A weekly audio postcard from the wide musical world of America’s best-loved band!
David Gans XM Satellite Radio carries my radio show, the Grateful Dead Hour on “Deep Tracks” Channel 40. Today I read that they’ve signed up a new DJ: Bob Dylan! His show debuts in March. Worst radio voice ever, quite possibly, but I predict he’ll have a kick-ass playlist. So what if Sirius has Howard Stern? I’m … Read more
Daring rescue of whale off Farallones On the front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle, the amazing story (by the excellent Peter Fimrite) of a brave humanitarian act. A humpback whale was discovered by fishermen trapped in a tangle of crab pot lines and struggling for her life. A rescue party cut her loose – … Read more
My question to all who cheered the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams: How exactly is your world improved by his elimination?
After two weeks of getting nothing done due to illness, I got my energy back in a major way and I’ve been on a cleaning and throwing-away binge for days. It started with the t-shirts in my bedroom closet. They’re on shelves, and the shelves were just a jumble of knotted, crumpled fabric. So I … Read more
Coming events: I’m on tour in the Bay Area this weekend, and the ticket prices are way affordable (i.e. $0) at three of these gigs! Thursday, December 15, 9:00 pm: The Invitational, with David Gans, Chris Rowan, Joshua Zucker, Josh Kaye, and Adam Perry. Hotel Utah, 500 Fourth Street (at Bryant), San Francisco. $7. 415-546-6300. … Read more
Here in California, we are plunging toward another rendezvous with destiny: Stanley “Tookie” Williams is scheduled to be executed tonight. The newspapers have been filled with bloodthirsty op-eds demanding closure on behalf of the victims’ families, and on the other side of the question we’re seeing stories of redemption: the founder of LA’s Crips gang … Read more
For Canadians who want to be annoyed by what they read, originally uploaded by D & D. Scene from a Canadian bookstore Update: I just noticed that another of the books on the “Jerks” table is How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a parody of the famous (in the ’40s and ’50s) Dale Carnegie … Read more
I just signed up as an online partner of powells.com, the online storefront of the great Portland bookstore. I ego-surfed (natch) and discovered that they have all my books there, including used copies of the out-of-print titles. Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead Conversations with the Dead: The … Read more
When Greil Marcus’ book Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (later reissued as The Old, Weird America) came out in 1997, I invited the author to appear on Dead to the World to talk and play records. Our mutual friend, San Francisco columnist Jon Carroll, got his advance copy and emailed me just to say … Read more
Bear (ne Owsley Stanley) has written about drug prohibition and offers “maybe the only published plan for a controlled and intelligent legalisation.” In the effort to “control” drug use, the approach taken on an international scale has been to prohibit even the use and possession of many materials. This model is the “American” one. That … Read more