Conference rdvax::grateful

from Steve Silberman:


The following contains my reply to the Washington Post.
 It is a reworked version of the essay that went out on 
AlterNet last week.
 Many of the grafs are familiar, but some are new and 
specifically
 responding to Carolyn Ruff's piece. 

I hope they find room for it.  Enjoy!

 The Dead:   30 Years on the Road
 by Steve Silberman
  
	The Grateful Dead are on the road for their 30th 
year, but that 
isn't news.  It's no glitzy, grab-the-bucks, "hell 
freezes over" reunion 
tour enshrined with a battery of MTV and VH-1 
appearances, a 
quick turn on Letterman, and the cover of _Interview_.  
It's a couple 
of dozen cities and 70 shows or so, load in, make the 
people happy, 
and load out:  business as usual.
	When the Dead have made headlines this summer, 
it's the 
tragic lightning-strikes and gate-crashing fans, 
nitrous-oxide 
purveyors and parking-lot predators which have been cast 
in the 
starring roles, rather than the music.  The fact that 
the Dead have 
kept up a fertile conversation in song for three decades 
-  in their 
quintessentially American synthesis of jazz 
improvisation, folk 
balladry, avant-garde soundscapes, transcultural 
rhythmatism, and 
good ol' time rock-and-roll redemption - takes the back 
seat to the 
collapsing balconies, the overdoses and 
seemingly-damning acts of 
God.
	Though the only accomplishment of comparable 
longevity in 
exploratory American musicmaking is, say, the Duke 
Ellington 
Orchestra - which suffered more changes of principal 
players than 
the Dead have - that's barely acknowledged, even by the 
Dead themselves.  
It's just Jerry Garcia up there under the lights again, 
spinning out 
another solo that lands nowhere you expect it to, 
singing in his 
broken angel's voice about trains, card games, and 
careless love.
	Garcia once quipped that the Dead, like old 
whores and 
architecture, simply stuck around long enough to become 
respectable.  They did more than that.  They managed to 
become 
the most financially successful touring rock and roll 
band in history 
without caving into industry homogenization or 
type-casting as a 
"'60s band," and without distilling the dissonant and 
unpredictable
edge out of their music.  Though the band's repertoire 
has become more predictable with the years, at nearly 
every show there's still one moment of pure discovery, a 
jam that 
goes somewhere it's never been before (and never will be 
again), an 
emotional peak which seems to boil up out of some 
primordial 
storehouse.
	I've been going to Dead shows, off and on, for 
all of my adult 
life.  Going to see "the Boys" (as Deadheads 
affectionately refer to
the bandmembers) in 1995 for me is like going back to 
the family house,
though families don't live in houses for that long 
anymore.  I look around 
me in the big halls, and glimpse faces I grew up with, 
kids when I was a 
kid who now bring their own sons and daughters to shows, 
to dance 
with them.  I also see the Deadheads who are young now, 
who must 
feel like they're hitching a ride on the caboose of a 
great American 
locomotive that's been steaming down the silver track 
forever, since 
long before they were born.  For them, the Dead must 
seem part of 
the natural world, like El Capitan or the Grand Canyon, 
inevitable 
and immortal.
	The Dead, however, and the extended family of 
Deadheads, 
are more like a fantastically intricate snowflake which 
has been 
sufficiently tenacious enough to drift over a glowing 
radiator for 
three decades without melting.
	At least part of the heat now being brought to 
bear on the 
Deadhead community is emanating from within, from the 
behavior 
of certain groups of people who go to shows.  I won't 
say "fans," 
because someone who trashes a room at the Motel 6, 
bulldozes an 
arena fence, and spends the duration of the concert in 
the parking lot 
hawking beer or nitrous is not there to enjoy the music, 
and 
obviously doesn't care if the Dead and Deadheads will be 
welcomed 
back to the venue the following summer.
	I'm no stranger to the sleazy entrepreneurs and 
patchouli-
doused petty larcenists who have attached themselves 
like 
suckerfish to the Deadhead touring community, vividly 
portrayed  in 
Carolyn Ruff's article in last Sunday's _Post_, "The 
UnGrateful 
Deadheads:  My Long, Strange Trip Through a Tie-Dyed 
Hell."  On 
the other hand, Ruff's story does not tell the whole 
story, or even a 
large part of it.  A longtime fan I know read Ruff's 
piece and 
objected, "It's like a microscopic picture of a tumor, 
not a portrait of 
the whole patient."  I agreed, but pointed out that such 
a cross-
section might be useful in a diagnosis.  Even die-hard 
Deadheads 
have been forced by the first-ever cancellation, due to 
fan misbehavior,
of one of the Dead's shows in June, to wonder if some 
cancer 
hasn't taken hold in this collective body which has been 
home to so many for so long.
	"Life on tour these days is far from peace, love 
and smiles," 
Ruff declares.  "Capitalism, greed and betrayal would be 
more apt 
descriptions," she continues, citing the scams which 
give a small 
subgroup of tour-followers the means to stay on the 
road:  rip-offs, 
double-crosses, injustices with no recourse in a 
community 
which prides itself on living outside certain laws.
	Part of the appeal of the Dead scene for kids 
who came of age 
up in "Just Say No" America is that Deadheads say yes to 
many 
things damned by the status quo.  In the '80s, when 
youth culture 
traded its gadfly outsiderhood for the MTV quick-cut 
hard sell of 
brand-name looks, haircuts, and attitudes, Deadhead 
society prized 
that which was handcrafted and individually expressive.  
Mass-
market ersatz tie-dyes were eschewed for hand-dipped 
one-of-a-
kinds.  Trademarked icons - like the distinctive 
skull-and-roses 
image that San Francisco poster artists Kelley and Mouse 
adapted 
from a 19th century illustration for _The Rubaiyat of 
Omar 
Khayyam_ - became elements in an original folk-art 
vocabulary, 
hand-stitched into dresses and denim jackets and 
silkscreened on t-
shirts, to be sold at prices well below those at the 
local 
mall.  In the parking lots outside of shows, impassioned 
circles of 
drummers locking into their own deep groove attracted 
more 
dancers than tapes of the band.
	"To live outside the law," cautioned Bob Dylan, 
"you must be 
honest."  Heads put a premium on that kind of salty 
honesty that 
leaves no room for pretense, or for the self-serving 
duplicity which 
metastasized throughout the American body politic in the 
very 
decades that Dead crowds swelled from an intimate fan 
base to a 
stadium-filling phenomenon, attracting notice from the 
likes of 
_Fortune_ magazine.
	This find-your-own-way attitude carried into 
areas of 
personal conduct.  For thousands of years, people have 
used 
psychedelics like peyote and psilocybin mushrooms, 
usually in the 
context of music and rituals passed down by tribal 
elders, to attain 
sacred states, and gain essential insights into the 
meaning of being 
human.  It is in this traditional spirit that many 
Deadheads use 
these outlawed substances - so that some Heads refuse to 
call them 
drugs, preferring, in the manner of the Native American 
Church, to 
call them sacraments.
	The incidents cited by Ruff, of Heads being 
"dosed" against 
their will by fellow Heads or similarly abused, are not 
only contrary 
to the law of the land, they transgress Deadhead 
extended-family 
values.  In a culture which values the sanctity of one's 
own mind 
above obeying local drug laws, committing someone to a 
psychedelic 
experience against their will is obviously a violation 
of the Deadhead 
prime directive.  The people who Ruff cites as exemplary 
"Tourheads" - raping, feeding drugs to animals, 
abandoning their 
touring partners - would very quickly find themselves 
outcasts from 
Deadhead society, which survives, and protects its own, 
by 
maintaining an intimate word-of-mouth network,that now 
extends 
into cyberspace.
	The phrase "misfit power" is heard often around 
the Dead 
scene, a tribute to the fact that the Dead have kept 
their collective 
gaze set firmly on what was essential for their own 
growth as 
musicians - maintaining the acuity of listening, 
remaining open to 
the next whim of the Muse,and technically proficient 
enough to do 
Her justice - without regard to industry fashion.  
Additionally, since 
"Deadhead" is an honorific title one bestows on oneself, 
the Dead 
scene is singularly inclusive.  In researching our book 
on Deadhead 
culture, my co-author and I interviewed Republican 
Deadheads, tie-
dyed lesbian Deadheads, sober "Wharf Rats," lawyers who 
sport J.Garcia ties in the dock, Deadheads of color, 
"trustafarian" 
Heads on the family dole, Deadhead sociologists, 
Deadheads-for-
Jesus, surgeons who unwind after an operation by 
spinning tapes, 
orthodox Jewish Deadheads - and the aides to one 
Deadhead who 
happens to be married to the Vice President of the 
United States.
	Before the paving of the information 
superhighway, the Dead 
community gave kids accustomed to suburban anomie a 
place 
where they could link up with something larger than 
themselves:  a 
training ground in generosity for the offspring of the 
Me Decade, a 
road scholarship for learning to trust the instructive 
flow in the 
events of daily life.  And now, nearly a hundred 
thousand 
"NetHeads" have translated the open-minded bonhomie and 
care for 
the commonwealth they were schooled in on Dead tour into 
good 
citizenship on the Internet;  the kind of citizenship 
which doesn't 
require censorship to stand in for good sense and humane 
concern.
	For thirty years, the Dead scene has been a most 
miraculous 
beast:  an anarchic society on wheels, an ongoing 
experiment in 
practicing "random kindness and senseless acts of 
beauty," as one 
bumpersticker says.  Though tickets are harder to get, 
the venues 
are more cavernous, and the DEA has discovered that it's 
easier to 
slam Little Ivy sophomores bartering 'shrooms into the 
state pen 
than face down crack dealers, one thing that there has 
never been a 
shortage of on the Dead scene is joy. 
	As the world beyond the Tie-Dyed Barrier becomes 
increasingly conservative and belligerent, however, Dead 
tour more 
and more resembles a life raft in choppy, shark-filled 
seas.  For a 
group that defines itself as misfits and outsiders - yet 
welcomes 
anyone who clambers onboard - questions of 
self-discipline and 
guidance from within loom large.  One casualty of the 
mid-'80s 
Deadhead growth-spurt was a natural enculturation 
process, of 
older Heads taking younger Heads under their wing, and 
demonstrating by example what sorts of conduct have 
helped keep 
the community self-sustaining.
	To address these issues, a group of concerned 
Deadheads has 
founded a task force called Save Our Scene, which will 
work with 
Heads, venue staffs, and the media to ensure that Dead 
shows 
continue to be a boon not only to Deadheads, but to the 
local 
communities along tour routes.  More than "an attempt to 
quash 
disruptive behavior," as Ruff put it, SOS aims to 
reassert the 
primary values of the Dead community.  As Deadheads are 
allergic 
to dogma, one of the first tasks SOS faces is to 
formulate what 
those values are, in the absence of any authority more 
central than 
the hearts and minds of those involved.  The savvy of 
professional 
Deadheads who "got lives" beyond Dead tour years ago, 
and have 
learned how to be, as Walt Whitman put it, "both in and 
out of the 
game" of mainstream life, should prove of utmost 
practical usefulness 
to this noble effort.
	I feel sad that the 30th year of the Dead's 
creative vigor is 
being celebrated with ominous news reports, but the Dead 
have 
always been committed enough to their own creative 
vision not to 
be distracted by excessive praise or blame.  Jerry 
Garcia never claimed 
to be captain of anybody's trip but his own, for better 
and worse.
	At Dead concerts, during those breakthrough 
moments in the 
music when a vitality beyond words momentarily banishes 
the woes 
of the world, the teenage "newbies" and grizzled older 
folks who 
have been "on the bus" for light-years, turn to one 
another in a 
shared moment of recognition.  And through it all, the 
collective body 
dances, poised on the brink of a mystery.
	The headlines will fade away.  The music, 
transcendent 
memories, and workable models of community developed 
over 
three decades will not, because they are woven in our 
bones.
	Happy Anniversary, Boys.




Steve Silberman is the co-author of _Skeleton Key:  A 
Dictionary 
for  Deadheads_ (Doubleday '94).
His email address is [email protected].

(415) 681-3401
109 Alma Street
S.F., CA 94117

    

    
    Sounds like the author of the first article was into the "scene" a 
    little too much.  Perhaps she ought to consider a career path in 
    socialology instead of journalism.
    
    She neglects to mention anything about those raging, stellar,
    performances that leave you on your hands and knees.  The kind that 
    when you exit the show it's hard to speak anything but "aahh duhhh".
    The ones that entice you to be on tour and make it all worthit.
    She needs a show! ;-)
                         
    I like the second clip much better.  

    YEAH!
    us undercover_DEA_narc_deadheads are a respectable bunch
    :^)