ID Music 20211126 - Muchas Garcias
North America's Gnarliest Mix for Becoming An Understanding Molecule in Evolution
Inter-Dimensional Music is heard weekly on the airwaves of Marfa Public Radio, LOOKOUT FM Los Angeles, and WQRT Indianapolis
For this year’s Thanksgiving Week practice, it's a very grateful Muchas Garcias edition of ID Music. Please join us for an hour long meditation on gratitude and thankfulness accompanied by the Grateful Dead, music inspired by the Dead, and other sounds tangentially connected to the general vibe of Jerry Garcia. We'll also hear language from Jerry throughout the broadcast.
20211126 PROGRAM NOTES:
Grateful Dead-heavy episodes of ID Music are a good opportunity to remind myself that I make this broadcast as an art project first and foremost. It’s the yang version of the more yin-like metal/drone/noise episodes, and similar process of weeding out. Something for everyone and everything for nobody except me (probably) is the guiding principle here. That, and a desire to avoid falling into the admittedly pleasant zone of ambient-only mixes that everyone is fine with. When I meet people who listen to the show, they usually tell me about the zone where they opt-out, and it’s always either the Dead or the metal.
Our definition of “sounds tangentially connected to the general Jerry vibe” is wide open. Which is to say that average Deadheads will probably find as much to dislike as the metal heads as the ambient heads, etc.
The hour starts and ends with excerpts from JD Emmanuel’s Dwelling Within the Dimension of Endless Gratitude (2021). I met JD in Marfa many years ago when my friends at dublab brought Tonalism, their all-night ambient music happening, to the high desert grasslands of Far West Texas, where I was living at the time.
Inter-Dimensional Music had just started its 10+ year run on Marfa Public Radio, and so I played for an hour or so before JD took the stage. My set was a lot like this week’s show: gloopy psychedelia from Stag Hare and Sunburned Hand of the Man, a Black Sabbath cover, Joy Division in dub, and the full 20+ minute “Scarlet Fire” from the legendary and possibly overrated May 8, 1977 show. As we pass the halfway mark, JD asked me “Phish? or Umphreys McGee?” A casual flex of his jam band understanding, and a clue to just how mellow and good vibesy his New Age music has been for the last 20 years. For the record, we played a Phish song once that I thought sounded like Melvins, but we have not played any Umphreys McGee.
For the actual Dead bits of the show, we go to the beloved Cairo ‘78 collaboration with Hamza El Din, and a Save Your Face edit of an ‘84 “Scarlet Fire” that is mostly instrumental save for a bunch of pleasantly chaotic echoing overdubs toward the end.
Tuluum Shimmering has long been a regular on our airwaves. TBH I prefer the artist’s original compositions to their more recent ephemeral, long-form covers (I appreciate the cover of Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts them, but I don’t need to hear the whole thing). Their Dead covers are great though, something that apparently I once described to my dearest Deadhead comrade as “the flip to John Oswald’s Plunderphonic Dark Star.” They’re in similar territory here, offering a meandering, mostly beatless riff on the Dead’s already meandering live “Fire on the Mountain” jam called “Happiness is Drumming.”
The rest of the set includes a Sunburned Hand of the Man song that sounds a lot like extremely ragged and blown-out dirtbag reggae to me, and a shout to M. Geddes Gengras and Cameron Stallones, who offered such good company at that Marfa Tonalism, along with significantly more substantial performances than my own. What’s more, Cameron is one of the principle organizers of the Southern California home of ID Music on LOOKOUT FM. I’m grateful to still be in touch with these long-ago friends in 2021.
Language through the broadcast from the Garcia: A Signpost To A New Space collection of interviews. As part of the same conversation that we hear on today’s show, he goes on to talk about the Dead’s music in much the same way that I talk about this understandably unpopular community radio heavy mellow meditation program:
“I think of the Grateful Dead as being a crossroads or a pointer sign and what we’re pointing to is that there’s a lot of universe available, that there’s a whole lot of experience available over here. We’re kinda like a signpost, and we’re also pointing to danger, to difficulty, we’re pointing to bummers. We’re pointing to whatever there is, when we’re on - when it’s really happening.”
Thanks again for joining me online and on the actual airwaves as we continue to point out the beatitude along with the bummers.
ID Music 20211126 setlist
artist - work
JD Emmanuel - Dwelling Within the Dimension of Endless Gratitude Part 1 (excerpt)
Tuluum Shimmering - Happiness is Drumming 1 (excerpt)
Grateful Dead with Hamza El Din - Ollin Arageed (Live Cairo, Egypt 19780916)
Grateful Dead - Scarlet Begonias Jam > Fire on the Mountain SYF Edit (19840413)
Sunburned Hand of the Man - Spell It Out
Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras, The Congos - Thanks and Praise
JD Emmanuel - Dwelling Within the Dimension of Endless Gratitude Part 1 (excerpt)
Dharma: Jerry Garcia - Signpost To A New Space
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