The guitar solo to begin Truckin' is pretty much the moment that I realized the Dead suck less than the shapeless jamfests my parents keep playing over and over.

They were my favorite band in high school. I was pretty insufferable (I was a Trotskyite and read way too many 19th-century Russian novels), miserable and awkward. Pretty much exactly who likes The Cure.

This describes my parents to a tee. Absolutely insufferable Grateful Dead bullies. They're so bad they will shut off the music I'm listening to to put the Dead on, and it's been a feature of family gatherings for 30 years that they will evangelize about the Dead and play them while people pretend to be impressed.

Topper Headon was a passable drummer? Wah-wah-wahhhhht?

Every Northern Californian ever loves San Diego, because they went there once and couldn't believe how good the weather is. And SD is pretty much a cipher city, so you can walk around in your Giants hat and hang out with other Giants loving bros and nobody will complain about it.

White alt-rock stations have been doing that nonsense for 30 years. It arguably cost the Beastie Boys a lot of credibility as a hip-hop group.

Don't forget Lindsay Nelson!

Radio's like that too - there's one guy in Schenectady who seemed to record about 75% of the surviving radio broadcasts of World Series games from the 1940s to the 1970s.

His Vin impressions in Spanish and Japanese are hilarious.

Don't forget the old CART/Indycar broadcasts with Paul Page, Bobby Unser and Sam Posey. They were great, especially Unser and Posey who came from two totally different racing backgrounds (Unser the dirt-track Albuquerque guy who was probably born with oil and grease on him, Posey the effete, erudite NYC prep-school…

I always thought Jack Buck went way over the top on that call.

I think there was a period in the 80s when McCarver was pretty good, but even then he talked too much. So when he declined, he still talked too much, and you get the Tim McCarver that polluted our screens for the last decade-plus of his time with Fox.

The thing about Uecker is he plays it pretty straight on radio, Harry Doyle he is not.