Grateful Cafe, Belltown Dead, circa 1980

For a few years in a row, back when we had a restaurant, every time the Grateful Dead would play at the Seattle Center, we'd help out with the food. One year we catered an after-show party in their hotel suite, another year we just got their caterer in touch with the best sellers in the Pike Place Market in exchange for tickets. I think we even traded salmons for stage passes to an Oakland New Year's Eve show one year. I still have a very nice letter from Robbie Taylor on the band's four-color stationary thanking us.

We made these t-shirts for the year we did the whole deal. We brought in a big barbecue, worked with the band's people to make sure that each drink bucket for each little fiefdom on the stage had the correct mixture of frosty beverages (different crew members were in charge of different parts of the stage—it was very territorial and weird up there). We thought these shirts would be funny, and we made one each for those of us who worked the show, plus one each for each band member, which, of course, none of them wore.