February 21

Today is Vince Welnick's birthday. Utter that name to a Deadhead and you will probably get a head shake or a pejorative "you mean, 'Wince?'" Me personally, I always rooted for Vince. The Welnick years (1990-95) are, at best, a footnote in the band's history, largely reviled and mostly forgotten. Welnick was an odd choice to replace Brent Mydland after his untimely passing in July 1990 - a rushed hire done more in the name of not missing tour dates than musical chemistry. He was not even the band's first choice. That man - Bruce Hornsby - agreed to sit in while Welnick got his sea legs, but in doing so, merely served to highlight the other man's shortcomings.

When Hornsby alit in early 1992, Welnick was competent enough to hold down the fort, but was offering little more. As Jerry's health deteriorated, Welnick's work actually improved, as the rest of the band attempted to compensate for the void created by their leader's declining capabilities. After Jerry's death, Welnick was at sea, devastated by the loss, he went into a tailspin that ended with his suicide in 2006. 

His time with the band and his place in their history is treated with, at best, ambivalence by the surviving members and the corporate keepers of the Dead's name. His years with the Dead have become synonymous with the band's decline and end for reasons that have far less to do with him than are ever mentioned. I always thought this treatment was very unfair. Vince did the best he could under the circumstances presented. He was a session musician who suddenly won the lottery, touring with an iconic band and performing nightly in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans - who could also be every bit as catty and petty as a group of high school mean girls. He spent the first 18 months being overshadowed by someone who was just better at the job than him, and when that guy left, his limitations were magnified that much more.

Instead of putting their collective arms around Vince and celebrating the time he spent with the band they have done their best to erase his memory. Little of the music he produced has been released commercially, and he barely rates a mention among Deadheads themselves. Of course, the hand of history is fickle - had Jerry died after going into a coma in 1986, most aficionados would have acknowledged the deep slide the music took from around 1983 onward - but instead, there was a renaissance after Jerry recovered that put those mid-80s years in a much different light. 

Yo Vinnie, happy birthday.

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