should i give the grateful dead a chance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeE6QysNp24

posting this in lieu of a long post in my head. also there's a destination in the sunshine daydream "playing in the band," that destination is hell

back in the day the title track of terrapin station drew me in deeper than workingman's dead and american beauty. the existence of this cover version, despite the generous range of the day of the dead tribute project, still surprises me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPdoWp-PHFU

the reason i love the dead is that they are constantly falling apart but remain together, it's like this spaghetti-like web that turns out to have all of these knots in it that you couldn't see. it's exhilarating to listen to. at about seven minutes in that "help on the way" you enter that web

they might not be the best players in the world but for me they are one of the best examples of an ensemble of musicians as a collective, roaming, unconscious mind

hell. hmmm.

hell isn't about the destination, it's about the journey.

i'm not trying to be glib there. it's something i've been through, several times, it's in fact something i'm going through right now, and going through a certain level of mental/emotional shit i have at times found myself completely lost, miserable, and with no way out. i've tried following other people's directions and gotten, as far as i can tell, absolutely nowhere, and i don't have any better ideas, and there's nothing left for me to keep doing the same shit i've always been doing and hope that what i'm doing will somehow miraculously start working.

i think you're generally right about the dead having no destination in their jams and that that is the point! and yeah hearing "playing in the band" gradually bend into something evil and gnarled is a really sick journey

i have played the sunshine daydream "playing in the band" for people hoping to convert them and it's never worked, which is very weird for me, someone who can't help but feeling at around nine minutes into it that i've been sucked off the earth into space and am being chewed up in the teeth of a monster formed out of the darkness and stars

the reason i love the dead is that they are constantly falling apart but remain together, it's like this spaghetti-like web that turns out to have all of these knots in it that you couldn't see.

― american bradass (BradNelson)

i get what you're saying, i have that feeling about a lot of things, and i'm not sure i trust that feeling. the way my brain works, and this seems to be a common human experience, is that my brain tends to create patterns and meaning where none exist. like, if there's a collective mind here it's not _just_ the dead, it's the canon-building process, it's headyversion saying "hey check out the 1970-11-05 DS, sure it's an AUD but they were really on and locked in that night", that's why i'm happy to see you writing about this insted of saying "listen to this version of this song", which is a thing that gets mocked so roundly by people who aren't deadheads, whatever is there - and ok, you've convinced me, there is in fact something there - is elusive, there's no single way in and if the common entry points don't work, which they didn't for me, i kept trying different ways over a period of decades and it did eventually click. one of my ongoing efforts w/r/t music is social, if somebody loves a song or a performance i want to be able to hear what other people hear in the music they love. i kept trying to listen to the dead because people still love them.

and i guess w/r/t the dead i'm now officially on the other side, where i'm trying to explain why i listen to dead bootlegs so fucking much after decades of vocally despising them.

ftr the 1977-05-09 help/knot/tower is yeah very good, and that's coming from somone who is generally left cold by '77

i'm going to have to listen to the sunshine daydream "playin" again, i haven't had that experience with it before but now that you've mentioned your experience i might!

this developing description -- that they're the AMM if not the scratch orchestra lol of stuff i personally don't much care for (=bluegrass) -- is actually p clarifying, in re the gap between my current response and a love for them i fee i now very much get (and respect) even if i'm unlikely to share it any time soon

However, my love for them very definitively stops at whatever point in the 1970s the lame funkiness and envelope filter guitars start to kick in.

i just started listening to some random dead tracks because of this thread and i think this is actually the point where i start to like them - bits on 'blues for allah' sound like the meat puppets trying to play steely dan songs

I'm just putting on right now a random track of theirs... them doing "Not Fade Away" at Boston Music Hall on 1971-12-01. And it is just so frankly bizarre. The audience just starts screaming and going wild and right out of the gate it's clear to me that this is an absolutely, unquestionably, terrible version of "Not Fade Away".

That's interesting because its almost like a political rally, that's where there is a break between the Dead and say, Rallizes or Dead C or whatever you'd care to compare it with who are basically playing to very tiny numbers of people - just howling feedback and shards of song in empty spaces (with free improv its even 'worse' , i.e. there is no song lol, the spaces are tinier still). The music is creating this social space that seems more sacred, somehow. Doesn't end when the show ends

The way some of you are (intriguingly!) positioning the band's faults as attributes makes we wonder what you think of Neil Young. Crazy Horse can be sloppy, and they can certainly be aimless. Plus, they embrace primitivism and lack of polish. But it's often if not always in the context of *great songs*, which is key, imo. I guess one way to look at it is that they are starting at the destination - great song - and going forward from there. Another quality comparison could be, say, Miles Davis "Live at the Plugged Nickel." The compositions are all tried and true, it's where the players take it from there that makes it such a fascinating document. (Though I admit it's not fair to offer those particular players up as comparisons to any rock band.)

Anyway, the Dead ... the way the band is often described (jamming, hit or miss, searching, etc.) is the way people often describe the writing process itself. That is, the Dead (live?) is like listening to all the permutations a band's music goes through *before* most bands even press record. I suppose my frustration with the Dead, whenever I give them a shot, is that they often seem either uninterested in reaching or unable to reach that destination, which is why even fans (afaict) discount huge hunks of their catalog or live documentation. They had a good night, they had a bad night, etc. Did Miles or Coltrane ever have a "bad" night? I dunno!

But it's often if not always in the context of *great songs*, which is key, imo.

let me clarify my own position here: the dead wrote great songs

bits on 'blues for allah' sound like the meat puppets trying to play steely dan songs

more where that came from on wake of the flood

^ thank u!

Did Miles or Coltrane ever have a "bad" night? I dunno!

Not "bad" in the shambling, "doesn't anyone here actually know how this song goes?" way of the Dead, but yeah, there are bootlegs of the 1973-75 Miles band - the group that made Agharta, Pangaea and Dark Magus - where they're just kind of going through the motions, with no real sense of inspiration or desire to make the audience's heads explode. It feels like a group just running through their repertoire.

I can believe it. Tbf, that was after three decades of music (and bands) that changed the course of jazz and right before he vanished for several years.

i have played the sunshine daydream "playing in the band" for people hoping to convert them and it's never worked, which is very weird for me, someone who can't help but feeling at around nine minutes into it that i've been sucked off the earth into space and am being chewed up in the teeth of a monster formed out of the darkness and stars

I've come to realize that it's pretty much impossible to show someone the Light, even via something that might seem objectively fantastic to the convert like the 8/27/72 Bird Song; it's something that has to happen organically. Personally I got semi into the Dead in high school in the early 00s via Live/Dead, which I loved (Dark Star in particular, because it's essentially a deep exploration of the mixolydian mode, which resonates with my brain chemistry like high-grade heroin). But apart from a song or two, I couldn't get into the Americana stuff that followed at all despite my Deadhead friend's best efforts, so I gave up on exploring further.

Fast-forward to 2016 or so and I randomly decided to listen to the studio version of Terrapin Station, and it resonated super hard. From there I listened to the studio albums in order to familiarize myself with the canon and found myself loving tons of the songs. Once I set off to explore the live stuff, it was OVER. For months I hardly listened to anything but Grateful Dead. I don't think anyone could have verbally or otherwise persuaded me to get to that point tho, and I've stopped trying with others :(

man, you guys need to settle down

no way

Settle down easy ;)

bits on 'blues for allah' sound like the meat puppets trying to play steely dan songs

more where that came from on wake of the flood

These are those newly remastered GDR albums I was taking about! (plus Mars Hotel)

I don’t care for the Americana stuff either — at least not American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead. (I do like the Europe ‘72 songs which could be descended that way, however.) Anyway, yeah, the Dead did have great songs, that’s not even a question.

*described that way

I don't deny it! It's just that imo that's not what they're best known for.

I know they're diametrical opposites, but I see some similarities between the Dead and Frank Zappa. They both undeniably changed the course of music, and you can hear their direct and indirect influence all over rock music. But they don't really attract/reward casual fans. You really have to be on their wavelength.

(And both, needless to say, deserve a chance. I think a newbie would come to a conclusion one way or the other relatively fast.)

And an unconscionable amount of laudatory tosh is spoken about both.

I can’t stand Zappa! And I’ve given him several big chances 🤨

lol ben w4tson once told me that i was his target-to-convert reader for his zappa book -- i was his editor at the time, at the wire -- and of course he did sterling work pulling together a bunch of potential ideas from all over everywhere, political, cultural, anything (it's a rich and interesting book! ppl shd read it!), that might encourage me to warm to the ghastly old goat. and anytime i do read a bit of it it makes me think "ok that was intriguing, i'll give him another try!" -- and i listen to half a song (less if he starts singing) and think OH MY GOD FUCK THIS HORRIBLE GARBAGE!!

i have played the sunshine daydream "playing in the band" for people hoping to convert them and it's never worked, which is very weird for me, someone who can't help but feeling at around nine minutes into it that i've been sucked off the earth into space and am being chewed up in the teeth of a monster formed out of the darkness and stars

I think the idea of the Dead and the idea of Frank Zappa both appeal to me, but I really don't enjoy listening to either.

That's interesting because its almost like a political rally, that's where there is a break between the Dead and say, Rallizes or Dead C or whatever you'd care to compare it with who are basically playing to very tiny numbers of people - just howling feedback and shards of song in empty spaces (with free improv its even 'worse' , i.e. there is no song lol, the spaces are tinier still). The music is creating this social space that seems more sacred, somehow. Doesn't end when the show ends

― xyzzzz__

and we are today, crucially, not part of that original space. a lot of what i hated about the dead was my hatred of deadheads as they were when i was growing up, listless twirling burnouts desperately searching for a "miracle", or in other words another fix. the dead's music is still a social space but is a different sort of social space.

and yeah, the dead have a lot of great songs, no question about it! outside of their "americana" trip, which i do believe their absolute best songs came out of, i would say that help/slipknot/tower from "blues for allah" is a really good medley of songs. on the other hand while i do like the "main ten" riff it came out of i fucking hate "playin' in the band" as a song. first thing i do whenever i put a version of "playin'" on is skip a couple minutes in.

when i was younger i listened to a lot of zappa. i loved zappa and hated the dead and now i've sort of switched positions on those. i'm tired of zappa's schtick, i'm tired of the nerdy dudes who act like he's the greatest composer of the 20th century without having heard any other 20th century composers, i'm tired of that vein of nihilist self-justifying assholery and people who present him as some sort of fucking hero for being constitutionally unable to write a love song. the sort of shit you have to put up with in order to listen to frank zappa is very different from the sort of shit you have to put up with in order to listen to the dead (the two things that bother me most about zappa's music are the blatant misogyny - see "the illinois enema bandit", which ben watson correctly points out as zappa's most indefensible moment - and his having played the worst reggae ever recorded by human beings).

zappa is dead and i am more than happy to let him stay that way.

The only Zappa music I have any use for anymore is his instrumental jazz-fusion stuff from 1969-72. Anytime he opens his mouth, I'm out.

anyway, if any of the stuff i'm saying seems really hard on the dead, it's from having seen people defend a lot of awful shit on the grounds that it's done by people they personally like. certainly people do that with, for instance, zappa. i don't want to be that person. the dead have done a lot of awful shit, both musically and, honestly, on a basic human behavior level. i would not have wanted to hang out with them on the europe '72 tour, for as much as the music from that tour probably represents their high point as a band. honestly, i don't think it would be fair for me to say that i like the dead, because i don't, but i listen to quite a lot of their music; a fair amount of it in absolute terms (in percentage terms a fairly small amount of it) is exceptional. i'd rather praise with harsh criticism than damn with faint praise. that's just how i am.

I’ve never heard stories of them doing awful shit (Altamont notwithstanding). Sounds like you’re deeper in it than me, though

i'm far from an insider - i've read jesse jarnow's "heads" and i know that they were in the habit of dosing people without those people's knowledge or consent. in my book doing that is just plain evil.

Dead also instrumental in the corporatization of rock and roll.

of course they are far from exclusively to blame in that regard, just coming from that particular messenger it was kind of gross.

Erstwhile ilxor patron sailor has a familial connection to the Dead merch empire dunno if he’s upthread talking about it at all

xp Josh, what does that mean?

tribunal is closed, guilty of assault and capitalism

xp The Dead incorporated in 1976 and, with the band members as the board of directors, became a serious business venture.

How to Truck the Brand: Lessons from the Grateful Dead

xpost It's more a romantic notion than anything else, but as I loosely understand it they were one of the first bands to put a price on and market everything. I could be wrong though.

no way to tell for sure but dead maybe soundtracked more popular kid high school keggers and fraternity events than any other rock band, 1971 - 2001

xp You mean, like, T-shirts?

yes, but more importantly, the idea of a band setting up a corporation specifically to sell (and profit from) said T-shirts

AFAIK, they were among the first to forge a direct relationship w/fans ("DEAD FREAKS UNITE: Who are you? Where are you? How are you?"), and build a robust touring/merch economy separate from record sales -- eventually, even going indie for a while -- which is totally "romantic" & cool in my book. What's wrong with setting up a corporation for that? They had a huge crew of ppl to support.

Would it be cooler if all the checks were personally cashed in Phil's name, or something?

if you don't get Josh's point then idk what to say

"kind of gross" sums it up for me

I don't get it, and I'm not being obtuse. Josh didn't even explain what he meant! Every band "puts a price" on merch and "markets" concert tickets, etc. (and what's wrong with merch, anyway??)