"So Many Roads: The World in the Grateful Dead" starts tomorrow night at San Jose State University. I'll miss the opening because I'm teaching the OLLI course, but I'm scheduled to present a paper at 9 am (!) Thursday morning. Very much looking forward to the conference, where I'll see many familiar faces but also lots of new ones: Carolyn Adams Garcia, Trixie Garcia, David Lemieux, Ed Perlstein, and countless others. Bill Kreutzmann will talk about his new book with Benjy Eisen; turns out we share the same editor (Marc Resnick) at St. Martin's Press. Here's the
conference info if you're curious. Should be a blast.
2 comments:
Thanks again for your OLLI course. It gave me a chance to look at a band I'd always loved as a subject to study as opposed to being entertained by. Though I've always felt "enlightened" after going to a Dead show. Which leads me to your observations about the "Family Values" the Dead adhered to "Ecstasy, Mobility and Community", creating a project that was truly interactive between band and fans. One thing I wanted to share on a personal note was my "ecstasy" experience and observation from going to Dead shows. Attending "holiness" churches in my teens, I'd often seen one of the church "Mothers" jump out the front pew when the "Holy Ghost" hit them, usually accompanied by a wailing B-3 and a fever pace drum beating at 4x4 time. Then the whole congregation would join in with clapping hands and tambourines. It was about my 3rd or 4th Dead show when that epiphany struck me. That's when I realized this was more than a band, but a community. Looking forward to reading "No Simply Highway" when it hits the road. ;)
Very good point, Greg, and glad you made that connection. When I told the religion editor at UC Press about the ecstasy and community bit in the book, he immediately associated it with religion. There has been some study of this--and lots of less insightful claims in the media about the Dead cult. (Those started in earnest in the late 1970s.)
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