The Grateful Dead are (were)....

[dolo amber]

Poll question: The Grateful Dead are (were)....

[ET Awful]

1. Only a Republican would vote for option 2. . :) :) :) n/t

[ET Awful]

2. Only a Republican would vote for option 2. . :) :) :) n/t

[amber dog democrat]

3. I never heard of Phish until 2 years ago

and still don't know what they sound like. The Dead were a defining part of my cultural identity. Still listen to them.

[ET Awful]

5. Phish are good and fun, but there is NOTHING like a Grateful Dead concert

:)

[quispquake]

4. I'm gonna be honest...

I've been a BIG fan of psychedelic music...but I just never cared for the Grateful Dead...I've tried and tried, but I just don't get it...(Flame on!!!). I actually saw this great documentary a couple of weeks back called "Festival Express" that had some vintage Dead scenes...I found them to be the most boring part of the movie...

I guess I always found the scene interesting, just not the music...

[ET Awful]

8. The Grateful Dead are kind of like black licorice. . . .

People that hate black licorice really hate black licorice.
People that like black licorice REALLY like black licorice.

It's as simple as that :)

Only the privileged "get it."

The rest of you mere mortals just haven't made the psychological leap forward yet :).

[calico1]

10. They had one song I liked

which actually made it to the top 40. Can't remember the name though. As for the others I could just never get into their music. And I have never been a raging Republican by any means. Just not my kind of music.

[ET Awful]

13. That song would be "Touch of Grey" and it all but killed the whole scene.

Freakin' MTV wannabe deadheads living on trust funds and meth trying to crash the party because MTV made it cool.

That was 1987 and it's the year that the whole scene really began a downhill slide.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

6. OVER-RATED, TUNE-SHY, MEANDERING, PRETENTIOUS SHITE!

(just hang on a minute though, the zip on my flame-suit is sticking)

[ProfessorGAC]

12. Correct, Correct, Correct, and Correct

The Professor

[ET Awful]

15. Overrated? By whom? Certainly not the press. Certainly not any

mainstream music company or any other mainstream industry. Tune shy? Hmmmm, spoken like someone who has never actually listened to their music, meandering? certainly, that's kind of the point? Pretentious? Hardly, humble would be a much more accurate description. How can a band that does nothing except walk on stage, play music then walk off with zero theatrics be pretentious? Perhaps you don't know the meaning of the word?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

17. That's right.

[ET Awful]

27. What's right? That nobody overrated them?

Or that the word "pretentious" doesn't apply in any way? :) :) :)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

28. Yeah.

[ET Awful]

31. LOL . . yer messin' with my head man. :) n/t

[Screaming Lord Byron]

34. Fair enough. I was just in the mood for a flame war.

[quispquake]

16. Okay, I agree...

I was trying to be nice, but what the hell :)

[amber dog democrat]

20. They are who motiviated me to get into bluegrass

and start learning mandolin.
There is NOTHING like a Grateful Dead concert. I owe a debt of gratitude to Jerry Garcia whom I will always cherish.

Some of the best shows were seeing him at the Armadillo World HQ with a smaller band.

[ET Awful]

21. Me too. . . let me to the music of everyone frorm Tony Rice to

Bill Monroe :).

After hearing Old and In the Way, I was a junkie :).

[amber dog democrat]

32. Tony Rice & Bill Monroe are on my iPod.

so do you play anything ?

[ET Awful]

37. I play a really mean CD player, and I'm really good at pushing play :)

I saw Tony Rice play at the Boston Folk Festival about 3 years ago, he was playing with Peter Rowan, that was a GREAT performance.

[amber dog democrat]

39. Rice is one of my heroes.

I love his rendition of The Gold Rush on Unit of Measure.
Never saw him play. sounds like an awesome show. Never saw Peter Rowan for that matter. Did see Raph Stanley a couple of times.

[Redneck Socialist]

38. Me three

Listening to the Dead lead me to discover a wealth of traditional music. I'm now a huge bluegrass fan. Thanks Jerry.

[Old and In the Way]

49. Have you ever heard "Bluegrass Breakdown"?

Garcia and Grissman plays the most blistering breakdown I've ever heard. Garcia was a great banjo player....this live tune was an amazing display of speed. Grissman keeps cranking up the tempo and Garcia was there to match him.

[amber dog democrat]

51. Where can i find it.?

I have Grissman and Garcia's Pizza Tapes - and some other stuff with him as well.
For seminal influence, Garcia was "it " for me.

[Old and In the Way]

56. Released on "So Many Roads"

I've got it on MP3.....PM me with your addy and I can send it to you.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

7. The Grateful Dead will always hold a cherished place in my heart

:)

[underpants]

9. I liked their albums more than their live stuff

There I said it.

Growing up near Hampton they was always plenty of live tapes floating around too.

[ET Awful]

11. Albums? BAH. . . overproduced tripe that even THEY hated. . .

If it ain't live, it ain't the Dead :)

[underpants]

14. American Beauty

Workingman's Dead

The early ones.

IMHO

[ET Awful]

29. Certainly good tunes came from the album, but . . .

both lacked the energy of a live performance. They had some great music on them, no doubt. But if you hear any of the acoustic sets from the 70's, they blow away everything on those albums.

The 70's shows when New Riders of the Purple Sage would open, then the Dead would do an acoustic set, then 2 electric sets. . . DAMN that was some damn fine music :).

[Old and In the Way]

40. 1972, Boston Garden.

NRPS opens around 6:30....the Dead finish it at 1:00AM. Their 1st album had just been released. Garcia sits in on steel pedal. I was sonicly blown away by the Wall of Sound.

A few days later, I see them both again at Clark University...maybe 1,000 people. Both bands jam.

The good 'ol days....

[CrownPrinceBandar]

18. the source of some good memories............

but I'll be damned if I get anything from listening to them now. Could it have been the drugs? Yup, must have been the drugs.

[goju]

19. Ripple

The very best tune ever produced. Might have something to do with my "experience" the first time I heard it :)

Grisman and Garcia put out some great ole timey folk tunes, if you havent heard them, you have to listen.

I miss the shows. I have NO interest in concerts now that HE is gone. Its a damn shame!

[ET Awful]

23. Same here. . . I've gone to a few post-Jerry "Dead" shows and . . .

it always seems like there's something missing. . .

It doesn't matter who they try to fill the hole with, the hole is still there.

[Old and In the Way]

30. My daughter is in a HS bluegrass band up here in mid-Maine.

They cover Ripple.....it'd bring a smile to Jerry's face to hear them play it.

I'm thinking of getting them to record it and sending a copy to Dennis McNally who is originally from my town...I think he'd get a kick out of it.

[ET Awful]

35. I was at a little music festival in the mountains above. . .

San Bernardino back in 1995 a couple months after Jerry died, a few Dead cover bands and other jam bands played, but during a break between bands, a 10 year old boy walked up to the stage and talked to one of the announcers for a few seconds, then got a huge smile on his face, ran back to his parents, grabbed an acoustic guitar out of its case and ran back to the stage.

Meanwhile, they'd set up a mic for the kid, just because he asked them to, they introduced him (and I can't for the life of me remember his name), but that kid played one of the most heart-rending renditions of Ripple I have ever heard. He may have been slightly off-key, and his guitar playing was still developing (but spot on, he just muffled a few notes), but there was more emotion in that few minutes of music than I've heard since. He finished playing, smiled shyly and said into the mic "That one was for Jerry, we miss you." Then he walked off stage back to his parents and just sat down with a huge smile on his face.

That was a great day.

[WilliamPitt]

22. My favorite band

[ET Awful]

26. In that case Will . . . next time there' s a get together in Boston,

remind me and I'll bring along a few CD's for you. I've got a LOT of shows to offer, and hundreds of blank CD's just begging to be filled.

[WilliamPitt]

36. I have a few fatty shows myself

:)

[Old and In the Way]

24. What's with the 'Pigpen is a dingbat'option?

[dolo amber]

43. Isn't he a GD person?

:shrug:

I know very little about them...but I thought it was mandatory every poll have a 'dingbat' choice. ;)

[Old and In the Way]

47. Yes, he was.

Ron was a damn colorful guy, I think he may have had the best white guy blues voice I've ever heard. He definitely had a big impact on their sound and musical direction. Sadly, he was the 1st to depart the planet in the early 70's.

If you want to hear him at his best, check out "Bear's Choice". "Katie Mae", "Smokestack Lighting", and "Hard to Handle" will convince you. :-)

[regularguy]

25. A great excuse for a road trip...

How else would I have been stranded in West Virginia with a car that wouldn't run and not enough money to fix it. Nobody encouraged me to have any adventures when I was young (1970s) except for my freinds' older brothers and sisters, who were deadheads. Good times!

[tigereye]

33. they made great music for the sake of it and for the fans

and should be respected for that.

[amber dog democrat]

41. Absolutely !!!!

I am glad you reminded me. And I remember how we felt encouraged to tape the live shows. The Dead were the only band that encouraged bootleggers to catch the live performances and share/ trade the concert recordings....sometimes they wanted to know how good their own sound was and they would listen to these recordings with an eye to making shows even better.

[ET Awful]

42. I always loved Jerry's philosphy on that . . .

"Once we're done playing, it's theirs." That's basically how he felt. It really came from his days of going to bluegrass festivals and folk festivals and taping those on an old reel to reel, he just let the tradition continue :)

[Old and In the Way]

45. Is there any band that has a deeper and wider recorded catalog?

Doubtful.

For you 'Heads posting here.....you might find Bear's site a fascinating read. For those that don't know him, he was the resident sonic wizard and alchemist.....

http://www.thebear.org/bearstory.html

[amber dog democrat]

53. oh, i did not know much about this

and always wondered. Cool

[Magrittes Pipe]

44. Something whose existence makes me very sad.

[MadHound]

46. Love the Dead, and you've got to give them credit

They brought country/bluegrass to the rock and roll masses. Great talent, great showmanship, they put on fantastic shows.

[WilliamPitt]

48. What the Dead means

The Grateful Dead was the house band for the Mery Pranksters' acid tests. They were the house band for the mid-late 60s San Francisco scene.

Here's an interesting thing. Phish crowds look a lot like Dead crowds. But Phish crowds come together for a kick-ass party. Dead crowds came together to come together, to hold aloft whatever light still shined from the candle of that San Francisco ethic. It had meaning.

The music of the Dead allowed you to be alone with your mind for a while, to travel across the axis of wherever your mind went. Being alone with yourself in a space that opens your thinking is a rare commodity.

Finally, they were excellent musicians, no matter what your tastes may be. The bluegrass/blues ethic shined through almost every song.

My favorite band.

[Old and In the Way]

50. You'd have loved Holy Cross in 1971.

I hadn't really heard them until I arrived on campus that fall. The Skull and Roses album was probably the most played music on campus. You couldn't walk anywhere without hearing it. It was Deadhead University. :-)

[WilliamPitt]

52. It was like that in 1990...sorta

With the people I ran with at HC, anyway. :)

[Old and In the Way]

59. That'd been about the time when kids of the alumni from that era

would be starting school there.....think there might be a correlation? :-)

[kodi]

54. the best.

We're all Jerry's kids now.

Anyone who has ever heard them live playing scarlet begonias into a fire on the mountain knew something special was about.

I had my first experience of Joseph Campbell when at 19, I read his “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” in 1974. That year finally I attended my first of over 75 Dead shows. A few years ago I read this from Campbell, and it rang in words as true as it had in my heart that night.

“I had had my first rock and roll experience at a performance of The Grateful Dead in Oakland (in 1986, he was 82 years old)…. Rock music had always seemed a bore to me, but I can tell you, at that concert, I found eight thousand people standing in mild rapture for five hours while these boys let loose everything on the stage. The place was just a mansion of dance. And I thought, "Holy God! Everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here!" The principal theme of my talk was the wonderful innocence and the marvel of life when it recognizes itself in harmony with all the others. Everyone is somehow or other at one with everybody else. And my final theme was that this is the world’s only of answer to the atom bomb. The atom bomb is based on differentiation: I-and-not-that-guy-over-there. Divisiveness is socially based. It has nothing to do with nature at all. It is a contrivance and here, suddenly, it fell apart.”


J. Campbell, “the Mythic Dimension” Harper Collins, p. 152, 1993.

“I was carried away in rapture. And so I am a Deadhead now.”

“The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work” edited by Phil Cousineau, Element books, p.221, 1999.

From that night in 1974, my philosophy has been to dance and as I move, feel the rhythm and unity of the Universe, and I have been delighted that message was what Campbell felt too, and I'll be a Deadhead too ‘til I die.

My motto is Campbell’s......“Follow your bliss” and Jerry and the boys held a lot of it

"When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come; this is the country we will celebrate, and these are the people we are one with."
- Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"

http://www.jcf.org/
http://freenet.msp.mn.us/org/mythos/mythos.www/TENCOM.HTML
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC12/Campbell.htm
http://www.whidbey.com/parrott/toms.htm
http://www.newdimensions.org/html/campbell.html
http://www.rain.org/~young/articles/campbell.html
http://www.spiritsite.com/writing/joscam/part2.htm
http://members.aol.com/ServantWRX/pwrmyth.html


the Dead are/were about more than just the music, that was just the launching point, and that is what art is all about.

[EstimatedProphet]

55. Their music was multi-dimensional

I'll leave it at that.

[Old and In the Way]

57. I've heard them on the 6th dimension

Never on the 7th.

:-)

[EstimatedProphet]

58. And they are better than the 5th Dimension

Even though I do have a soft spot for the 5th Dimension...