the book of the dead, 1

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for more than 20 years now, so much so that I like to refer to myself as a Born Again Angeleno. As such, I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to Frisco, which I regard to be a town for pussies, those precious folk who look down their collective nose at L.A., juxtaposing our trashy suburban sprawl with the righteous authenticity of their holy way of life.  At the same time, there’s no point in being overly restrictive in my antipathy, and if there’s one thing that redeems the Bay Area for me it’s the Grateful Dead. It’s hard to even associate the Dead with San Francisco anymore. In my mind, the band is just distinctly American in the best possible sense. Everything about them, from the mythic American tropes that constitute the thematic substance of so much of their music, to the DIY entrepreneurial way in which they handled their business affairs, to the rootless, nomadic drifters who gravitated towards their scene (before the frat boys took over), to the distinct blend of personalities in the band…It’s impossible to imagine an outfit like this emerging anywhere other than the USA. I don’t reach for Grateful Dead music all that often anymore because I’m a big believer in the magic of the recording studio, whereas the Dead have always been about the live experience and letting the music happen in the moment. But there are certain aspects of the Dead that I continue to find irresistible…

-       The wisdom, vulnerability and warm benevolence Garcia conveys with his singing.  In his hands, a song often seems to have two meanings going on at once.  The first is literal; the second is subjective, an expression of the head space Garcia’s in at any given moment.  Listen to him singing China Doll in the mid 80s and you’ll be convinced he’s trying to tell you he’s about to die. And what makes it so intense is that he’s quite right in telling you this!

-       The interplay between the guitars.  I used to tell people that Bob Weir was the better of the two guitarists in the Grateful Dead.  This is, of course, preposterous, but Weir is certainly one of the best rhythm guitarists I’ve ever heard.  It wasn’t always this way. Up until 1971, Weir’s guitar playing was not particularly noticeable.  But in the wake of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, after the music took a rural turn and went in a more countrified direction, Weir found his guitar playing mojo.  From his cover of Papa John Phillips’ Me and My Uncle onwards, his chopping, elastic-wristed (and often weirdly jazzy) chords become indispensible to the band’s sound.

-       Drums: One or two?  My preferences vacillate.  Sometimes I like the Dead better with one drummer, but there’s other times where the bigness of the sound with two drummers is pretty darn great.  Objectively, I think one drummer makes the music hang together a bit more tightly.  But Mickey Hart’s earthiness is endearing.  Either way, the Dead have always had great percussion. Kreutzmann is an excellent rock ‘n roll drummer.  I like the way he looked so much older than the others, always seemed so sweaty and unhealthy, at risk of an imminent heart attack.  He wasn’t flashy, but he had a great drum sound, and drum sound is about 80% of what drumming is all about.

-       Robert Hunter.  In the same spirit of telling folks that Weir was the better of the two guitarists in the band, I also liked to say that Robert Hunter was my favorite member of the Grateful Dead. Garcia’s voice captivates me in large part because of the words Hunter gives him to sing. Hunter is quite a bit younger than the likes of Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac, but I see him as contiguous with the Beats, perhaps an heir to their legacy.  Hunter is deeply literate, steeped in the archetypes of the American frontier, and he’s also an unabashed hippie romantic.  As much as I love the guitars and the drums, the Garcia-Hunter tandem is the biggest reason I continue to find the Grateful Dead compelling.

I thought it’d be fun to do a short series on the Grateful Dead, my ten favorite songs.  It’s a bit of a challenge with the Dead because so much of their best stuff is live, and I have no idea of the extent to which it’s available on youtube, so I’ll probably have to stick with officially recorded material, much of which will be studio versions.  The Dead are a different, diminished band in the studio. It’s obvious that the studio, where they presumably had to accept and implement input from  producers, was simply not a comfortable setting for them.  This was true even when the producer was someone they respected, like Lowell George.  On the other hand, the Dead managed to put out a handful of decent studio records. Their self-titled debut, released at the dawn of 1967, is a garage punk classic. Everything about the album oozes amphetamine. The music is played at a much brisker (but also somehow looser) tempo than what they’d typically do on stage, and much of the record sounds vaguely off pitch, as if they were too hopped up to stop and tune their instruments. In lesser hands, these imperfections would seriously detract from the music, but here the blemishes heighten the overall sense of restless rebellion.  My favorite track on the album is the cover of Bonnie Dobson’s folk song of nuclear apocalypse, Morning Dew, a staple of the Dead’s live performances, though rendered on stage in a more stretched-out form. The studio version’s vibe is completely different and, to be honest, much more to my liking.  I’ve heard many versions of the song over the years, from Tom Rose, to Rod Stewart, to Joan Baez, to Judy Collins, but this particular interpretation is by far my favorite.  As the music fades, listen to the anguish in Captain Trips’ voice as he sings, I guess it doesn’t matter anyway – NO! – I guess it doesn’t matter anyway!  It’s great stuff, completely of its time and place but also transcendent and still meaningful almost 50 years hence…