![]() ![]() ![]() The band’s lyrics always spoke to a particular strain of American individualism - cowboys, mystics, toiling workers, reprobates, gamblers, loners, lovers, drunks, and, of course, railroad drivers were all at the core of the band’s songs. Their influence on two generations of musicians - from Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello to the National and Dawes - is too vast to calculate. Few other bands could take a classic tune like Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” the traditional folk song “I Know You Rider” or the Motown number “Dancin’ In the Street” and turn them into musical explorations. The band has, since its earliest days, weaved together varied and seemingly discordant elements of American popular music: folk, rock, country, the blues, rockabilly, psychedelia, bluegrass, jazz, and even disco and funk have all been part of the Dead’s canon.Īnd their long, improvisational jams explored the musical possibilities inside even the most basic three chord songs (and for better or worse, created an entire musical genre: the jam band). That Mayer, who is trained in the blues and produces easily digestible pop music, fit so seamlessly into Garcia’s role speaks volumes about his talents, but also the Dead’s quintessentially American sound. Some like me couldn’t imagine seeing a Dead show without Garcia, until I was dragged back to see their 50th-anniversary shows in Chicago, and I forgot what I had been missing. For others, it was the series of Dead spin-offs with former band members - Furthur, Other Ones, Phil and Friends, and The Dead. But even though Garcia held such a rarefied space in the imagination of Deadheads (and his fellow bandmates), the desire for adventure could not be so easily quashed.įor some, it transferred to the other jam bands, like Phish, that sought to capture the Dead’s musical aesthetic. The most important word in that quote, of course, is “adventure.” Garcia’s personal journey tragically ended in 1995 when he died of a heart attack at just 53. But what keeps me coming back is summed up best by the Dead’s late guitarist, Jerry Garcia: “Maybe we’re just one of the last adventures in America.” A 2015 poll found that Republicans were just as likely as Democrats to count themselves as DeadheadsĮvery Dead fan has their own answer, of course. ![]()
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