Comments on: All About the Music

By: Mr OK Jazz Tokyo

Mr OK Jazz Tokyo — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:38:19 +0000

Under-rated musicians but I’ve never been a fan.

By: Sliced Bread

Sliced Bread — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:42:38 +0000

I recently played The Music Never Stopped (one of my favorite Dead tunes) for my sons, and they liked it a lot. They’re only interested in 21st century radio hits, but they instinctively felt compelled, and knew how to dance to the Dead.
There’s hope for them yet.

By: Matt Blankman

Matt Blankman — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:12:55 +0000

[5] Although funnily enough, a musician/songwriter friend of mine who had always resisted them found himself giving them another chance a few years ago and suddenly something clicked. He said he wanted to *really* listen to them, because he always wants to dig deeper when there’s something he just reflexively hates or rejects. He suddenly found himself “getting it” and now finds live Dead bootlegs among his regular listening. As he has said, “Here’s the secret about the Grateful Dead: their music was actually really good.”

By: Sliced Bread

Sliced Bread — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:58:27 +0000

4) that’s the thing. Most criticism I’ve heard about the Dead has more to do with the brand, and the scene than the music – which I think stands up well as great folk-rock.

By: Matt Blankman

Matt Blankman — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:49:50 +0000

As Alex well knows, I am still a pretty serious Dead freak. Actually, all the GD fans I know personally are all people with eclectic and interesting taste in music as well as a real passion for it. I particularly liked this passage: “They may be brain surgeons, lawyers, bartenders, or even punk-rock musicians. Really, it shouldn’t matter what they do, or what they smell like, or whether they can still take a toke without keeling over. It’s the music, and not the parking lot, that’s got them by the throat.”

Not so amazingly, I personally know lawyers, bartenders and punk-rock musicians who consider themselves Deadheads. (Sorry, I don’t know any brain surgeons.)

I also think Paumgarten nailed it here:
“No two shows were the same, although many were similar. Even on good nights, they might stink it up for a stretch, and on bad ones they could suddenly catch fire—a trapdoor springs open. Then, there were the weird inimitable gigs, the yellow lobsters. Variation was built into the music. They played their parts as if they were inventing them on the spot, and sometimes they were. The music, even in the standard verse-chorus stretches, often had a limber, wobbly feel to it that struck many listeners as slovenly but others as sinuous and alive, open to possibility and surprise. It came across as music being made, rather than executed.”

Right on.

(Also, I have given up arguing the Dead’s case for those who don’t like them. Very often, its for reasons that have zero to do with the music, and life is just too short. Enjoy what you enjoy.)

By: Bronx Boy in NC

Bronx Boy in NC — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:25:42 +0000

The Dead were never my thing. Lured by a few DH friends, I saw them at RFK in the spring of ’92, just as I was emerging from an extended Billy Joel-Bruce-Stones-Beatles-Rush adolescence into some wider tastes.

It was the most perfect blue day imaginable. Willowy girls spun and swayed in cotton sun dresses. I didn’t smoke anything – not directly – but drank exactly the right amount. So much whiskey and hacky-sack in the parking lot that we forgot (“what’s that noise?”) to go inside and see the Steve Miller Band open. Then during the show, the GD played “Casey Jones,” and I learned from the veterans around me that this was A Big Deal.

All in all, a time capsule day. I don’t own a single GD recording but smile whenever I think about it. I saw them one other time, several years later at Giants Stadium, and it felt very ordinary. Couldn’t shake a headache the whole time. Magic not recapturable; once was enough.

Postscript: The morning after the RFK show in ’92, my friend and I were walking on the other side of town. We were dressed in chinos and button-down shirts. Short hair, clean-shaven. Not a single sticker or patch. We could have been anyone from anywhere. But as two very archetypal deadheads passed us on the sidewalk, one cracked a grin at us and said, “Casey Jones, man. Can you believe it?”

By: Sliced Bread

Sliced Bread — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:09:11 +0000

Ah,the line about the drummers sounding like sneakers in a dryer is hilarious. The writer nailed all the negative things you can say about the Dead and their fans, but I still remember them fondly.
I was by no means a huge fan.
I went to a dozen or so shows between ’84 and ’94, my college and post-college years. The band was far beyond its prime but had a bit of a resurrgence, and the shows were fun, and memorable (more so collectively than individually)
It was easy to roll your eyes at “the scene” (described perfectly in the article) especially if you were late to the party as I was.

Most of the friends I went with were more into the band than I was (probably thanks to older sibilings who saw the Dead in their prime), but none of them were bonafide Deadheads. I always felt like a tourist at the shows, but I enjoyed going back for more. I got to see them out west, and in Saratoga Springs, NY – some cool venues.

As for the music, I always enjoyed their melodies and jams far more than their lyrics which seldom if ever “spoke to me.”
I still listen to the Dead occasionally – mostly live recordings from the 70s. The accoustic Reckoning is still a great listen.

By: ColoYank

ColoYank — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:58:19 +0000

I was acquainted with a few Deadheads in my college days at New Paltz, and they all seemed to wear their ‘deadness’ with a certain grungy purity. I still to this day do not understand the attraction, let alone the undying devotion, to such an undisciplined group of musicians. At the heart of it was Jerry Garcia, and I could discern dimly that there was a cult of personality that had grown up around him. The band had arisen around him, too, and frequently whirled beyond his orbit, and at its chaotic height he seemed bemused but unperturbed at the center of it. It seemed to me the band crystallized all the characteristics of their fans – certainly a false imagining on my part, although performances under the influence were certainly not uncommon. Even at its most interesting, or at its least incomprehensible, Garcia’s songwriting has a characteristic country-rock flavor, dreamier than Charlie Daniels, but closely related. Sometimes I wonder if the young devotées I knew at school ever snapped out of it.