Just back from a one-month writing stint during which I shed, albeit briefly, my log-in addiction, I was able to find some focus in the narrative. No Leafs. No Dead. No Bachelor.
My days became balanced and quiet, my dreams vivid. I wrote and read and hiked and wrote and read. It was as good as it gets.
Needless to say, I have returned and been disappointed in virtually every corner: The Leafs traded Kessel, The Grateful Dead devolved into something called The Dead and Company and The Bachelor concluded with a Nazi-like denigration of homosexuality. And I’m blogging about it again!
And so we went to the July 4th Fare Thee Well concert. The Grateful Dead, even without Jerry Garcia, played with heart and inspiration.The 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. It 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.
I’m off to see The Grateful Dead this weekend in Chicago. Although tickets for the Fare Thee Well concerts were too expensive and The Dead’s marketing branch is selling 70-CD box sets for $700, the music remains the thing.
Santa Clara, CA – June 27: performs on Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years Of Grateful Dead at Levi Stadium on June 27, 2015 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
I was so wound up during my workout today – listening to The Dead – that I went through a series of adrenaline rushes, each one almost ending in tears, until I finally started to settle down after an hour and then had to do another hour to get my energy out. I saw my first Grateful Dead concert in Hampton, Virginia on March 9, 1983 and went on to follow the band over 12 years, seeing 48 concerts in such places as Lake Placid, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Boulder, Providence, Eugene, San Francisco, Miami and, yes, Chicago. Known for a wide range of rock genres, The Grateful Dead will likely play much of their Americana at Saturday’s July 4th concert, including covers such as Me and My Uncle (John Phillips), Big River (Johnny Cash), El Paso (Marty Robbins), Me and Bobby McGee (Kris Kristoferson) and I Know Your Rider (traditional) as well as their own true America standards Jack Straw, Going Down the Road Feeling Bad, and US Blues. Damn it, I’m getting worked up again.I need to breathe.
Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has been praised as a great filmmaker and artist, one who probes the shades of humanity in such great films as Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon. Bob Weir, not as highly praised, is certainly recognized for “chasing the music” as he says, on his 50-year journey as rhythm guitarist with The Grateful Dead. And so I was intrigued to watch documentaries on each man this weekend to perhaps gain an insight or two through understanding their trials and tribulations.
It was not to be.Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2007) offers brief moments of filmic analysis amidst a tidal wave of laudatory praise, Steven Spielberg gushing, “He was a conceptual illustrator of the human condition”. And so despite a 50-year career, we are left with the trite summation that Mr. Kubrick worked terribly hard and loved his family, little else.
The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir (2013) is worse. While some fellow musicians offer comments on Bob Weir’s work, the documentary is almost solely guided by bland recollections by Weir – “Here’s my Jerry Bobbblehead” – occasionally, boyishly and evasively hinting toward his notorious off-stage reputation. His band mates are only briefly interviewed, likewise alluding, saying little else. It’s a shame that both of these these documentaries offered so little, not that they should focus on personal scandal, but that they veered so very far from the very same human condition that these men had endeavored to understand and instead settled on empty praise.
It’s also the name of an epic song by The Grateful Dead. Makemake is the 11th planet from the sun. Eleven also documents two infamous dates in history.
While a day of remembrance, November 11 recalls wars that killed hundreds of millions. The 11th hour is our final chance.
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 Virginor at your local electric zoo. Dance 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:
The Deadhead moved the thin plastic bag to his other hand and absently dug into a pocket. “I had it, man.”
“I need your ticket.”
“Yeah.” The Deadhead’s scruffy beard and dirty jacket and pants stood out in rumpled contrast to the commuters on their way home to Connecticut. “I had it.”
The Deadhead offered a crumpled dollar bill. “I have this, man.”
The conductor glared back. “Next stop.”
“Listen, man, I…” He held out his hands and raised his shoulders in a pathetic, slow motion shrug.
The conductor continued on through the car. “Tickets, please.”
The Deadhead stayed where he was, half hiding between cars, slumped in the corner, hoping the conductor wouldn’t come back. And he didn’t.
The Deadhead got off at his stop, Port Chester where there was a Phil Lesh concert, and adjusted his pants and CVS bag on the platform.
It struck me, as I walked past, how I’d seen this same character many times before, so often at Grateful Dead concerts, everything sweet and cool as long as they got what they wanted: free rides, food and tickets.
The issue was significant enough for Jerry Garcia to write Day Job, in which he preached to his followers: If you ask me, which I know you don’t/ I’d tell you to do what I know you won’t/ Keep your day job until your night job pays.The Deadheads never liked that song much, giving it that tell-tale Deadhead Shrug, ironically enough, the same shrug offered by The Dead’s management and promoter David Shapiro when only 10% of the people got tickets through the mail order while Ticketmaster, Stubhub, etc feasted on profits. “Sorry, man, hope to see you there.”
The Grateful Dead create an environment like no other. It is a simple thing, marvelous and sweet, just music, but music to live in, breathless and divine at moments, raucous at others, insane in between, just music, music that never seems to end. Yeah, I love The Grateful Dead. That’s why I wanted to go to the 50th Anniversary Shows in Chicago. That’s why I entered the mail order. That’s why, even after only 10% of the orders were fulfilled (not for me) in some sort of unpleasant insider deal with Ticketmaster, Stubhub, Ebay, etc, I tried again.
That’s why, even with tickets marked up as much as 1200% (yes, twelve thousand percent), I am still considering going to one of the nights. And that’s also why I’m questioning the whole thing…or to be more honest, why I’m so pissed off at the band right now. This astronomical pricing indicate that there is a possibility of Jerry Garcia might show up when it’s going to be Trey Anastasio instead, a guitarist known for his obsessive Zappa-like changes, and on-stage shenanigans.The ugly tenor established by the promoters of this event indicate that this show could even feature a bastardized setlist or two. And it could be real bad: Day Job – Big Boss Man – Money – Deal – Money Money – Might As Well – Sell Out.
The Dead do not have a good business history, messing up Grateful Dead Records and every big concert they staged; as Bob Weir admitted many years ago, “We always blow the big shows”.
Indeed, for this show of shows, how is that Deadheads will even get in……when the market for tickets has been cornered by Deadheads who have lost their way?The band has never been known for empathy. Many anecdotes in Dennis McNally’s What a Long Strange Trip It’s Beenfocus on the band members’ personal indifference toward one another, including when drummer Bill Kreutzmann had to leave a tour to visit his gravely ill father, and only Bob Weir bothered to talk to him about it.
The musicians are known for their personal indulgences in sex, booze and drugs, and not much else…except of course for the music. It is the music that is supposed to take us away from the scourge that is us, the burden of who we actually are, this detritus, our ugly state. And, yes, this music really can do that. It’s just that now The Dead are demanding a heavy price..and it isn’t just money. And yet…I still wanna go. How much is it again?
Fripp & Eno started it with The Heavenly Music Corporation, not ambient music but ominous and terrifying sonic explorations, lovely too. (Click preceding link to listen.)I heard the sound again, years later, at a Grateful Dead show in Miami in 1988; it was like being inside a jet engine, all-encompassing, so very loud.
And then, in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2006), a new version, low and distant, perhaps over-produced, arrived on screen. (Click preceding link to listen.)It arose again in the trailer for Chris Nolan’s Inception(2010), promising aural profundity; regrettably, the sound was brief and the movie was not.The sound became more realized in Gravity (2013), providing the soundscape for the impending doom of debris.It has now returned to the frontier of music, more than My Bloody Valentine’s sonic wall, in Sigur Ros’ latest work, Kveikur (2013).Louder and deeper, back-filled by drums and wailing voices, the sound builds, just falling short of the next plateau. As this sound continues in its evolution, getting deeper and fuller, it might even be a synchronistic backdrop for our promised apocalypse.
No Leafs. No Dead. No Bachelor.
It was as good as it gets.
And I’m blogging about it again!
Towering worlds climb and collide, fade into the distance, resurrected, flying again, impossibly so.
