What A Long (Strange) Weekend It Will Be…

Friday is fun. It’s about music. Links, playlists, the works. Today, a bit of Grateful Dead revisitation.

I know I’m on holiday (for a few days) because I’m listening to The Grateful Dead. What perfect lazy, long weekend music. Actually, I’ve been thinking about the Grateful Dead a lot lately, and, weirdly, I’m often more into thinking about them, reading about them, watching docos about them, than even listening to them. But then of course, one will always lead to the other…

I first heard the Dead after watching Jerry Garcia talk on the Rolling Stone 20th Anniversary doco in the late 1980s. He was funny, friendly, and not really what I had pictured. But it didn’t give me any read on his band — I’d heard the name, but didn’t know what the sounded like. Garcia was self-effacing to a point of being dismissive, laughing about how his band played the most forgettable spot at Monterey, and couldn’t get their shit together to play Woodstock.

I bought the Live Without A Net double tape as a way of learning about the band. It was new at the time.

It was also a mindblowing experience for teenaged me. I was mowing lawns, and listening to this alongside Santana’s classic live double, Lotus. And I had always thought, by iconography alone, that The Dead was a metal band. This wasn’t even quite hippie jam music, but at the same time it totally was. What struck me was the fluidity of Garcia’s guitar playing, these wonderful cosmic jams that would conceal a song. Sometimes the essence of a great tune would burst out somewhere in the middle, or would be the starting point. But from there it was anyone’s guess, band members included, where it might actually go.

The Dead has become well known in the last 20-30 years for these game-changer moves of allowing fans to record the shows and trade tapes, and share set lists, all of which was happening years ahead of that even, but in the last 20-30 years it has come to shape the various internet cultures, and fan sites, in support of music. The Dead was (and is) an incredible brand. They really only had one hit. And it arrived late in their career.

But listen to Terrapin Station, Feel Like A Stranger, Althea, Feels Like Rain, China Cat Sunflower, St. Stephen, Uncle John’s Band, Truckin, Box of Rain, Friend of The Devil, Ripple and Eyes of the World. Just for starters. They all feel like the greatest songs ever to me. Almost hard now to not think of them as hits, or should have been hits. But also better to let them live where they are. Special fruits up high on secret tree-branches…

I finished my day yesterday, a hugely busy week at work, a really intense, blow-your-brain (in a good way) English literature seminar, a bunch of things to sort out at home before travelling away briefly this weekend, and I dialled up Without A Net by The Grateful Dead.

There’s something about the version of Eyes of The World (with Branford Marsalis guesting) that just takes the troubles of the world instantly away. I love the disc-two opener of China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider.

The song seems to just bubble up spontaneously, and seemingly out of nowhere. To begin with, almost everything is riding against it even correctly happening. Everyone on stage is possibly in the middle of a different song, but then the groove evolves, the song finds itself, and the band finds its way.

And I guess, in various ways, that is The Grateful Dead. They were like that in 1965/66/67 and they were like that in 1973/73 and then in 77/78 and certainly in 89/91/91.

They have these key periods within the long, strange trip. They have these moments of major wow. Almost none of them are anything to do with any of the studio albums (many of which I really love). And mostly it’s about the live albums. The band, understanding long before anyone else, that the albums were business cards to get the fans to head to the show. The show was the place where the money was made, through more than just attendance, through merch, and eternal, perpetual word of mouth. The show was the thing. But the music was cosmic and constant. The music could keep evolving, but it had to promote a joy, a ceremony, a reason for gathering, and a time for celebration. The gigs — the very best of them — were happenings. They were about more than the music. But they were anchored by the music.

Anyone out there not convinced by the Grateful Dead as players, as conduits for the music, just isn’t listening correctly.

They weren’t ever great singers. And there are better musicians in the world, better songs, better types of music. But they had their own thing entirely. And there’s no better way to start your long weekend, no better group to tune in to when you want to turn the world off for a bit and just get lost in some spirit you don’t even quite understand. What good is understanding everything. It’s often best when the music is mercurial; precision leads to boredom, and excellence is actually malleable, fluid, transgressive even.

The most excellent Grateful Dead music forever holds me in its weird, wonderful sway.

Happy long weekend!

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And here’s some non-Grateful Dead for your (long) weekend. Especially pleased with this playlist, but then I would say that. Hope you find something on here you like.