The Grateful Dead: A Manifesto of Deep Ambivalence

-I am no fan of hippie culture, but what makes the culture of the Dead truly odious is its cooptation by prep school kids who grow up to be bankers and other major movers of other people’s money. What riles is the readiness with which the Dead atmosphere (more than the actual music, the actual drugs, etc.) gives itself up to the smug, always already nostalgic leisure of this demographic. When I see tie-dye today I see it mainly as a class marker, doing work like an Izod alligator label used to do, but more passive aggressively.

-Songs sung by Bob Weir are mediocre at best (“Truckin’); most are execreble. Weir is also responsible for the band’s most cringy covers (“Dancing in the Street,” “Good Lovin’”), and for introducing a creepy Jimmy Buffet vibe that conflicts with (and is actually much more stupid than) the (to me) more attractive atmosphere of giggly dopiness that Jerry Garcia embodies.

-Nonetheless, the influence of the Dead on some of the greatest “slacker rock” bands of the 90s, particularly Pavement and the various incarnations of Will Oldham, is undeniable. There are several songs in particular that embody this quality, all sung by Jerry Garcia: Tennessee Jed, He’s Gone, Dire Wolf, Brown-Eyed Women, Mission in the Rain, miscellaneous Dylan covers (many of these songs don’t appear on studio albums, only in the now vast collection of authorized live recordings). It’s not hard for me to imagine Stephen Malkmus vamping through the semi-crescendoes and stops of Tennessee Jed, in particular. Indeed, Pavement sometimes sounds like the Dead plus Television, Malkmus like Garcia plus Verlaine.

-This kinship is actually not that surprising when one considers the inextricability of weed from the way Malkmus and Garcia both seem to imagine the effects of their composing, and likely from the composing itself.

-The Dead’s long live jams, which make up the bulk of the live recordings, are the essence of noodle, and sometimes almost astonishing in their monotony. However, there is a certain attraction to the way the band bends from one song to the next without stopping, and to the way these transitions continued to shift (i.e. using different songs) over the years of the band’s performances.

-I admire the Dead’s embrace of bootlegging culture. I’m sure many Deadheads consider it a loss, or irrelevant, that so many bootlegs are now official releases available for download, for money. Pearl Jam also went this route. But I wish a band or performer I really love and is a good live act—Elvis Costello comes prominently to mind—would do something like this, rather than just letting a few live recordings trickle out as he seems to be doing now.

-I’m fine with having never seen the Dead live. For one thing, they were never much to look at. Of all the bands of their vintage and, loosely, genre, the one I’d most like to have seen, by far, is The Band, whose every member was a point of interest—and who were much better looking.