Happy Birthday Jerry Garcia
The Grateful Dead were never a part of my listening repertoire growing up. This was all due to the fact I was being judgmental. Not on the band or the music. I judged the rich yuppie kids who went to my high school, who wore their tie-dyed shirts and could only name one or two songs the same way they suddenly became R.E.M. fans when "Stand" became a massive hit, while I toiled in the dark recesses of the rows of locker rooms listening to the Chronic Town e.p.
These same kids had lawyer and doctor dads who were weekend warrior Deadheads. These were not the types to follow the band around for weeks or months on end. How could they? There was the almighty buck to chase, and then Rover payments and the expensive Tudor house on the tree-lined street in the exclusive neighborhood?
While their kids wore the kaleidoscopic t-shirts, their parents were more modest. The Garcia tie (an ironic piece of apparel because I just can't imagine Jerry wearing a tie) became the 1990's equivalent to a Freemason ring. A special signifier that you too had not quite lost your edge, even if you hadn't smoked pot since 1976 and were way too straightedge to have ever dropped acid.
As a hardcore Ween fan, I am of course now assumed to be part of the same type of cult followers. If I wear a Ween shirt out in L.A., most people will ignore it. But the ones who get it have to acknowledge its meaning to my face and are often somewhat disappointed when I don't turn their acknowledgement into an invitation to discuss Gener and Deaner for an hour. Ween itself has been derided as a "jam," band, I guess because once upon a time Phish covered "Roses Are Free."
Though the bulk of my exposure to the Dead came in the form of "Truckin', Touch of Grey" "Casey Jones," or whatever deep cut they might have played occasionally on WDVE, I distinctly remember my dad covering the new that the Grateful dead were playing in Pittsburgh one summer.
He looked like the squarest of the square in his suit and non-Garcia tie, chatting with Deadhead after Deadhead. I'm sure my dad was familiar with them; his music tastes ran towards Dylan and Woody Guthrie. I can still picture a middle aged dude in tie-dye excitedly telling him that he and a few of his friends loaded up "the van," and drove some 40 hours from San Francisco to Pittsburgh without stopping, just to be there.
For me, the Dead and their fans represent an America that we lost. It began with the Beat Generation, and was on its last legs by the 90's. The hitchhiking and free-wheelin' and roadside diners and small towns. All of it seemed to vanish. And yet the music loves on, as it always does.
My appreciation grew for Jerry & Co, a year his ties came out, when I heard a cover of "Loser," off of Cracker's Kerosene Hat.
Country and bluesy and slow but without meandering. Garcia's voice is weary. He's the typical weary gambler character hailing out of the wild west. Garcia's original is more organ inflected (sometimes with a weird reggae offbeat) that kind of works against the overall feel of Robert Hunter's lyrics.
A few years after Kerosene Hat, the movie Smoke came out. Written by Paul Auster and directed by Wayne Wang. It was one of those 90's indie sleeper films that hasn't particularly aged well. Looking at it now, it's less a story with a major narrative than an episodic series of vignettes that are sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, and sometimes unintentionally funny. But this is more than offset by some stunning performances by William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Stockard Channing and Forest Whitaker as well as the rest of the cast. One of the last scenes in the film is one long, slow push in on Keitel as he recounts a "true," story for William Hurt that was quite an interesting technique.
The soundtrack to this film was released tow months before Garcia's passing. It includes two songs from the Jerry Garcia Band. The one below, a cover of (what else?) "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," is a treat, but the music video (cut scenes of the film interspersed with the Jerry playing) leaves a lot to be desired. At least Jerry was in fine form and in good spirits.