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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Something that constantly surprises me is the fact that no band has ever come forward in a bid to do something similar to what the Grateful Dead did.
We live in a world where we are constantly surrounded by content. It has never been easier for people to make and publish music, which means we have more being made and released than ever before. Equally, artists seem to try incredibly hard to use their music in a bid to reflect the world around them, discussing topics such as feelings of helplessness, politics and general injustices within society.
All of this is a noble cause, and yet, it feels as though capturing a particular moment in time with music is getting increasingly difficult. Simply put, we are less connected to specific moments than ever before, as social media and technology remove us from the modern world and place us into one that seems artificial, one catered towards us and our interests and our beliefs. It’s tough to write something that is a reflection of ‘the’ world, as everyone is trapped inside ‘their’ world.
You can dissect their music all you want, but the fact remains, the reason the Grateful Dead were so popular, and the reason they remain popular despite the passing of Jerry Garcia and other original members, is because of their ability to represent a specific moment in time. By having songs that they only use a backbone for live performances, and allowing improvisation and jamming play a massive part of their shows, they reflect a specific moment in time with their shows better than any other band. It’s an incredibly effective way to make music, and one that really hits home with a lot of listeners.
“A list of song titles would mean very little in terms of what actually goes on inside the album,” said Lenny Kaye when discussing the band’s album Live Dead. “Like the early Cream, the Dead in concert tends to use their regular material as a jumping-off point, as little frameworks that exist only for what can be built on top of them.”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jerry Garcia was so good at peeling back the layers of a song. He always liked musicians whose songs were more than just one piece of music, and instead, had depth to them, who gave him something new to appreciate on repeat listens of the same song. This kind of artist is not a common occurrence, but when he stumbled upon them, Garcia would listen religiously.
“I listen to anything anyone gives me. I always go back to a few basic favourites,” he explained. “I can always listen to Django Reinhardt and hear something I haven’t heard before. I like to listen to Art Tatum and Coltrane, and Charlie Parker. Those are guys who never seem to run out of ideas.”
Who has time for one-dimensional music? Garcia certainly didn’t. What he created with Grateful Dead was a reflection of that, as are the artists he would describe as his favourites. It’s less about how the song sounds on first listen and more about how it sounds on repeat listens.
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