The Myth of the Grateful Dead

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

Moderators: Clemsy, Martin_Weyers, Cindy B.

Locked
dark_star_crashes
Associate
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri May 13, 2005 11:28 pm

Post by dark_star_crashes »

This link is to a PDF version of an analytical/interpretive essay I wrote titled "The Myth of the Grateful Dead". It is an 8,700 word interpretation of the music of the Grateful Dead according to Joseph Campbell's A Hero With A Thousand Faces. Enjoy...

http://suchfriendsaredangerous.50megs.c ... 20Dead.pdf

one love,
chris

_________________


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dark_star_crashes on 2005-05-13 19:34 ]</font>

Martin_Weyers
Working Associate
Posts: 4054
Joined: Mon Mar 25, 2002 6:00 am
Location: Odenwald
Contact:

Post by Martin_Weyers »

Thanks for sharing your article, Chris! Unfortunately the link doesn't work.

Welcome to the deadhead forums!
Works of art are indeed always products of having been in danger, of having gone to the very end in an experience, to where man can go no further. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

dark_star_crashes
Associate
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri May 13, 2005 11:28 pm

Post by dark_star_crashes »

Is there somewhere on the Foundation where I can upload the file as a resource?

Mark O.
Working Associate
Posts: 1221
Joined: Sun Dec 08, 2002 4:52 am

Post by Mark O. »

Hi Chris,

You can nominate a resource here at the JCF Mythological Resources page. Unfortunately, the JCF doesn't make a policy of hosting external resources on its own servers (it will gladly provide a link to a file or website hosted elsewhere). Typically, the text and audio/visual files located at JCF.org are generated by the JCF or JCF affiliates.

Yours,

Mark

Calaf
Associate
Posts: 89
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2003 5:00 am
Location: Anchorage, AK

Post by Calaf »

Dark Star:
I love the Dead. (great name, by the way--very good article).
Thanks for sharing!
"Dharma is the best thing for people, both in this life and in the next."<br>-The Buddha, from the Agganna Sutra

Ken O'Neill
Associate
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2005 2:05 am

Post by Ken O'Neill »

There's a three CD set alive and well in the Grateful Dead taper/trader world of Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, and Joseph Campbell. Yep, all three of them.

In 1982 The University of California Extension, San Francisco, hosted an all day program held at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in SF featuring all three. Audio is not the best due to the acoustics of the hall. Joe speaks on the Dionysian as I recall.

According to Mickey Hart's book, Joe attended the Dead concert held in Berkeley later that evening, coming away from it declaring the Dead to be a modern Gnostic movement.

The CDs include round table discussion, a Joe talk, and short concert.

It's noteworthy that when Hart asked Garcia to meet Campbell, Garcia already knew of him from having read Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake.
Ken O'Neill

bodhibliss
Working Associate
Posts: 1659
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2003 5:00 am

Post by bodhibliss »

On 2005-12-01 08:17, Ken O'Neill wrote:
There's a three CD set alive and well in the Grateful Dead taper/trader world of Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, and Joseph Campbell.
Say Ken, if you - or anyone - has a line on where to find a copy of these CDs, please drop me a PM. The event, of course, is legendary - but i've been part of the Dead scene for years and have traded my share of bootlegs, but have never come across these

(not that the Grateful Dead thought of fans recording concerts as making "bootlegs" - Jerry's theory was "once we're done with the music, you can have it" - so the Dead set up a special section for tapers near the sound booth at all shows).

I don't really trade casettes much anymore - now that the Dead have opened their vault, it makes sense to get the CD versions of shows - much better sound quality than from a tape recorder strapped to someone's back. Even then, though, plenty of bootlegs still circulating (in fact, a friend just gave me a CD he burned of portions of the Jerry Garcia tribute i attended at the U.C. Berkeley's Greek Theater last September)

... however, i've never even heard rumors that bootlegs of the "Jerry and Joe Show" existed ...

thanks
bodhibliss


_________________


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Bodhi_Bliss on 2006-03-17 19:27 ]</font>

Rainbow Tara
Associate
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 9:17 pm
Location: PA

Post by Rainbow Tara »

Hello Fellow Heads,

"There's a three CD set alive and well in the Grateful Dead taper/trader world of Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, and Joseph Campbell. Yep, all three of them."

Aaargh, I know this is a late reply, but I've been searching for this for well over a decade!!! Please let me know how/where to get a hold of it if you can! I'm out of the tape trading loop by now, so I have nowhere to start looking...

Peace
Rainbow "The Dead Changed My Life" Tara



littlewing
Associate
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2005 9:08 pm
Location: coastal NC

Post by littlewing »

Thank you for this link (which now works!) Am looking forward to having time to read it.

Seems to me Dead philosophy is as good a life guide as any out there. So I tell people it's one of my religions.... 8)

I use David Dodd's GD lyric site a lot (you'd think I'd have 'em all memorized by now). Love the annotations... love to see what other people read and get from the lyrics. Hey, now. They're no more vague than the Koran, Bible, Upanishads... Good lyrics hand you the feeling; how you interpret is left to your own application to your own life. All the best lifeguides are like that, aren't they? And like those other guides, if you interpret in a harmful way, you trip and fall. How human.

lw

littlewing
Associate
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2005 9:08 pm
Location: coastal NC

Post by littlewing »

Dark Star Crashing, are you still out there?

Got time to read your essay. Will be thinking about it for a long time; so 'twas good for me! When I hear the lyrics (which playing Dead CD's is a way of life, so that's mighty frequent), I'll throw your interpretations into the mix. Of course, they work. The thing is about Dead lyrics... and if my poetry teachers lead me right... any good lyrics, they hold many interpretations. Wherever you are on your journey, lines from the lyrics will stick out and teach; soothe; bang you on the head. Whatever you need to get over a hump or sit with a feeling, these timeless lyrics are there for you. So St. Stephen for instance works to illuminate wherever you are in your own journey; and can be interpreted in many ways.

Joe pointed out the Dead share their name from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. My understanding is they opened a dictionary and landed on a ritual dubbed 'The Grateful Dead'. Indeed, if one is to live up to their name, knowingly or unknowingly, this band sure has! Much of the credit for the deep spiritual quality goes to a shared hippie experience that was a hero's journey. Getting on the bus, in That's It For The Other One, is literally Ken Kesey's bus Furthur driven by cowboy Neill Cassidy as the song says. The journey into dropping what you were taught life was about and exploring it together with your chosen family, your friends; using mind altering substances to get out of your ego and experience differently. Or as Jimi, another family member said, just Experience. Mind altering substancves were an important part of that journey; and have been used for such since the beginning of human society on the planet. That it ended up creating hard problems in the hippie generation may be that it didn't have the controls tribal societies put on them.

Re: the religious meanings in the lyrics, you got strong Christian values from them; and that is not incorrect. It is just too limiting. Many Biblical references (or Koran, Torah references) spring from the background the writers grew up with. They tell the stories well, as they always have. But they were never meant to sell a religion; or even a deity. At Dead shows, I can be wildly Dionysian and deeply spiritual, feeling at one with everyone else there. That oneness is, as Campbell says, something we all are working towards feeling. But it's not necessarily a oneness with a God or gods. Personally, I think it's the place where we know who we are in relation to our species: equal; no one ego or importance of one individual over another, including self. The love we want is the love to give all others. That is the tone of a successful Dead show.

just a few thoughts,

lw
littlewing

Clemsy
Working Associate
Posts: 10645
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:00 am
Location: The forest... somewhere north of Albany
Contact:

Post by Clemsy »

On the notion of where the name comes from...

Some years ago, out of curiosisty I looked 'grateful dead' up in an encyclopedia and found references to folktales. This is what Wikipedia has to say:
The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. Some claim it was a Funk & Wagnalls, others, the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book Of the Dead), but according to Phil Lesh, in his biography (pp. 62), "...Jer (Garcia) picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary...(and)...In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "A song meant to show a lost soul to the other side."[8] According to the Garcia biography, Captain Trips by Sandy Troy, the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time.
Britannica reflects what i had found:
in folktales of many cultures, the spirit of a deceased person who bestows benefits on the one responsible for his burial. In the prototypical story, the protagonist is a traveler who encounters the corpse of a debtor, to whom the honour of proper burial has been denied. After the traveler satisfies the debt, or, in some versions, pays for the burial, he goes on his way. In…
There seems some disagreement on whether the term can be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead... most of the hits linking the two mention Campbell.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

littlewing
Associate
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2005 9:08 pm
Location: coastal NC

Post by littlewing »

Of course, which World Language Brittanica edition... which would not be the B. Encyclopedia.... Amazing they could remember any of that on DMT.... But then, they performed for days on end on acid and etc..

So I could probably pull out some reasonable explanation of how they pull off that phenom they did (still can do, yes, folks, even without Jerry). But really it doesn't diminish the magic it truly is. The theme that runs thru all the lyrics of all Dead music is that we all die so many times per lifetime. Loves die; lies die; grief dies; naiveity dies; innocence dies; old beliefs die. Dying isn't 'good' or 'bad'; it's the soul of life! As I come home to the dance, I have sometimes brought joy; sometimes grief; even jealousy once. (The guy I was going with flew in an old flame at the last minute.) Have gone sometimes alone; sometimes with crowds of friends. However I go, I bring my life in with me and dance it thru the music. The dance says 'how human we all are!' as we relate to, say, the wino sharing somebody's wine on the street (yours cause we done shared all of mine). In this state of humility, we all just keep on dancing. Because that's what you do with the little/big deaths in your life. You feel close to those around you; and keep on dancing. So, as Bob pointed out at the Family Reunion celebrated 7 yrs after Jerry's death, WE are all the Grateful Dead. They are the band.

lw

Sister Fennario
Associate
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:43 pm

Post by Sister Fennario »

Chris/darkstar -- are you still out there? I'd love to read the paper you posted a link to but my access has been denied. Is it my computer or has something changed since your initial post/link?

Gratefully, Mary

Clemsy
Working Associate
Posts: 10645
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:00 am
Location: The forest... somewhere north of Albany
Contact:

Post by Clemsy »

Hi Mary and welcome to the JCF Forums!

I tried the link and it opened just fine. You may want to check the security settings in your browser (?)... If you re trying from work, their filters may be in your way.

Any way, here's something you Deadheads may be interested in: Phil Lesh just performed in nearby Glens Falls, NY. One wonders if the proximity to Saratoga Springs wasn't the inspiration, as Trey Anastasio has been sorta confined to the area following a drug bust last spring (He's doing rehab and community service. Ran into him in the supermarket parking lot last summer.) Anyway, Trey played the whole show. I foolishly missed the concert, but a good friend who was had the cds two days after the show and burned me a copy. Simply outstanding.

Check out the set list: Set 1: Alabama Getaway, Pride of Cucamonga, Friend of the Devil, Deep Elem Blues, Deal, Bird Song, Bertha
Set 2: *@Shine, Viola Lee Blues> Cumberland Blues> Viola Lee Blues> Cumberland Blues> Viola Lee Blues, @Plasma, Unbroken Chain, Dark Star> Wharf Rat> Dark Star> Help on the Way> Slipknot!> Franklin's Tower
E: Donor Rap / Intros, Box Of Rain

YouTube has some of the show. Here's Bertha with other links to the side. Enjoy.

The myth goes on...

Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

Locked