Do "Dead Head Threads" get to you? I can't read them anymore.

[m-jean03]

They put me in such a trippy space, all those Dead fans talking about drugs and the sixties and stuff, man. :smoke:

[m-jean03]

1. Yeah, they totally get to me.

Hippies suck, man. :P All that tie-dye hurts my freakin eyes.

[Nlighten1]

2. I never got into the dead.

I always thought they sucked myself.

[mistertrickster]

3. They don't suck, but they are an aquired taste. As for hippies, they

always kind of steamed me off because it was all about "ME"--that is, if "I am happy, then the rest of the world can drop dead." It was the "drop out" part of "tune in, turn on, and drop out" that really sucked.

You had this big self-absorbed target for the right-wing to fulminate against, AND they were too "pure" to dirty their hands with material culture, i.e., politics.

No real help to building a better society, although I do admire the eco-friendly anti-materialism of the true hippy.

[m-jean03]

4. Uh, oh you guys are getting serious on me.

That's OK, I guess! :hi:

[Teddy_Salad]

6. See what you've gone and done????????????

You come on here with your silly posts and get other DUers into arguments!

You really should be ashamed of yourself!!!
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;) :P

[Nlighten1]

5. They are definitely an acquired taste.

Because in my mind they have difficulty playing their instruments. It sounds like a bunch of jumbled-up, gobble-de-gook. I had a bunch of friends in college who followed the dead around for a while. I went with them on occasion and I liked the scene but I just didn't care for the music at all.

They had one song I liked and that was "Touch of Gray" but my DH friends didn't like it because it sounded too commercial. A lot of time has passed since then so maybe I should go and listen to them again and see if I can begin to hear what everyone likes about them.

[Emboldened Chimp]

7. Definitely an acquired taste

I've been a head for a long time, so I will say right off the bat that I'm biased. But I've NEVER understood why people who aren't into it think that they can't play their instruments. Phil (the bassist) was a classically trained musician. I forgot where he went to school (maybe Berkley?), but the guy guest conducts the SF Phil. Jerry, though not formally schooled, practiced non-stop, even when suffering from drug addiction. These guys definitely knew a lot about music, which is why they were able to go 'far out'. You can't do what they did and not understand music as fully as possible. Look at Coltrane: he went WAY out, and to a lot of people that sounded like garbage. However, he was exploring music's possibilities. And he did it with a firm knowledge of theory and practice. The Dead did the same, only from a different angle. So, like I said, I don't get why people don't understand this.

[mistertrickster]

8. Agreed, they weren't performers . . . they were creating all the time

that they were on-stage, so sometimes their live stuff sounds thrown together because, hey, it WAS. That, and also the acoustics and recording equipment was all over the map at a live performance.

But as far as musicianship goes, they were non-parelil (spelling?).

Jerry was the only lead guitarist who could riff around a melody like he did--a lot of lead guitarists take a melody and run a blues lead around it, that's not that hard. But Jerry was totally free form--he had no pre-trod path that he followed.

If you want to hear the "polished" Dead, go for the "American Beauty" and "Working Man's Dead" albums.

The other amazing thing is that The Dead made truly great music right up until Jerry's death. They didn't have a "golden era" and then everything else was crap, like virtually every other band going, e.g., The Rolling Stones.

The song "Black Muddy River" on (I think) their last album was every bit as good as anything they had ever done.