From the GD Hour mailing list, posted with permission:
I’m not here to comment on any aspect of Vince’s treatment by the organization. I just recall my own initial education in the subject of the ethos of, for want of a less threadbare appellation, the psychedelic warrior: Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”.
By the point I read it I knew my way around an acid trip pretty well, and was past the novitiate stage with the dead but still pretty early on in the whole thing. (Fortunately for me, I think, those experiences were mostly on separate tracks.) I certainly knew enough to have seen the dark, hard edge of the dead scene and the Dead’s music from the inside — though I’m pretty sure I didn’t quite believe it (“Maybe it’s just me?”)
Wolfe’s book was enormously illuminating. I came to it at just the right moment — I had the experience to understand just exactly what he was getting at, but hadn’t been around long enough to not be able to yet learn a tremendous amount from the perspective it provided. Perspective — that was really the thing of it.
There’s a lot that could be said about that, but for the present conversation the fascinating revelation for me was what sheer BASTARDS a lot of the folks in the prankster orbit were. The weak were simply not interesting and hence simply not welcome. Oddly, that was a significant part of what brought the whole thing down to earth and made it real to me — and relevant. Light is only meaningful in the light of the shadow framing it. It’s part and parcel of the weight the Dead possess to
which so many other bands could only aspire. (Much that went on at a grateful dead show fell into place after the read.) In short, peeling the layers of your psyche and your world is damn dangerous.
I’ve seen pleny of evidence of that….
Interestingly, I had occasion to know quite a few of the general type personally — fiendish intellects that, each for their own reasons — could sometimes be downright mean. These are people I’ve been privileged to know. One thing I’ve learned: this world is FILLED with remarkable people. And almost every one of them worth knowing is their own kind of gigantic pain in the ass.
David Craig