Four Years Old and Learning Fire on the Mountain
What was the first time music really hit you? Not background noise, not car radio, but really hit you?
Mine was lying on my brothers' bedroom floor at four years old, hysterically laughing as they tickled me and taught me the words to "Fire on the Mountain." I'm the youngest of five by several years, and when my college-age brothers came home from following the Grateful Dead on tour, they'd drag me back to their wing of the house to sing along.
Joy isn't background noise. It requires attention, intention, a willingness to be present for the moment when ordinary transforms into something else entirely. Sometimes that's a four-year-old on a bedroom floor learning song lyrics. Sometimes it's a customer dancing down the cereal aisle because the right song came on at the right moment.
That memory lived quietly in me for years until high school, when I started drumming in a band that covered Dead songs. But my real obsession became collecting tapes. Hundreds of them, inherited from my brothers as a starting point. Each one labeled in their distinct handwriting: setlist, venue, city, recording source, and most importantly, the generation.
The Grateful Dead had a "tapers section" at every show where fans mounted ambient mics and recorded shows. The Oade brothers and other serious tapers might have found a way to do it digitally, but many, like my brother, were recording directly onto cassettes in the 80s. The recordings that captured the best nights and had the cleanest sound became lore among fans.
As a high schooler trying to understand a community I was too young to join, I discovered why so many people loved this music. It was everywhere (they played nearly a hundred shows a year) but within that abundance were peaks and valleys that created space for something approaching transcendence.
The moment that changed everything: July 31, 1982, Manor Downs, "Morning Dew." I was visiting my friend Miller at his family's place in Tahoe. Late night, sitting in my VW Jetta, looking through the sunroof at the stars while we listened to this particular recording. As the band comes out of the bridge and into Jerry's solo, there's a point of such intensity that the tape itself can't handle it. Phil's bass line roars, Brent's keyboard screams, Jerry's guitar pierces through until everything distorts right when they all hit the same note together.
I remember the chills I felt looking up at those stars, traveling back in time to Manor Downs, right there next to my brothers, experiencing the glory of the band uniting as one.
Music, like food, like art, has a way of bringing us into a deeper dimension. But getting there takes risks, trust, empathy. For us at Luke's, it started with the simple notion that we could bring something meaningful to grocery. Over time, we've found small ways to take more risks that we hope allow for more connection in our stores. Not all of them work, but that's what makes the ones that do matter so much more.
I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see customers bouncing around our aisles as they shop and dance.
Joy is a practice, not an accident. It requires the same attention we bring to sourcing the best ingredients or training our staff. It's as essential to community as good food and friendly service. Because at the end of the day, we're not just feeding bodies. We're nourishing the parts of ourselves that remember what it feels like to be fully alive.
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Also in Luke's Local Blog
Four Blocks from Paradise
This August, Dead & Company are playing Golden Gate Park, four blocks from our Inner Sunset store on 9th Avenue.
The same music that shaped my understanding of joy, community, and what it means to be present will be echoing through the neighborhood where we've built our newest store. The same songs I learned on my brothers' bedroom floor, the same recordings I obsessed over as a teenager, the same tape that was playing when Charlie and I took our first ride in the Tacoma. Everything comes full circle in the place where we're trying to prove that grocery stores can still be neighborhood cornerstones.
Why My Truck Only Plays Tapes
The tape wall in our 9th Avenue store exists because we've been struggling to find the right balance of structure and freedom with our music selection. We never wanted one set playlist, but with four stores, having no guidelines turned what should be an enjoyable part of the job into a source of conflict. Who gets to choose? What happens when someone complains?
The answer came from an unexpected place: a recent purchase of a 2004 Tacoma with the original tape deck still working.
Joy D'Ovidio
July 12, 2025
Oh wow, I just read your beautifully written story. I am much older than you in fact I’m a 79 year-old senior and I remember the first time I heard the Grateful Dead in Monterey California at at the fairgrounds. Whenever I am near a Luke local store I park my car and just have to go in there to buy something. It’s such a great experience thank you so much for all the hard work and you do for all of us in our community to give the best service and product to all of us. Thank you.