Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
Great lineup on Ham Jam this weekend!
Weir & Lesh will sign CDs in NYC 10/14
GRATEFUL DEAD FOUNDING MEMBERS PHIL LESH AND BOB WEIR TO MAKE RARE IN-STORE APPEARANCE AND SIGNING
Lesh And Weir To Sign Copies Of Historic New Grateful Dead Release Rocking The Cradle: Egypt 1978 at Midtown Manhattan Best Buy On October 14
Grateful Dead founding members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir will make a rare in-store appearance and signing to celebrate the historic release of Rocking The Cradle: Egypt 1978. The 2-CD/1-DVD Egypt collection features previously unreleased audio and video highlights from the band’s legendary performances at the foot of The Great Pyramid in Gizah. The set will be released on September 30 from Grateful Dead Productions and Rhino.
Lesh and Weir will be signing copies of the release at the Best Buy in midtown Manhattan at 5th Avenue and East 44th Street on October 14 starting at 7:00 PM. The first 400 people to purchase Rocking The Cradle at this Best Buy location on Tuesday, September 30th will receive a wristband entitling them access to meet Lesh and Weir on October 14. Please contact the store for more details at (212) 808-0309.
Richard Loren interview on DeadNet
Audio of my interview with Richard Loren, executive producer of Rocking the Cradle:Egypt 1978 and manager of the Grateful Dead at the time of the Egypt trip, has been posted on DeadNet.
Donna Jean is a grandma!
This wonderful news just arrived in email:
Hello Family & Friends,
Delta Robert Godchaux was born today, September 23rd at 4:47 P.M. He weighed in at exactly 8 pounds and is 22 and 1/4 inches long, healthy and robust! Brianne (his mother) did great in the birthing process and Zion was a champion in helping her throughout.
Zion is beside himself with love, wonder, and amazement at the arrival of his beautiful little boy. I, the grandmother, have the same sentiments. It is beyond even what I knew it would be. I’m much more than glad I was here to be in the room when he popped out and let out his first cry. (The first of many more to come, I’m sure!)
Love You All!
DJ
Much love to the whole family!
Gary Greenberg’s “A Noble Lie”
Just got this email from Gary Greenberg – a good friend, a soulful psychologist, an excellent writer, and a damn fine musician to boot:
As if there weren’t already too many books in the world, now I’ve gone and published one. It’s called The Noble Lie, and it’s about what happens when doctors try to diagnose away our moral confusion. You know, like when they say that a person whose brain has stopped working, but who is still breathing and still has a beating heart, is actually already dead, so it’s okay to remove his organs. Or that a person who is miserable has a brain disease, so it’s okay for her to take drugs that make her feel better. Or that a man who falls in love with a man ought to be able to marry him because he was born that way rather than because in a life that will drive you to your knees with alarming frequency, love is rare and should be encouraged in all its forms.
The idea–to the extent that there is one–is that these diagnoses are myths that we live by, and like all myths both indispensable and fragile, hard to live without and nearly impossible to sustain. But mostly the book is a series of strange stories–about people who come back from the dead and people who think they will never die, about a serial killer who wants to be thought of as evil rather than sick and a convicted drug kingpin who wants to cure drug addicts by giving them a dangerous hallucinogen, about straight people who become gay and gay people who become straight. It’s got sex and drugs and, if you read it with your ipod on, rock and roll, and you’ll get to see me beg for an audience with the Unabomber, weasel my way into a clinical trial, and get into a life-threatening situation with a guy who thinks he will live forever. You’ve seen some of these stories before, in places like The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Mother Jones, but there’s plenty of new stuff, including my visit to the Wet Spot, one of America’s best sex clubs.
Publisher’s Weekly called The Noble Lie “muddled,” which makes sense, since the point is to re-muddle what should probably never have been un-muddled in the first place. New Scientist called it “impressive and fascinating“. The book hits the shelves today. Read it and decide for yourself.
Here is the publisher’s catalog page for the book.
I have ordered my copy and will report back when I’ve finished reading it.