Conference rdvax::grateful

Here is an interview with Dennis McNally, the publicist for the Grateful Dead. 
It is in the latest issue of Unbroken Chain and has been copied without
permission of course!  Keep in mind that this interview was done before the
Hampton Dead shows when you read the part about Hampton.  I felt that it was an
interesting interview and it also touched on the band and McNally's feelings on
the ticketless people that show up at the venues the band plays.  I hope you
enjoy it.  Any typo's are my fault! 


=================================================================================================
AN INTERVIEW WITH DENNIS MCNALLY:  THE PUBLICIST SPEAKS Interview was conducted
by Tim Ashbridge immediately prior to the JGB show at the Capitol Centre
11/07/91. 

UC:   Tell us a little bit about your history with the Grateful Dead;  how long
have you known them, how did you get your job, and what does a publicist do
anyway? 

DM:   I graduated from college in 1971, and then I went to graduate school at
the University of Massachusetts.  I was hanging out with this guy who was a
huge Deadhead even then.  I had listened to the Dead in college and as a DJ had
played the first album a lot.  At the time I was looking for a book to write. 
This guy turned me on to the Dead, took me to my first real show. I went with
sufficiently altered consciousness.  It was Springfield in October of '72, and
I was immediately hooked.  Earlier that year, my friend had suggested to me
that the book I should write was a biography of Jack Kerouac.  Here I was, this
child of the 60's, going to graduate school, which was a really numbing
experience.  I wanted to research my roots as a bohemian, a early 70's freak,
and researching a biography of Jack Kerouac was a great way to do that. I went
to a bunch of Dead concerts and simultaneously wrote the book about Jack
Kerouac called "Desolate Angel" which is now in paperback with Dell. 

UC:   Published in 1979...

DM:   When it was published I sent a copy to Jerry and sort of waited.  What I
really wanted to do was write a two-volume history of bohemia or whatever you
want to call it, the counterculture or something, in America, through
biography...picking one person to illuminate a time or one group of people.  So
Volume One would be the 50's, bohemia, beatniks, Kerouac; Volume Two was the
60's, Grateful Dead.  I was intuitive enough to know that I couldn't march up
to the Grateful Dead and say, "Hi, I'm here to write your biography" and that I
would have to wait for them to ask me.  I wrote a piece about the Grateful Dead
which appeared in the Sunday Magazine of the S.F. Chronicle during the 1980
15-night run at the Warfield.  I had Met Eileen Law, the queen of Deadheads and
one of the best people on the planet, through Jan Simmons who was then Bill
Graham's secretary and is now the Grateful Dead's tour secretary. Franken and
Davis did a skit between sets and they were picking out a Deadhead to be the
Deadhead for the skit.  The whole spoof was on Jerry's kids, and I was invited
by Eileen to audition to be a Jerry's kid.  I was already too old and too
straight and all that, but of course I seized the opportunity to meet Jerry and
say to him, "Did you read my book?", to which I had the wonderful experience of
having him literally jump out of his chair and say, "You wrote that book?  It's
the best biography I ever read!", to which I said, "Aw, shucks."  That was in
September, and in December, Jerry sent some people to me and said, "Why don't
you do us?" To which I replied, "Fuck Yes!"  So I spent'81, '82 and '83
researching it, during which I started the research part of what later became
DeadBase.  I'm proud to say I kind of assembled that team.  Then, the Dead went
through it's changes and in June of '84 they had a band meeting and Mary Jo
Mienoll, who was then the receptionist and now works in the accounting
department, raised her hand and said, "Look, what do we do with the press?" 
And Garcia said, "Get McNally to do it, he knows that shit."  So I became the
publicist.  That was June of '84, and I've been the publicist ever since. 

UC:   Tell me a little about what a publicist does.

DM:   I answer the telephone - in most cases what people want from me I direct
them to the right person.  With the press, most of the time I say "no" nicely
to interviews because most of the time we don't have time or there's no desire.
 And then we have a project - something like Planet Drum or whatever, that we
want to sell, I make phone calls.  Basically, my job at a show is to give the
media some kind of reasonable access to photography or TV.  For instance,
there's part of the Grateful Dead that say's we shouldn't even let TV in.  Then
there's me saying "Well, here's the story guys...the Grateful Dead is no a
phenomenon and it's a story.  Either the TV can shoot the trash that accrues in
the parking lot, and that's what they're going to put on the local news, or
they can get the first two songs of the band making music with pretty lights
and stuff.  Most TV stations would rather run that.  They'd rather be positive
if they get a chance. But somebody has to keep media people, who are frequently
very aggressive and very intrusive, out of sight.  So, I have this job, which
is kind of funny because when I'm at my best it looks like I'm not doing
anything.  Of course at some point someone will think, "So what is McNally
doing around here anyway?" and I would say, "Well, we just had 14 news crews
here, and you never saw them.  I think I worked."  So that's what I do on tour.
 I've gone to all of the shows in the last 8 years. 

UC:   But at the same time, I remember at RFK this summer, when the people
breached the security, you took it upon yourself to go over and try and get
that under control.  It had nothing to do with the press - that was security. 

DM:   Well you know, you do what you have to do.  We had a situation where a
number of the people who were working for security were not experienced and
they needed some help.  A classic example of that was the first night we played
Albany.  The brand new building had been open for less than a month.  Kids come
in, and all the security, we'd been talking to them for months, coaching them
and they'd done a couple of shows, and they took one look at the Deadheads and,
metaphorically speaking, turned green - and they just quit!  And they stood
there and they panicked.  They couldn't open their mouths.  I was looking at
the supervisors saying, "What do you think you're doing?" And they said
"Everything's ok."  And I said, "Everything's not ok, there isn't an aisle in
the building."  And that first night we found out what it was like to do a Dead
concert without security, because there was no security.  If the fire marshall
had been there, we would have been screwed because they have absolute law. 
They can shut down a show like that (Snap).  Pull the plug.  And there wasn't a
corridor or aisle in the building. Deadheads took over every square inch of the
building.  Now, it was benign, but it wasn't safe. There's a reason why we do
all of this nonsense.  By the second night, our security head, Ken Viola, said,
"Look, all you have to do is tell them to move, and they will move.  Now you
may have to say it five times, but they're not going to hit you, they're not
going to bite you, you have to keep at it."  And by the third night, it was a
real smooth running environment, and it was ok the last time. 

UC:   In your capacity as publicist, do you participate at the infamous "band
board meetings"? 

DM:   Absolutely not.

UC:   How often does the band hold these meetings?

DM:   I varies tremendously.  More often than once a quarter, but that's band
business anyway and I don't really discuss band business. 

UC:   From your perspective, what are the band's top two or three
accomplishments in the last five years? 

DM:   (Laughs)  I don't know...enduring...Absorbing the excessive popularity of
post-In The Dark and coping with it.  At least from my point of view as an
organization, enduring the loss of Brent and moving on, those are the hard
ones.  I'm real pleased overall with the scene.  But I can't understand the
rationalization of every Deadhead who doesn't have a ticket who says, "Oh, the
band doesn't mean me."  Yes, it does mean you.  If you don't have a ticket, you
shouldn't be out there.  You shouldn't!  You're causing harm to the band. 
Fortunately, it's reached a point where the number of those people is
sufficiently small that we seem to be able to function ok.  I really did think
for a while there that the Dead was going to come to an end, touring-wise, and
it was going to be because of the dumbest of reasons, not the fact that the
band couldn't play anymore, but because the audience wasn't going to let them. 
All I can say is, Thank God "Built to Last" was mediocre, because if it had
been a hit, it was over, it was freakin' over, and that's pretty strange. 

UC:   Do you think the no-camping, no-vending rules have had a lot to do with
the improvement of the scene in general? 

DM:   Oh absolutely, without question.  We would not have venues if we allowed
vending and camping.  The venues didn't bargain for the kind of problems you
have when you allow vending and camping.  If people want a traveling
countercultural roadshow, they've got to do that themselves.  They created it
in the first place.  The band's job is to make music.  The band's job is not to
be responsible for the lives of a traveling group of 10,000 to 20,000 people. 
Folks have to take care of themselves.  We have to do our best to make it safe
and to make it decent, but Jerry can't be mayor.  He never bargained for that. 
What he does is play the guitar.  That's his job.  A lot of the rap a couple of
years ago from the fans was, "Oh, you're turning your back on the hard core
fans."  The expectations of those people were completely unfair to the band. 
The band has said throughout that the Dead didn't create Deadheads, Deadheads
did, you know?  That all just happened, it's not like the band planned on it. 
It's neat, but you have to recognize the responsibility, the intrinsic
responsibility of being a Deadhead is to think for yourself, and not to bring
yourself, your family (the greater Deadhead family) into disrepute, which means
- don't go piss on somebody's lawn, don't be doing any business, legal or
otherwise, in the parking lot.  We asked the City of Albany not to permit
camping.  The City of Albany demands camping, and then 70 or 80 people per
night get busted.  Is there a pattern emerging here?  And yet, all these people
think it's so neat that they can go camp, and then they run around and do
things, and half the damn narcs in upstate New York were in that park.  Let's
be fair - there are some real dumb people out there in the parking lot, and
they pay for their dumbness, and I feel bad for that, but jeez, what are you
going to do?  We ask, we put it on the radio, we hand you a note saying "Don't
be Dumb."  There is a reasonable point where our responsibility is clearly
over, and that's what happens. 

UC:   Tell us a little bit about the concept of the home stadium where the Dead
might play permanently.  Is it more than just a concept at this point? 

DM:   It's always been a running joke.  Again, Jerry Garcia is neither a mayor
nor is he a stadium manager.  The band has to deal with a fair amount of
business with running a multi- million dollar corporation.  They don't want to
be in a position of having to run something. First, they don't have the money. 
I mean, we're talking tens of millions of dollars to build such a building. 
Secondly, we can play Shoreline anytime we want to.  That's really about the
right size for us, and it's our home venue.  That's propounded on the notion
that we could make a living and have all the Deadheads travel to us.  We'll let
you in on a little secret.  70-80% of all of the tickets sold at any given
Grateful Dead show are local.  You can talk about all the traveling Deadheads
all you want, and it is an unusual phenomenon, it's more than any other band
surely, but the fact is, if we try to only play at New York and Chicago, we'd
lose 2/3rds of our business.  Most of those people in wherever, are from within
100 miles.  That's a fact. It's just not economically realistic. 

UC:   Well that's good news to us!  We don't want you to do that any time soon,
believe me. 

DM:   As long as the band intends to play in public, it's going to have to
tour. 

UC:   Jerry Garcia Band is playing in Hampton this weekend.  Virginia Deadheads
are really excited about that because the Grateful Dead has not appeared here
in over two years, since the Warlocks' shows.  Tell us a little about the
status of the Dead playing at Hampton...how does the band feel about Hampton? 
Deadheads view it as kind of a special place - does the band feel that way? 
And how does Hampton feel about the band? 

DM:   I have no idea how Hampton feels about the band.  People imagine that
because those two Warlocks shows were so special, as they were, that the band
feels something special about it, which is not true.  There are three places
the Dead play...they play at home, they play New York (you know when you're in
New York City, it's inescapable), and then there's the road. There's no
distinction.  The only distinction, I should say, is your ears.  They like
Albany because it's got great sound for a big building.  They won't play in the
World Music Center outside Chicago for the same reason - terrible sound. 
Hampton's funky and small, and the band's fond of that, but it's very small,
and the odds of us playing there again are pretty slim because it's too small. 
There's real good people there, the people we work with are wonderful, Bill
Reid (w/ Cellar Door in Virginia) is he's excellent, and the production
manager, Bobby Melatti is among our favorite people.  But the fact is, Hampton
is just too small for a Grateful Dead concert.  It only seats 12,000. 

UC:   So there's no chance the Dead will play there on Spring Tour? 

DM:   I wouldn't hold my breath, no.  We've got to do what's safe, and not
overrun the town of Hampton. 

UC:   What about Richmond? 

DM:   Our last experience with Richmond was not pleasant.  The Commonwealth's
Attorney saw an opportunity to win a lot of votes with a lot of bogus arrests,
and I wouldn't hold my breath about coming back to Richmond either.  Again,
we're talking about protecting you.  The same thing goes for Vetura. 

UC:   What do you think is the biggest obstacle the band needs to overcome
right now? 

DM:   New material.  How many songs has Jerry written in the last five years? 
How many songs has Bobby written in the last five years?  They're both
impossibly slow with new material, and for it to continue to be fun onstage,
they have to be challenged.  That's why Jerry got off so much on Hornsby in
particular.  Vince is more of a supporting player.  Bruce is a guy who
challenges Jerry...plays at him.  In his head, Bruce is a soloist, a lead, a
front man.  Well, that's fine.  Jerry has never been intimidated or said, "Hey!
 This is my stage, and you just back me up," --it's just the reverse.  I once
saw Jerry, 10 years ago now, I think it was, or almost. We had Etta James for
New Year's and Etta was literally leaning on Jerry.  She kept giving him the
hip and leaning on him as he was playing.  And he was grinning, and I said to
him a couple of days later, "You look like you were a side man in the Mission
Street R & B Band that night!" He said, "Man, I could have done that all my
life and have been just as happy."  Jerry Garcia's whole point of view about
playing is like...what's the word I'm looking for? 

UC:   ..Spontaneity, rapport... 

DM:   Back and forth, communicative.  That kind of playing.  Not a lead backed
by five musicians...but a group of back and forth, give and take, that's what,
in particular, Bruce has brought.  It's also what Branford brings.  And it's
new, despite the fact that Bobby and Phil's work can surprise him, after 26
years.  The single biggest illusion the Deadheads frequently get into is this
notion that the band knows where it is.  Their ears tell them, "this is a good
room, this is a bad room," and they know when they're in New York.  It is
impossible to be in Manhattan or Nassau or Jersey without knowing it, because
you know you are going t go back to the hotel and will be in New York City. 

UC:   Tell me about that, is that energy? 

DM:   Oh yea, being in Manhattan is like shooting speed. 

UC:   The whole band gets off on that? 


DM:   Everybody gets that way, you know.  Remember when Phil used to do his "I
Hate New York Spaces?"  You know, it's anxiety, it's tense, sometimes it's
negative, but it's energy.  And anybody who has ever listened to, for instance,
the three "St. Stephen's" of late 1983, when it was brilliant at the Garden,
mediocre at Hartford three days later, and then we made them play it in Marin
and they didn't want to, and it was awful.  Well, that's the difference of
energy. It was right that night, and after that they should have put it away. 
It was a great one shot. That's New York.  The rest of the time on the road,
there are places you like and places you don't like.  We live in an era where
we are a lot more interested in whether or not the hotel has a health club than
closing the bar.  Orlando was a lot of fun last Spring.  Everybody was out at
the theme parks and the what not.  It was a great way to tour...it really took
the edge off the end of the tour where otherwise you'd be getting cranky.  Hey,
this is a job, I'm here to work and worry.  You're here to have fun, keep that
in mind.  The job of the band and the crew on the tour is to make it work for
you guys. 

UC:   You talked about Bruce earlier, and how Bruce challenges Jerry.  If you
watch the two on stage, it's pretty obvious, they do get off on each other, and
they have fun together.  Is he viewed as a member of the band now or is there
any plan to permanently integrate him? 

DM:   The deal is he's welcome to come as long as he wants to, and he's welcome
to not come when he can't show up.  He's a permanent floating member. 

UC:   I'd like to talk a little about this Rolling Stone article and Jerry's
comments about taking a break. 

DM:   I'm the publicist, I'm not the band's spokesperson in that sense.  I
think most of the band would agree that we need new material, and most of the
band would probably agree that to really do that, probably knocking off for six
months would probably be a good idea.  I can only point out, as factually as
possible, that Jerry never said "we're gonna take six months off." What Jerry
said was that  "it would be a good idea, we oughtta," and I have to agree with
him, I think the band should come up with new material.  There is a very morbid
streak amongst Deadheads and media watchers. 

UC:   You talked earlier about Jerry originally attracting you to the band to
do a biography on them.  Can we expect you to do that, are you still in the
research phase? 

DM:   No.  You can't be a publicist who defends the band where necessary, who
advocates the band, and objective or honest historian at the same time.  When
the band stops touring I'll write the book. 

UC:   Are you doing any writing beyond your work with the Dead? 

DM:   Yea, I'm working on a detective story. 

UC:   Is there anything else you would like for Deadheads to know about the
band or focus for the 1990's? 


DM:   I've gotten a lot of anonymous phone calls lately, really hostile ones. 
Screaming about Jerry loathing Deadheads because we were playing Brendan Byrne
Arena.  Obviously, they are a little confused because Jerry is not playing at
Brendan Byrne Arena.  I am not going to forget Adam Katz nor Patrick Shanahan. 
I don't think anyone can point a finger at the band.  I applauded the Katz's
suit in the sense that if it finds out what happened, great.  I would like to
know.  I honestly don't think anybody's ever going to find out, for a lot of
reasons, namely that they think it's a cover up, and objectively I think there
are real political reasons why two different prosecuting attorneys
investigated.  They thought they could look good by finding out who did it. 
There was no reason for a coverup.  Don't even imagine for a minute that police
are going to cover up for a rent-a-cop.  Forget it.  Cops hate rent-a-cops. 
For a lot of reasons, I think it's unsolvable, and I'm very sad about that. 
The Grateful Dead has two responsibilities, and only two -- to play to the best
of their ability and in a reasonably safe environment, but we can't do
everything;  we have to trust associates.  Mutually, the Deadheads have got to
take responsibility for themselves.  It ain't gonna go on forever, and I know a
lot of people whose lives are so wrapped up in the Grateful Dead, I can't
imagine what they're gonna do when it stops. 

UC:   One of the most frequently asked questions I get is, "What is going to
happen to all of the Deadheads when the band stops playing?" 

DM:   What I suggest is that people have a life that isn't totally dependent on
the Grateful Dead. It's nice to run off and join the circus, but unless you're
working in the circus, doing something, really giving something to other
people, then...an entire life that is exclusively focused on just scraping
enough money to amuse yourself by traveling with the Grateful Dead doesn't
strike me as very constructive.  Now I don't wish to be either patronizing or
paternal, and it's your business what you want to do.  Live your life.  But it
just occurs to me that when the band folds, they'll leave a lot of people
walking around with blank expressions on their faces.  Play hard, work hard,
you know, do all of it, a full range, which is on a good night, what the
Grateful Dead is all about.  Some pain, some joy, exquisite beauty, some real
ugly, you know? And that seems to be the whole point of what Jerry's playing is
about to me, I mean, to most people.  And like I say, I can't imagine what some
of the folks I see are gonna do.  My God, I wish they'd start thinking about
it.  Right now, I think there's going t be a lot of turmoil and anguish and
it's not going to be very fun for them, whereas we should see it as a
graduation instead of a disaster and go on to another level. 

================================================================================

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------------------------------

    thanks for typing that inFog,...
    I got a kick out of McNally commenting on "the people whose lives are
    so wrapped up in the Grateful dead that he doesn't know what they'll
    do when the band folds,..
    
    meanwhile,, he works for them,. hes the publicist,. and when they
    fold he's gonna write a book about 'em ,.. but his life isn't
    too wrapped up (?),..
    
    Just joking around,..s truck me as funny,. I'm sure hes got his head
    screwed on right,.. unlike the folks hes referring to
    
    Interesting comment about how Jerry would have been just as happay as 
    a backing musican,.. I've been starting to enjoy that role more and
    more myself,...But Jerry has a problem that I don't,.. for me ,. its
    easy to find people with lots of,. or more talent than I have,.. so
    backing them up is a natch,.. for Jerry,.. I dunno,. he's pretty
    goldanged talented...
    
    								/
    

    
    Yes, thanks a LOT Fog...  I found it very fun to read.
    
    I liked how McNally described his take on the Bruce situation...  How
    Jerry likes him because of what happens musically...  Interesting to
    take in his point of view.  I would have guessed the situation was a
    bit different.
    
    Also, I liked reading about how Dennis sees the role of the band vs.
    the role of the crowd in continuing tours successfully.  I'd have to
    agree that they are doing just about all they can, and it's up to the
    crowd (us) to do the rest.  But that doesn't mean that the band
    shouldn't come out East more often!
    
    Also liked how he said We're either at home, on the road, or in NY
    City!  I think JC would agree with him on that point!!! ;^)
    
    treemon
    

    Well,.. I guess for those of us born/rraised 'round theyah,..
    that weze can only beez two places then eh?
    
    							/on+_the_road_fer_now

	I didn't type that in by myself; I don't have _that_ much free time.

	It came through rec.music.gdead, and I did tweek it a bit, as it was 
entered there in 100 character lines. 

DEFINE_KEY_GOLD_P_AS_"FILLPAR."_edt_head_P

    Well,. if you're gonna be that way about it,.. I reatract my "thanks
    for typing that in" and I'll just say,.. "thanks for not typing that
    in" dammit
    
    :-)
    
    							/
    

don't let him fool you slash, he has plenty of free time.  Why, the guys
in my group don't hassle him at all about ECO's.



NOT!

:-)

    I got the following from the Well, its a great piece of writing.
    Please do not extract and forward around, but read and enjoy!
    ------------------------------------------------------------
   
   In February John Perry Barlow appeared on NBC's "A Closer Look"
   to talk about LSD.  Not long after the program aired a letter
   appeared in the Pinedale (Wyoming) Roundup; what follows is
   the letter and Barlow's response, which was also printed in
   the Roundup.
   
   
   TV, LSD, and Life in the Country
   
   To the Pinedale Roundup, Pinedale Wyoming:
   
   Sublette County, hang your head and cry!
   
   Last week (Feb. 3-7 I don't remember the exact day now) on
   National TV's noon program "Closer Look", hosted by Faith
   Daniels. The subject was the increasing popularity of the
   80's and 70's designer hallucinogen, LSD. The guests were
   a young man that had used LSD, a man whose son was killed
   because he used LSD, and a man who thought LSD use was O.K.
   That man, Sublette County, was John Perry Barlow. He sat
   right there on National TV and said he supported the use
   of LSD, and the last time he used it himself was last
   November.
   
   What a fine representative of our wonderful piece of country
   and the people in it. Will LSD users be tempted to come to
   Sublette County, thinking this is a good place to practice
   their drug habits with the approval of the residents. And
   what about the young people (and the not so young, such as
   Mr. Barlow) in the county. Is this the example and role model
   for them to look to and build their values on? A native son
   and a LSD user. What about it Sublette County? Wipe the tears
   from your eyes so you can see clearly and find some good role  
   models so the kids can choose strong, clean values. They are
   the future of our country and nation. Hold up for them some-
   thing or someone with something more than what Mr. Barlow
   represents. 
   
   <unsigned>
   Idaho Falls, Idaho
   
   To which I have replied as follows:
   
   Fellow Citizens of Sublette County,
   
   When I agreed to appear on A Closer Look, I had a hunch
   that, sooner or later, there'd arise a call to protect
   yourselves such perils as me. It's encouraging, though
   not surprising, that my only denunciation came from outside
   Pinedale. Tolerance is one of the things I love about this
   place.  
   
   For these and other reasons,  I intend to go on living
   here, so I figure I owe you an explanation.
   
   NBC invited me on the show in my capacity as a lyricist
   for the Grateful Dead, an institution long associated with
   LSD. I was not there to defend (and certainly not to
   recommend) its use to anyone.  That is a personal, even
   spiritual, matter. 
   
   I accepted their offer, with grave misgivings, because
   I care about free speech.
   
   Over the last 25 years, I've watched a lot of Deadheads
   do acid. It is the sacrament of their community. I've
   taken it myself. I still do occasionally, in a ritual sort
   of way. On the basis of their experience and my own, I
   know that the public terror of LSD is based more on
   media-propagated superstition than familiarity with its  
   effects on the real world. 
   
   I know this, and, like most others who know it, I have
   kept quiet about it.  
   
   But I've finally realized that if I continue, out of
   fear, to conceal what I believe in this or any other
   area of public interest, I participate in a growing
   threat to the minds of America's young greater than any
   which acid presents. I mean by that the establishment
   of permissible truth in America. In a word,  
   totalitarianism.
   
   Shortly after the Bill of Rights was drafted, English
   Philosopher John Stuart Mill said, "Liberty resides in
   the rights of that person whose views you find most
   odious." 
   
   I will go further and say that liberty resides in its
   exercise. It is preserved in the actual spouting of
   those odious views. It is maintained, and always has
   been, by brave and lonely cranks.  
   
   Lately, it seems our necessary cranks have been
   falling silent, struck dumb by a general assault on
   liberty on America. This is no right wing plot from
   the top. Like most totalitarian impulses, it has arisen
   among the people themselves. Terrified of virtual
   bogeymen we know only from the Evening News, we have
   asked the government for shorter chains and smaller
   cages. And, market driven as ever, it has been obliging
   us. 
   
   This is what is now taking place in our conduct of The
   War On Some Drugs. In this futile Jihad, Americans have
   largely suspended habeas corpus, have allowed government
   to permanently confiscate our goods without indictment
   or trial, have flat discarded the Fourth Amendment to
   the Constitution, and are voluntarily crippling the
   First, at least insofar as any expression might relate
   to drugs.
   
   In my gloomier moments, I wonder if the elimination of
   freedom in America is not what the War On Some Drugs
   was actually designed to accomplish.
   
   Certainly we haven't engaged this campaign because the
   psychoactive substances we so determined to eliminate
   are inherently more dangerous than those we keep in
   plentiful and legal supply. Indeed, the most dangerous,
   anti-social, and addictive drugs I've ever taken...the
   ones I'm afraid to touch in any quantity today...are all  
   legal. 
   
   Alcohol, nicotine, and prescription sedatives do more
   American damage every day than LSD has done since it was
   derived in 1942. Each year, alcohol kills hundreds of
   thousands of Americans, many of them violently. It is a
   factor in most murders and suicides in America. It is a
   rare case of domestic violence or abuse where alcohol
   plays no role, especially here in Sublette County, where
   domestic pathology and alcohol addiction are as common
   and united as jello and whipped cream.
   
   Yet I don't hear people calling for its prohibition, nor
   would I support such an effort. I know it won't work.  
   
   It's not working for LSD either and it's even less
   likely to. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25 is active in
   doses so small you can't see them. It's colorless,
   odorless, and it doesn't show up in drug tests. And
   you have to be pretty high on acid before anyone's
   going to notice you being anything but extremely alert.
   
   Does this mean that I think LSD is safe or that I am
   recommending its use? Hardly. My accuser's allegations
   notwithstanding, I was careful to point out on A Closer
   Look that I consider LSD to be a serious medicine. Hey,
   this stuff can make some people see God. Now that's  
   serious medicine.
   
   I tried to convey two points there. First, by
   diminishing the hazards inherent in our cultural drugs
   of choice and demonizing psychedelics, we head our
   children straight down the most dangerous path their  
   youthful adventurism can take.
   
   Second, LSD is dangerous but not in the ways generally
   portrayed. By dressing it up in a Halloween costume of
   fictitious dangers, we encourage our kids to think we
   were also lying about its real ones.  And LSD is dangerous.
   
   It is dangerous  because it promotes the idea that
   reality is something to be manipulated rather than
   accepted. This notion can seriously cripple one's coping
   abilities, though I would still suggest that both alcohol
   and TV advertising carry it more persuasively than LSD.
   And of course, if you're lightly-sprung, it can leave you
   nuts.
   
   But LSD is not illegal because it endangers your sanity.
   Halcion has a clinically demonstrated ability to cause
   violent psychotic episodes, and it's so legal that
   President Bush uses it. 
   
   LSD is illegal because it endangers Control. Worse, it
   makes authority seem funny. But laugh at authority in
   America and you will know risk. LSD is illegal primarily
   because it threatens the dominant American culture, the
   culture of Control.    
   
   This is not a sound use of law. Just laws arise to
   support the ethics of a whole society and not as a means
   for one of its cultural factions to impose power on another. 
   
   If you think this is a necessary exception, consider that
   there is a rapidly growing segment in this country who
   consider big game hunting to be murder. At present expansion
   rates, it is not so hard to imagine them a majority someday.  
   
   So, before you dish out as law your own cultural prejudices,
   consider what you might one day get to eat according to that
   principle. 
   
   There are probably 25 million Americans who have have taken
   LSD, and who would, if hard pressed in private, also tell
   you that it profoundly changed their lives, and not
   necessarily for the worse.
   
   I will readily grant that some of these are hopeless
   crystal  worshippers or psychedelic derelicts creeping
   around Oregon woods. But far more of them are
   successful members of society, CEO's, politicians,
   ministers, and community leaders. 
   
   This is true. Whether we want it to be or not.
   
   But the fact that so few among these millions dare
   utter this truth is, in a supposedly free country, a
   symptom of collective mental illness.
   
   I neither expect nor ask any young person to regard
   me as a role model. There are easier routes through
   this world than the one I've taken. But I do like to
   think of myself as someone who defends his convictions.
   
   And I hope to raise three daughters who are brave
   enough to own their beliefs, no matter how unorthodox,
   and to own them in public, no matter how risky. I dream
   of a day when anyone's daughters will feel free to do that. 
   
   The most I can do toward a world in which their liberty
   is assured is to exercise mine in this one. 
   
   In hope of your continued tolerance,
   
   John Perry Barlow 
   
   Pinedale, Wyoming 
   
   Tuesday, March 10, 1992

    thanks fer that Mystery....... %^)

	Pedantic, isn't he????   :-)

The guy has the singular ability to make one proud to call themselves a "user".

Excerpted from _tricycle,  The Buddhist Review_
   Spring 1992

                  Jerry Garcia
                      speaks with Barbara Meier


         Barbara Meier and Jerry Garcia were friends in the
         early sixties when they were part of a community of
         poets, pacifists, and folksingers in Menlo Park,
         California.  Jerry went on to become a founding
         member of the legendary band, The Grateful Dead,
         and Barbara became a member of the San Francisco
         Zen Center under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.  In 1974,
         she moved to Boulder, Colorado, to study Vajrayana
         Buddhism with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and to be
         part of the Naropa Institute Creative Writing
         community.  She is the author of a book of poetry,
         _The Life You Ordered Has Arrived_.   After many
         years of being out of touch with each other,
         Barbara and Jerry had this conversation in June of
         1991 when the Dead played in Denver.

B:  I remember reading Ram Dass describe you as a bodhisatva.

J:  He's very kind, but I don't deserve that.  I'm just a guy trying
to play the right notes, that's all.  If I were to think of myself
in a spiritual context, however, I'd think of myself as some sort of
Buddhist.

B:  Well, music is your practice.  When I hear you kin concert, I
feel you want to push the energy further and further, taking the
crowd along with you.

J:  I don't do it consciously.

B:  You must be aware of it.

J:  Only because of the feedback, becasue of the endless reportage. 
It's like UFOs: if enough people say "I saw one the other night;
they're spinning around," even if I haven't seen one myself, I start
thinking there must be something out there.

B:  No intentionality?

J:  Not really.  From my point of view, it's all a bead game.  My
finest moments have been as part of an audience in a musical
situation, or as a performer, when things are unfolding in a
graceful way.  It's one of these moments of grace what humans get to
experience.  When that happens, no one enjoys it more than I do. 
And when it's just hard work, that works for me, too.
    There are timew when I feel I'm playing way below what I'm
capable of, and I think, "Well, this whole evening is a giveaway.  I
never played at the edge of my ability."  I used to hear guys like
Pablo Casals say,  "If I don't play for a day I can tell, if I don't
play for a week my wife can tell, and if I don't play for two weeks
everybody in the world can tell," and I use to think, "Ah, come
on..."  But now I recognize what they're taqlking about.  It's a
purely technical thing--something my muscles do.

B:  I remember you practicing the guitar twelve hours a day.

J:  As far as I know that's the only way you get good.  When you
play music, you know how good or how bad you are and what you can or
cannot do.  And I'm still surprised more people stay than leave. 
That's totally baffling.

B:  Not only stay, but keep arriving.  So what is the Grateful Dead
all about?

J:  It varies through time.  We're just trying to play music; it
really isn't any more complicated than that.

B:  But there's this other thing happening.

J:  Yeah, and that has a consciousness of its own, and we're
invented by it.  It's really just a continuation of those old days. 
Everybody's gotten older and is doing other things in their lives,
but we really never decided to go somewhere or become something.  As
we go along and gain larger and larger illusions of success, it
requires more and more preplanning, and we have to spend more time
investing consciousness into the fiction of the corporation.  Even
though we've always operated without an agenda, the hardest part is
preserving illusion of spontaneity.  It gets to be more complex as
it goes along, full of all kinds of complex ethical questions.

B:  Like what?

J:  For example, is is fair to charge people $25 a ticket to go into
an enormous stadium and see people on the stage this big? (Jerry
holds his thumb and forfinger a half of an inch apart.)  I don't
think it is,  unless you're able to create a good enough sound and a
large enough image to play to the worst seat in the house.

B:  But you do do that.

J:  We try.  Another issue concerns the safety of the fans and thier
exposure, because a lot of people still come to our shows thinking
it's kind of a hole in reality wherei it's okay to take drugs.  But
we can't protect them.  We have no control over the world at large. 
The police are going to do what they want.  Some years the
newspapers are full of Dead bashing; and yet there are also years
when we gain something like respectability.

B:  There's this amazing nomadic tribal culture that has formed
around the Dead.

J:  "Deadheads" aren't that easy to pin down.  They range from
professionals doing hard scholarship to total street wierdos.  That
keeps it interesting, because the feedback is amusing.  At the same
time I feel guilty, because I wonder, "Isn't there something real to
think about out there?  Aren't there questions that people could be
applying their valuable human energy to?"  Getting involved with the
Grateful Dead isn't going anywhere except onward.

B:  You don't impose any political message.

J:  I couldn't do it.  The power is frightening.

B:  Are you ever tempted?

J:  No.  I thought, if I'm going to be onstage I'm not going to say
anything to anybody of address the crowd, because it doesn't matter
what you say, sometimes just the sound of your voice might
inadvertently set somebody off.  The situation with psychedelics is
so highly charged that you never know what's leaking in.  I don't
mind doing it in the music, because that's where I divest myself of
ego.  It's egoless, something I trust.  If the band has something to
protect, it's the integrity fo the experience, which remains
shapeless and formless.  As long as it stays that way, everything's
okay.

B:  I got the sense that your real pleasure is getting to the "space
jam" part of the show.

J:  That's true, but I'm also a rear-guard musician; I really like a
simple song with simple accompaniment.  Relating to your instrument
is the first basic task.  Then there's the next thing: what's
everybody else doing?  Are they together with their instruments? 
That has to happen to each individual, and then you can start
addressing each other.  The whole first part of the show is getting
everything to work technically so you can hear everyone and
everyone's attention is at the same place, more or less.  By then
it's the middle of the show and we know everything is working, and
it becomes time to actually do the thing.  Sometimes we say, let's
do this and see what happens, and that gets us to a place that's
absolutely free.

B:  Free imporvisation.

J:  There's no such thing as improvisation.  There's only
composition.  Only you do it quickly; you're composing on the spot. 

B:  Is that an epiphany?

J:  It is an it isn't.  Luckily it's okay with the audience if we
fail.  What they car about is that we take a chance.

B:  Can you talk about your relationship to the shamanic aspect of
the Dead?

J:  In the early psychedelic days all the power vampires of every
description came out of the woodwork.  What did I know?  I was 24
years old, and all I had going was psychedelics and a sense of
caution, a sense that there's something valuable and important to
protect.  At that time I didn't know there were people like Charles
Manson who would be willing to do anything to gain control.  The
power vampires are easier to recognize as time goes by.  Thye change
shape and form as your consciousness expands.

B:  You must have learned ways to deal with it.

J:  You don't deal with it;  that's how you deal with it.

B:  One of the primary things traditional Vajrayana Buddhism teaches
is hwo to create a protection system and set the boundaries so you
mind can be free to expand.  Some kinds of energies are very
dangerous without protection.

J:  My reaction was instinctive.

B:  So you winged it.

J:  And I got bumbed and bruised.  It's hard to explain, because
unless people have some contact with other levels of consciousness
they don't believe that any of this is real.

B:  You mean that there's a cotangent universe of spirits and
energies, demons and goddesses?

J:  And everything else, you name it.  And it can be just as
frightening as your worst nightmare.  The rewards of the exploration
of consciousness are immense, but the scare is intense.

B:  What are the rewards?

J:  Mainly the rewards of service.  It's a simple thing, the
feeling of a job done well.  There's a workmanlike quality that
depends, I'm sure, on the same sensibility that makes the tea
ceremony work, that kind of ritual of doing some simple taks over
and over again.  It's not a big thing, but it's strong and
important.
    

Thank you for posting that.

tim

    	I'm not real sure where this one belongs, but since my last Well
    posting ended up here, I'm continuning the trend. I just discovered
    this today, and knew I had to share this.
    
	----------------------------------------------
     
          ++++++++ tapes conference ++++++++
 
Topic tapes/90:  Garcia's Autobiography Project
  By: David Gans (tnf) on Mon, Mar 30, '92
  	3 responses so far
  
  
  
  1 new of 3 responses total.
  
  
tapes/90 #3: David Gans (tnf) Tue, Mar 31, '92 (13:14) 20 lines
  
    I have recieved the following message from Jerry Garcia (thats right,
     Jerry Garcia) which he has asked me to pass on. In our last conversation
    he was justifiably curious about the Net community of Deadheads and con-
    veyed to me that he felt it is a "safe" avenue of communication with his
    fans. Why the sudden interest in Deadheads? He must now want to gain a 
    new understanding for the book, which he will be writing on his shiny new 
    Sparcstation IPX...

   
   |From jrg@well.sf.ca.us Mon, 30 Mar 92 03:40:43 1992
   |Date: Mon, 30 Mar 92 04:37:39 GMT-0700
   |From: jrg@well.sf.ca.us (Jerome R Garcia)
   |To: tnf@well.sf.ca.us
   |Subject: Hello to all net beings

          David,

    I think I'm getting the hang of this. Can't wait to try on my 
    new virtual diving mask-simulator! Thanks for showing me 
    how to use Email, now I want to open the gates and see the 
    flood. This is real great!. Here's the message short and sweet:

    Deadheads: I want to here from you! I will try my best to respond.

	  JG
  

    so wheres the Fools joke Mystery ? I ain't biting !!!
    
    but tomorrow is another story !!!

	I got the same memo forwarded from a completely different source, and 
	got it _yesterday_...

Sure you did, Fog ... suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure you did .... ;^)

    My first message will be: "Did you get the damn croakies?"  I still
    think / pocketed the contributions and bought himself a beer or
    something.
    
    Jamie

    
    	Al right, it really was an April Fool's joke.
    
    	It even got sent out to friends who have acconts on the Well. They
    "fingered JRG" and found a John R Gilchrist.......I got quite
    a lot of mail about that.
    
    	I also have to share the credit with Fog, he wrote it, I posted
    it.....	
    
    
    	Mystery
    
    

    
    Hmm.  Wonder who sent me my response then. 
    
    

Nope, a finger on jrg@well.sf.ca.us shows:

[well.sf.ca.us]
Login name: jrg                         In real life: Jon Gillispie
Directory: /home/users                  Shell: /bin/sh
Never logged in.
New mail received Thu Apr  2 06:25:39 1992;
  unread since Mon Mar 30 16:51:13 1992
No Plan.

I wonder how much mail Jon has gotten since you pulled that prank ;-).

peace,
t!ng

    From what I see, he's gotten quite a bit. His "New mail received"
    date keeps changing. :-)

    Besides, any "real" Deadhead (tm) knows that his middle initial is not
    "R."
    
    Jamie

>    Besides, any "real" Deadhead (tm) knows that his middle initial is not
    "R."
    
Right; that was the built-in trap to separate the gullible from the 
ineluctable (or whatevah)..

:-)

             <<< Note 41.22 by STUDIO::IDE "now it can be told" >>>
>    Besides, any "real" Deadhead (tm) knows that his middle initial is not
>    "R."
 
yeah,  everyone knows it's T. for Tiberius....

right! :)

whoops! wrong conference:)
bob

    So did you guys get jrg's permission to use his handle?
    
    If not,.. I don't know,.. I'm not sure how happy I would
    have been about something like that ... :-/
    
    							/
    

re -.1

Yeah, really.
					/

>    Besides, any "real" Deadhead (tm) knows that his middle initial is not
>    "R."

is his first name really "Jerome" ?

> Can't wait to try on my 
>    new virtual diving mask-simulator!

this one got me wondering just a bit...

- rich

Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Mickey's interview from 'Island Ear'.
 
From the ISLAND-EAR, issue April 6 '92. Excerpted with my permission.
Mickey talks about Planet Drum...
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[lots of stuff deleted]
 
M: ...when I get home from a Grateful Dead gig I just can't go to sleep,
   so I would crack open Eliade or Dioszegi or Rouget, any of the more
   scholarly works, and take about two hours until my eyes would close...
 
[more stuff deleted]
 
(and now for the important part :-)
 
Interviewer: I have to ask, due to statements that Jerry Garcia made to
             Rolling Stone awhile back: What is the current state of the
             Grateful Dead, and is it fun anymore?
 
M: Yes, it is fun. And we do have to reinvent ourselves again, as we always
   have done in the past. You know, shed the skin to change. We've booked
   our full eighty dates for the year, and so far as I know, as of last
   night at eight o'clock, we're working all year. That's the question,
   I assume. You want to know if we're actually going to hang it up for
   six months or not. No we're not. That was a question asked of Garcia
   when he was real tired on the ninth night of our stand at Madison
   Square Garden [last september], and we all felt a little bit tired
   {\em and} it wasn't so much fun by the ninth night, so he said he would
   like to take six months off. I would like to take six months off sometime
   too, but after we sat down and talked about it, we realized all we really
   need to do is come up with new material in order to make it fun for
   ourselves again - and that's really what it's all about. We really
   enjoy playing with each other. If we didn't, we wouldn't do it.
   You can be sure of that. So as far as I know, we're on the bus.
 

    Is the whole interview available?  I think ISLAND_EAR is a local
    free rag distributed only on Long Island...
    
    thanks,
    /bruce

    Same interview excerpt, different source. Don't remember where I
    read it, though.

This article was put together from interviews with early friends of the dead..


------------------------

   A tour of the Grateful Dead's Midpeninsula roots
   
   From the Palo Alto Weekly, May 12, 1993.
   Reprinted with permission.
   
   By Brian Bothun and Monica Hyde
   
   (cover photo is a Herb Greene Warlocks shot, inside photos include a 1993
   band shot, high school photos of Billy and Pigpen, and an old photo of
   Kepler's bookstore. We had a photo of Billy as the valentines day prince in
   Jr. High, but he wasn't looking at the camera, so it wasn't used.)
   
           If rock 'n' roll were a religion, the Grateful Dead would be God.
   Preaching their psychedelic sermon for almost three decades, the Dead have
   amassed their flock--a faithful, multi-generational clan known as Deadheads.
   
           Many of these faithful are on a constant pilgrimage, traveling from
   one town to the next, from one concert to another. Deadheads who can't make
   it to every show keep in touch with each other daily through a variety of
   worldwide computer networks, talking about everything from what the band
   played last night to plans for future shows. Inside the concerts, Deadheads
   even have their own brand of Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous, a group known
   as the Wharf Rats, which holds meetings during the intermission.
           The Grateful Dead--perhaps one of the last true ties to the
   psychedelic era--is a cultural and musical phenomenon unlike any this
   country has ever seen.
           With a distinctive mix of jazz, country, blues and rock, the Dead
   has created a sound that is fundamentally American. Considering its
   longevity, the band is an example of how, through luck and circumstance,
   perseverance and just being in the right place at the right time, separate
   elements can come together and jell into something original and timeless.
           Those elements came together in the early 1960s in Palo Alto, then a
   rather sleepy little college town, but a place beginning to pulse with the
   beat of the burgeoning folk scene. Vernon Gates had just opened the city's
   first real coffee house, Saint Michael's Alley, then located at 436
   University Ave. Author Ken Kesey was working at the Veterans Administration
   Hospital in Menlo Park, where LSD research was being conducted. Roy Kepler
   was selling paperbacks in Menlo Park where Mrs. Fields sells cookies today.
           And a young man fresh out of the Army, Jerry Garcia, moved to town.
   He got a job teaching guitar downtown at Dana Morgan's Music Store.
           Meanwhile, Bill Kreutzmann, who would become the band's drummer, was
   attending Palo Alto High School, and guitarist Bob Weir was living in
   Atherton and jumping from prep school to prep school, finally finding
   Pacific High, where they let him do what he most wanted to do--play the
   guitar.
           Ron "Pigpen" McKernan was learning to play the harmonica and
   drinking wine in East Palo Alto, listening to the blues records his father,
   one of the Bay Area's top disc jockeys, played on radio station KRE. (A
   heavy drinker at a young age, Pigpen would later die from liver disease at
   the age of 27, after almost a decade with the band. His gravestone at the
   Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto reads "Pigpen was and is now forever
   one of the Grateful Dead.")
           Phil Lesh, who would become the band's bassist, was going to the
   College of San Mateo. Later, he lived on High Street in Palo Alto. It was
   there, one lazy afternoon, that Garcia would pick up a dictionary and happen
   upon "Grateful Dead," the motif for a cycle of folk tales which deal with
   the refusal of a group of people to bury the corpse of a man who had died
   without paying his debts, and the man who gives his last penny to pay for a
   decent burial.
           Many locals who were there remember the genesis and evolution of the
   band, from the garage band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, to
   the Warlocks, and finally the Grateful Dead. Pauline Swain, owner of Swain's
   House of Music, used to lend instruments to the band when they called
   themselves the Warlocks. She remembers Garcia asking her secretary how to
   spell "grateful." Michael Handler remembers seeing the Warlocks play at
   Magoo's Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park. Rodger "Cool Breeze" Williams attended
   Encinal School with Pigpen when his nickname was "Rims." And Karen
   Huntsberger remembers the day her older sister, Diane, brought Jerry Garcia
   home to meet mom and dad.
           "They were planning on getting married and my parents weren't too
   happy," Huntsberger, 46, remembers. "She and Jerry were going to run away,
   become beachcombers and play guitar. At the time Jerry was playing music and
   roaming around town in a truck," Huntsberger says. "He used to come over and
   play guitar in our living room."
           Her parents were relieved when Garcia married Palo Alto High School
   graduate Sara Ruppenthal instead.
           "Bill Kreutzmann and I were in the eighth grade together at Jordan
   Junior High," Huntsberger continues. "He was elected King of the Valentine's
   Day Dance."
           Not everyone enjoys reminiscing about the band. "That was so long
   ago," Swain says. But that's just the point. The Grateful Dead has managed
   to remain among the top-grossing touring bands for 28 years, always
   attracting new, younger fans. The Dead, it seems, will never die. And Palo
   Alto will always be their home.
           Our tour has to begin with Dana Morgan's Music Store, which was
   located at 534 Bryant St. near where Spanky's Cafe is today. It was here
   Garcia came in 1961, asking Morgan if he needed a guitar teacher. 
           "Jerry Garcia was the first long-haired guy I'd ever seen or had to
   talk to," says Handler, 45, who grew up in Atherton and used to ride his
   bicycle to Morgan's to buy strings and picks for his guitar when he was
   about 14. He now lives in Walnut Creek and writes for California Jazz Now
   magazine. "I was a little scared. He was an imposing character," Handler
   says of the music store salesman.
           But Handler soon heard Garcia solo on a guitar, and before long,
   asked him for some music lessons.
           "Morgan's was the hippest music store of the several in the area,"
   Handler says. "To me going there was an adventure; Morgan's was on the
   farthest reaches of my bicycle perimeter."
           As Grateful Dead textbooks tell the story, Garcia was strumming his
   guitar in the back of the store one New Year's Eve (1964 by most accounts),
   waiting for his students, but oblivious to the fact that none would probably
   show up given that it was New Year's Eve. Young Bob Weir was strolling
   through Palo Alto, perhaps looking for a bar that would let him in to see
   some folk music. He heard Garcia playing the guitar and stopped in to rap.
   They started talking about bluegrass music and about forming a band. Bob
   could play the guitar, Jerry could play the banjo and another guy they knew,
   a wild child called Pigpen, could play harmonica. Mother McCree's Uptown Jug
   Champions was born.
           In the space of a year, the Jug Champions had become the Warlocks
   and Dana Morgan Jr. was playing bass. The Warlocks borrowed their
   instruments from Dana Morgan Sr. and practiced in the store.
           Soon, though, Morgan was out and Phil Lesh was in. With his son out
   of the band, Morgan Sr. was getting tired of the Warlocks practicing in his
   store. Besides, he was worried they were starting to smoke marijuana, he
   said in a 1988 interview.
           "I decided I just hated the noise they were making," Morgan said in
   the same interview. "I can't understand why they're famous today. I put them
   out in the carport (to practice), but they kept sneaking back in. Finally, I
   got so tired of them, I sold the instruments." (Dana Morgan closed his shop
   in the early 1980s and retired. He died about three years ago.)
           More and more, the band began borrowing their instruments from
   Swain's House of Music. Pauline Swain, who still works in the music store at
   451 University Ave., says she and her husband, Robert, lent instruments to
   the band "because we liked to help young musicians." Sometimes the band
   would practice in the store. Other times, they would take the instruments up
   to La Honda, where they would hang out with Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.
   More often than not, "when the instruments were returned, they came back
   looking like they had been in a pig pen," says Swain, making reference to
   McKernan's nickname.
           Swain, who keeps a file of newspaper clippings on the Dead, also
   remembers when Garcia asked her secretary how to spell "grateful." He didnUt
   know if the word was "greatful" or "grateful.
           "All my secretary could say was, 'Jerry, with a name like that,
   you'll never go anywhere.'"
           The Swains used to cross the street to Saint Michael's Alley to hear
   the latest folk singers. While Swain doesn't recall seeing the Dead play
   there, she has vivid memories of Joan Baez sitting on the floor, singing and
   playing the guitar.
           Vernon Gates opened his popular coffee house in 1959 at 436
   University Ave., establishing what was then the pre-eminent venue for rock
   and folk in Palo Alto. By now, Gates has tired of talking about the Grateful
   Dead, but many longtime local Deadheads have fond memories of the early
   shows at St. Mike's.
           "Saint Michael's was a new world for us. It was off limits when we
   were 15, 16, 17 years old, but since my friend's sister was going out with
   Jerry, we got in," Handler remembers. "It was a real beat scene. We
   approached it tentatively.
           "Saint Mike's was more of a hangout, with poetry and art on the
   wall," Handler continues. "I had my first cappuccino there. It was the first
   place I remember seeing posters for LBJ, as the 'peace candidate.'"
           There was always much discussion about peace over at Roy Kepler's
   bookstore, the place to be for the politically active in Menlo Park and Palo
   Alto in the late 1950s and 60s. "Kepler's was a gift, a real Mecca of
   Meccas," says "Cool Breeze" Williams, an artist who now lives near Lake
   Tahoe. "Garcia and Pigpen both hung out there and played. Ron (Pigpen) would
   sit in the corner and play his harp."
           Ira Sandperl, who founded the Institute for the Study of
   Non-Violence and was later active in the civil rights movement with Martin
   Luther King Jr., worked at Kepler's from the beginning. Now 70, he still
   works there two nights a week. He remembers the young Grateful Dead with
   fondness--even though he likes to joke about how he was often tempted to
   throw them out of the store.
           "Roy (Kepler) always said they were nice kids, leave them be, but he
   didn't have to listen to them play the same notes over and over all day,"
   Sandperl remembers with a laugh. "It just wasn't the kind of music that
   appealed to me. They were awfully nice kids, though."
           Kepler's generosity allowed just about anyone to hang out at the
   tolerant, free and easy bookstore, Sandperl remembers. (Kepler even
   hesitated to fire an employee who was caught taking money from the cash
   register, Sandperl says. Finally, he let the employee go, but not without
   helping him find another job first.)
           Handler remembers Kepler's as "a real eye-opener, a slap in the face
   to parents and the establishment."
           Many longtime local Deadheads have memories surrounding Kepler's and
   Saint Mike's, the two bastions of "hipdom" on the Midpeninsula. Some
   people's memories of the band members, though, go even farther back.
           Pigpen, Handler and Williams all attended Encinal School in
   Atherton, when Pigpen's nickname was "Rims." Williams, who was good friends
   with Pigpen at the time, remembers them riding their bicycles to East Palo
   Alto to check out the blues scene.
           "We never got into the clubs, but we used to go over there and
   listen to jazz and blues and just hang out. Then we'd ride over to Saint
   MichaelUs Alley," Williams said. "It was a wonderful adventure--we didn't
   see stuff like this living in Atherton. He and I loved the blues.
           "We were sort of notorious, like hoodlums," Williams remembers with
   a chuckle, "but we were aware of the beat scene in Palo Alto."
           Handler remembers Pigpen as a "greaser." "I remember him roller
   skating in the hallways," Handler says. "Once, he pushed me into the girl's
   bathroom."
           After the eighth grade, Pigpen's family moved from Menlo Park to
   Palo Alto, where he attended Palo Alto High School.
           During this time, Bob Weir was jumping from school to school,
   briefly attending Menlo-Atherton High. "He used to walk around with a guitar
   on his back. I remember sitting in the boys' bathroom, our feet up on the
   urinals, and Bobby teaching me how to play guitar," says James A. Nelson
   III, then an Atherton resident. "He taught me G chords."
           Several important stops on a Midpeninsula Grateful Dead nostalgia
   tour include hangouts that have disappeared. 
           The first time Handler and a few of his friends were high in public,
   they ventured into Magoo's Pizza Parlor at 639 Santa Cruz Ave., now part of
   the Yuen Yung Chinese restaurant, for a bite to eat.
           It was May 1965, the scene at Magoo's was laid back and friendly,
   and there was a small stage in the corner.
           "My friend said, 'Look, it's those guys,' and it was Jerry from the
   guitar store, Dana Morgan, Pigpen and Bob Weir," Handler remembers.
           "They were playing an acoustic/electric combo with an acoustic feel
   to it. The place wasn't too crowded, but people seemed to like it."
           Handler doesn't remember if Lesh was there, but it was at Magoo's
   where Garcia asked Lesh if he would like to join the band. The gig at
   Magoo's on May 5, 1965 is regarded as one of the first Warlocks
   performances, according to Deadbase, the complete guide to Grateful Dead
   performances.
           Around the corner from Magoo's was Guitars Unlimited at 1011 El
   Camino Real, today the site of the Dancer's Loft. Here, Handler, then 16 or
   17, took guitar lessons from Garcia, who seemed happy for the work.
           "Jerry was having a beer at the place on the corner (today,
   Applewood Inn) and I went in and said hey, how about that lesson?" Handler
   says. "Jerry thought it over and said, 'OK, $5 for a lesson,' and we went
   next door to Guitars Unlimited."
           There, Garcia and Handler worked on open G tuning, three-finger
   picking, and Mississippi John's version of "Frankie and Johnny." The $5
   lesson lasted about an hour.
           Handler recalls asking Garcia where he learned to play, and Garcia
   told him from listening to records.
           Years later, backstage at a Grateful Dead concert at Frost
   Amphitheater, Handler ran into Garcia. "Remember me? I used to take lessons
   from you," he asked Garcia. Garcia then asked him how his guitar playing was
   coming. Handler said he was still working on it, and Garcia said, "Me too."
           Also gone is The Tangent, located on University Avenue above where
   Rudy's Pub is today. It was a popular coffeehouse, dark inside with wood
   tables and a small stage.
           Jerry Garcia and his first wife, Palo Altan Sara Ruppenthal, played
   there as a duet, as did the jug band, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions.
   Pigpen and Cool Breeze also frequented the place, performing and reading
   poetry.
           "Ron and I spent lots of time together there; he would be playing
   the harp and I'd be playing the kazoo," Cool Breeze says. "And we both did
   poetry readings. The Tangent was a major hangout."
           "It was like having your friends getting up and playing," Karen
   Huntsberger remembers. "It was so small the audience wasn't that far away
   from the people playing."
           Partying and jam sessions didn't only take place in bars and
   coffeehouses, though. Some of the most memorable gigs took place on Perry
   Lane, a little street located between Vine and Leland. This was Menlo Park's
   "little Bohemia." Author Thorstein Veblen lived there, and so did Ken Kesey,
   while he was writing "One Flew Over the CuckooUs Nest."
           Kesey and his cohorts, known as the Merry Pranksters, would often
   close down the street for the festivities. Garcia and Lesh would come there
   to party and jam.
           "They were big block parties, starting around noon and going into
   the night. Musicians would often show up," remembers Vic Lovell, 58, a Menlo
   Park psychologist who was at several of them. "We used to have Afro-Cuban
   jazz jam sessions."
           The parties would often have a theme, like a Hawaiian Luau or the
   "Perry Lane Olympics" on the Fourth of July.
           "I remember Phil Lesh (the Dead's bassist) showing up to play the
   jazz trumpet. That's where I got the idea he wanted to be a serious
   musician," Lovell says. "He was tall and lean, playing modern jazz."
           Palo Alto resident Bob Cullenbine was also there for the Perry Lane
   Olympics. "We had treasure hunts, games, partying, smoking and drinking," he
   says.
           There were also plenty of games and partying over at a large house
   on Santa Cruz Avenue, near Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. It was home to
   various members of the scene, including Garcia and his songwriting
   collaborator, Robert Hunter, today a lyricist for the Grateful Dead.
           The house, which still stands today, was known as the Chateau, and
   the site of numerous parties and jam sessions.
           "We used to sit on the front porch of the Chateau and jam. Jerry was
   always the leader, it was quite the weave," Williams says. "Jerry was the
   finger man."
           Lovell remembers the three-story house with lots of rooms as one of
   the first "hippie-group-living-together" situations. "They had loud, wild
   parties, and lots of people were drunk. Sometimes somewhat out of hand."
           One of the Grateful Dead's earliest Palo Alto gigs, on Dec. 11,
   1965, came seven days after they first performed as the Grateful Dead. Held
   in a metal warehouse on Homer Street, west of the railroad tracks, the event
   at the "Big Beat Club" was one of Kesey's Acid Tests.
           "There were lots of people with their faces painted and a real
   carnivalesque feeling," remembers Nelson, now a San Francisco songwriter.
   "It was like a burgeoning rave scene, a million raves thrown into one."
           "The Big Beat came out of nowhere. This is where everybody played,
   the next step from the coffeehouses," Williams says.
           By 1966, the next step for the Grateful Dead was San Francisco.
   Haight-Ashbury was the place to be for all the up-and-coming psychedelic
   bands. But before the Dead headed up the Peninsula, they played a concert at
   El Camino Park, across the street from the Stanford Shopping Center.
           Harry Ely, 73, now a reference librarian at the Menlo Park Library
   (he also plays the hammer dulcimer at the Palo Alto Farmers Market),
   remembers that concert well. In the early 1960s, he was going through a
   "very pleasant midlife crisis," hanging out at St. Mike's and chatting with
   Garcia, who gave guitar lessons to Ely's son, Edward. In the late 1960s, he
   would go up to San Francisco to hear the band play at the Fillmore, but he
   remembers with fondness the El Camino Park concert.
           "There was a very interesting organization called the Mid-Peninsula
   Free University (run by Vic Lovell) around here and they would have these
   kind of 'be-ins,'" Ely says. "As part of one of these, the Grateful Dead
   played on the back of a truck in the park there. I remember it being a
   beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon. I found out many years later that my
   companion (LaVerne LeRoy) was there as well. We were both there, but we
   didn't know each other then."
           Ely and LeRoy continue to attend Dead shows together. On New Year's
   Eve of 1989, they took LeRoy's mother, who was then 90 years old, to her
   second Dead concert, at the Oakland Coliseum. (She was 87 when she saw her
   first show at Frost Amphitheater.)
           The Grateful Dead don't play in Palo Alto anymore--not since
   Stanford University put an end to the Frost concerts four years ago. The
   band performs frequently at Shoreline Amphitheatre, though, and will return
   for three concerts May 21, 22 and 23.
   -30-
   
-------------------------

    very nice reading for a fryday afternoon !:')

    ...or a, drag, Mondane morning :^)
    
    thankx Fog!

   "I think basically the Grateful Dead is not for cranking out rock and roll,
   it's not for going out and doing concerts or any of that stuff, I think it's
   to get high. . . . To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget
   yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to
   become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of
   the universe. And I think every human being should be a conscious
   tool of the universe." --Jerry
 
   "I'd like be the Oil Filter Wrench of the Universe. O.K., Jer?" --Fog

:-)

    what's the date of that interview quote, Fog, any idea? 
    
    BTW ---I AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!
    
    rfb

    fog and jerry,,, yer such a tool!
    
    sorry couldn't resist a little Firesign humor...rfb

    yep, i'm wrenching with laughter...  
    
    					da ve

	Oh look, here come the punsters, plying their trade.

No, rfb, I don't have a grip on that date. Take my vise, you'd be better 
off dead...

:-)

    Don't crush that Dwarf, hand me the pliers....*;')

Shadow Valley Condoms: If you lived here, you'd be home by now.

A recent interview by Dave Gans of Don Pearson is available at:

CSCMA::D_SNA:[M_PECKAR]Pearson.txt 

It is 1219 lines, which is why I'm not posting it.

Highlights: Don talks alot about the new earpiece monitor system, Phil Lesh 
	    calls in to say hi, and there's some fun discussion on Meyer 
	    Sound technology.

>> >Hunter was on an aol conference...  It was sponsored by DC comics. 
>

a partial transcript:

Q Compare writing with JG vs Weir
A My communication with JG was semi-telepathic. Weir is more of a 
workhorse writer, but we did good tunes.

Q What is your favorite work you did for the dead?
A Probably the collection of songs about that guy in friend of the devil, 
deal, loser, wharfrat and Jack Straw to name a few...brown eyed women..

Q Did you study any contemporary comics to inspire the writing of Dog 
Moon
A Read alot of Vertigo, which JG turned me on to but Dog Moon was an 
idea Truman suggested could make a great comic book, specificaly Vertigo.

Q How long were you friends with JG and when did you start writing with 
him?
A We met when he was 18 and me 19. We were on the road pals and always 
sang and played guitar.  I miss him terrible.

Q Aside from Box, which you said pratically wrote itself, are there any 
other lyrics which you found flowed very smoothly from your pen?
A BE women, Mustve been roses, Ripple, To lay me down, Brokedown, Touch 
of grey.

Q Do you plan on doing any interactive stuff?
A Am learning HTML and working on designing a page

Q Any work on the last GD CD with liberty, so many roads etc?
A I think that with a great produer, someone outside the loop, a person 
of high technology and vision the trick could be pulled off to make the 
best sound recording yet.  Frankly.

Q Touring at all in the future?
A No tour plans

Q How re you coping with JG's death?
A He's Dead?  I don't think so!

Q Can you explain the muse in Jerry's elegy?
A The Muse, Menomny (sp?) is the goddess who inspires song.  Greek and 
Roman mythology. The singer in your heart.

Q what do you find yourself listening to these days?
A I loved Blind Melon, met the guys, felt there was hope in that 
direction. But Shannon was so crazy, you knew it couldn'y last.  That's 
the big thing     to last.

Q Bob, Spencer Splice here. What current or future projects can you tell 
us about?
A Hey Spencer, how's Fluncy Slink (reply) and hows the ocean going 
Broadcasting?  That's what we called Matthews and Betty Cantor when they 
helped up record Aoxomoxoa (Spencer & Founcy). 

Q Any plans to work with Dylan in the future?
A Yes

Q Who would you consider your biggest influence?
A WS Gilbert and Hank Williams

Q Could you tell us a litle bit about the band Comfort 
A Old friend Rodney Albin hooked mein on that one. We got crazy and 
burned out but we were hot and real.


Q Is there going to be a reunion or tribute concert?
A there's no clear answer. we're friends, we'll always be friends, we'll 
always work together in different configurations. it's what we do. we ARE 
the Grateful Dead. It's both a name and a circumstance.

 I was looking for a quote from Joseph Campbell and came across this old
 interview.  I really miss this stuff... 
 
 Reprinted from the Golden Road (edited by Blair Jackson) c. 1986 without
 permission. I downloaded it some time ago from I don't know where...
 
 
 MYTHOLOGIST CAMPBELL ON THE DEAD
 
 *Last issue we noted that renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell had attended
 one of the Dead's Kaiser shows in Oakland in February.  Shortly after that
 we received a tape of one of Campbell's lectures on mythology, sent in by
 Glenn Robert Lym of San Francisco.  Campbell's apparently extemporaneous
 remarks about his dead experience are reprinted below and offer further
 proof that you're never too old(Campbell is 80) to "get it."*
 
         I had a marvelous experience two nights ago.  I was invited to a
 rock concert.  [Laughter in the audience]  I'd never seen one.  This was in
 a big hall in Berkeley[sic] and the rock group were the Grateful Dead whose
 name, by the way, is from the *Egyptian Book of the Dead*.  And these are
 very sophisticated boys.  This was news to me.
         Rock Music has never seemed that interesting to me.  It's very
 simple and the beat is the same old thing.  But when you see a room with
 8000 young people for five hours going through it to the beat of these
 boys... The*genius* of these musicians- these three guitars and two wild
 drummers in the back... The central guitar, Bob Weir, just *controls* this
 crowd, and when you see 8000 kids all going up in the air together...
 Listen, this is powerful stuff!  And what is it?  The first thing I thought
 of was the Dionysian festivals, of course.  This energy and these terrific
 instruments, with electric things that zoom in... This is more than music.
         It turns something on in *here*[the heart].  And what it turns on
 is life energy.  This is Dionysus talking through these kids.  Now I've
 seen similar manifestations, but nothing as innocent as what I saw with
 this bunch.  This was sheer innocence.  And when the great beam of light
 would go over the crowd, you'd see these marvelous young faces all in utter
 rapture-for five hours!  Packed together like sardines! 8000 of them!  Then
 there was an opening in the back[of the auditorium] with a series of panel
 windows, and you look out and there's a whole bunch in another hall,
 dancing crazy.  This is a wonderful, fervent loss of self in the larger
 self of a homogenous community.  This is what it's all about!
         It reminded me of Russian Easter.  Down in New York we have a big
 Russian cathedral.  You go there on Russian Easter at midnight and you hear
 *"Kristos anesti!"* "Christ is risen!  Christ is risen!"  It's almost as
 good as a rock concert! [Laughter]  It has the same kind of life feel.
 When I was in Mexico City at the Cathedral of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
 there it was again.  In India, In Puri, at the Temple of the Jagannath-
 that means "the lord of the moving world"- the same damn thing again.  It
 doesn't matter what the name of the god is, or whether it's a rock group or
 a clergy.  It's somehow hitting that chord of realization of the unity of
 God in you all.  That's a terrific thing, and it just blows the rest away.

    re .-1
    
    Bobby controls the crowd? I know he sometimes spits on them
    while he's singing, but controls might be too strong a word 

    thank you , Debess.....i needed that *BADLY*
    
    rfb

    that was excellent

    cool guy.  Maybe I'll actually read that coffee-table book I got
    long ago.  

    
>    Bobby controls the crowd? 

	maybe he thought the guy moving around the most was controlling
	the crowd?  HAH!

    Interesting perspective though, that to a total neophyte Bobby "looked"
    like the leader.
    
    Great entry btw, thanks
    
    /rick
    

     Hey debessss
      Thanks for posting that.  I have always fely a dead show was a
    religous experience.  That review is a keeper for sure.
    
    	Mark

    
    Yeah, I've seen Bobby take charge on a given night.....must have been
    one of those nights.
    
    Hogan

that was pretty terrific...  :^)

just a few minutes ago i had been thinking of his quote about the 
tribal aspects of the whoel scene...

it still surprises me every so often, how much i really miss this...


			da ve

MICKEY HART & ROBERT HUNTER INTERVIEW


SUNDAY, JULY 7, 1996


Copyright 1996 America Online, Inc. and GD Forum 
On July 7th, Mickey Hart, Dennis McNally, Robert Hunter, and I sat down 
together in cyberspace for an interview. I from my office in San 
Francisco, Dennis and Mickey from the Furthur Festival at The Meadows 
Hartford, CT, and Robert Hunter from vacation in England. Spread out 
across 8 time zones, it's remarkable it went as well as it did. Mickey's 
bus was stuck in traffic, so Dennis filled in while we waited. This 
interview was link-botted to 2 IRC chat rooms, so in the continuing 
spirit of sharing, Deadheads beyond the walls of AOL were able to see 
what was going on, and a few questions from dead.net were asked as well. 
If you copy this transcript, please do so in whole, including the 
copyright notice. I'd like to thank the AOL Live staff for making this 
event possible as well. The interview has been edited to give the 
illusion of intelligibility. ;-) 
Cheers, Geoff Gould
GD Forum AOL keyword: dead
gdforum email: sweeney99@aol.com
Internet: http://www.ggould.com/gdforum/ furthur photos: 
http://www.ggould.com/gdforum/furthur.html 
********************************************************** 
Geoff Gould: OK everybody, welcome to the GD Forum interview with Mickey 
Hart and Robert Hunter; only Mickey's running a tad late. Dennis McNally 
is here 
and Robert Hunter too. Welcome Dennis and Robert 
Robert Hunter: aboard
Dennis McNally: Thank you kindly. It's beautiful here in muggy ole' 
Hartford, Ct.
Hunter: And cool and dark in the Welsh Marches at 10pm 
Gould: yes, Robert is logged in from England! 
Gould: While we're waiting for Mickey, perhaps you could tell us about 
your archives web project Robert.
Hunter: taking a vacation from it in England, where it is rather later 
than there
McNally: Memo to all: Mickey's just about here. 
Hunter: I just tuned in to talk to Mickey - havent seen the old buzzard 
in weeks
Gould: It's on www.dead.net, correct?
Hunter: the archive? Last I looked
McNally: Memo to Hunter: He's still a buzzard. But a happy, drum-playing 
one.
Hunter: Hi Dennis, keepin the phone hot? 
McNally: Robert, the phones are starting to melt in my very hands. How's 
Wales?
Hunter: Wales is magic. We went out specifically to get lost in hedge 
rows today
Gould: OK here's a question for Robert from dead.net: As I listen to 
Mystery Box, it strikes me again and again how beautiful Robert's words 
sound coming through women's voices. Robert, I understand that the 
lyrics were originally written in response to the "bare-bones rhythm 
tracks," but how much did the Mint Juleps' presence on this project help 
to shape the words? 
Hunter: The words were formed before the Juleps, molded after them 
McNally: Bob -- the only two things I know about Wales are Dylan Thomas 
and Portmerion, where they filmed The Prisoner. Are you up on either? 
Gould: Robert: I have read that "Only the Strange Remain" has been 
around for quite awhile. It reminds me of "Fletcher Carnaby," a tune you 
two did with David Freiberg on "Rolling Thunder." Is there any family 
resemblance, or is this just another personal interpretation? 
(Hallucination?) 
Hunter: they were written at the same time, roughly 
McNally: Cyber ladies and Cyber gents, and especially Hunter, here's the 
ole' buzzard himself. The traffic has parted, and Mickey's here. I'll 
shut up. 
Hunter: We were trying to find a standing stone called the ffordd 
cross--anybody able to pronounce that?
Gould: what's a standing stone?
Hunter: there are stones with inscriptions in forgotten languages, whose 
cultures have been lost to history. These interest me immensely, as they 
would Mick
Gould: we have a question for Robert: Where does the word "Sito" come 
from, and does it mean anything in particular? 
Hunter: It's the ethnic name of the rhythm used for the song. 
McNally: Sito actually came from Olatunji, really it's just a sound, but 
it has a certain kind of "can do" implicit meaning. It's a super-yes 
meaning. 
Sito started off as a sound, and has turned into a kind of latin-lover 
suave presonality. Sito, man.
Hunter: It occured that the sound of the word bore repetition 
McNally: Yeah, K9. It's a sound that feels good coming off the tongue, 
so you want to repeat it. When you have the good, you want to make more 
of the good. Mas good.
Gould: Can you tell us about Sangre de Christo? It seems like a thank 
you and a prayer at once
Hunter: When I left New Mexico, I headed for the Rio Grande on foot with 
the Sangre De Christos at my left all day crossing the desert. Wore out 
my boots. 
McNally: Sangre de Cristo is a prayer. A prayer to the spirit of the 
mountains, to almighty nature. I love the song. 
Hunter: Greeting, O Buzzed One!
Gould: Welcome Mickey
Hart: Hi,Hunter.It is true: the strange do only remain. Bob and I are 
well and happy and our music is. OK. Good to be down the road again. 
Hunter: Long time no see
Hart: And don't look away, full steam ahead (of course) and Oh My God,
I'm speaking in song titles -- and it's your fault. 
Question: Question for RH: Who's the Sandman? 
Hunter: The Sandman looks suspiciously like Neil Gaiman's character, but 
only in appearance and message. You never see the Sandman, babe, you 
only see the sand.
Gould: from dead.net: Do you think there will be any Furthur tours in 
the future?, and will you be a part of them if there are? 
Hart: So far, so good. There is life out here, and where there's life 
there should be music. I'm having a ball. It really is taking me on an 
adventure that I had anticipated -- musically, rhythmically, and 
socially. So the answer is, Sure. Love to.
Question: Robert, did you approach Mickey with ideas for Mystry Box, or 
did he approach you?
Hunter: vice versa
Gould: from dead.net: What has been the most exciting (or fulfilling) 
moment for you so far, in terms of the musicians on stage and/or in 
terms of audience reaction? Do any stand out in your memory? 
Hart: The first moment performing in front of people -- at Laguna Seca 
-- and doing it in the middle of a gale -- it was a great bonding 
moment. We took the dream live, and we did it under less than easy 
circumstances, which made it especially sweet. Now, on the road, it's 
been mutating and finding its own personality, and finding its own mind. 
We've seen this creature emerge, this rhythm snake, and we're nurturing 
it. We don't know what this band's capable of yet, its top end is, how 
good it will get, but it improves each night. So we still wait in 
anticipation of musical epiphanies that await us, just around the 
corner.
Gould: And now, let's not forget the tapers: 
Question: Mickey, how long are your sets running? In other words, how 
much tape will we need?
Hart: Simple answer: in this festival situation, it's just one plain 
simple hour. Unfortunately. Of course, there is some other good music 
around, to put it mildly. So bring lots of tape.
Question: any plans for a solo album Mr. Hunter? 
Hunter: doing a reading of Kerouac's Book of Blues for Ryko. 
Question: robert are you keeping the archives goin from the road, or are 
you just getting away from it all?
Hunter: I'm right on top of them, after a little trouble getting 
connected 
Question: Hunter; Who all are you writing with these days? 
Hunter: nobody at present
Gould: from dead.net: How is the final jam developing (from venue to 
venue)? 
Do you anticipate a point when y'all will really get to cut loose and 
JAM? 
Hart: We're trying to come to some kind of common ground, some sort of 
understanding, before we go off the deep end, which I anticipate to be 
fairly soon. We can't have 27 guitarists playing at once -- so we're 
finding combinations that yield special musical fruits. Like Jack Casady 
and BK (Baghiti Kumalo of Mystery Box) playing double bass together on 
Fire on the Mountain. I'm sure we'll be kicking out the jams now that 
the stage setup --the monitors, the house -- are stabilized. Remember, 
this is not the Grateful Dead, where all systems were on automatic. We 
now have to create a new sonic environment from scratch. What's emerging 
here is that this tour is developing a character, a sound, a feeling, a 
way of going, a spirit, of its own. And will continue to do so, as long 
as our enthusiasm prevails. 
Question: For Mickey: How much does the Mystery Box set vary from show 
to show?
Hart: What we're trying to do now is to personalize our space on the 
stage, physically and sonicall. We are rotating our sets and they're not 
consistent each night. We're adding songs, pulling them out, trying to 
get some kind of taper, some flow, some shape we're in an experimental 
stage right now. We're looking for a new form, so we're trying to stay 
flexible and quick on our feet. It's new rhythmns we're after. The good 
ones stay, and the bad ones...
Gould: Well Robert, I guess the title worries some; here's the next 
question: 
Question: Hey Hunter, The last song wasn't, was it? 
Hunter: I suggested they play the last song first - it would work in any 
position the last shall be first
Gould: from dead.net: Mickey, there is a tape kicking around with an 
early version of "Only the Strange Remain" (labeled '83 Club Front). Who 
performs the lyrics on the early versions?
Hart: I don't know where that came from. I wonder who snagged that tape? 
I'm singing the words, and the equipment guys are the backup choir -- 
Ramrod and Steve -- they were the cheapest I could get, and they were 
there. They were fun -- they weren't in tune -- they were just fun. It 
was great to just howl with the 'quippies. After all, you couldn't get 
any stranger than our quippies. This is the bottom line: you want 
strange people to sing a strange song. They covered it.
Gould: A question about the Olympics:
Question: Living in Atlanta we have heard that you are going to be in 
the music for the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics. Is 
this true? 
We hope so, looking forward to hearing it. 
Hart: I composed the music for the opening ceremonies along with Zakir 
Hussain, Giovanni Hidalgo, Chalo Eduardo, and Philip Glass. And it will 
be performed by a cast of thousands while we watch from the stands. No 
military drumming,. no war drums, no pomp and circumstance. It's a 
different thing -- no martial beat, but the opening will dance to the 
rhythms of the world. 
After all, the theme of the Olympics is the gathering of the tribes of 
the world together in sports, which is really rhythm. Which is being 
together in rhythm. Sports is rhythm.
Question: For Robert Hunter: Are you planning on taking in any of the 
Further Fest shows?
Hunter: I've brought my back stage pass in case there's a chance, but I 
really need this vacation. Nerve time
Question: Tell us about future recordings with the material you were 
working on
Gould: for either I guess
Hunter: Mick?
Hart: All I can say is there won't be too many piccolos on my next
recording. I'm sure about that.
Hunter: How's the health holding up? Is the fantasy happening the way we 
hoped?
Question: Mickey your show is a fantastic blend of many different art 
forms, 
do you plan to stay with this arrangement or continue to play with many 
other artists?
Hart: This tour is a piece of cake. We're only playing an hour a night, 
plus the jam. And the rhythms on the Mystery Box bus are nonstop. We've 
jammed on the beaches, by a river, and when we get to the desert we'll 
cover that too. The bus calms me and the rhythms buoy me. 
Hunter: And when you get home, let's start on the next record 
Question: hello mickey and welcome! will you be going on a separate tour 
with the full mystery box, or is there any chance that you might revive 
the planet drum tour in the near future?
Hart: It's like summer camp, rhythm camp, with Giovanni and Zakir. 
Giovanni has only one switch, on and off and it's mostly on. We play 
very sophisticated rhythm games on these hand percussion instruments we 
bring on the bus, and two new songs have sprung up from these 
spontaneous happenings. 
Hunter: Man, I wish I could be in two places at once! But that's why I 
needed a vacation. The music always happens on the bus! 
Hart: There are many smiles on the citizens of planet drum.
Gould: A question (deep in the queue) relating to a comment Robert made 
in the beginning
Question: ? for Robert: Do you think these stones have anything to do 
with Logos or visible language?
Hunter: No, I think they're lost tongues & cultures, plain and simple. 
Sobering.
Question: Mickey, Do you enjoy singing on in front of us all, or are you 
nervous?
Hart: I feel fine -- I'm actually enjoying it too much. God gave me a 
great gift to sing, and I'm just a vehicle for this gift (McNally: Yes, 
he's smiling as he says this).
Hunter: Bravo!
(McNally: Much laughter here in Hartford). 
Gould: One more he says
Gould: from dead.net: Mickey, over the years, the songs you have written 
often seem to be cutting edge, but I notice that you credit many other 
musicians as co-composers. How much of the actual melody lines for these 
songs have you composed?
Hart: It varies on different songs. Vince Welnick and Dave Jenkins 
contributed quite a great deal to the melodic content. Also the Mint 
Juleps. 
But it was definitely a collaborative effort. 
Hunter: Bye Mick. Hi, Dennis, how's tricks? 
Hart: Tricks is good. Hunter, The Mint Juleps are here and send their 
love. 
Hart: Gotta go. Greetings to the world from Planet Drum. And remember. 
It's the rhythm, stupid.
Gould: Thanks Mickey; a round of applause y'all 
Hunter: stay
[McNally takes over keyboard from Hart]
Gould: Dennis, how crazy is Furthur compared to GD? 
McNally: Furthur is much, much calmer than GD. The anxiety levels of the 
audience are down to a reasonable level, and the musicians are enjoying 
the hell out of themselves, each other, and the audience. As GD people, 
it's nice to share our audience with people like Jorma and David Hidalgo 
and company. The show is long and so is the travel but the rest is just 
fine. 
McNally: Hunter, Craig O'Leary is sitting behind me and says thanks for 
the tickets and Hello.
Hunter: Hi, Craig. Great usenet column this week from you in the Archive 
McNally: Craig to Hunter: Any time. New edition in a few days. 
Hunter: Great, I'm ready any time. Just gotta put up the journal and the 
mailbag
Comment: full steam ahead sounds like a metaphor for further..i like 
that sentiment
Hunter: It would do for that, or any impulsive effort forward 
Gould: Someone wants to know why you call Mickey the Buzzard 
Hunter: 'Cause he's the most buzzed man I know. Cheers 
Gould: Robert, did writing Mystery Box help you work things out about 
the current situation?
Hunter: Maureen's in the kitchen making tea, three floors below. I knew 
I should pee first. It was already mostly in the box by then oddest 
juxtapositions
Question: who is your fav band today?
Hunter: Mystery Box. Once in a lifetime. Hard to see how Mick can round 
up that crew again. See em for Krissake
Gould: any closing comments Robert? Any things you'd like to discuss 
here? 
Hunter: Just to say how good it is to feel the power of the internet to 
stretch around the world
McNally: And let me add that Mickey had a great time, and really did 
have to go feed RAMU (random access musical universe) before massaging 
him tonight. 
I'd better go, too, as my little media folk need care and feeding too. 
Nice to chat with you Robert, Geoff, and everybody else. Yours with love 
from FURTHUR...Cheers.
Gould: OK, I'd like to thank Robert Hunter, Mickey Hart, and Dennis 
McNally for being here today. Big round of cheers 
Gould: after-show party in the Rose Garden [wonder if that's the same
Rose Garden that I got married in in Hartford?!? - debess]
Hunter: Nice chatting with you Dennis, Geoff, folks. Later 

    remember...
    
    
                 IT'S THE RHYTHM, STUPID!!!!!! 
    
    
    
    
    i like that!  %^)
    
    rfb

    I caught the last 5 minutes of a piece featuring JG.
    Seems to be part of a series: Films That Changed mY Life:
    
    Jerry was talking about *Frankenstein,* and how it made him
    realize that things were weirder than he could ever imagine.
    
    The copyright date was 1995.  The show was on AMC last Friday night;
    I'd love to see the whole  thing.  Does anybody have a clue?
    
    /bruce

    Haven't seen this but have heard a bunch about it. Some series of 5-10
    minute interviews with people about their favorite movies or ones they
    consider to have changed their lives/outlooks. The one JG talks about
    is actually "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein".  

wow!  one of my all-time fav's!!!!!!  had all my favorite movie
bad guys...  Frankie, Drac and Wolfie!!  

i always thought Dracula was cool...  snappy dresser...  must've
been the cape...  :^)

			da ve

 
excerpt with interview of Mountain Girl by David Gans 1/29/97


Oakland, California

.
.
.
stuff cut about trial (you can read the whole transcript at 
www.levity.com/gans/MGInterview.html
.
.
.
Garcia: This is the importancy dialogue that we've all had a lot. It was 
so important to people to go to these shows. And the band recognized 
that and understood it innately. They understood it way back at the 
beginning, how important it was. We knew that. We knew it was important 
to people, because it was that break-out thing, the change in space, 
that change of mental space. And then there was the healing aspect that 
came along with it, and people would go to the shows for healing, for 
the uplift, for whatever that big cookie was that you would come away 
with that would put the big smile on your face. That was generated not 
just by the music, but also by the event. But I think it was, in large 
part, from the music.
Gans: Well, without the music, it wouldn't have become --
Garcia: -- it wouldn't have become an event, and that magical thing -- 
it just became so overwhelmingly positive and such a force of 
positiveness.
Gans: And then it became a burden.
Garcia: Well, at times, yeah. Terribly so. But the fact that it was a 
burden is no excuse for anything. I think that it's on everybody to stay 
polite and be excellent to each other. It's still part of the deal. Just 
because you're famous and a celebrity doesn't mean you have to turn into 
an angry person, even though sometimes it makes you angry.
My feeling about the importance of the Grateful Dead hasn't changed. 
It's still really important. And it's really important that people 
remember about what it was like before this band happened in this 
country. It was kind of grim.
I remember the first show we went and did in Chicago, and it was like, 
the late '60s, and there had been riots and the Chicago Seven... And 
every person backstage that wasn't one of us was a cop! There was 150 
armed cops backstage! They were not even out in the audience -- they 
were watchin' us! And the feeling that you got from that... you get so
 mad, because the attitude, and it's that attitude of "These people must 
be controlled." You know, that controlling attitude -- that's still 
alive and well in this country, and it's flourishing and passing new 
laws every day. And it's up to people that know better and that have 
seen the importance of being aware and being alert to that sort of thing 
to keep it going.
Gans: I still can't get over how that happened in the '60s, when it 
became public common general knowledge that people were having fun with 
LSD. And that the natural course of authoritarian America was to, 
without any legislative due process, simply make it illegal.
Garcia: And then they've gone and made everything illegal. I mean, is 
there something now that isn't illegal?
Gans: Sex and coffee.
Garcia: Well, the stuff that grows hair is now over-the-counter. They've 
decided that's okay. That's about the only thing that hasn't become more 
illegal. I think a lot of that is a control issue for pharmaceutical 
companies who've worked very, very hard to keep things illegal so they 
can sell Prozac.
Gans: Hmmm...
Garcia: I really think that there's a powerful pharmaceutical lobby at 
work. Also, the tobacco and alcohol industries refuse to allow marijuana 
to become legal. We used to think that marijuana was going to become 
legal next year, no problem, it's going to happen. And then, everybody 
kind of went to sleep about it.
Gans: Yeah.
Garcia: Now, it's going to be a terribly difficult fight, and it's up to 
voting citizens of conscience to stand up and speak their piece about it 
and say how they truly feel. This is the democratic process. 
Unfortunately, it feels really dangerous when you're doing that. And I 
just want to say that anybody who can do that has got my support.
***
Gans: Do you have any ideas about how the Grateful Dead community can 
continue to do the important thing in the absence of the band touring?
Garcia: Oh, I think there's a good deal of connectivity in the Grateful 
Dead community without the band. I think the online stuff has been 
tremendous, and Bob Hunter's done an incredible job of sort of revealing 
his personal self in his journal on dead.net. I think there's a lot of 
different places for some of that communicative energy to go. I feel bad 
that the events aren't going to be there. I miss the events; I'm an 
events junkie. I love events.
Gans: I guess that's what I was asking: Is there a way we can create an 
event that approximates that feeling of safety, importancy and healing 
like we were talking about? The most important feature of the Grateful 
Dead concert that I would tell a civilian was, "You're in the safest 
place on earth." And at its best -- it felt that way no matter where we 
were -- the Grateful Dead concert was a "time-out" space, as Bill Graham 
put it.
Garcia: Yeah, it was safe. Statistically, I think that could be shown, 
too. But I don't know -- I don't know what's going to become of that. I 
know that Deadheads are going to other bands -- of course, they should. 
The Furthur Festival is going to go back out this coming summer. The 
Furthur Festival was kind of hard for me. (A short laugh) I missed 
somebody during that.
Gans: Hmmm.
Garcia: It was bittersweet. I think a lot of people felt that way. I 
don't know what's going to grow up; I don't even know if it should. I'm 
uncertain as to what to say to that question. But I think we have to 
find the events that speak to our own hearts, whether it's church or 
community action or the folk music scene or hip-hop -- whatever it is 
that makes you feel good. But that connectivity at Grateful Dead 
concerts -- I feel that it's not lost. I think people that have found 
each other have found each other for good. It's not going to go away.
Gans: Yeah. I don't think the friendships are going to end, and I don't 
think that the valuable things we can do for each other will stop 
happening. We've just lost our principal excuse for gathering.
Garcia: Right. The attractant seems to have faded. You know, I'm a big 
proponent of rave scenes, myself, mainly because I love that loud, fast 
music, and quadraphonic, and get in there and there's a light show. But 
the fact that there's no bands at rave scenes -- it's all recorded music 
-- well, it's kind of interesting. There's no celebrity; there's no 
waiting for the guys to come on or go off. So, it's a lot less personal, 
but the good energy is there. I mean, you can have a good time at a 
taped party without live musicians. Sorry, musicians -- I don't mean to 
make it sound like... I'm going to catch fire for that one, I know. 
But...
Gans: Well, as a person who's both -- who does the Grateful Dead DJ 
thing at the Fillmore and a guy who plays in a band -- I see both sides 
of that argument. I see the up side of what you're talking about with it 
being pre-recorded music, and I also see there's something you get when 
there's live musicians onstage that you can't get otherwise. And in 
doing the Fillmore parties that Dick Latvala and I do, and all these 
other guys who are doing the local little clubs and stuff, the challenge 
is to have any sort of spontaneity at all when what you're doing is 
presenting a sequence of pre-recorded tunes. I do that by not planning 
ahead too much. We bring a stack of things we might play in a given 
evening, and then we let the event dictate to us as much as possible.
Garcia: Uh-huh. And you also know your medium really well. You know what 
you've got in the stack; you know the different vibes are that you've 
got recordings of that you can throw on in a second.
Gans: Well, sure, but that's as much an opportunity to manipulate as it 
is to respond...
Garcia: Well, I think that's valuable.
Gans: ...the trick is to respond...
Garcia: ...and keep it open...
Gans: ...rather than attempt to force it --
Garcia: I think that overly controlling people should try to stay out of 
it. One of the biggest problems the Grateful Dead have had over the 
years is getting next to overly controlling influences and... and 
becoming controlling themselves. I think that looseness and spontaneity 
go hand-in-hand with fun, and --
Gans: There's the Prankster ethic in a nutshell. [both laugh]
Garcia: -- and it's important to focus on fun. I know there's a huge 
number of young Deadheads that I haven't met who have tasted the fun, 
and I encourage them all to pursue that as a lifetime thing. But 
everybody's got to be kind to each other, and don't have too many big 
expectations for the remainder of the band to pull anything out of their 
hat right now. There's a process going on. I don't know what it is; 
they're all in a state of change, and I think they're a bunch of tired 
puppies, too. They gave and gave, and uh... it's going to be interesting 
to see... how the rest of their lives are led. The Grateful Dead was one 
of those things that was greater than the sum of its parts. 
Self-conscious as it was, there was that tremendous unconscious side 
that the reckoning still hasn't been made for all the things that have 
happened because of the Grateful Dead. We don't even know what's been 
set in motion. And I'm watching; I'm paying attention.
Gans: In a very real sense, each of us had both the power and the 
obligation to manifest the Grateful Dead spirit as we see fit, and that 
there never really has been a central dogma to which we must adhere. And 
each one of us, no matter how far-flung we are, really does have the 
power to keep the Grateful Dead alive, in a way.
Garcia: I think we all have the ability to keep the good spirit alive. 
And that's about all you can do. It's guys like you who have the killer 
tape library that can come up with the gems from the past. That's been 
pretty meaningful to me. And I'm very happy that that can happen, 
because it's, you know... I listen to that stuff and it's -- it's deep, 
and it matters a lot. And it's really weird to have that be shared with 
so many people, but that's just the way it is, now. I'm grateful that 
they recorded everything. I hope everybody buys the stuff and keeps 
dead.net going and encourages what's left of the organization to keep it 
together, keep the faith. I think everybody needs a lot of encouragement 
right now about the whole thing. Life is a confusing place, post-band.
Gans: Well, like Bob Hunter said through Mickey, "We'll know the next 
step when it comes."
Garcia: Yeah! And I know that there's a lot of intelligence at work in 
this situation. And I think that whatever happens is going to be 
manifest some time soon. 

    that was freakin grate! My sentiments EGG_ZACH_LY! Thanks Debess.
    
    rfb

    ahh yes
    
    the gathering of the tribes

    thanks Debess, made my day, I would like to attend those 
    shows, David Gans does...

    
    I've always been pretty hip towards mtn girl.
    

	a recent interview Gans did with Phil can be found:

	www.levity.com/gans/Lesh.970402.html