We decided we hated the Grateful Dead long before we ever heard the Grateful Dead.

This was for a variety of reasons: (a) our friends’ dads liked the Grateful Dead; (b) the entirely of our teenage years were spent exclusively listening to punk music; (c) the insufferable negative connotations associated with the band (airheaded solipsism, boomer excesses, self-indulgent musical masturbation); (d) no band, including the Grateful Dead, could possibly live up to the crippling burden of expectations created for the Grateful Dead by the Grateful Dead; and (e) this guy:

But, gently, our discernments changed. Little nagging hints that the Grateful Dead may actually rock snuck into our consciousness. Like when we saw the Hold Steady, and Craig Finn played this guitar:

Or in episode 18 of Freaks and Geeks when this happens to Lindsay Weir.

Or when we saw this picture of basketball great Bill Walton:

Slowly, but surely, we were won over by the Dead. Which is arguably more authentic and peaceable than how most other people got into the Grateful Dead – Presumable by having their hesher high school friends put ‘From the Mars Hotel’ on repeat while they hung out in a Jack in the Box parking lot taking resin hits out of a hollowed out apple – We fell in love with the Dead on our terms.

But unlike most other people that are into the Grateful Dead, we didn’t actually put it together until like 10-years ago. Which means that we’ve been walking around for the better part of the last decade slapping ourselves in the forehead for not having gotten wise sooner.

Fortunately, the forehead slapping can now stop because the Grateful Dead (or some incarnation thereof) have come back to prove to our current selves that our former selves were completely wrong.  Or, at the very least, come back to provide an adequate setting for us to score psychedelic drugs.

Either way, there’s no doubt that we’ll be spending the better part of July 3rd to 5th in, or around, Soldier Field, bathing in a warm ocean of good vibes.