C’mon, what’ve you been up to, my lad?

I was glad to see that Dimitri ‘Dee Pop’ Papadopoulos of the Bush Tetras got a mention in Real Gone [MOJO 338]. I met Dimitri when he was a guest at the Catskills hotel where I worked in the kitchen on my summer break from college. We would hang out in his room getting high and listening to the Allmans and Bowie. I went to my first Grateful Dead show with him and stayed at his house. Fast forward eight years, I’m working my first post-college job and I see his byline on a record review in a Buffalo, New York paper. I saw his college band The Secret open for Patti Smith and later took a date to see Mink DeVille, Rockpile, and Elvis Costello and had a bite with Dimitri and his girlfriend before the show. He had transformed himself from a spotty hippy teenager into this elegant Mod punk. I lost track of him until seeing his obituary, not knowing he had changed his name. Mike Spak, Colorado