Dave’s Grateful Dead Pick #38: Dave Lemieux’s Myopia

Dave’s Pick #38 (Uniondale, 09/08/73) is a good show, starting with Bertha and Me and My Uncle, has El Paso and China Cat>Rider and moves out with Goin’ Down the Road>Not Fade Away. That said, it’s just more of the same because of Dave Lemieux’s myopia.

Consider Dave’s liner notes: Every moment with Dick Latvia, every interaction, every word he said was memorable. And then: Every song, every solo, every moment was out-of-this-world excellent. Yeah, Lemieux is the guy at the ballpark who yells “Home run” for every pop-out. (And I mean every pop-out.)

More to the point, Lemieux’s maniacal vision of the archives -1968-74 & 76-80 being holy relics and 1987-95 his personal nostalgia – denies everyone else the belly of the beast, the bleeding heart of The Grateful Dead, the music that must be shared.

Lemieux is a nice guy in a dancing bear suit, not the person to manage the archives. It’s time to get someone else in there before this whole thing ends up a Broadway show.

Our Failure in Group Think

Theodore Sturgeon wrote of group think, or bleshing, as he called it, in his novel More Than Human. The idea is simple, founded on minds working together, the sum of the parts being greater than the whole, celebrated by many in the arts, such as Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead. It is the dream of musicians and anarchists alike, to be at one with each other, to guide and at the same time follow, and yet it is just that, an impossible dream for anything practical. Human nature is the flaw, our inherent need to always want something more for ourselves. Adam Smith and his capitalist crew celebrate this in what we can achieve – always in terms of monetary success – but it’s a far cry from all those other things we are told to cherish, and in the end, just don’t give a damn about. We lie to ourselves about everything – about who we are and we will achieve – just to get through and not think about the world as we have made it.

Ratdog and Mayer

The hype on Dead and Company, the latest Grateful Dead side project, is befuddling to say the least, although the success of 50th anniversary shows have certainly led us hereRatdog and MayerThe truth is, however, that the fall tour of this hodgepodge and questionably-named band has little to do with the concerts in Chicago. Not only is founding member Phil Lesh nowhere to be seen – indeed he is concurrently playing in his eponymous band – but neither were Bruce Hornsby and Trey Anastasio included.

This group lacks the soul of earlier post-Jerry Garcia incarnations, The Dead and Furthur, neither of which were bedazzled by all the hype.Ratdog and MayerThis band, headlined by pop guitarist John Mayer who has nothing whatsoever to do with the music of the Grateful Dead, is a dubious path for Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann and, if they are not careful, could lead to moments they might regret. Ratdog and Mayer