Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
Garage sale!
The first Grateful Dead Hour t-shirt. White only; Small and Medium only.
The second Grateful Dead Hour t-shirt. Blue, Black, or Tan; XXL only. All are Hanes Beefy T. Here’s a Beefy-T color chart; I think the colors we’re dealing with are Royal Blue, Sand, and, uh, Black.
$15 each, and I’ll pay the postage. Email me for more info.
Kvelling for shmo
My dear friend, fellow Pacifica-radio music programmer, and occasional musical collaborator Barry Smolin is featured on the front page of the Los Angeles Times today! It’s about his work as a teacher in the Los Angeles schools: This Teacher Digresses, and Well
If that link expires, Barry has it archived on his site.
Barry hosts The Music Never Stops on KPFK Sunday evenings. He’s also a fine keyboard player and a delightfully idiosyncratic songwriter. Check out his CD At Apogee, and join me in warmly anticipating the new CD he’s working on right now.
Bastards
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
Tina Loney (1943-2006)
My best friend died this morning. Tina Loney was the “best man” at my wedding. When I got together with Rita, it was Tina’s approval I sweated out, not my parents’. Fortunately, Tina approved. Tina and her partner of 15 years, Eric Rawlins, have been our companions through countless adventures, tribulations and mundane pleasures since Rita and I became a couple at the end of 1992.
There aren’t many people in this world with whom you can have a completely truthful relationship, whose judgment you can trust 100%. Tina was that sort of friend to me for nearly 20 years. The last time I saw her, on June 1, I looked her in the eye and thanked her for her friendship, fierce loyalty, and unblinking honesty. “I won’t forget,” she assured me. “Neither will I,” I said.
Hunter’s journal 6/7/06
In this letter, a public response to an email from someone named Sean, Hunter says explicitly something I have believed/known for years: “Play the recordings. I put as many clues there as I could. In a way, they are one long letter to the Grateful Dead.”
More excerpts:
In the aftershock of the tragic death of Vince, an amiable man and a fine musician, the Grateful Dead is once more a target of public disdain, fueled by passion and indignation. Its ethics and humanity are being publicly questioned on a deeply troubling level. Sic transit gloria mundi. Do I know the score? To a degree. But I’m not concerned here with either justifying or condemning the attitudes which make a group of musicians, who must seal themselves together in that intimate time capsule called a tour, make the decisions they do concerning who they want to travel with and why. It’s not necessarily democratic and it’s not always pretty. They choose what they choose for reasons as much personal as professional.
Some people are angry at what they perceive as the band’s throwing over of Jerry’s chosen keyboard player. That’s off base. We all chose him. I listened to the auditions and said “He’s the one.” Everybody was in agreement. As for saying anything further, stick your arm in the sink of gossip and it rises to suck you in. The attacks on the band members are heartfelt and, were they based on accurate assessment, could be accounted righteous. One must not entirely discount a touch of ‘rising to the occasion’ in the bias of the information shaping perceptions of purported evil doing in the wake of this sad event. But grief is like that, it brings out extremes. Who is entirely guiltless? Not me.
Are you willing to throw over something you truly prize on the basis of hearsay? Listen – I know these people. Ihey’re bastards. Yet I find myself here trying to interject a little perspective into their public scorching because they’re my bastards. They played the songs I helped write with love, taste and sublime dignity. You know what I’m saying because you heard it too.
But people demand answers. Failing answers they go away. Please don’t do that. Just don’t expect golf balls from a walnut tree.