neither Weir nor his sister had any kids. Garcia, obviously, did, and had the concerns noted below:

JG: I'm wondering about the girl [Tamara] in the story. Now, this is extremely not cool. First of all, her mom sends her off to play by herself in the part of Australia that has, what, the highest concentration of poisonous snakes in the world? [BW laughs] She's just a little hippie, and she's sent off into the rain forest all by herself, where there are insects big enough to eat your head! So that's my main complaint about the story.

Yeah, everyone loves Jerry for stuff like that...

Oh, and also, here's an interview transcript that describes one of the truly great Dead stories about their trip to Egypt. The best part (from Weir, again):

Moe - When my friends and my listeners learned that I was going to be speaking with you… They wanted to know one thing. They wanted to know what are some of your craziest memories of your whole music experience… not just Grateful Dead, but your whole music experience. Anything stand out particularly?

Bobby - Uhhh… Let’s see. The musical experience. The one that stands out the most is the time that we uh… the first night that we played… I guess it was actually the third night that we played… well it was a blend of all three nights that we played in Egypt back in ‘78, I think it was. It was with The Grateful Dead, and we had done our sound check… It had taken us a week to rig the Son Et Lumiere over there which is you know, thousands and thousands of year old ampitheatre built back in ancient times at the foot of the Sphinx which is at the foot of the Great Pyramid, and it’s all lit up real pretty these days. Word had sort of filtered out that there was going to be a rock and roll band playing there… It was a first time happening. Like I said, we spent a week setting it up and getting electricity out there, getting it reasonably reliable. We went on stage to play and it was just at dusk, and we started playing, and the lights came on and we were the brightest and warmest thing around…

Moe - (Laughs)

Bobby - This was down by the river… The Nile. So the mosquitoes came right for us. This is something we hadn’t planned for!

Moe - Oh jeez… (Laughs)

Bobby - I look at this cloud of mosquitoes around us and I saw them landing on me right and left, and I figured, ‘Welcome to hell, this is going to be throughly un-enjoyable!’ (Smiles) And then something flashed before my eyes… Some dark form… And then another… And then another… And then I looked around and I saw that these great big bats were flying around the stage and they were gulping down the mosquitoes…

Moe - (Laughs)

Bobby - You know… (Laughs) They knew a good thing when they saw it! You know… It was a good thing for them! And then I realized that there were like hundreds, if not thousands of them… there were of course thousands of mosquitoes, but these bats were just… They were saving the day!

Moe - (Laughs)

Bobby - And so, you know… In my mind’s eye, I sort of backed off from this… So here’s this rock and roll band, just hitting the groove, just starting to hit the groove… And they’re on this ancient stage… at the foot of the Sphinx… at the foot of The Great Pyramids… And the dunes on either side were lined with Bedouins on their camels, with guns over their shoulders… They’d heard about this, and they’d come in to check it out… Full moon was rising… and all this surrounded by a cloud of bats… BIG cloud of bats! And I was thinking to myself, ‘Take me now Lord, I want to remember it just like this!’

That does sound cool. And I'd love to have a pet bat as big as Coney!