should i give the grateful dead a chance?

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??)

It's gross for a band to seek revenue steams that aren't dependent on checks from Warner Bros.(?)

stop being an apologist for capitalism

Wasn't rock and roll pretty fully corporatized by the time of the Beatles? If anything, I more get the sense that they expanded what could be done within corporatized rock and roll.

xp lol, are you fucking serious?

The music wants to be free, maaaaannnnn...

But wasn't that more or less the Dead's impetus?

If anything, I more get the sense that they expanded what could be done within corporatized rock and roll.

Like Jerry Garcia ties.

yes, they repeatedly drugged people without their knowledge or consent, but let us never forget the greatest evil is capitalism

The music drugs wants to be free, maaaaannnnn...

Like I said, it's more a romantic notion than anything else. Few bands are in it to *lose* money. The Dead if anything deserve credit for calling it what it is.

Fine, just don't call them hyprocrites b/c you had some vague sense that, as hippies or whatever, they *were* in it lose money.

Well, I think at one point they kind of were! Until maybe they realized how much they were losing. (Embezzled by one of their dads?)

The conclusion of that Altamont book I read was that the debacle kind of ended whatever the Dead (and Stones) were, or at least what they wanted to be. But I'm not familiar enough with the Dead to know if they were changed by the events.

i think they were in it to have a good time. no 'rock star' seemed nearly as chill as jerry (which i think is the core of their aspirational fan appeal). dude died at 53 a martyr to hippie hedonism

i mean if we want to talk about the corporatization of the dead yeah that was '75 when all of their dreams crashed and burned due to a number of factors, including yeah embezzlement, that wasn't altamont and for god's sake isn't there another thread or two where we can argue about how capitalism is the root of all evil?

The embezzlement was 1970. Hart's dad disappeared with their money three months after Altamont, fwiw.

I think it's awesome that the Dead has built a thriving merch empire to support their fans' thirst for high-quality recordings of live shows, merch, etc. (even though I rarely engage with any of that personally). I wish every band/artist that I'm into (and, heck, even many I'm not) could be successful on their own terms. I recently signed up to send a few bucks a month to my favorite guitar dude on Patreon, to get behind his future recording & merch efforts... that's what I do as a fan, don't we all? -- support artists we love and hope they can find financial stability or even "success" via what they produce & do.

i think it's awesome the only other american band who has as many great album-closing jams as the dead ("casey jones", "blues for allah", "the weather report suite", "truckin'", "terrapin station", "cosmic charlie") is REM

xpost I think Pearl Jam doing that was super-cool, too. I remember all those shelves of live CDs at Tower Records and thinking, man, I wish every band did this. It's more or less free money for them, and an awesome thing for fans.

Re: Altamont, the whole reason Altamont happened at all was because the Stones were getting shit for high ticket prices on their US tour, and the only reason they were touring America at all was reportedly to refill their empty coffers; the reason the event was moved to Altamont at the last minute was because Jagger wanted to keep a bigger percentage of the film profits, iirc. A lot of folks of course write about Altamont as the fabled Death of the '60s (with actual death the turning point), but it was also when a lot of idealism evaporated in the face of practical money matters and/or greed.

my favorite guitar dude on Patreon

lol this was Hagerty wasn't it