Grateful Dead

Long Strange Tech, part 1 supplementary notes

by Jesse Jarnow 

Since our newest Deadcasts focus on the Grateful Dead and technology, there are perhaps unsurprisingly a number of online resources to point towards. In this episode, we called back to a few earlier episodes, especially the Nedcast, Bear Drops: LA ‘66, and In & Out of the Garden: Madison Square Garden, 10/83. 

Ned Lagin was the Dead’s primary conduit to the deep computer world in the mid-1970s, with his Seastones project creating a connection between the Dead and the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. The recent edition of Seastones (and Ned’s newer album, Cat Dreams), as well as Ned’s writing and visual art, are available via SpiritCats.com. NedBase is a chronicle of Ned’s musical career, and includes a recently uncovered photograph of the full Seastones ensemble at play in June 1975.

Frank Barron, quoted in this episode, was the author the influential 1965 article, “The Creative Process and the Psychedelic Experience.” Stephen Siff’s book, Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience is a first-rate scholarly study of LSD in the years between its 1943 invention and 1966 criminalization.

Andy Moorer, veteran of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, went on to compose the THX Logo Theme (known as “The Deep Note”) and found the noise reduction company Sonic Solutions. His most recent project is The Man in the Mangroves.

John Markoff is the author of What the Dormouse Said How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry and the recent Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand.

Erik Davis is the author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information and other fine books.

As always, we’ve been helped immeasurably by David Gans, this time featuring his 1991 interview with Owsley Stanley, originally published in Conversations With the Dead.