I've only been listening to Grateful Dead music for a few years. I'd been hearing about them for a longtime, but something made me find a best of playlist while making pancakes for my kids on Saturday morning and I've been hooked since. Now, when we load into the minivan to drive down the mountain towards civilization, Jerry Garcia sings, "Long distance runner, what you standin' there for? Get up, get out, get out of the door..."
It's somewhat amazing how these giant cultural movements used to exist completely off your radar. My guess is that omnipresent media makes this less the case now, but back in the 80s and 90s, a whole scene could exist without you knowing about it. Now, we have an Amazon documentary (or three), an HBR article, and a book by my employer's co-founder, the Dead's corner of culture seems to be all around.
I vaguely knew of them in the mid-90s, when I was working at a garden center after school, the somewhat employed, somewhat older people would disappear for a weekend or two for a show. They weren't quite old enough to be real deadheads, although some claimed to have seen Jerry perform. They had intense taxonomic discussions about which band's fanbases were the most drug-addled. They mostly went to see the jam bands of the northeast that grew up in the broken apart scene after Jerry's death. Eventually, most of them had Phish stickers on their cars. I would wager more than a few of them bared all for that famous picture of hundreds of nude druggies on the airport runway in Aroostook County. The funny thing was: the management of the garden center wouldn't allow any jam band music to be played on the premises. I knew about these bands but had no idea how they sounded.
I wonder how much of music is experienced like I've experienced the Grateful Dead: their prime mover is long gone, they've broken apart, I've seen only recordings, and their remaining members are shuffling off this mortal coil. I like albums recorded of live performances in Europe in 1972 or Cornell in 1977. The only real live performances I've seen were by cover bands or the reconstituted remaining parts of the original band. And this was a band that lived for the live performance—live was music; music was live. Once they were done performing, they were done with it. That was the opposite of my experience: I only picked up the moments long after the band probably forgot about them.
What's the attraction of this music? When asked for his favorite Dead song, Bill Walton said, "It's all one song. They just change the verses, they change the rhythm, they change the beat, they take a little break to catch their breath, to change the mood. But there's only one song." Is that nonsense? Maybe, but read the GQ and New Yorker pieces below: the jam band, its fans, and their shows are a cultural force.
Most bands aren't made by their bassists, but Phil Lesh brought real musicianship, acid flashbacks, and lyricism to the Dead. He died earlier this week in his mid-eighties, on his second liver, and performing right until the end. Some of his best work, both as a songwriter and bassist, can be found in this playlist. That the playlist is anchored by a 30-minute version of Dark Star would surprise no fan of the band: they'd wonder which version made the official playlist and have some critical commentary of why the Veneta, Oregon show in 1972 came together the way it did.
"If, as some savants of consciousness suggest, we are actually agreeing to create, from moment to moment, everything we perceive as real, then it stands to reason that we're also responsible for keeping it going in some harmonious manner."
― Phil Lesh, Searching for the Sound
RIP
They’ve weathered derision, addiction, and even a temporary breakup, but the Burlington legends just keep swimming. GQ embedded with the band (and tens of thousands of fans) in a field in Delaware to watch them stage their first festival in nine years—and reinvent themselves one more time.
A run of lost Las Vegas weekends for Deadheads prompts a longtime fan to wrestle with what the band has left behind.