Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Gary, do you mean "connections between communities," or "similarities"?
  

    
Good point.  "Similarities" would be the operative word.  Though,
there are certainly also some solid connections as well.  I spent a
couple of years recently taking lessons playing three-finger Scruggs's
style banjo, & one of the things I learned is just how respected Jerry
Garcia is in the bluegrass universe -- they don't care at all about The
Grateful Dead, but my teacher & everybody else I met in that context
had the highest regard both for Garcia's banjo playing and for the
rebirth in bluegrass brought about by Old & In The Way.

And there are a couple of festivals down in my part of the world
(northern Florida) where those two communities completely overlap --
Suwannee Springfest (which is more "bluegrass") and Magnolia Fest
(which is more "hippie/deadhead") both take place at the Suwannee Music
Park, which was long a primary stop on the southern bluegrass circuit,
& the audiences at both are full of both hardcore bluegrass fans and
hardcore deadheads.
  

    
Excellent posts ... Quick response to John's comment:

I'm not at all convinced that the Dead phenomenon differs
substantively from the contexts you mention, just as I'm not sure they
don't fall into a long cultural lineage we're only beginning to
explore. Part of the problem is that the academy hasn't done a real
good job with any of those antecedents ... or maybe I just haven't done
enough work. The interdisciplinary nature of the work is also a
challenge. BTW, I think that article is a fine one, and I wanted to use
it in the intro to AGI but the theme it illustrates was one of the
things that had to cut from what was already an ungainly and overly
lengthy overview.

To Xian's comment that, "We see it in Albuquerque, to be sure, from
both seasoned and new, young scholars, this occasional tipping into
hagiography and frankly an unscholarly acceptance of hearsay and lore
..." Two quick thoughts: we study the art of artists at their best, not
their worst; it's a given that a chunk of Haydn's 100+ symphonies
ain't Papa at his best, and as long we remind ourselves that the
x-factor *didn't* descend every night, every minute, and some of the
studio work is *not* them at their best, we're on safe and well-trodden
ground, scholarly speaking.

I do think we need a heck of a lot more good work on the sheer
historicity of the phnemonon, but then again, that true of much of the
milieu from which they sprang: lots of sixties historians bemoan the
fact that there's so much work that still needs to be done. I think
that goes to one of your earlier comments, Scott, about McNally's book:
it's that dense because he has a lot of ground to cover, simply in
order to set up the grounds for his analysis.
  

    
One last thought on the connections/similarities between Deadhead &
bluegrass/folk communities:  James Revell Carr's chapter in AGI does a
great job of outlining the connections between the Dead's music & their
folk antecedents.  But I don't know of anything comparable that looks
at the fan communities.
  

    
...slipped by Gary... 

High Sierra has some of that same nature, partaking of the facets of
the Deadhead diaspora most inclined to like bluegrass and string-band
inspired music. (Most notably the style of improvisation, which is
often virtuosic and at times quite speedy without always hitting that
electronic dixieland style the Dead were known for).

Speaking of the diaspora and obliquely the Phish-and-everyone-after
aspect of things, I find it interesting that the Dead commanded the
audience they did through a fairly odd conglomeration of influences and
styles and that with no Grateful Dead anymore, you find that Deadheads
clump together around other musicians and bands who often exhibit one
or more (some of) those influences and styles, but really never all of
them (except perhaps the tribute bands, up to and included Dark Star
Orchestra - but that seems to be an exceptional case that proves the
rule: you can be "like" the Dead in numerous ways but if you are like
them in every way then you are fundamentally unlik them in that you are
not charting your own course).

Numerous forms of music and other art no doubt tap into the same or
similar "magic" (of serendipity, improv, openness, wideness,
willingness to make mistakes and sound bad to the John Rosses of the
owrld - no offense, John! - etc.) but we (and our successors) may
stumble upon them in "the strangest of places" because superficially I
suspect they will tend to not resemble what the Dead were.

Also, remembering the occasion Nick mentioned, "we had a Native
American audience member who came to a session and stayed for several
more ... he commented, 'I think the Grateful Dead phenomenon looks like
the beginnings of a religious movement.'," I recall that he also noted
without condescension that Deadhead use of psychedelics as a
sacrament, as it were, seemed very "beginner-ish" to him.
  

    
(xian), I don't claim that the music of the Grateful Dead "sounds bad." I
simply don't understand it, just as I don't have the musical vocabulary to
understand the subtleties of hip-hop or heavy metal or Swabian accordian
music.

My original question was about the charater of the deadhead community and
how it resembles the communities I have observed at folk festivals and
fiddle contests where people who may have little else in common come
together a few times a year, and who have a common interest in the music and
personalities (both on and off the stage) who are regulars at those events.
The questionn of the Dead's musical influences and how their fans have
expanded their interests to those influences is a whole other discussion,
and one that I'm not qualified to address.
  

    
Again, I don't know of any research that attempts to compare those two
communities.  But it might be a fun experiment to watch a couple of
documentaries back-to-back:

Bluegrass Journey (which is mostly set at the Grey Fox Bluegrass
Festival)

Music Farmers: Sowing the Seeds of Americana (set at the Suwannee
festivals I mentioned earlier -- a few folks from the WELL, including
me, appear in it)

It strikes me that the kinds of interactions within the audience --
jam sessions, an extremely strong sense of community & family between
people who don't see each other outside of the festivals, an
overwhelming devotion to the music (including a sense not only of its
American roots but also of its spirituality), a sense of weathering the
storm together (both documentaries feature torrential downpours), etc.
 
  

    
slippage


>>the Grateful Dead phenomenon looks like
the beginnings of a religious movement.

This, again was Wolfe's observation about the Pranksters.  In earlier
posts Adam made the important point that, of rock audiences, only the
followers of Phish had the sort of culture formation that the Deadheads
exhibited.  There are so many valid ways of viewing the Dead
phenomenon, but for this specific analysis, it's key to differentiate
the Deadheads from the audiences of other well-liked bands. Musically,
the Dead were, of course, highly accomplished in their eclecticism, but
even though the actual concert/festival of a given band or a bluegrass
festival or Lollipalooza(sp) will elicit similar cut-loose Dionysian
responses, the attendees rarely begin to loosely caravan to other
concerts put on by the same touring group.  The Dead and Phish, in
this, were two exceptions. It is this tribal/cultural formation
question that deserves specialized study beyond the typical live music
experience.

With the Deadheads, there is an underlying precedence from that old
hippie urge which welcomed communal synergies.  This is a far more
potent impulse than is typically appreciated, and the aspect of Wolfe's
analysis of the Pranksters that resonated best.  The issue of an
underground economy to sustain such a caravan is also key to this. 
Probably as much as the drug trade, the vendor/barter/artisan network
was integral to this culture formation. Analysis of the veggie burritos
and mobile inventories of tie-dye need to be looked at along with the
black marketeering of drugs to appreciate the means of sustenance of
this road culture. Also what was the shared ethos of the Deadheads (or
Phishheads)?  This is where Deadhead "stories" or narratives that Gary
talks about play a significant, basically "ethnographic" role.  Whether
the cat disappeared or not, is not as significant as the belief system
in a mysticism where the closer to the edge one gets, the more magic
that happens.  Such Deadhead/Phish-head narratives would also lend
insight into what it was about the live experience of the band that
caused it, concert after concert, to be treated in a manner akin to a
spiritual/religious ritual.  

>>Deadhead use of psychedelics as a
sacrament, as it were, seemed very "beginner-ish"

And this, in part, is why the Deadheads hold such potential scholarly
importance in the realm of socio-religious cultural formation. The 14
to 24 year olds creating a mass Bacchanalia in 1967 to 1972 are not
bearers of cultural tradition in the same way that tribal elders serve
to pass down spiritual tradition formulated generations earlier (such
as with peyote). This, in part, explains the use of the word
"beginner."

Finally, because such "tribal" formation flies in the face of a mass
society––industrialized and consumer-driven––where most individuals
live a "privatized" existence, how much of this formative "tribalism"
is leader/follower dependent? And in the "pied piper" archetype, how
much of the Deadhead/ Phishhead experience is not so much cultural
formation as it is a chosen rite-of-passage of young people, mostly 18
to 30, who gravitated to the "caravan" as a way to search for
individual identity and a utopian sense of ecstacy and belonging before
"succumbing" to the system and it's 9 to 5 exigencies?

So many layers here!
  

    
I wonder if the Phish phenomneon could be viewed as a protestant or
reform version of the Dead one, much like Buddhism as compared with
Hinduism or the various schisms in Christendom?

John, I apologize for teasing you. I did understand what you meant,
and I did literally mean that the Dead's music can sound band when one
doesn't hear it with a grounding in the practice of doing so. I've
myself had occasions where something I liked suddenly sounded bad to me
when I was confronted with another person's presence and hearing of
it. My empathy for their unfamiliarity made me suddenly notice the
problems with the recording, the clams, the ragged vocals, etc., when
moments before I had been tuned into the greater gestalt, with its
forgiveness of smearing and variability that is usually unacceptable in
most formal music performance.

(xian), I don't claim that the music of the Grateful Dead "sounds
bad." I
simply don't understand it, just as I don't have the musical
vocabulary to
understand the subtleties of hip-hop or heavy metal or Swabian
accordian
music.

Re, "My original question was about the character of the deadhead
community and how it resembles the communities I have observed at folk
festivals and fiddle contests where people who may have little else in
common come together a few times a year, and who have a common interest
in the music and personalities (both on and off the stage) who are
regulars at those events," I think you've identified a key similarity
indeed. And I imagine the jam sessions in camping and parking areas
would be even more similar.
  

    
> but even though the actual concert/festival of a given band or a 
> bluegrass festival or Lollipalooza(sp) will elicit similar cut-loose
> Dionysian responses, the attendees rarely begin to loosely caravan
to
> other concerts put on by the same touring group.

What about the people who "loosely caravan" to multiple festivals? 
There are certainly plenty of them (many of them who travel from
festival to festival to follow particular bands -- Donna The Buffalo
being a case in point).  Or does it require that people travel around
to follow only a particular band only before they can be considered to
be an interesting "tribal/cultural formation"? 

There are certainly ways in which the Dead phenomenon is sui generis,
but there are also many ways in which it is inextricably embedded in a
whole range of experiences that are closely related, and the more
recent "festival circuit" scene is one of those sets of experiences --
it's not just an isolated concert or festival.  I think it'd be a
mistake to separate the Dead and Deadheads out from such closely
related scenes.

As Garcia once said "The Grateful Dead is as American as a lynch mob."
  

    

> I've myself had occasions where something I liked suddenly sounded bad to
> me when I was confronted with another person's presence and hearing of it.
> My empathy for their unfamiliarity made me suddenly notice the problems
> with the recording, the clams, the ragged vocals, etc., when moments before
> I had been tuned into the greater gestalt, with its forgiveness of smearing
> and variability that is usually unacceptable in most formal music perfor-
> mance.

That can be embarrassing at times!
  

    
>> does it require that people travel around to follow only a
particular band only before they can be considered to be an interesting
"tribal/cultural formation"?

No. I think the Rainbow Gatherings are a non-band focused phenomenon
that has met every Fourth of July week for several decades.  These
gatherings have more in common (and overlap) with Deadhead culture
than, say, a network of bluegrass musicians touring to various
festivals, or Jimmy Buffet fanatics with the means to follow him around
on tour.  I don't know about Donna and the Buffalo.  Maybe over time
this group's following will manifest itself in ways similar to the
Deadheads.  

This is an important question, though, to delineate what it is that
makes the Deadhead phenomenon, not anomalous (which I don't think it
is), but of long enough duration and cohesion to start manifesting
itself as a distinctive socio-spiritual culture.  To make this point,
imagine if you took the audience of the Rolling Stones, a band of
similar duration, and the audience of The Grateful Dead from, say, two
separate sold out Cincinnati concerts in 1988. Then imagine them
separately as the only people left on the planet. The Deadheads, I
think, had so many commonalities of distinct cultural values, beliefs,
and behaviors that the surviving culture would be significantly
different and decidedly more in line with the alternative imaginings of
the counterculture than what the Rolling Stones fans would manifest. 
These Stones fans would be a much more representative cross-section of
the mainstream culture. They would likely try to recreate a community
and society similar to what dominated before.

This hypothetical speculation is only to get at how to best understand
and appreciate Deadhead culture as a socio-religious phenomenon, and
to exlore how they transcended being simply fanatic followers of a rock
band.
  

    
>> the various schisms in Christendom

Isn't that Xendom?

It took me a while, but I had a good laugh when I finally "got" Xian!
  

    
ah, yes. a discussion for another time perhaps, with its "I thought
you were Chinese" branch, and the whole "how do you pronounce xian"
line.

Generally I refer people to Xmas as the precedent. Nick has decided to
pronounce it "Chun" and has taken to calling me Dr. Chris Chun....
  

    
<<<In earlier posts Adam made the important point that, of rock
audiences, only the followers of Phish had the sort of culture
formation that the Deadheads exhibited.>>>

In size and fervor, the Phish following was definitely a mini-Deadhead
thing...but the culture formation just wasn't there, from my
experience. It was just a bunch of people who really loved the music
and the band and wanted to be there for whatever was gonna happen next,
and a whole bunch of other people who just wanted to party. That's
more of a following than a phenomenon, in my opinion, whereas the
Grateful Dead spawned a culture.

I'm pretty adamant about generally preferring Phish's music to the
Dead's because of the Zappa influence I love so much, and because over
the years they were more willing to be experimental and unpredictable
than the Grateful Dead, but while the cult following Phish had was
sizeable and could drag 70,000 people to the tip of Maine or an Indian
reservation in Florida for a two-day concert by one band, Phish was
ultimately lacking in the kind transcendent lyrics that perhaps were
the keystone to the Grateful Dead phenomenon. 

Not all of Phish's lyrics were nonsensical and humorous, as I hear
from lots of friends who have never really heard Phish, but I think
they had more of a focus on musical prowess via group improvisation
(and impressive, sprawling and extremely difficult-to-perform
compositions) than the Grateful Dead that helped (along with the
Gamehenge saga) to spawn a huge following, but never wound itself into
an actual living, breathing *culture* like the Grateful Dead did,
between the jamming, the beautiful pieces of music, *and* Hunter's
lyrics and the fact that the whole thing came out of the 60's and kept
that Kesey/Cassady/Haight torch for so long, rather than coming out of
a couple of music school dorks from New England.

I don't think you'll ever see a formidable book about the culture of
Phishheads like "Skeleton Key," although there are some wonderful books
focusing on Phish's *music* like <rgehr>'s "The Phish Book." I hope to
see more literature about the musical history of Phish in the future,
rather than laughable claims to a culture behind Phish like "Run Like
An Antelope."
  

    
>>>What about the people who "loosely caravan" to multiple
festivals?<<<

It strikes me that a surprisingly great deal of what has been written
here so far applies directly as well to the legions of people,
particularly in the American South, who devote large portions of their
time and lives to supporting one college football team or another.
There is community; there is regalia; there is identity and sense of
purpose. In the autumn you find caravans of these fans stretched all
over the southern and midwestern interstate highways, journeying to the
next game of the Razorbacks or the Gators or the Crimson Tide or the
Gophers or the Wolverines or the Longhorns or what have you.  
  

    
Nascar does that, too.
  

    

Great post, Adam!
  

    
>> applies directly as well to the legions of people,
particularly in the American South, who devote large portions of their
time and lives to supporting one college football team or another.

>> the Phish following was definitely a mini-Deadhead
thing...but the culture formation just wasn't there

Adam, I think your knowledgable assessment differentiating Phish from
the Dead helps get at this idea of culture formation.  First, a hobby
such as being a football fan, a bluegrass musician, rock concert
attendee, Lutheran, or a Trekky are, by themselves, singular elements
of living in the mainstream culture, whereas the Deadheads immersed
themselves to a much greater extent in an alternative lifestyle with
many cultural permutations of behavior, belief, shared values, lingo,
etc.   The Deadheads, unlike the followers of Phish, were drawing from
the hippie counterculture, were a continuance of those fully immersed
in serious attempts to create an alternative society in the late '60s
and early '70s. The counterculture of this period, in this respect, had
a critical mass of participation that afforded full lifestyle
immersion for the most hardcore.  This is different than the narrower
construct of sub-culture, the participants of which may or may not be
disaffected from the dominant mainstream culture.  The Deadhead
phenomenon, the Rainbow Gatherings, and barter fairs are examples of
people trying to keep the vestiges of that old hippie counterculture
alive.  Despite the dessication of the alternative society, the
Deadheads and a remnant hippie culture did change over time. The
Deadheads were/are a fascinating distillation of the old hippie
culture, full-fledged and intense, but obviously reliant on needing the
Grateful Dead--or successor bands--to follow to sustain this caravan
of intensity.  So, to understand the Deadheads as a cultural formation,
we need to go back to the hippies and the multiple cultural pressures
that influenced its countercultural manifestation.

    
  

    
>>>First, a hobby such as being a football fan, a bluegrass musician,
rock concert attendee, Lutheran, or a Trekky are, by themselves,
singular elements of living in the mainstream culture, whereas the
Deadheads immersed themselves to a much greater extent in an
alternative lifestyle with many cultural permutations of behavior,
belief, shared values, lingo, etc.<<<

Scott, I think there are more similarities than differences in what
you identify as "elements of living in the mainstream culture" and the
Deadhead "alternative lifestyle." After all, how truly alternative was
the Deadhead "lifestyle"? It showed a lot of conformity in personal
style and clothing (the comedian Michael Pritchard once made a good
joke at a stadium Dead show about trying to find a guy in the crowd
described only has having "long brown hair -- anyone seen him?"), it
drew inspiration from retold history and stories (just like college
football fans do), it lived for moments of perceived transcendent
greatness, it kept the flame alive between events by gathering and
sharing. The Deadheads, for all their claim to counterculturalism,
seemed, beneath the tie-dye surface, to be emphatically mainstream, at
least to me they did, since 1980 or so. 

You want a lifestyle that's truly alternative to the American
mainstream? Try the plural marriage communes in desert Utah. 
  

    
> First, a hobby such as being a football fan, a bluegrass musician, 
> rock concert attendee, Lutheran, or a Trekky

So, being a Lutheran is a "hobby"?  

I also disagree with the notion that being a bluegrass (or any other
kind of) musician is nothing more than a hobby.  Peter Rowan writing
such a brilliant song as "Walls of Time" with Bill Monroe argues, all
by itself, against such a demotion of his art to "hobby" it seems to
me.  Ralph Stanley's lifelong devotion to his craft likewise.

But no matter how mainstream a religion may be (or how much it may not
reflect our own beliefs and practices), it's probably not a good idea
to dismiss it so nonchalantly, it seems to me.
  

    
Indeed, says this lifelong Lutheran. 
  

    
>>no matter how mainstream a religion may be (or how much it may not
reflect our own beliefs and practices), it's probably not a good idea
to dismiss it so nonchalantly, it seems to me.

shheeet.  I'm not dismissing anything.  I like pro football, I grew up
Lutheran.  What I'm trying to get at is an anthropological
observation, nothing judgmental. Most practicing Lutherans, Jews,
Catholics, etc. in America, though not hobbiests (wrong term for making
my point), also participate in the mainstream where they go to work on
Monday, watch [Nascar/MLB/NFL/NBC/etc]. When I went to a Rainbow
Gathering, it had the makings of a full-fledged culture; one could
imagine such a phenomenon on its own Pacific Island functioning as a
culture different than the mainstream American culture.  The polygamous
communities in Utah/Arizona are an example, like the hippie
counterculture at its most hardcore, of a different non-mainstream
cultural formation.  Also, I agree that by 1980 most of the hippie
counterculture had dessicated.  The Deadhead phenomenon, as a cultural
formation, had a focal point--The Grateful Dead--that allowed it to
persist. 
  

    
I still disagree, Scott, that post-1980 the Deadhead phenomenon was an
alternative, or "counter" culture, to mainstream America. How so?

As I mentioned in the topic devoted to your book, Garcia himself once
said the Grateful Dead scene could happen only in America. He was
absolutely right about that. The Grateful Dead were, as a band, and
remain, as a focal point of a social phenomenon, quintessentially
American. And anything quintessentially American is by definition part
of the American mainstream.

Let's look at that social phenomenon for a moment. The parking lot
scene? Entrepreneurial capitalism --nothing counter-American about
that! The conformity of the clothing and the insignia and the hair
styles? About as nonconformist, or "counter," as a gymnasium full of
college grads and faculty in ranking gowns on graduation day. Following
the band around in caravans? We've already pointed out that millions
of college football fans do exactly that for the teams they support.
Running away to follow the band? Running away to join the circus is an
American trope dating from the 19th century. Were Deadheads outlaws?
Only in the sense that many of them openly broke laws against
controlled substances that many people in the mainstream, including
some mainstream politicians, question anyway. When was the last time a
Deadhead was busted for being a Deadhead? When was the last time a man
in America was busted just for wearing long hair? When was the last
time the band was told it had to turn down the volume or face arrest?
Not since 1980, I'm positive.

So where's the "alternative" in any of the above?

What is more, I think the idea of the Deadhead phenomenon being an
"alternative" sets up a dichotomy that's antithetical to what the Dead
were founded on and continued to express in the best of their
inventiveness. The dichotomy creates an "us" and a "they" -- "they"
being the mainstream. Yet in the Dead's space jams, a fully open-minded
approach was the only way to make the jamming work. There could not be
limits. If Lesh or someone wanted to quote from a Sousa march, it had
to be not just allowed but embraced. There could not be a dichotomy or
dividing lines or even "alternatives." If everything is accepted,
nothing's an alternative. 

You want to see some truly weird, alternative, counter-American shit
today? Go below the surface in just about any cul-de-sac community in
this country. It's much, much easier to be truly weird behind a facade
of normalcy, you know, than it is to be truly weird by looking weird.  

By 1980 or perhaps even a little earlier, as the Deadhead crowd grew
and the shows got bigger, the music got more conservative and the shows
got much more predictable. The truly experimental period was over when
the band retired the first time, in 1974. The true "counterculture"
was ephemeral and short-lived; in San Francisco it was over by the
"Summer of Love," in 1967. Did the band ever write anything new that
was close to the open-endedness of "Dark Star" again? That song
structure dates from 1967.

So I don't see what the Deadhead phenomenon was an alternative to in
this country. What it is, I think, is a new iteration, with a few
unique trappings, of social phenomena that have happened many times
already in American history. As such, it's worth studying academically
-- in mainstream academia. Up above, wasn't Nicholas saying Rebecca
Adams was criticized by fellow academicians for taking the Dead scene
seriously as a social phenomenon? What's the real complaint there? It's
that mainstream academicians couldn't understand the Dead scene is
worthy for inclusion in a mainstream academic area of study. That's a
complaint worth making, too, because the Deadhead phenomenon is as
American mainstream as Red Sox Nation. 
  

    
See also "U.S. Blues."