by David Burn | Aug 3, 2013 | Grateful Dead, Music
You have to learn the rules before you can begin to artfully deconstruct them. Of course, all serious artists and thinkers do learn the rules first, it’s the artful deconstruction that eludes so many.
Jerry Garcia Life Lesson #3: Defy Convention
Jerry Garcia grew up in the 1950s–a time of mass conformity in America, San Francisco included. So, where did he acquire the gigantic nut sack it took to dream his own dreams, think his own thoughts and live his own life? I can’t say for sure, but this kind of inner confidence is typically the result of strong parenting.
Jerry also grew up in the Mission District, and while he was a very affable and generous soul, he was also a relatively tough guy from a tough part of town. And tough guys from tough parts of town don’t exactly flock to art school, but Jerry did. He defied convention and the odds, time and again.
I remember driving from Salt Lake City to Tahoe and seeing Jerry Garcia Band perform at Squaw Valley in 1991. Jerry announced from the stage on the first day that he and David Grisman, who were slated to headline the next day would instead play earlier in the day. Jerry felt that The Neville Brothers ought to headline the Sunday festivities, so he defied convention and Bill Graham Presents by rearranging the schedule on the fly, much to everyone in the audience’s liking.
The Neville Brothers are a high energy dance band from New Orleans and they belonged in the headliner’s slot. Jerry’s humility and respect for his fellow musicians put the Neville’s in the spotlight that day on the mountain. His willingness to let his conscience guide him and his readiness to speak up to right a wrong, showcased his personal integrity in an unforgettable way for me that day, and again it speaks to his inner confidence. A lesser man would have never volunteered his headlining spot on the ticket — that’s simply not how show business works.
And frankly how show business works was never much of concern for Jerry and Grateful Dead. They formed their own record label, designed their own sound systems, sold their own concert tickets via mail order, made their own feature film, and so on. Grateful Dead also played concerts at the Pyramids in Egypt during a full eclipse of the moon. They did it themselves, and it was all a great big adventure. Not everything went as planned all the time, but that’s a price you pay for taking risks, for going your own way, for defying convention.
Oddly enough, defying convention has proven one of the more difficult lessons from Jerry’s life, and one many of his fans fail to understand or practice. Deadheads are followers, not just of a band but of one another. It’s a tribal culture, as are all sub-cultures, but there’s a BIG issue with tribalism as practiced by white neophytes with no grounding in the realities of living in a tribe. The problem is group think and group do. When everyone wears the same clothes, likes the same drugs, listens to the same music, lives in the same cities, drives the same cars and adopts the same look, I am sorry to say it’s a convention of non-conformists, which kind of defeats the point.
Previously: Jerry Garcia Life Lesson #2: Improvise
by David Burn | Aug 2, 2013 | Grateful Dead, Music
To make or provide from available materials.
Jerry Garcia Life Lesson #2: Improvise
Jerry’s brother, Tiff, accidentally removed his little brother’s middle finger with an axe when Jerry was young. Thus, Jerry literally did not have the finger-picking ability of other able-handed guitarists. So, he made do with what he had to work with. He improvised.
In Jerry’s Palo Alto days he lived in his car for awhile, and later in a shed behind a big communal party house. Jerry was a dedicated musician and he put everything he had into being a musician. He sacrificed and “made do” for the music. He improvised.
Of course, improvisation also has another meaning. To invent, compose, or perform in the moment. In other words, to play like you’re in a jazz band. It’s well known that Grateful Dead modeled their approach to music on jazz and classical, and that they loved Miles Davis, John Coltrane and the rest. In fact, Miles opened for The Dead at Fillmore West and Phil Lesh, for one, was horrified to have to follow Miles’ performance, such was the band’s respect for Miles’ heaviness.
I am one fortunate freaker son, in that I was there to see Branford Marsalis join Grateful Dead on stage on Dec. 31, 1990. I was in a great position in the Duck Pond (the floor of Oakland Coliseum) and I could see the interplay between Jerry and Branford pretty well. It’s not something I’m likely to forget. Here, get some of this musical magic in your ears.
Jazz legend David Murray also liked to jam with Jerry. So did Carlos Santana, David Hidalgo and César Rosas, David Grisman and Tony Rice, John Kahn and Merl Saunders, David Nelson, David Crosby, John Cippolina, and so on. He was a beloved guy, eager collaborator and gifted musician able to hold deep conversations with everyone in the room thanks to his uncanny ability on guitar.
To improvise is to create and Jerry was always making things and making things happen. I think the practical hard-working side of Jerry’s personality gets lost in all the adulation and fandom. The man was a grunt! He practiced for hours every day and explored every new direction in music he could find by being a great listener (with open ears to go with his open heart and mind).
You improvise by cobbling disparate parts into a cohesive whole. To do it well you must have an environment of trust. You have to put yourself out there in a vulnerable position, not knowing what’s next only that you are capable and will hopefully be able to roll with the changes. Improv is scary. It’s risky and the chance of failure is high. But when you fail to fail, the rewards are so great that it makes facing the fear of the unknown worthwhile.
Grateful Dead’s live album from 1990 is titled Without A Net, and those three words capture the essence of the band’s approach to being a band. They took the stage without a net from the very beginning when they were Ken Kesey’s house band at the Acid Trips, all the way to 1995 and the dark chaos of the band’s last tour that summer. They went out there night after night ostensibly to see what would happen, and with the informed faith that they could coax something great from themselves and the music floating there in the air.
Previously: Jerry Garcia Life Lesson #1: Stretch
by David Burn | Aug 1, 2013 | Grateful Dead, Music
Jerry Garcia was born on this day in 1942. In the years since his death on August 9, 1995, Garcia fans have taken to celebrating “Nine Days of Jerry,’ which covers the span from August 1st (his birthday) to August 9th.
This year, with encouragement from Darby, I am going to share key insights, a.k.a. lessons learned from Jerry — one a day for nine days.
Jerry Garcia Life Lesson #1: Stretch
Stretching is both a physical act and a metaphorical framework.
Top performers stretch to achieve a desired state of limberness, which in turn allows them to reach much further and higher than they otherwise could. Before going on stage, Jerry used to run through scales to prepare himself physically for the challenges of playing a three-to-five hour show. But it was during his shows where his yogic mastery was truly revealed — few artists have stretched their form to its breaking point and survived the journey.
Long before Jerry became the iconic Captain Trips (and unwilling spokesperson for the Haight-Ashbury scene), he worked hard to learn the rigors of folk music. He played acoustic guitar and banjo and got his voice in strong singing shape. Add LSD and an explosion of consciousness (and societal turbulence) to the mix, plug it in and turn it up and you have the beginnings of Grateful Dead.
Let’s use “Viola Lee Blues” to illustrate the point. The song was written in 1928 by Noah Lewis, an American jug band and country blues musician. “Some got six months, some got one solid year.” Viola Lee Blues is a traditional ditty about a man lamenting his prison sentence. In the hands of Grateful Dead, the song gets opened up considerably, thanks to the weaving of jazz idioms into what is a very simple blues construction.
http://youtu.be/3HMgZu9GzG0
You might say Jerry and friends “stretched the shit” out of this tune. You’d be correct and it’s what made Jerry’s work and the band’s so compelling. When your mind is stretched far and wide it can hold a lot more information, and Jerry’s held a deep reservoir of American roots music, jazz, classical, and more, which he could tap in an instant for just the right effect.
In my own life, I make sure to stretch out daily as a writer. Like Jerry, I am attracted to and capable of working in a variety of forms (journalism, advertising and literature). And like Jerry I have my main gig as a ad writer and several nourishing side-projects. The rewards of cross-pollination are found here. For example, if I write a particularly poetic line for an print advertisement, it makes the ad better and it loads commercial communications with an artfulness it desperately needs.
There’s also a degree of patience woven into the act of stretching, which I like. Stretching is what we do to prepare and that’s the key. We’re too often in a mad rush to succeed or do this or that, but the reality is we must first stretch, breathe and gather ourselves before taking the stage.
