The Ecstastic Soul of The Grateful Dead

And so we went to the July 4th Fare Thee Well concert. The Ecstastic Soul of The Grateful DeadThe Grateful Dead, even without Jerry Garcia, played with heart and inspiration.The Ecstastic Soul of The Grateful DeadThe sound was almost as great as was the feeling of being back at a show, that feeling of ecstatic calm, where it seems there is nowhere else ever to be, just in the music, surrounded, like a child, soothed, where everything else turns off, except thinking about what they might play next. The Ecstastic Soul of The Grateful DeadIt is a precious, precarious thing that, now gone, has left me melancholy, thinking that they have to do it again – just one more, man –  where they just yet might get into a Lazy Lightning-El Paso-Supplication jam.The Ecstastic Soul of The Grateful Dead

Music for your Bacchanalia

A genuine bacchanalia needs the right music, music that evokes a sense of raw desire, truth in flesh, that kind of thing, not superficially bald renderings such as Madonna’s Like a Virgin or at your local electric zoo. Music for your BacchanaliaDance party music is often predictable, denying the subtlety of the bacchanalia, the potential for a slow build, heightening the tension, a move to the side, and then incrementally back toward inevitable release.

Some alternate bacchanalia soundtracks to consider:

4. Uah (Mouse on Mars)Music for your Bacchanalia

Stripped down, dream-like, this music moves between slumber and fever.

3. Supplication (Grateful Dead)

Music for your BacchanaliaJazz meets psychedelia, spiraling toward electric understanding..

2. Voodoo Chile (Jimi Hendrix)

Music for your BacchanaliaTowering worlds climb and collide, fade into the distance, resurrected, flying again, impossibly so.

1. Heavenly Music at Half Speed (Fripp & Eno)

Music for your BacchanaliaThe feeling of a vibrating whole reduced to a devastating note washing over, continuing without end. Something like that.