![]() ![]() Keeping in touch with the band not only feeds his appetite for eclectic music but keeps him in touch with youthful memories. He attended his first show in 1977, a “much more carefree time in my life,” he admits. I sort of used the shows to get around and do some traveling,” Mr. “Over the years I was able to see about 75 different shows. With the Dead: he’s taken clients to shows and coordinated business trips and vacations around concerts. Reisberg, the Baltimore ad-man, sometimes mixes business Morak, an American University law school graduate whose office is decorated with a vintage Grateful Dead concert poster. “It’s a lot larger than I think people realize. Glenn Morak, a 38-year-old criminal defense attorney and litigator with Shuman, Abramson, Morak & Wolk in Manhattan, said he’s often surprised at concerts to see colleagues and adversaries dancing in the crowd. Grateful Dead spokesman Dennis McNally said other unlikely fans the band has attracted over the years include ABC newsman Peter Jennings, former NBA great and current sports commentator Bill Walton, and Vice President Al Gore (“I don’t think we’re going to have a statement on that today,” said a spokesman for the vice president). “The band spans 30 years so you’re obviously going to have an eclectic following,” said Mr. But neither does he hide it: his Land Rover has a bear sticker on the back. Maryland Stadium Authority chairman John Moag, a partner with the high-powered Washington lobbying firm of Patton, Boggs and Blow, admits his attendance at 24 Dead shows over the years does not appear on his resume. It is an instant bond, a link, an understanding,” Mr. “I’ve been in some offices where there will be some small, dancing bears over in a corner. But every so often he discovers a soul mate in the least likely of places. He wears no tattoos, pony tails or Terrapin Station T-shirts to business meetings. His job is trying to convince physicians - a high-income group hardly known for its free-wheeling ways - to publish their research with his company. “I never tried to keep it from anyone but you would drop it and make an obtuse reference and if it was picked up there was an immediate bond,” said Jonathan Pine, a 37-year-old executive editor at Williams & Wilkins, a Baltimore-based textbook publisher that specializes in medical works. They are successful politicians, lawyers and business executives somewhat paradoxically following a band whose songs celebrate lifestyle far out of favor in Newt Gingrich’s America. Reisberg, who left his Fortune 500 job and is now is an executive vice president of Trahan, Burden & Charles Inc., a Baltimore advertising and public relations firm.ĭespite the popular perception of the group’s followers as barefoot flower children and graying hippies, some Deadheads long ago traded in the tie-dyed shirts for button-down oxfords. “People are generally surprised that a short-haired advertising executive is a Deadhead,” said Mr. “I was kind of concerned about the fact that I was a Deadhead getting out,” Alan Reisberg said of his nearly two-decades-long enthusiasm for the Grateful Dead, the counterculture rock band whose future was thrown into serious doubt by the death Wednesday of guitarist Jerry Garcia. ![]() But as his professional stature grew, he revealed his secret in subtle ways, beginning with the trademark dancing bear decal on his computer printer. Baltimore Sun eNewspaper Home Page Close MenuĪt first he kept it from co-workers at the stuffy, Fortune 500 corporation where he worked, for fear it would be misunderstood.
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