Well, it’s been a while.
I guess being middle-aged means that sometimes middle-aged things need to be done. I spent two months away from my house on the road, for a variety of reasons which are not really too relevant here, but which caused a big crimp in my Grateful Dead listening.
Most of the time I was on the road with two teenagers, which meant that I was self-censoring much of the time.
It is no exaggeration to say that I could have listened only to the Dead for most of the trip and the 8600 miles . . . . If I were alone.
What I realized, among other things, was that I had become proprietary about the Grateful Dead and sought to find appropriate driving situations to work them into the mix. I also realized that it’s hard to pick out single tunes to play, because few of the performances work in a stand-alone kind of way. At least to my ears now.
I felt more comfortable putting on live shows for at least 45 minutes or an hour, in order to get the groove going.
When I did, I found I was missing the attitude that my prior intensive months of Dead listening had provided, peace of mind-wise.
And while there are panoramas in the East amenable to the music, nothing beats California for a listening background for the GD.
Not being able to approach the music comprehensively and academically, I found that I learned relatively little about particular shows or tracks on this trip. More or less I was choosing amongst recently-discovered favorites, and learned that the late 70s goes down a little easier than the early 70s boogie with teens.
Maybe that’s what I learned more than anything — how the boogie rhythm that underpins my 60s and 70s rock is completely gone from today’s popular music. Funny that I didn’t realize that.
From listening to the radio I also got over my aversion to Dave Matthews. “Funny the Way it Is” was everywhere and opened me to giving the guy the respect he is due.
Sorry for those of you who have been following my journey in real time, I recognize this might have thrown you for a loop. Ultimately, I decided that I was not posting for an audience but for the purpose of chronicling my fall into the Grateful Dead. Accordingly, since I was largely in summer reruns, I decided not to turn the blog into a travelogue or discourse on the fragile state of mind of a wandering fortysomething.
Oh, by the way, I got hung up in a positive way on Knocking on Heaven’s Door from Dylan and the Dead. I always like the song no matter who does it, but Dylan sounds desperate and lost and the song just works due to that. I understand that reviewers think the whole record is a travesty.
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October 13, 2009 at 21:49
igorjazz
I share your experience that small doses of the Grateful Dead are usually ineffective at getting someone interested in the band. Like you, that’s an observation I’ve had as a 2009, forty-something convert (“Deadhead”? never sure about that). But I’ve started to wonder if that’s got more to do with my perceptions and less to do with some immutable aspect of the music. For instance, would some of my jazz musician friends be swept away (as I was) or at least intrigued by one of the classic versions of Dark Star? Maybe. Would some of my friends who are more firmly ensconced in the rock and blues camps be swayed by a roasting version of China>Rider or The Other One? Maybe. I’ve been thinking seriously about cobbling together a one or two disc compilation of some of my favorite (and yet to be officially released) performances of several individual songs. Sort of my own take on a sampler of live, unofficial Dead for total newbies. Getting it down to one or two audio discs (ie, 80 to 160 minutes) would be tough, but I just don’t think giving a newbie a complete show is the right way to go unless I really get the feeling that he or she will have the patience to listen beyond one or two songs to get the overall arc of the experience. A quick instance of bad vocal or instrumental intonation or a blown lyric might lose them. Then there’s the possibility that they might look at me even more strangely than before and say “yeah, I listened to some of that but couldn’t really get into it.” Hmmm.
September 5, 2009 at 17:34
HalSF
Welcome back to the blogosphere.
Just a quick reaction to this: “the boogie rhythm that underpins my 60s and 70s rock is completely gone from today’s popular music.”
Have you listened to anything from My Morning Jacket? To my 70’s-Dead-fanatic ears, this band offers a dose of happy familiarity. Whether they can be defined as boogie rhythm or not, I hear echoes of the Dead along with Neil Young & Crazy Horse and the Allman Brothers. I never caught a fire with Phish or Dave Matthews or the whole “jam band” thing, but MMJ (especially the great “It Still Moves” album) rings my bell big-time. They’re also great live and like with the Dead you can find a zillion high-quality live bootlegs out there. I went to NYC to see them this last New Year’s Eve at Madison Square Garden and the show was up there with some of the sublime Dead shows I saw back when Patty Hearst was Tanya.
September 4, 2009 at 12:06
Erik
Glad to see that you’re back.
And, in reference to Dylan and the Dead, from the day that it was released I’ve always really liked that disc. (Despite the criticism) The boys just seem to complement Dylan’s style nicely!