Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
Bear vs. the War on Some Drugs
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 this approach is a failure has been widely noted by many prominent and even conservative commentators. The use of substances which alter in various ways the conciousness of man, is an extremely ancient and established practice, in spite of the belief of those who feel their moral views are the ones which should be imposed on all humanity.Lots of other interesting comemntary on that page.
Garrison Keillor vs. The War on Some Drugs
The War on Some Drugs is irrational, inhuman, morally and logically indefensible, and unamerican. It’s exactly like the opposition to gay marriage: you can’t get anyone to make an argument that doesn’t eventually circle back on itself. How exactly is “the institution of marriage” harmed by allowing two people of the same sex to participate in it? How exactly is marijuana more dangerous than alcohol?
To me, the bottom line is the right to be left alone. Seems to me that is one of the cornerstones of liberty.
‘War on Drugs:’ A Foul Tragedy
By Garrison Keillor
In These TimesWe Democrats are at our worst when we try to emulate Republicans — as we did in signing onto the “war” on drugs that has ruined so many young lives.
The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is stark indeed, as are the sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug possession — guidelines in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that sailed through Congress without benefit of public hearings, drafted before an election by Democrats afraid to be labeled “soft on drugs.”
As a result, a marijuana grower can land in prison for life without parole while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this; it is a Dostoevskian nightmare, and it exists only because politicians fled in the face of danger.
That includes Bill Clinton, under whose administration the prosecution of Americans for marijuana went up hugely, so that now there are more folks in prison for marijuana than for violent crimes.
Read the rest. Keillor makes a very good case for the ugliness of this unholy war.
“Insider” my ass
I posted this on rec.music.gdead just now, so I might as well post it here, too.
JonP wrote:
Why do you think that david gans has been posting her nonstop since this started?… Damage control for gdp..I wouldnt be surprised of they asked him to do it…
They didn’t.
I don’t know how many times I have to say it: I am not an insider.
The truth is, I don’t really need to suck up to them to do my job. Back in the ’80 and ’90s when GDP was rolling in money, they didn’t “need” the GD Hour to help them sell tickets, and many powerful insiders (John Cutler and Dennis McNally, to name two) didn’t particularly want my help in selling records, or anything else either.
For example, when Arista hired me to make a promotional interview disc for “Built to Last,” Cutler wouldn’t even let me use the GD studio to do interviews. He did let me use one half-decent microphone for the Garcia interview, but I was on my own aside from that. McNally never sent me press releases, invited me to press events, facilitated interviews w/ Jerry, etc.
Dick Latvala was happy to make music available to me for the radio show, consistent with his generally kindhearted nature and his desire to get the music out into the world – but he was fucked with mercilessly by crew people (and especially Cutler, who didn’t have the balls to get in my face so he abused Dick emotionally behind my back) – to the point where I stopped asking Dick for music for several months at one point because I couldn’t stand what it was doing to him psychologically. Peter McQuaid intervened, took me and Dick out to lunch one day, and told Dick to stop letting the hecklers interfere with our mission.
So I was never inclined to suck up to anyone; oftentimes it was all I could do to keep from spraying gunfinre.
Nowadays the relationship is much more professional on a certain level, because David Lemieux and Jeffrey Norman are sane, professional, decent guys who appreciate the value of the GD Hour. I haven’t asked David for any unreleased material for quite some time, for a variety of reasons – one of them being that I have access to tons of great material that is already outside the vault. Amusingly, I’ve gotten plenty of shows directly froom archive.org – or CDs from Charlie Miller as he prepared them for upload to the archive.
I have also given Charlie quite a bit of music to post on the archive and asked that my name not be attached to it.
So the bottom line is, STFU already about me sucking up.
I”m here to serve the music, and always have been. I’m not terribly sentimental about the GD organization, because although they have allowed me to earn a good living promoting their music, and I have gotten a great deal of satisfaction from the job over the years, for most of my tenure on the periphery of the scene I’ve had to fight one fuckhead or another just to do my job. It’s left me profoundly unsentimental about the “family,” believe me.
GD Download #8
Today is the release date of a double-barreled download: a single disc from 1970 (mostly 2/4, with one song from 10/5 and two from 12/31), all mixed from 16-track; and what looks like the complete show (on two CDs) of 12/10/73 in Charlotte NC.
I listened to all three discs last night, and it was the perfect antidote to all the non-musical GD traffic that’s been careening through my brain of late.
At this moment I’m listening to the jam in Good Lovin’ from 12/31/70 – an airy, subued affair that seems somewhat unusual to my ear. This is the sort of collective, structural, melodic jamming I came here for. Hard to imagine that this one is going to wind up anywhere near the Booklyn Bridge (see 4/17/71), but who the hell knows?
The other 12/31/70 item here is the only electric Monkey and the Engineer in GD history (aside from that entirely forgettable attempt w/ Bob Dylan in LA in 2/89. Great fun. Weir’s spoken intro reminds me that I was in my parents’ apartment in San Jose on 12/31/70, watching this show on Channel 9 – at least for a while. I wouldn’t go to my first GD show until March 5, 1972; this might have been the first time I ever saw them – no, I must have seen the movie Petulia by this time. I also must have been on my way out to a party or something, because I don’t remember much of the broadcast. If only I’d stayed home and watched the rest! Anyway, Jeffrey Norman’s mix is wonderful and so is the music.
Okay, Pigpen is into his improv now – a key phrase of this rap, “One monkey don’t stop no show,” is the title of a song that was popular around that time.
Highlights from the main part of the 1970 disc include a soulful Black Peter; a powerful Me and My Uncle (this song eventually became so routine that it’s hard to find anything memorable about any latter-day performance, but in this era the song has some real menace and narrrative power); and a terrific St Stephen-> Not Fade Away-> St Stephen (the thing I remember best from last night’s audition is the transition back into St Stephen) into Midnight Hour.
I need to go back and listen to 12/10/73 a few more times, but the things that stuck with me from the first hearing include: a sweet, meditative Playing in the Band jam (characteristic of the ’73-’74 era, although without the meltdowns that marked some – but this is not a complaint!); Bobby saying “Have a safe and sane fourth” during Fennario, obviously in reference to a firecracker thrown toward the stage; a kick-ass Nobody’s Fault But Mine out of Truckin’; and a really cool transition from the post-Eyes of the World jam into Brokedown Palace.
I’ll be featuring some of these highlights on Dead to the World tomorrow night (Wed 12/7, 8-10pm on KPFA 94.1 in Berkeley, and streaming on the web). Also on tap are an interview with April Higashi, editor of the new Jerry Garcia art book, and 4/1/91 set 2 part 1 (Tim Lynch will play the rest on 12/14).
P.S.: I asked David Lemieux what, if anything, is missing from the download version of 12/10/73. His reply:
Four songs, I think. All from the first set. Hmmm, Jack Straw, Tennessee Jed, El Paso and Brown Eyed Woman. Sonic issues. The second set is complete, starting with Promised Land, although Deadbase lists a Me and My Uncle in the second set that was nowhere to be found on the tapes, so that’s dubious.
Correction: Bill Herz passes along the deadlists entry showing an electric Monkey and the Engineer at the Fillmore East on 1/2/70. So the one on the new download isn’t the only one.
Addendum to the correction: Davld Lemieux notes, regarding the 1/2/70 Monkey:
If I remember, it’s a quick little attempt at the song while technical problems are solved, similar to Jerry’s Little Sadie on 10/31/80.
We try to be thorough here at Playback!
Collateral damage…
Over on Uncle John’s Blog, I posted a message from AOL’s GD Forum Store proprietor Geoff Gould regarding the state of his business.
An excerpt:
The Grateful Dead have been very good to me over the years. When my company was making Phil and Bobby’s axes (and a couple for Jerry he didn’t play) they helped keep us afloat. Over the years since the GD Forum first appeared on AOL and then on the web, we have worked together to bring the community many unique chat events and interviews. The GDF Store was actually the first functioning online commerce store selling GD Merchandise back in the Fall of 1995, and the GDM folk provided us with much great gear over the years. It’s been an honor serving the community, but times have changed.
Enter the “business is business” crowd.
Over the last couple of years, the GDM as well as the JG Estate stores have adopted a marketing plan of offering ‘exclusive bonus discs’ that has basically cut our sales anywhere from 60% to 90%. It was probably intended to get more market share away from sites like Amazon, and not aimed at me (I hope!) but the result is undeniable nonetheless. Like I said, the GD has been very good to me, and after reading Phil’s comments, I have to hope I was not targeted by these practices, but merely affected by the collateral damage.
It’s hard to say for sure, but this sure feels like the last holiday season for us
Maybe you could take a browse at Geoff’s site and see what sort of bargains he’s got…