So the other week I'm getting my hair cut, and Julie the hairstyling goddess, a young thing of twentysomething who's into tattoos, hair color as art form, and lots of black clothing, hears of the impending tour and my hopes of getting Shoreline tix, and says, "I have a question. What's a Dead Head? How would you define it?"
You think that's a really easy question till you try to answer it.
So I hemmed and hawed a bit. I said it was the kind of thing that if you said you were one, no one could say you weren't. I may have mentioned Ann Coulter.
I said that it my experience it meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some were there for the party and that was pretty much it. Some were there for the community. Some were there for the life-changing spiritual experience. Some were there for the tunes.
Finally I gave up and told her the story of Curvature. Which is a story Robert Hunter wrote a couple years back that kind of speaks to the issue: "We're one and all addicts of the wings and won't rest easy until we're back on a ship searching them out again. Once you've seen them, nothing in life seems worthwhile but the thought of seeing them again."
Your thoughts?
See ya in Portland, God willing
My father's name was William, my mother's name's Peggy.
I'm not going to worry about it anymore, I've seen the Dead at the Gorge and two Ratdog shows plus 3 live shows on Sirius this year, my cup is full. God bless Phil and Bobby and the new guy John.
We will survive!
I can see why Phil and Bobby would want to play with someone who sounds a lot like Jerry. If it inspires them and makes them happy I'm all for it. I don't know if it sets a good example for young musicians and I'm very grateful fo Jerry and Billy telling us to follow our own muse. My guitar is an indispensible part of my life and for that I'm thankful.
Yesterday is gone
But tomorrow is forever
A hashness I sense ,a mean streak ,indifference ,cruaulty ,a neutered political correctness ,a spiritual quest not visible in the younger deadheads about forty years old ,a callousness, all of it considered as normal ,laughted about ,as if the only dimension worth consideration is now the numbers of shows ,titles of songs ,one knows about . Most other deadheads web sites where women never really speak anymore and that's very revealing ! Dear Marye , I wish I as wrong on all this ,but, sincerely I'd be worried to just go hang outon a dead parkinglot late night ,nowadays !
what's changed to make the scene less trustworthy?
A deadhead loves greateful dead music,can listen to it again and again ,blasting all over , even rest with it .The other dimension I discovered about deadheads I met when in america was their friendship ,awareness on political and spiritual issues ,sense of communauty in diversity . I could trust them with my life ,nights and days ,to travel for shows ,have fun in their parking lots ,talk, toke ,trip ,groove on the music all around . Definitly ,without most deadheads I met between early eighties to mid nighties ,I could never have been to so many concerts ! These deadheads are precious memories ,as equal to the GD band ,at least . But ,nowadays I simply do not feel I could trust my life among deadheads ,and I thought it important to add this detail as to what is different between now and then .
i love you guys.
i can never say that enough.
deadheads love. we're infinite - our hearts are infinite, our spirits are infinite, physically we are infinite (matter cannot be created or destroyed- on the atomic level and on every other level, we are forever). it's not that these characteristics are specific to deadheads; we've just woken up.
song that the morning brings and all that.
it's all vastly transcendently beautiful, what a long strange lovely trip :)
Blind Catfish Willie
Being a Dead Head is seeing the light, hearing the music, being one with a positive karma that can never die."Hey hey, my my." Its being part of the long strange trip and finding sunshine daydreams. It is not a chronological age or number, its a realization.
Location
Deadheads are all of the wonderfully kind souls who contributed to making Johnman's Portland Further Miracle happen!!!!!
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By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's I mean.
Mark Twain