Friday, September 27, 2002
Compendium Essays: Dancin' in the Streets
Hey, I just noticed that the Tapers Compendium team have posted the essays that I believe were cut from the first three editions. (Or did they appear? Someone check!) I forgot that I had written an essay on the evolution of "Dancin' in the Streets" with Dan Dasaro:
Aside from other R&B hits of this period, the only other time the Dead covered a current hit song is when they played "Werewolves of London" in 1978.
Improvising a jam inside the song that transcends its basic structure provided a way to carry new minds along on the psychedelic journey, both leaving from and returning eventually to a familiar station. In their own way, the Dead achieved something akin to John Coltrane’s radical reworkings of "My Favorite Things."
As with the Dead’s 1970 FM hit, "Truckin’," "Dancin’" features the road-song virtue of naming a long list of major cities. It was also an appropriate song for a band that often played on flatbed trucks to a crowd that was literally dancing in the streets!
by Christian Crumlish at 9/27/2002 04:34:17 PM
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
I Blame Gans
In A Long, Staid Trip - How Deadheads ruined the Grateful Dead Marc Weingarten uses his own experience as a Dead Head to illuminate the darker side of the second half of the thirty-year trip:
It wasn't just the fanatics; every fan (myself included) bought into the "satori through space jam" myths, wore the same tie-dye, danced the same wiggle dance. What had begun as an inclusive rallying point for outcasts became a provincial closed society. Deadheads were supposed to represent enlightened musical inquiry, but instead, as McNally points out, they ignored adventurous opening acts and lifted lyrics out of context. In the early '90s, according to McNally, Jerry Garcia became annoyed with the fact that the line "when it seems like the night will last forever" from his bleak ballad "Black Muddy River" invariably was greeted with lusty cheering.
by Christian Crumlish at 9/4/2002 01:05:31 PM
