Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
The Days Between
August 3, 2005 Ten years since old Jer kicked the bucket? Seems more like fifty. Nothing about his passing seems like “only yesterday,” rather as long ago and far away as my childhood. From the sublime to the vicious, everything that could be said has been said and said again. Yet, the essential mystery of who Jerry Garcia was remains. What can be said with fair assurance is that he was a source, an original way of seeing the world that agreed with others in a few broad and important outlines, but which in just as many other dimensions confounded all expectations. I wouldn’t say he delighted, in any Whitmanian sense, in what appear to be his contradictions, nor that he had control of them; predictability was not his strong suit. Not even self predictability. He could be alarmingly kind in situations where kindness was the last response to be expected – and altogether gruff where sympathy seemed the more natural response. You could almost say he had weather rather than climate. Few would disagree that a key part of him remained isolated, unknown and unknowable. His art is the closest thing to an available roadmap of his singularities, amorphous clues, and clues only, to the nature of his true affections. Where he entered, he dominated, generally to his dismay. He knew he was not a leader, more a scout striking out in the wilderness of his intuitions, unwittingly summoning others to tag along through virtue of his magnetic personality and apparently deep sense of inner direction, but basically antipathetic to following or to being followed. Driving back and forth across the bay from Larkspur to San Franscisco on Workingman’s Dead recording sessions, our conversations would range wide, or, sometimes, nothing would be said at all. I remember once we got to talking about directions. He professed to having none and inquired as to mine. “For the time being,” I said, “I’m just following you following yourself.” “Then we’re both lost,” he muttered. A persistent image I have of Jerry which seems strangely resonant with his coming and going: a brilliant sunny day on a boat bobbing above the abyss of Molokini where the floor of the ocean suddenly drops off a cliff and plunges to unknown depths, I watch him check his gear then sit on the edge of the boat and tumble over backwards into the water, which is clear to a depth of several hundred feet. I watch him dwindle in size as he descends further and further, spread eagle and motionless, until he is only a speck to the eye, then disappears altogether from view and there is no more Jerry, only ocean.Got this email from cartoonist Steve Lafler, pointing to a comic about the Dead that he posted on his own blog. The comic is well worth a look.
Dear David,Been missing your radio show after a move to Portland (after 20 years in Oakland…) but happily figured out how to listen to KPFA archives on my wife’s fancy new laptop!
As the tenth anniversary of Jerry’s passing is upon us, I felt compelled to post
Top Ten musical (listening) moments from my July tour
10. “Rain and Snow” – Peter Rowan and Tony Rice et al at MagnoliaFest Midwest in Bean Blossom, Indiana
9. “Vincent Black Lightning” – The Tumbleweeds on the Porch Stage at MagnoliaFest Midwest
8. “Riddle of the Universe” – Donna the Buffalo, Positive Friction – because it’s always in my Top Ten
7. North Country – Michael Stadler‘s new CD
6. Moon on My Pillow – The Spud Puppies, Pick of the Litter
5. “You Can’t Save Everybody,” the title track from a 2004 CD by Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch
4. Chavez Ravine – Ry Cooder’s amazing new album.
3. “Willie Taylor” – Uncle Earl, She Waits for Night
2. Buddy Miller‘s entire set at MagnoliaFest Midwest
1. “The Road” – Russell Smith, The End Is Not in Sight
Miss Liberty?
I am inordinately proud of this poster, designed by David Newman from a photo I took last fall in High Point, North Carolina.
“20 Questions with David Gans” on jambase
I did an email interview with Dennis Cook for jambase.
An excerpt from the opening paragraph:
…there’s far more to Gans than a lurker on the edges of Dead territory. A gifted singer-songwriter, respected music journalist, inventive entrepreneur, and trickster in the archetypal sense, Gans vibrates with a love of things musical, which in turn inspires our own pleasure and feeling for sound and vision.
Here’s a link to the interview.
Spanish PM on gay rights
My friend Scott Marley posted this in The WELL, in the media conference:
Excerpts from the speech of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, prime minister of Spain, upon the Spanish parliament’s vote to legalize same-sex marriage and the adoption of children by same-sex couples:
We are not making law, honorable members, for people far away and unknown to us. We are increasing the opportunity for happiness for our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, and our families. At the same time, we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.
… Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who for many years have been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their
identity, and restores their liberty.
It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone’s triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet, because it is the triumph of liberty. Their victory makes all of us, even those who oppose the law, better people. It makes our society better.
Honorable members, there is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married. To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens gets the opportunity to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: This law enhances and respects marriage.
Today, conscious that some people and institutions are in profound disagreement with this change in our civil law, I wish to say that, like other reforms to the marriage code that preceded this one, this law will generate no evil, and that its only consequence will be to avoid the senseless suffering of decent human beings. A society that avoids the senseless suffering of decent human beings is a better society.
With the approval of this bill, our country takes another step in the path of liberty and tolerance that was begun by the democratic change of government. Our children will look at us incredulously if we tell them that many years ago, our mothers had fewer rights than our fathers, or if we tell them that people had to stay married against their will even though they were unable to share their lives. Today we can offer them a beautiful lesson: Every right gained, each access to liberty, has been the result of the struggle and sacrifice of many people that deserve our recognition and praise.
Today we demonstrate with this bill that societies can better themselves, and can cross barriers and create tolerance, by putting a stop to the unhappiness and humiliation of some of our citizens. Today, for many of our countrymen, comes the day predicted by [the poet C.P.] Cavafy one century ago: “Later, in the more perfect society, surely some other person created like me will appear and act freely.”