Philosophy
Grateful Dead Caucus 2007
A wonderful conference last week in Albuquerque, the 10
th annual gathering of the Grateful Dead Caucus as a part of the annual meeting of the Southwest/Texas Association of Popular and American Culture.
Reflections from my first time as a part of the caucus:
PaperCovering four days -- from 8 am to 8 pm on Thursday and Friday -- there seems to be no lack of interest in taking the Dead phenomenon seriously by academics. Covering a very wide range of methodologies in the humanities and social sciences, the papers were universally of a very high quality. Papers generally grouped themselves around a couple of general themes:
HistoryA wonderful series of papers discussing historical aspects of the Dead, the
Haight, and the movement. Starting off was co-chair Gary Burnett's
examination of the complete run of the neighborhood newspaper the
Oracle and its relation to and mentions of the Dead showing at first a bi-polar stance both embracing and
deprecating hippie music showing a tension between the beat and hippie factions of the early counter-culture. Rick
Dodgson read "From
Soquel to San Jose: The First Acid Tests"
Grateful Dead and SpiritualitySeveral papers discussing the spiritual nature of the Dead experience. Thursday's panel featured Mary
Goodenough's "In and Out of the Garden: Sacred and Profane in
Deaddom," Paul
Gass' "Buddhism Through the Eyes of the Dead," and Dave Bryan's "Grateful Dead Theology," while Saturday brought Kent Elliot's "The Lie Breathed Through Silver." All began from the fact of broad spiritual experience amongst Deadheads at shows and then tried to make sense of this phenomenological data. By examining the relation between lyrics and religious traditions or looking at the experience itself, the hope was to make the "it" that so many point to more clear. Discussion around this topic was spirited, if not spiritual.
Deadhead CultureSociologists
Rebbecca Adams and Alan Lehman gave fascinating discussions of Deadhead demographics, the former from data gathered at the 1998 Further festivals and the latter at 1991 shows at
RFK and Giants Stadium. Nicholas
Merriwether gave an incredibly well documented discussion of Deadhead
pipecraft, locating it in the historical tradition of
pipecraft through the centuries. Elizabeth Carroll gave a fascinating approach to interpreting the scene as a whole (both good and bad) viewing through the Greek notion of a
pharmakon -- the word for both remedy and poison -- in her paper "Is Destruction
Loving's Twin?: The Grateful Dead
Pharmakon." The continental philosophical duo of Jim
Tuedio and Stan
Spector read their papers "All Ears, All Body: The Strange Attraction in Nonlinear Musical Embodiment" and "And The Music Played the Band: The X Factor,
Merleau-
Ponty, and the
Chiasm" that sought to understand the
phenominological embodiment of the process of Being when engaged in what the Germans call
Mithoeren (hint: if you don't understand continental philosophy, just say something in Greek, German, or French). My own contribution looked at the nature of the economy in the parking lot.
Comparative MusicologyThere were a number of papers that sought to
reconcile the music of the Dead with the larger body of American popular music. Eric Levy and Jay Williams both compared the Dead to representatives of the
experimental and
avant-
garde movements, Eric focusing on John Cage and Jay upon Frank Zappa, while Matt Armstrong looked at the
Dead's influence in the work of Ryan Adams. Chris
Norden compared the lyrics of Bob Dylan and
Robert Hunter in terms of their use of weather metaphors. Christian
Crumlish examined the unmentioned influence of the Dead on artists through the decades in his "Please Forget You Knew My Name: Secretly Influenced by the Dead." Pam Hunt, Liz Yeager, and Jake Cohen gave contrasting
views of the political presuppositions in post-Dead, contemporary
jamband culture with their papers "Are You Kind?: The Relationship between Behavior, Meanings, and Levels of Involvement and Ideological
Embeddedness in the
Jamband Subculture," "My Band is Better Than Your Band: Inside America's
Jamband Scene," and "
Jamband's and Sonata Form." Barry
Smolin focused on freak folk, contemporary
psychedelic music that eschews improvisation and David
Gans in "Anti-Dead and Meta-Dead" looked at music about the band both
laudatory and negative.
OtherPapers that defy categorization included Mark
Mattson's magnificent cataloging of every performed error in the playing of "Here Comes Sunshine" and Mel
Belleville's fictional expansion of the
storylines of "Jack Straw," "Loser," and "Friend of the Devil."
RockWe were treated to several wonderful performances. Wednesday night was a triple bill at the District Bar and Grill of Dave Bryan's
Chickenstand Throw-
DownBand, David
Gans, and Liquid Gypsy. David
Gans played a second set at Friday night's house party and if he wasn't completely pleased with the performance, his opinion was far in the minority.
ScissorsPerhaps the highlight of the conference was the appearance of John Perry Barlow as the conference's keynote speaker. Mesmerizing the crowd with wit, intelligence, and his abilities as a storyteller, Barlow was simply amazing. Generous with his time as well, he hung out and shot the breeze with us at the infamous Hotel Blue on Thursday night and at the airports in Albuquerque and Houston on Saturday.
An incredibly successful conference by any measure. I want to personally thank everyone there for being so incredibly welcoming of the new folks like myself and especially to the session chairs, Nick and Gary, I just have to say thank you for a real good time.
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