should i give the grateful dead a chance?

Hah, the Dead and Phish fans I knew in school had generally limited tastes! There was a small world of "good" music which consisted of select Herbie Hancock and jazz (mostly fusion) records, a smattering of reggae, the Alman Brothers, Zappa, and a few random other things. Mostly stuff that facilitated imbiging something or had lengthy, virtuosic solos.

Yeah, I like them but i think listening to them (or anyone else, really) "exclusively" would be rough.

i really dig this album too! forgot about this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GswPO2eX_VI

I think I want to just live in Scott's store for a week and listen to whatever he does.

Very true about Dead / Phisheads and their limited musical range.

But the same could be said about a lot of kids I knew who were into punk. Punk and punk only, everything else crap.

One of my major eureka momenst as a teenager was realizing that it's possible to like the Dead AND punk. Wow! Negative capability! Sounds dumb but a big lightbulb went off in my head.

In the '80s and especially the '90s, there was nothing less cool than liking the Dead. By the '90s it was for frat boys, even. Interesting to see things come around again.

Uh, lightbulb went "on", I mean.

now playing:

http://www.vinylnet.co.uk/gallery/robert%20hunter%20-%20liberty.JPG

Which Hunter album has him doing Terrapin Station with a whole other section (Ivory wheels on a rosewood track or something) that the dead didn't use?

One thing about Garcia is that he played slow better than anyone, like his cover of Dylan's "Senor," "Stella Blue," "Row Jimmy," "Must Have Been the Roses." And the aforementioned "Standing on the Moon," one of their last, great songs. Lovely lyric too ("I hear the cries of children") aside.

― thirdalternative, Thursday, April 21, 2011 2:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

china doll and ship of fools too. mars hotel is pretty great.

The version of "Loser" from the Cornell '77 show is almost unbelievably slow. It's great too.

One of my major eureka momenst as a teenager was realizing that it's possible to like the Dead AND punk
ha, yeah, it was nice when my weird musical prejudices just started to fall away. after being a pretty serious classic rock kid, ages 11-14, i spent the remainder of high school rejecting a lot that stuff. until i realized i realllly wanted to listen to pink floyd. and the dead.

Funny coincidence apropos of all the love for Europe '72:

"Grateful Dead's 'Europe '72' Gets a Massive Re-do":

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2011-04-20-deadeurope20_st_N.htm#

One of my major eureka momenst as a teenager was realizing that it's possible to like the Dead AND punk. Wow! Negative capability! Sounds dumb but a big lightbulb went off in my head.

funny cuz arguably the most important american punk, greg ginn was a huge deadhead

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lfympbUtWM1qzezj5o1_500.jpg

xp 72 CDs!?!?

When wrapped up this summer, Europe '72: The Complete Recordings will span 72 CDs on Rhino Records. Fans literally can't wait: Although the music won't be available until fall, all 7,200 copies of the $450 box set are sold out. Individual shows will be available through the band's site, dead.net.

!!

lee ranaldo was a deadhead too
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/2841262/Lee+Ranaldo.jpg

if you can believe it

Steve-O from Jackass is a Deadhead, lol

Yeah, they pretty much sold out instantly. Works out to $6.25 a disc which, compared to how much some of their live stuff goes, isn't so bad. Of course, now they'll probably charge like $30 for each individual show.

sonic youth are kind of the grateful dead of punk

sonic youth were acid rock!

once upon a time...

Didn't the British press used to compare Television to the Grateful Dead?

i loved listening to sonic youth and live skull on acid. and the jefferson airplane.

funny cuz arguably the most important american punk, greg ginn was a huge deadhead

Indeed but we did not know these things in the Midwest in 1984. No internets. Just Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and a couple others. There was a lot more mystique involved. We were excited when 7 Seconds came to town. Not to mention Sloppy Seconds.

and meat puppets! loved them when i was tripping too. total deadheads.

Indeed but we did not know these things in the Midwest in 1984. No internets. Just Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and a couple others. There was a lot more mystique involved. We were excited when 7 Seconds came to town. Not to mention Sloppy Seconds.

― thirdalternative, Thursday, April 21, 2011 4:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh yeah i'm sure, even me way later never would have guessed that, just always thought it was a cool weird thing about ginn...his new shit is total hippie rock, guitarist i play with got to jam with him at a local show, he said he'd never seen a human being smoke more weed than ginn, which is likely saying something

Tripping and seeing the Grateful Dead Movie at midnight. Also Pink Floyd The Wall. Saw that again recently and wondered why the hell anyone thought it was a good idea to watch a movie full of images of war, drowning in pools of blood, rape, eyebrow shaving, nipple cutting, Nazi shit, etc. etc. whilst on acid, was anyone's idea of a good time.

Didn't the British press used to compare Television to the Grateful Dead
greil marcus has said this a bunch of times and he's totally wrong.

Didn't the British press used to compare Television to the Grateful Dead?

Legend has it that on his first visit to CBGBs, Lester Bangs walked out while Television played "Marquee Moon", remarking loudly about "Punk" & "this Grateful Dead shit".

marcus must've blanked on trying to tie marquee moon into the basement tapes

sst and relix kinda the same thing really.

"the solo on marquee moon was like the gettysburg address of punk, bridging the old weird america with the new wave, and ... oh fuck it."

joe carducci says punk was the nihilistic phase of hippie in enter naomi

xposts galore

never seen that ginn photo before, kool thing

think the dead's drug cycle went - 60s ACID ACID ACID 70s Coke/Booze/Smack>80s. Garcia started smoking heroin hardcore in 76, remained a junkie pretty much the rest of his life, all the while eating hamburgers and ice cream (even going into a diabetic coma that meant he had to relearn how to play the guitar) and smoking bushloads of tobacco and of course WEED WEED WEED, always and forever. In a way, amazing he lasted as long as he did. Remember reading that 72 was the final mainly coke-free Dead tour (and also that my fave end of tour London Lyceum show was one of those comparatively rare gigs were the band were all still tripping their nuts off); by the 74 European jaunt, the snow was everywhere (as Allen Ginsberg once said abt dylan on the rollingthunder tour "his munificence was engorged with snow." Def. remember reading the 'theory' that Dylan's '66 motorcyle crash was cover for HIS kicking junk - can believe that one of the attractions for Bob touring w the Dead in the 80s was the constant availability of p gd drugs.)

I think it was someone in the Allman Bros. camp that remarked on the failure of the big closing jam @ Watkins Glen (paraphrased): "The drugs didn't match, so nobody could communicate. The Dead were tripping, The Allmans were flying on coke, and The Band were all drunk. No greatness occurring."

dude, that's like rule #1 of jam sessions! MAKE SURE THE DRUGS MATCH.

xpost

Part III of Allen Ginsberg's "Rolling Thunder Stones," written while traveling with the Rolling Thunder Revue:

Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine
Jiggling yr knees blankeyed in the rain
When it snows in yr nose you catch cold in yr brain

Indeed but we did not know these things in the Midwest in 1984. No internets. Just Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and a couple others. There was a lot more mystique involved. We were excited when 7 Seconds came to town. Not to mention Sloppy Seconds.

― thirdalternative, Thursday, 21 April 2011 21:55 (1 hour ago)

you weren't in Bloomington Indiana by any chance were you? That sounds EXACTLY like my autumn of 1984.

never heard this diga rhythm band before. sounds like tortoise!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkubRK-RRUQ

he said he'd never seen a human being smoke more weed than ginn

I forget whether it's in Get In The Van or one of Rollins' other books, but he talks about Ginn traveling with an entire road case full of weed on Black Flag tours.

smoke up jam band man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT_Bf0yTrf0

When I was in high school, I didn't think the title "The Process Of Weeding Out" referred to weed; I had heard the song at the beginning of the Live '84 cassette, so I figured it was a piece Black Flag opened their shows with to "weed out" all but the most hardcore fans, who could withstand 10 minutes of insane Ginn guitar wank to get to the punk rock. As with many things I have been wrong about, I still like my version better.

greil marcus has said this a bunch of times and he's totally wrong.

Hmm, my ears must be wrong too then, because Television do sound a lot like the Dead in some ways. The clean, noodly interweaving guitar lines mostly.

I just listened to Television for the first time (Marquee Moon, the song) and it reminds me more of Phish than the Dead, although of course this would be a case of the other influencing the one rather than the other way around.

@sleever: Heh, pretty close.

Television is more Dead-like in concert where the guitar solos can go on for 7 minutes.

I really hate the kind of insult-the-band via strawmanning-the-fan that the Dead, in particular, seem to attract. Apart from being lazy and dishonest, it often makes no sense outside of the country or time period where the stereotype originated.

i dunno, television, even at their noodliest, seems so much more tightly wound than the dead. if we're going to compare them to any west coat 60s act, i'd say quicksilver messenger service.

"Apart from being lazy and dishonest, it often makes no sense outside of the country or time period where the stereotype originated."

aren't there deadheads in every country and every time zone? and the time period is seemingly endless. i also think that people bring up the fans so much because they are a very real part of the band experience. the dead always stressed that deadheads were an integral part of their show. and when people pick on the dead's fans it's often because the fans love things about the dead that detractors kinda hate. the long seemingly formless slow-motion jams, etc. and this is partially drug-related too.

but yeah obviously you can just listen to the music and judge it on its own merits and never bring up or think of deadheads. its just that deadheads actually had some ability to change the music itself using their third eye pyramid mind power at live shows. and the dead reacted to their audience in weird ways. and they were perverse with their audience. they played them like a violin.