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Building a Library: The Grateful Dead

"He was a warrior...What he did was pry a chink out of the wall and let the light come through the hole. It's up to us to keep that hole open. We've got a world to save. This guy is going to kick our ass if we get up there and we haven't carried the torches."
---Ken Kesey, Funeral for Jerry Garcia, 8/11/95

"That which is non-existent can never come into being, and that which is can never cease to be. Those who have known the inmost Reality know also the nature of is and is not...

"That Reality which pervades the Universe is indestructible. No one has power to change the…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Page 2

So now what? What can a library of Grateful Dead music do, when the essence was what happened live? A library of Grateful Dead recordings will serve as a catalyst for bold ideas and a reminder to those possessed by the inevitable moments of confusion that they "Gotta make it somehow on the dreams you still believe" (footnote 3). Or, as Lao Tzu said,

Breathe harmony.

Become tranquility.

As the ten thousand things rise and fall,

rise and fall,

just witness their return to the root.

Everything that flourishes dissolves again into the source.

To…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Page 3

Moments such as the spacejams of "Prelude" (Europe '72) or "Slipknot" (Blues for Allah, 1975) possess mysterious and unfathomable depths. Out of all of those voices, those multiple dialogs, come the elegiac simplicity and the ringing clarity of "Morning Dew" or a "Franklin's Tower (Roll Away the Dew)":

In another time's forgotten space

your eyes looked from your mother's face...

God save the child who rings that bell,

It may have one good ring, baby you can't tell.

If you get confused listen to the music play,

Some come to laugh the past away,

…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Page 4

The fabulous polyrhythms and time changes of "King Solomon's Marbles" (Blues for Allah) are probably the best studio examples of the thick textures, tone clusters, and one of the first endings of a "space" segment that doesn't fade or segue into another tune. There will always be something very disturbing about that dead stop, for it stands in direct contradiction to the norm: the continuity, the fluidity, the timelessness that is so compelling. However, the craving for surprise and musical chicanery has also been a mainstay of the band; take that ending and get on with it.

A Grateful…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Page 5

This leads into the meanderings or the paths, everyone finding their own way, getting there, inhabiting the moment that is music in its fullest sense.

While Rameau (footnote 11) would be astounded at Weir's chord inversions, nowhere is the idea of the Fundamental bass (basse fondamentale)---"root progressions in a succession of harmonies"---better illustrated than in the playing of Phil Lesh. I happily and shamelessly repeat Rob Bowman's comments on "the boys": "the idea of bass/guitar counterpoint was intrinsic to the stylistic alchemy of the Dead...Lesh laughingly concurs, 'Some…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Page 6

So begins "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)," the first cut on The Grateful Dead. It resonated with those looking to leave the mind-numbing, soul-deadening confines of a Leave it to Beaver universe that never quite matched the color and timbre of mid-'60s life. There had to be something more, something real, something true out there, and here was a clarion call: the initial message that life is fun.

Anthem of the Sun (1968) was as adventurous as any piece of "classical electronic music" at the time: feedback, flanging, phasing, reverb, echo, kazoo, vibraslap, celesta, claves,…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Page 7

In Workingman's Dead the Dead taught empathy. Perhaps that's the core of what they do, or is simply what music itself enables. It's no wonder that transportation metaphors of cars, buses, trains, and planes thread their way through the Grateful Dead repertoire, because each of these vehicles gives you a different perspective of the lay of the land. Back in Anthem of the Sun, "The bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began." We not only have the dream/reminiscences of Bob Weir meeting Neal Cassady (the real-life Dean Moriarity of Jack Kerouac's On the Road), but we step through the…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Page 8

"Eyes of the World," too, illustrates the sweetness of Garcia's guitar playing. The E-major VII intro shows his exquisite phrasing and his lyrical ability sine qua non. The guitar solos punctuating the chorus and the break are also indicative of his ability to penetrate the veil. Perhaps here it was safe for him; given this task outside of the bounds of the music, it became an onerous burden. More than anything, that price serves as a reminder that happiness must come from within, that no one else can provide your answers, that the solutions are up to all of us: it should never be one man's…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead Discography

SIDEBAR 1: A Grateful Dead Discography

The Grateful Dead (1967), Warner Bros. WS-1689

Anthem of the Sun (1968), Warner Bros. WS-1749

Aoxomoxoa (1969), Warner Bros. WS-1790

Live/Dead (1970), Warner Bros. WS-1830

Workingman's Dead (1970), Warner Bros. WS-1869

American Beauty (1970), Warner Bros. 1893

Grateful Dead (1971), Warner Bros. 1935

Europe '72 (1972), Warner Bros. 2668

History of the Grateful Dead, Vol.1 (Bear's Choice) (1973), Warner Bros. 2721

Wake of the Flood (1973), Grateful Dead GD-4002

From the…

Building a Library: The Grateful Dead SIDEBARS 2-5

SIDEBAR 2: Dead.Net

November 1, 1995 was the official debut of the Grateful Dead's Internet server site. The URL is http://www.grateful.dead.net. Plans include recurring Chat Rooms with bandmembers, Mbone broadcasts of albums, and interviews with the band. Information on the web site includes Special Events, Almanac, Bandmember, and Merchandising.

An Infosearch seek reveals over 100 Grateful Dead-related Web pages ranging from documents of set lists to tape archive info. The Usnet space is rec.music.gdead. The Well, an online service provider, has served for many years as the…