Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Speaking as another DeadHead, I have found many times the lyric
snippets mimic or call forth certain elements of my particular life,
at the moment..fer instance, I have always preferred cold coffee so
I was surprised when I found a lyric snippet from “Loser” where the
protagonist advises not to touch hard liquor, “just a cup of cold
coffee”..I know this one is a minor congruence but there are other
ones which follow along with my life and struck deeply when I first
heard them..fer instance, “Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come since I
first left home” when I first heard this lyric, Boy Howdy, did that
lyric snippet ever deeply resonate with me..the list goes on and on
  

    
#50 makes sense to me: a community sharing the same scriptures. the
cross-references are also interesting.

just musing on how much the words rather than the music matters in
deadhead culture.
  

    

>  What makes a lyric work is resonance; it expresses a univeral truth in a
>  way that makes it instantly comprehensible, as though you'd always known
>  it but never had the words to articulate it.


As Hunter wrote, "things we've never seen will seem familiar."

My watchword as a songwriter is: personalize the universal, and univeralize
the persona.
  

    
And, oddly enough, JOHN DENVER articulates it concisely:

"Coming home to a place[you've] never been before."
  

    

<50> yes! You can utter one of these phrases in a room full of strangers and
count the nodding heads.
  

    
wrt #50 this whole discussion reminds me of growing up in an
assimilated jewish household  but in a very gentile community ---
and realizing how much language/literature/memes/cultural
referents/etc were xian. and i was not part of this religious
tradition.

obv even if not a deadhead one is immersed in dead language and
music.

and yes i understand the power of lyrics as embedded in music.

but still.

'all romantics have the same fate. cynical and drunk and boring
someone in a dark cafe'.

i think in general i lack the tribal group-identity gene, another
reason why deadhead culture has been so baffling to observe from the
outside.

thanks for taking my questions.
  

    
“Once in a while you get shown the light 
In the strangest of places if you look at it right”
Another zinger line that resonates deeply with me and I daresay all
of us have known or met the girl with “rings on her fingers and
bells on her shoes”
Or have had one of those deja vu moments, as in:” As I picked up my
matches and was closing the door
I had one of those flashes I had been there before
Been there before”
Or the whole Miscontrued Lyrics, fer example:”In the thick of the
evening when the dealing got rough 
She was too pat to open and too cool to bluff”
I had always heard that line (no pun intended) as if she was too
packed to open as in her nose was already too full of cocaine to
open up for anymore..it was only later that I discovered those lines
were written about gambling..my life at the time resembled
(1972-1989) that Misconstrued Lyric..I quit cold turkey in 1989
The list goes on and on and that is just one song that I have
commented about here..the resonations just keep comin’
  

    
I've always considered "His job is to shed light, not to master" as
songwriting advice from a winning coach.
  

    
I like that.


> I had always heard that line (no pun intended) as if she was too packed to
> open as in her nose was already too full of cocaine to open up for anymore

That's wild!!!
  

    

The students in my Stanford class made a t-shirt (and Stanford was kind
enough to let us use their logo!)

On the back it says

You Ain't Gonna Learn
What You Don't Wanna Know

My friend and colleague Rebecca Adams co-authored a book with that title:
<https://archive.org/details/deadheadsocialsc00adam/page/n5/mode/2up>
  

    
that book looks very interesting
  

    
She took a Sociology Methods class on tour withh the Grateful Dead in 1989. I
met many of them and am still in touch with some of them. And with Rebecca!
  

    

Rebecca writes:

I took the book title from the back of OUR class shirt in 1989. It was Robbie
Freeman's idea and Alyce Wimbish's husband designed the shirt for us.

I just talked about a discussion I had with Barlow about how he didn't like
the lyric because it was too pedantic (this was for Jesse's current podcast
about Money, Money, which Barlow mentioned in passing during the same
conversation).
  

    

I find it fascinating that Barlow disavowed that brilliant observation!
  

    
Rebecca adds:

"I had this conversation with Barlow sometime in 1990 just before the lyrics
to BTW were changed."
  

    

BTW here is a proer link to Rebecca's book, which is still in print.

<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742502512/Deadhead-Social-Science-'You-Ain't-Gonna
-Learn-What-You-Don't-Want-to-Know';>
  

    
must thank the hosts for letting me use this conversation as a
'everything i ever wanted to know about Dead culture but was afraid
to ask"

- that newer description of rebecca's book raises an important
question: for a band which sold as many tickets as it did and which,
for example, counted mainstream folks such as venture capitalists
among its fans --- how can it be characterized after say the 1980s
as larger society being hostile to it? or is my living in the bay
area for so many years tainting my understanding?

- the antipathy between me + barlow has been documented elsewhere
and wont be recapitulated here. but it was always clear to me that
his use of language reflected a strong classical liberal arts
education --- something which i was also the beneficiary of. so
among other things i often felt in his writing 'oh, i know where you
are getting those sonorities from. i have similar ones in my
resevoir'. thus, less impressed, perhaps. in other words, i felt
'derivative' rather than 'inspired'. ymmv, obv.

- are there new deadheads being created? or will the culture
gradually die off?

- what are former deadheads like? what do they feel about their
previous affinity?

- finally, the guy who was one of my practitioners for many years
was also jerry's, fwiw. RIP, much beloved and missed randy baker md.
  

    

>  must thank the hosts for letting me use this conversation as a 'everything
>  i ever wanted to know about Dead culture but was afraid to ask"

To the extent that it contributes to the discussion of Donn's book, you are
welcome.
  

    

> are there new deadheads being created?

Yes! There are hundreds of bands around the country playing Grateful Dead
music, and their audiences are not all geezers.

See <http://gratefuldeadtributebands.com/>

I cohost a talk show on SiriusXM's Grateful Dead channel, and we get lots of
calls from people in their 30s and even younger. I know of at least one
family that is three (if not four) generations into it!
  

    
but that's an interesting question: young fans of the music? or
young members of the larger deadhead culture?
  

    
Both.
  

    
Several years ago I gave my son an autographed copy of David’s book.
Knowing David upped my coolness quotient considerably. I’m not a
Deadhead, but I’m Deadhead-adjacent. 
  

    
That's sweet!

I host a call-in show on SiriusXM Sunday afternoons (and we're planning to
talk with Donn net week!). Lots of younger callers, and we even heard from
little kids (often prompted by their parents, of course) from time to time.

This is a rich culture and there are many portals into it. I had a caller
today who talked about being made so welcome in the crowd, and I had the
impression that that was almost as important as the music in making him a
fan.

Nearly 60 years into it, it's fun to meet people and compare notes about all
the times you've been in the same room having the same ecstatic experience.
  

    
And so many hugs post-shows as lots of us bade adieu to newly made
friends.
  

    
Agreed, Helen!
Big hugs were exchanged always with the cats and kitties I was
always in line with @ Winterland 
(show after show over several years cos we always got there at the
same time for each show so we we were always line buddies along the
wall of Winterland waiting for Winterland to open its doors)