Conference rdvax::grateful

OK, I've only read a little bit of "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," and I
definitely plan to read the rest of it soon ... but I'm curious and I figured
this was a good topic for discussion?

Who was Neal Cassady?  Or more specifically, what was it about him that 
fascinated the Dead, Ken Kesey etc. so much?

- Dave

    The way I get it ,.. he was a very powerful spritual person that was
    perhaps a bit older,.. but definitely (to the Pranksters and company
    anyway) a bit wiser.
    
    The one line that I can remember so clearly,.. is when someone (maybe
    even Jerry? nnaaaah,... probably Tom Wolfe himself) was asking Keesey
    this same question,.. like why does everyone look up to Cassady,.. and
    Keesey says:
    
    	" Listen to Neal,.. he's been there "
    
    	And the nebulous "there" that they were referring to was like:
    		a) the astral plane
    		b) heaven
    		c) hell
    		d) enlightement
    		e) all of the above
    
    	SOmehow, Neal had a way of being able to keep driving the bus even
    when nobody else could see straight, It was like drugs didn;t affect
    him no matter how much they did. They often wondered if he was really
    still driving or if he had relinquished control of the bus to a spirit
    on the other side of,.. it
    
    							/
    

    Neal Cassady was a friend of Jack Kerouac's, and accompanied him (as
    Dean Moriarty) on a journey in Kerouac's book "On The Road."  I forget
    if the book describes their meeting.  The book was an important
    touchstone for 60's youth who sought to emulate the free spirits of the
    characters.  Neal was a product of the Beat generation, and therefore
    older than the emerging hippies, who looked up to him as someone who,
    as / noted, "had been there."  I don't doubt that "On The Road" was a
    tremendous influence on the teenagers who became the Grateful Dead. 
    Now that I think of it, I think "Demon Box" describes Kesey's first
    meeting with Neal.
    
    Neal was described as a speed munching demon, capable of carrying on
    four separate conversations at once, all the while fiddling with the 
    radio and navigating through the streets of San Francisco.  I don't
    know how he hooked up with Ken Kesey, but he became the Prankster's
    designated driver (probably because he shunned LSD in favor of speed).
    
    Jamie

    
    Also...
    
    ... Words describing Neal in the Kool-Aid Test By Wolfe paraphrased...
    
    ~ He's so fast, so quick, that when other people are reacting to events
    a split second after they occur, he has already experienced them, and
    moved on to the next sequence of events.  He has the uncanny ability to
    be as close as physically possible to anything happening, so that to
    other people it appears as if he is actually a part of what is
    happening, or even the cause for what is happening. ~
    
    ~ When he drives the bus, everyone on the bus can feel that he has
    integrated himself with the rhythm of the bus.  He can do the
    impossible by driving down the side of a mountain in the Rockies going
    80mph-90mph when other cars can only go 70mph before losing control. 
    He can feel the reactions that the bus is making to his driving, then 
    adjust his driving so quickly that the bus is always in control. ~
    
    The above paraphrases are from memory, I read the book one year ago,
    but by far Cassady was my favorite character in book.
    
    Treemon_on_Cassady
    

    Is the Acid Test still in print? I'd like to get a copy (lost my other
    one years ago) and re-read it.
    
    thanks - Dave

    
    Yup,  Look in one of the mall bookstores like WaldenBooks or something
    in the History section.  They usually group Wolfe's books together.
    $4.95 for the soft cover (I doubt you can find a hardcover anyways)...
    
    Treemon

    Note 31.6 by DIGGIE::RILEY "Don't shake the TREE when it's fruit ain't
    ripe
                                 -< Test availability >-
    
    
    Yup, look in one of the mall bookstores like Waldenbooks or something
    in the History section.  They usually group Wolfe's books together.
    $4.95 for the soft cover (I doubt you can find a hardcover anyways)...
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^                           
    Treemon                   You can find it but you have to special order
                              the harcopy version. I got a hardcopy version
                              last year and it was in its 8th printing.
    
                              Mike
    
    
    
    
                                                                    

    The book club I belong to (QPBC) offered it a few months back in the
    large, semi-hard, paperback book.
    
    dave

I just finished talking with a co-worker about the upcoming tour ... why I'm
driving all the way to NY to see six shows by the same group.  Man, was that
exhausting.  She didn't have the usual look of non-deadhead puzzlement on her
face at the end, though, so I think I got some of the concept across. 

The only thing is that, while I call it a subculture, she insists on calling it
a cult.  ;^)

- Dave

So I'm shufflin' down the side of rte 1 in Foxboro a few Julys ago,
a bit bummed by the heat and the traffic ... I'm concentrating on my
feet as I'm thinking of hauling my skeleton over and plopping down
on the ground to remove a pebble from my shoe, when suddenly

			WHAM

I feel a bang on my chest - feels like someone lightly punched me there.
"Oh oh" thinks my keenly-aware brain, "some local or over-worked cop
thinks my tie-dye is too bright or my hair isn't regulation;" my
nervous system has found a motherlode of adrenalin but is searching 
in vain for testosterone - too many years of telling computers to move
numbers from here to there - and I look up but instead of seeing an
aggressive naked male ape, I see a smiling female deadhead ... I look
at down at my chest ... heavens to betsy I've been

			** STICKERIZED!! **

And it's a nice little flourescent circular blue (my favorite color) sticker
too, just a'shinin' in the Foxboro sun!

Stickers - mindless meaningless pasttime, or unifying cosmic force?

- DC

    Yes.  Doesn't one feel a bit nervous when first "stuck" in that manner
    by a sticker yeilding head. It's a cold world we live in.  Then you
    realize it's all a dead show!
    
    dave

    Patty got the BIGGEST kick outa stickerin people with T!ng NTTH stickers
    and NTTH stealies at the Denver "Real Family Values" shows last
    December. and the looks some people gave her! until they realized what
    she was doin...the funniest though was when she threw a whole roll into
    a clump of miracle people, they just watched the roll flutter down
    amongst them, I had to retrieve it and re-toss it 3 more times before
    they got the idea!!! Also, after a while, people on our side of the
    stadium realized where they all were comin from and started approaching
    us and asking for a sticker...we'd give 'em a half a roll... %^)
    
    and we have some saved STILL for Vegas, even after stickerin all of
    Colo Springs...
    
    rfb

Would you believe that MY FATHER, who is now 72 years old, went to the 
Dead Filmore East shows on 9/20/70 and 4/25/71 ?????!!!!!

He saw some great shows!

He's been carrying the ticket stubs in his wallet for all these years!
Apparently he went with my older brother David (the first-generation Deadhead
in the family) to these shows to see what it was all about, or to chaperone 
him, or something.  Maybe like a 'bridge-the-generation-gap- kinda thing
(thats why I used this note!)  So, he was around 50 when he went.  He remembers
the Dead were really loud :-) and that there was a lot of sweet-smelling smoke
in the theater :-) --) and that he probably got a contact high!  He even
remembered that there were a few bands on one of the shows. (9/20/70 opened
with the NRPS.)  He favorite impression of it, he tells me with a chuckle, was
that the other concertgoers thought he was a narc!!!!

He's gonna give me the ticket stubs next time I'm down in NYC (June). 
Can't wait to see 'em!  

Josh

Jack cutler, who sometimes notes here when he comes up for air :-), has a
few old stubs from the early 70s also.  he has showed me them - ticket
price:  $2.50, $3.00, etc....

hey! the keyword for this note ie "Deadhead Culture" so I thought this
article should go here. 
   No Alice B. Toklas brownies?  bummer, man! :-)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Deadhead Design
   ---------------
   Feb. 9, 1995
   
   By DAVID MARGOLICK
   
      LOS ANGELES - As the first person ever to sleep in the new Jerry Garcia
   Suite at the Beverly Prescott Hotel, I feel compelled to clear up a few
   common misconceptions about it immediately. 
   
      Though the bedspreads and shower curtains feature Mr. Garcia's designs,
   they are not tie-dyed. The artwork on the walls doesn't include psychedelic
   Grateful Dead posters. The courtesy sweet near the bed is genuine milk
   chocolate, not an Alice B. Toklas brownie. There is no Cherry Garcia ice
   cream in the mini-bar (though Ben & Jerry's has offered some), and there
   aren't any joints amid the munchies. In fact, the suite is actually on a
   no-smoking floor.
   
      Of course, it is Mr. Garcia's music -- the funky, high-energy,
   drug-related sound of San Francisco in the 1960's -- that the 52-year-old
   lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead and several other bands will always be
   known for. But he studied art in the early 1960's and returned to it while
   recovering from a diabetic coma in 1986. Four years ago, his designs began
   appearing on what became a highly successful line of neckties. Someone later
   suggested a larger canvas: hotel interiors, with furnishings that could be
   covered with the same silk used to make the neckties and walls with his
   paintings. 
   
      Thus was born the Jerry Garcia Suites. The first opened last September at
   the Triton Hotel in San Francisco. And now, six flights higher and several
   hundred miles to the south, another has opened in the Beverly Prescott, an
   otherwise ordinary-looking hotel that has a mailing address in Beverly Hills
   but is actually in Los Angeles.
   
      Last month, Room 807 of the Beverly Prescott -- owned, like the Triton, by
   the Kimpton Group of San Francisco -- metamorphosed almost overnight from a
   regular business center into a bona fide Garcia Suite. The hoteliers hope
   that soon Mr. Garcia's fans -- among the most fanatical in rock-and-roll --
   will be truckin' onto the premises to examine their idol's watercolors and
   cartoons and lay their Deadheads on Mr. Garcia's surrealistic pillows. 
   
      When guests take showers, they will be surrounded by Garcia-inspired
   curtains. When they dry themselves off and traipse about the suite, they will
   use towels and bathrobes embroidered with the same Garcia fantasy fish that
   adorn the lamps. They can sit in Garcia chairs, put their feet up on
   Garcia-trimmed hassocks and throw trash into Garcia-wrapped wastebaskets.
   
      Just as he has a laid-back attitude toward his art -- "I hope that nobody
   takes them too seriously," he once said -- the reclusive Mr. Garcia has
   provided the original spark with his drawings and doodles, then left it to
   others to transfer them onto silk, neckties and now to hotel furnishings. He
   selects the basic notes and leaves the orchestrating and the arrangements to
   others. 
   
      "He went along very graciously with it," said N. Sage of the Art Peddler
   in San Rafael, Calif., Mr. Garcia's publisher and licensing company. "He's
   very serious about his art, but he really is only interested in it as he is
   creating it." True, Mr. Garcia did attend the opening of the suite in San
   Francisco -- in one of his many black T-shirts -- and signed one of the
   walls. "I've never seen so much of me in one room before," he marveled. But
   Mr. Garcia, who has just returned from a belated honeymoon in Venezuela with
   his wife, Deborah, has yet to see the Los Angeles suite and will not talk
   about it, at least to the press.
   
      It's too soon to say how the suite will play in Los Angeles, though there
   are already some bookings, at $300 a night. But in San Francisco, where the
   Grateful Dead were born and where Mr. Garcia still lives, the suite is doing
   a brisk business. "Everyone's always calling for it," said Jan McCormick,
   general manager of the Triton. "The problem is that it's not always
   available. We've had a real cross section: Deadheads, a number of
   businessmen, a very high-powered Amway distributor from Seattle."
   
      If Mr. Garcia's music is eclectic, a blend of gospel, jazz, bluegrass,
   blues, country and western, and rock, so too is his art. The 14 prints and
   lithographs hanging from the walls of Room 807 at the Beverly Prescott -- or,
   more accurately, bolted into them, so that guests can't make off with pieces
   Ms. Sage said are worth up to $40,000 apiece -- show a variety of influences,
   including M. C. Escher, William Steig, Pablo Picasso, Walt Kuhn and Mark Alan
   Stamaty.
   
      In a catalogue for one of Mr. Garcia's exhibitions -- which sits on a desk
   where room-service menus and advertising-laden city guides usually roost --
   James Mahoney, an art critic from Washington, called his creations "visual
   improvisations, as unintentional and as open-ended as a line of notes
   emerging from his guitar." Mr. Garcia put it more succinctly. Art, he once
   said, comes out of him like sweat.
   
      Most of the Garcia creations stay well within their frames. But many have
   migrated onto bolts of silk neckties and, now, fabrics and furniture. The
   tree motif in Mr. Garcia's "Green Landscape," a quasi-impressionistic
   watercolor hung near the bed, for example, reappears in Fauvist colors on the
   duvet cover and pillows. 
   
      Then there are the ubiquitous fish that appear on towels and bathrobes,
   reflecting Mr. Garcia's love of scuba diving. David S. Smith, general manager
   of the Beverly Prescott, said he had stockpiled the bathrobes just in case
   fans stuffed them in their suitcases. "I don't like to use the word 'rip
   off,' " he said, "but if someone chooses to make it a gift, we'll go ahead
   and comply with their wishes and charge them for it."
   
      While colorful, nothing in either suite is likely to bring back memories
   of an LSD trip or time spent in other altered states; Mr. Garcia, like many
   of his followers, has settled into a more sedate middle age. "He's not the
   tie-dyed acid rocker who started out years ago," Mr. McCormick said. "He's
   quite the gentleman."
   
      That's good news for anyone booking the suite primarily to get a good
   night's sleep. But anyone seeking a transforming visual experience for only
   $300 a night -- $50 more than a similar room minus the art and plus the more
   traditional chrysanthemum upholstery -- may well be disappointed. True, for
   those who have seen more Rembrandts in hotel rooms than in the Rijksmuseum
   and for whom bedspreads and curtains are merely things to be pulled aside,
   Mr. Garcia's creations are a refreshing change. How often does one check out
   the paintings in a hotel room even before the bedsprings? 
   
      But even with all the Garcia touches, there's still too much hotel and too
   little Garcia in Room 807. What has happened is really more of a face lift
   than a fundamental transformation.
   
      For one thing, there are very un-Garcia-like salmon-colored wall stripes,
   better suited for an ice-cream parlor than for an art gallery. And there's
   the nondescript beige carpeting with its latticework of vines. 
   
      More seriously, the Garcia Suite is claustrophobic, hardly a proper homage
   to mind-expanding music and the man who made it. Rather than renovate one of
   its more generous suites upstairs, complete with hot tubs and balconies
   overlooking the soaring Hollywood Hills, the hotel selected a small space
   overlooking a construction pit. Should Mr. Garcia ever set foot in the suite
   bearing his name, he might feel cramped, physically and spiritually.
   
      "They should have gone nuts," said Thomas Piccirillo, a Grateful Dead fan
   and a bellman at the hotel. "I was expecting paisley or velvet wallpaper,
   wallpaper you could lick. Jerry Garcia's a big man. He'd love a room where 20
   people could sit in a Jacuzzi or on a balcony smoking pot."
   
      But Ms. Sage thinks that as hotels come to see that the Garcia name is
   good business, they will give her a freer hand and a larger palette. She says
   the Garcia Suites she is planning for two Seattle hotels are likely to be far
   more grand.
   
      "You have to kind of prove yourself," she said. "We're really Jerry-izing
   as we go."
   
   Copyright 1995 The New York Times

    puuuleeeze........when will it STOP!!!!!!!!!
    
    to paraphrase what some have said about the parking lot scene...
    
    "It's about the MUSIC!!! dammit!"

    if you haven't already guessed by the last reply..you can call me
    chicken today, cause I'm in a FOWL! mood.....
    
    rfb

	ok. so we won't EGG you on then.
	
	relax. have a homebrew.
	
	many :-)

    Just let rfb roost there and maybe his anger will pass over

    
    If'n ya get too angry in here you could be "Ostrich-ized"
    
    From Da group    8-)
    
                                                             

    We're watching you like HAWKS!
    

    Yeah!
    with eagle eyes Mister!!

    Man and i thought you were RAVEN about the place...*;')

    some of these puns are for the BIRDS!!

    ya..wish I'd a said I was buffaloed, then I wouldn't be COWering right
    now! 
    
    DOOOHHHH ! DID I SAY THAT!
    
    thanks all for putting me in a better mood..thanks Mnelson for the
    phone call too......

>    ya..wish I'd a said I was buffaloed, then I wouldn't be COWering right
>    now! 

	But we'd still find something to yak about.

    What a bunch a bull!  Youse guys are a bunch a loons.

    I gnu that!
    

    ....thought i DUCK in to say hi, but i see we've changed animal
    kingdoms...so i guess i'll just UDDER my last response....
    
    MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    Ewe guys are just toooooo much!


    - jeff

	no sheep jokes, just get the flock outta here.

    You are baaaaaaaaaaaaahd jollimore
    baaaaaaaaaaaahdddddddd....

	i know, i do it for the shear pleasure.

    ....or to pull the wool over our eye's...
    

    
    Maybe this fits here .. I received a super brochure for the Grateful
    Bed&Breakfast in Puerto Rico.  Be glad to share it with anyone - let me
    know and i'll get a copy to you.  sounds really reasonable at $75 a
    nite for two people - includes breakfast, a terrific ambience, island
    guide/touring info.  probably the most expensive part is getting there.
    
    c

re: Gr8fl B&B

Hey Carol... if it ain't too much trouble... 

Scan it and put a .ps file somewhere accessible! :-)

- jeff

    yikes - sounds like high tech.  i'll have to find someone at lkg or zko
    to do this for me.  yeah - it is a good way to share the info.
    
    

	Grateful B&B....cool!  I don't do B&B's but this one 
	sounds like it's cool and progressive.

	I've never been to any tropical destination and never
	really wanted to, but am considering someplace tropical
	next year.  Puerto Rico would be my top choice as it's been 
	recommended by hundreds of people.

    Please copy for me and snail mail to me Tom Davis @COP 6/1
    
    Thanks
    

    
    If you're in ZKO, come to my office in the library and
    you can make a copy. 
    
    otherwise is there anyone who can do the scan thing?