They're a band beyond description...
Like Jehovah's favorite choir...
People joining hand in hand... While the music plays the band... Lord, they're
setting us on fire!
from "The Music Never Stopped" - J.P. Barlow & R. Weir
For those of you not familiar with the Grateful Dead, here is a very short history of the band...
Considered by many to be the heart and soul of the band, Jerry Garcia played with a number of acts between 1960 and 1965 before finding musicians Bill Kreutzman, Bob Weir, Ron Mckernan and Phil Lesh, who would become The Warlocks, and later the Grateful Dead.
In the Fall of 1965, The Warlocks start performing as a house band for LSD-fueled parties hosted by Ken Kesey, which would later evolve into multimedia shows known as Acid Tests. Around this time the band went in search of another name. They finally stumbled on the phrase Grateful Dead in a randomly opened dictionary. The words referred to a genre of folktales in which a Good Samaritan arranges for the burial of a penniless stranger. At some point later, the Samaritan encounters life-threatening peril and is, himself, aided by the spirit of the man he helped bury, hence "grateful dead."
The Dead lived at 710 Ashbury Street, and became synonymous with the 1967 Summer of Love cultural movement centered in the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. The group took influences from all over -- rock, country, folk and blues -- and forged a defining sound.
The group's mission statement as voiced by Garcia in 1967: "We're trying to make music in such a way that it doesn't have a message for anybody. We don't have anything to tell anybody. We don't want to change anybody. We want people to have the chance to feel a little better. That's the absolute most we want to do with our music. The music that we make is an act of love and act of joy...we're not telling [anybody] to go get stoned, or drop out.... We are trying to make things groovier for everybody so more people can feel better more often, to advance the trip, to get higher - however you want to say it - but we're musicians and there's just no way to put the idea 'save the world' into music."
As the band, and its sound, matured over thirty years of touring, playing, and recording, each member's stylistic contribution became more defined, consistent, and identifiable. Lesh, who was originally a classically-trained trumpet player with an extensive background in music theory, did not tend to play traditional blues-based bass forms, but opted for more melodic, symphonic and complex lines, often sounding like a second lead guitar. Weir, too, was not a traditional rhythm guitarist, but tended to play jazz-influenced, unique inversions at the upper end of the Dead's sound. The two drummers, Mickey Hart and Kreutzman, developed a unique, complex interplay, balancing Kreutzman's steady beat with Hart's interest in percussion styles outside the rock tradition. Hart incorporated an 11-count measure to his drumming, bringing a new dimension to the band's sound that became an important part of its emerging style. Garcia's lead lines were fluid, supple and spare, owing a great deal of their character to his training in fingerpicking and banjo. His improvisational lead guitar style, in the tradition of jazz pioneers such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane, opened up the Band's overall expressive presentation, allowing for extensive musical exploration.
Of historical note is the Band's practice of allowing fans to tape performances. Over the years, as the Dead's touring protocol evolved, the Band provided a "tapers section" at concerts where industrious individuals set up elaborate, state-of-the-art recording equipment. This allowed fans the opportunity to "capture the magic" that was a Grateful Dead performance... on tape... and distribute the recordings free of any royalty fee. This practice pre-dated and pioneered the "peer to peer" state of our modern day music industry.
For thirty years, the Grateful Dead created a musical space that transcended entertainment. The Dead's concerts became a traveling tabernacle for the Deadheads, as the band's followers were known. The dynamic songwriting team of Hunter (lyrics) & Garcia (music) as well as Barlow & Weir provided fans with a wonderful musical tapestry of imagery and emotion that imparted reflection and contemplation... and hence expanding the opportunity for internal processing. The experience of attending a Deadshow provided context to the crazy world that was the final third of the twentieth century.
And now... on to selected excerpts from "Book of the Dead"...
Let my inspiration flow in token lines suggesting rhythm...
that will not forsake me till my tale is told and done.While the firelight's aglow... strange shadows in the flames will grow...
till things we've never seen will seem familiar...
Inspiration!
Move me brightly.
Light the song with sense and color, hold away despair.
More than this I will not ask... faced with mysteries dark and vast.
Statements just seem vain at last.
Some rise... some fall... some climb... to get to terrapin.from "Terrapin Station" - R. Hunter & J. Garcia
What do you want me to do? To do for you… To see you through?
A box of rain will ease the pain and love will see you through.Just a box of rain… wind and water…
Believe it if you need it, if you don't just pass it on.
Sun and shower… Wind and rain…
In and out the window like a moth before a flame.It's just a box of rain… I don't know who put it there…
Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare…
But it's just a box of rain or a ribbon for your hair…
Such a long-long time to be gone and a short time to be there.from "Box of Rain" - R. Hunter & P. Lesh
Went to see the captain, strangest I could find,
Laid my proposition down, laid it on the line.
I won't slave for beggars pay, likewise gold and jewels,
But I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools.It was later than I thought when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools.
The bottles stand as empty, as they were filled before.
Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more.
Though I could not caution all, I still might warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.Ship of fools... on a cruel sea, ship of fools... sail away from me.
It was later than I thought, when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools...
from "Ship of Fools" - R. Hunter & P. Lesh
When that wind blows... And the darkness starts to fall... I can hear the sirens call...
It's a certain sort of sound... In the rain fallin' down...
Rain fallin down...
Holes in what's left of my reason... Holes in the knees of my blues,
Odds against me been increasin'... But I'll pull through.
Never could read no road map... And I don't know what the weather might do,
But hear that witch wind whinin'... See that Dog Star shinin'... I've got a feelin' there's no time to lose...No time to lose!
from "Lost Sailor" - J.P. Barlow & R. Weir
There is a road, no simple highway.
Between the dawn and the dark of night.
And if you go no one may follow.
That path is for your steps alone.Ripple...
In still water.
When there is no pebble tossed Nor wind to blow.You who choose to lead must follow.
But if you fall you fall alone.
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.from "Ripple" - R. Hunter & J. Garcia
Yet sometimes at night I dream…
He's still that hairy man,
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse and wandering the land.
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse...
And wandering the land.from "Brother Esau" - J.P. Barlow & R. Weir
Some come to laugh their past away... Some come to make it just one more day.
Whichever way your pleasure tends... if you plant ice, you're going to harvest wind.
Roll away... the dew . . .
from "Franklin's Tower" - R. Hunter & J. Garcia
Some folks trust in Reason…others trust in might.
I don't trust in nothing... but I know it comes out right.
Say it once again now... Whoa, I hope you understand.
When it's done and over... lord, a man is just a man.from "Playin' in the Band" - J.P. Barlow & R. Weir
There comes a redeemer... and he slowly too fades away.
There follows a wagon behind him that's loaded with clay.
and the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom and decay
The night comes so quiet... and it's close on the heels of the day
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the World.
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.
Sometimes we visit your country and live in your home.
Sometimes we ride on your horses... Sometimes we walk alone.
Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.from "Eyes of the World" - R. Hunter & J. Garcia
Midnight, on a carousel ride... reaching for the gold ring... down inside.
Never could reach it... just slipes away... but I try.from "Crazy Fingers" - R. Hunter & J. Garcia
Storyteller makes no choice and soon you will not hear his voice.
His job is to shed light, and not to master...
Since the end is never told.
We pay the teller off in gold.
In hopes he will come back... But he cannot be bought or sold.from "Terrapin Station" - R. Hunter & J. Garcia
