ID Music: Dead Sets 2015-2021
ID Music: Dead Sets 2015-2021
Celebrate Jerry Garcia's birthday with our non-definitive alternate timeline of the Grateful Dead
I have a complicated relationship with my favorite band, The Grateful Dead. I wrote about this relationship in 2004 for Arthur Magazine, a bohemian culture broadsheet that I had been contributing to for a few years. I was down and out that summer, living in Los Angeles, unemployed freelancing full time, and house-sitting for friends who had a pool. I spent the days floating around, endlessly blazing, listening to Dead shows from archive.org and trying to think of something to write about, possibly for money. More than likely not.
Jay from Arthur suggested I take a crack at writing about being a quasi-Deadhead who had never seen the Grateful Dead live, despite hanging around in the parking lot with friends. I felt rejected and alienated from most of the Deadheads I knew1 as an awkward high schooler. I loved their albums, but I was much more excited to see live music from other awkward, depressed, rowdy, and angry teenagers like me. In my alternate history, the band of boomers these young burnouts and teenage proto-yuppies followed would become a direct progenitor of heavyweight jammers like Comets on Fire, Animal Collective, and Boredoms, rather than frat party soundtrack mainstays String Cheese Incident, Rusted Root, and Phish2.
Late, lamented poet and musician DC Berman – a longtime champion of the band and friend of the magazine – shared some stories with me, and contributed illustrations for what would become “Uncle Skullfucker’s Band,” the obscene headline combining a title the Dead considered for their 1971 live album and their 1970 single “Uncle John’s Band.”
Jerry was long dead by the time I attempted to claim my own head heritage, but my Deadhead mentor Piotr Orlov miracled me a ticket to the final Fare Thee Well 50th Anniversary show on July 53, 2015 at Soldier Field. The closing hook of the 2004 essay was that I actually had a ticket to what would become Jerry’s final show at Soldier Field on July 9, 1995. I sold that ticket because I couldn’t deal4 with the hippies who were my ride to Chicago. But through Brother Orlov’s grace, I got to sing along through a head full of flying colors to another final “Touch of Grey” with 50,000 crying and tripping lifer freaks, wasted frat boys, and the sort of nostalgic boomers who flex Jerry Garcia neckties. It was absolutely spectacular, an unforgettably beautiful experience with a vibrant counterculture that embraced me for a communal one night stand during a super hard time in my life.
My relationship with the Dead remains complicated in part because 20 years later, “Uncle Skullfucker’s Band” is still the most popular thing that I’ve written. Initially this was great! Musicians that I was thinking about in the essay – members of Animal Collective, Comets on Fire, et al – responded enthusiastically in Arthur’s follow-up coverage. James Toth of Wooden Wand and One Eleven Heavy called me out for denigrating Donna Godchaux, a crucial member of the band throughout the ‘70s, for her unfairly maligned vocals. I started playing Live Dead and Garcia Band reggae covers as part of my “country night” DJ sets at the unofficial Arthur bar in Echo Park: A conga line of Angeleno libertines boogying around the pool tables to an early ‘70s “Good Lovin’” is one of my favorite memories from those mostly forgotten nights of indulgence. One night Chris Robinson – another longtime Arthur supporter – was hanging out and quietly volunteered kind thoughts about what I’d written.
It was less great that search engines now served anyone looking for me online – prospective employers, Friendster crushes, my sweet mom – with a sexually violent profanity. I went with the title thinking the piece wouldn’t reach beyond the cluttered vestibules of record stores, boho bars, and head shops where Arthur was distributed. As Grateful Dead authority Jesse Jarnow5 wrote of my essay in his excellent 2016 book Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, “It’s hard to say which is cruder, the illustrations or the headline, but together they conjure a new beginning for psychedelic America.” Jarnow goes on to credit and/or accuse me with sounding the “opening gong and tentative reintroduction of the Dead to the new generation of freaks. The rebirth of the Dead starts now.”
Jarnow bestowed this dubious honor on me along with Judd Apatow since Freaks and Geeks – Apatow and Paul Feig’s beloved television series that was canceled after its first season – became a surprise hit on the DVD market the same year. The series concludes with Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini) swaying blissfully around her bedroom to the Grateful Dead’s “Box of Rain.”
“The ‘Deadhead life’ meant ‘saying yes to all that life offers,’” Jarnow writes, quoting an essay by Stan Spector. “This is what Deadheads do,” Jarnow continues in his own words. “This is not what Judd Apatow or Daniel Chamberlin or Animal Collective do. They aren’t Deadheads at all.”
My fellow false Deadheads’ stars shone ever more brightly in the 12 years between the Freaks and Geeks DVD revival, “Uncle Skullfucker,” Sung Tongs, and the arrival of Heads in 2016. I let my star go dark: I mostly quit writing and dropped out to Far West Texas where I worked as an EMT with Marfa EMS, made visual art about my “communion with the plant mind,” and racked up debt living as wild and free as possible. My bootleg Deadhead card would eventually be publicly revoked, but my best and worst days began to feel like something out of Hunter/Garcia lore. I managed to avoid getting killed or caught for seven years, and eventually left Texas for a slightly less gonzo lifestyle as a resident student at the Indianapolis Zen Center6.
To Jarnow’s point, the essay only worked because I wasn’t a Deadhead. “A Deadhead Enthuses About The Grateful Dead” doesn’t hit7 the same. In a way it was satisfying to come full circle and rekindle8 the alienation that fueled my own minor cult classic. But there are few Deadheads pious enough to bother with keeping apostates from the gates, especially if they have tickets. More importantly, I still get the occasional note from someone who found some amount of joy via the Grateful Dead, in part through my profane yet sincere memoir. Which is the ultimate point – as I often struggle to remind myself – of making things. My basic understanding of the Dead’s actual timeline suggests that the transformation of underground status into fame and fortune doesn’t always lead to equanimity. But even lifelong outsiders and committed dilettantes can envy their comrade’s tribal credentials.
I bought a copy of Heads on an early date with the woman to whom I’m now married. “Hey check this out,” I said to her, flipping through the hardback to page 379 as we flirted around an Indianapolis record store. “Me and Judd Apatow reintroduced the Grateful Dead to a new generation of freaks.” Much to her credit, she was amused but otherwise unimpressed.
My appetite for such mundane heresies remains. In addition to the metal and New Age sounds that I play for yoga classes and Inter-Dimensional Music – my understandably unpopular yet surprisingly long-running community radio experiment in anarchist9 psychedelia and radical meditation – I also force the Dead into the mix. I sometimes pick fights with metal guys too, but those stakes are a little higher.
In keeping with my false Deadhead status, I had no idea it was Jerry’s birthday until the usual celebratory “happy birthday fat man” and trolling “actually Jerry sucks” posts began surfacing on my August 1 Twitter timeline. This Void Contemplation Tactics newsletter has been paused while Rachel and I wandered off the grid for a summer retreat. Jerry’s birthday seemed like a good excuse to resume transmission and check in with everybody.
There are many hours of Live Dead scattered over 12 years of Inter-Dimensional Music. I’ve collected some of the highlights for you to listen on your own. Or join us in the lot to burn one and see if we can find that falafel maniac who rants about adding pickles to the wrap.
If you know anyone who might find this Void Contemplation Tactics newsletter useful or perhaps even entertaining, please pass it along. I’m stoked to meet your friends, and it’s incredibly validating whenever anyone decides to spread the word.
UNCLE SKULLFUCKER REVISITED 2015-2021
A Non-Definitive Guide to the Grateful Dead on Inter-Dimensional Music
ID Music July 2015
North America’s Gnarliest Mix of “Irreverence, Anarchy, and Something Pure”
In July 2015 I recorded two Grateful Dead-focused episodes of Inter-Dimensional Music as I prepared to travel from Marfa to Chicago for the final night of the band's Fare Thee Well tour. ID Music was entirely a live broadcast back then when I still lived in Marfa, but I was on the road so these pre-recorded shows were preserved for future generations. I haven’t listened to them in years, but the mix of live recordings and commentary are based on the “Uncle Skullfucker’s Band” memoir discussed above. The show is “live to tape” with no edits, so we get to hear the weather forecast, underwriting announcements, and flubbed dedications to Jeremy, Piotr, Melanie, Elka, Sonya, and the other kind souls who kept me honest to the point of recklessness, despite being self-centered to the extreme.
ID Music 20190607
North America’s Gnarliest Mix of Gat Dam Grateful Dead
This week's ID Music served as a welcoming beacon for the remains of the band formerly known as the Grateful Dead as they made their way back to Indiana for a performance at Deer Creek on the 2019 summer tour. Listen for Live Dead from Oregon State University 1970, Roanoke 1974, Hartford 1981, Deer Creek 1990, San Bernardino 1977, and University of New Mexico 1977. Commentary from Bill Graham and John Zacherle along with sounds from John Oswald’s Grayfolded in the background and in-between.
ID Music 20190614
North America’s Gnarliest Mix of Sunburned Crust, Animist Drone, and other sounds that came up in conversation in the lot at the Deer Creek Deadshow this summer
Your host continues trying to convince fellow goner pals to seek the common ground between the Grateful Dead and potent strains of psychedelic death metal, granola drone, and organic funeral doom. Listen for Expo ‘70, Vale, Atrament, Lycus, Black September, Mournful Congregation10, and a 1981 “He’s Gone” dedicated to hunger striker Bobby Sands.
Words from Zen Master Seung Sahn on finding direction in life and death in the background and in-between: “Don’t be afraid of your sickness.”
ID Music 20200403
North America’s gnarliest mix of “sentient fog in a realm of visceral stillness,” “drifting guitar textures that slowly interweave to open celestial doors,” and other kosmische pastorals
ID Music keeps things slow and low this week with Blacks Myths’ hypnogagic jazz, a dissociative funeral dirge for Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter from Prana Crafter, headyversion’s contender for the Dead’s second best “Terrapin,” and Earth’s heavyweight version of hot buttered soul. We’ll conclude our practice with a twofer of cosmic Americanan treatises on impermanence and acceptance from William Tyler and Superwolf.
Sluggish opening meditation remix excerpted from the latest installment of our Void Contemplation Tactics meditation video series: Dig the full spectrum audio-visual experience in the Vimeo archive.
ID Music 20211126
stream | download | commentary
North America's Gnarliest Mix for Becoming An Understanding Molecule in Evolution
For our 2021 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.
BONUS TRACKS:
If you want to celebrate Jerry's birthday with Live Dead songs – as opposed to jams – there is no better introduction IMO than Save Your Face’s Garcia Songs Live 1972-1974 collection. The curious seeker will find no shortage of lysergic Americana in this friend-of-the-show’s free archive of music that has yet to see official release.
You can support Inter-Dimensional Music and Void Contemplation Tactics by sharing this post, subscribing for free, subscribing for money, streaming past episodes from the archive, and/or purchasing music from the artists we play on our airwaves. Tell them where you heard their sounds if you want to go the extra mile! Breathe deep in the Bandcamp library.
With the notable exception of lifelong friend and brother Jeremy Pickett who is featured prominently in the essay.
As many Buddhist teachers have pointed out, Buddhism is a great religion for Buddhists. Likewise, Phish is a great band for people who like Phish.
lol literally “leaving Texas on the fourth day of July.”
At this point in my life I was more concerned with the post-colonial implications of Suede’s “Dark Star.”
I don’t know Jesse other than from online where we’ve since had a few brief but lovely conversations. You should read his book and listen to the official Grateful Dead podcast that he co-hosts here.
As my friend, dharma teacher, and former IZC housemate John once observed, “you have two kinds of T-shirts: Black ones with sad skulls and colorful ones with happy skulls.”
As one of the two people responsible for reanimating the Grateful Dead for hipsters, it is fitting that I am somehow still included along with Jon, Sarah, and Pat on the “Friends & Family” web page of Official Grateful Dead Hipsters Online Ceramics :)
The nice leftist, antifascist type of anarchism not the Republican crypto bro kind espoused by Grateful Dead lyricist and former Dick Cheney campaign coordinator John Perry Barlow, who apparently hung out with General Wesley Clarke at Burning Man.
“More like The UnGrateful Dead amirite” is a joke that maybe three people are gonna get. It originated in a conversation I had at a Dead & Co. show with an elderly hippie who was asking questions about the Mournful Congregation T-shirt I was wearing. “They’re probably not much like the Dead,” he laughed.
“Actually, they write very long and slow psychedelic songs with beautiful guitar parts,” I said. “It’s usually super sad though.” He told me he’d recommend my radio show to his metalhead friend who was recovering from back surgery. Hippies are nice.