We examine the emergent interdisciplinary world of Dead Studies & pay a virtual visit to the annual Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus, hearing presentation excerpts from a spectrum of musicologists, historians, psychologists, and more.
Dead Studies supplementary notes
by Jesse Jarnow
The emergent field of Grateful Dead Studies is as rich and surprising as the band on which it focuses. Preparing for its 25th annual meeting this February, the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus has provided a home to Dead scholars for years, gathering at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association conference in Albuquerque. In this episode, we visit the virtual 2020 edition of the Scholars Caucus, but I’ve been attending for years and wrote about The Deadologists a few years ago for Relix.
More recently, the Grateful Dead Studies Association--organized by historian Nicholas Meriwether--has been meeting as part of the national Popular Culture Association conference, as well as publishing Grateful Dead Studies, a scholarly journal dedicated to the Dead. Several full issues are available to read on their site.
Sociologist Rebecca Adams began studying the Dead in the late ‘80s and co-edited Deadhead Social Science: You Ain’t Gonna Learn What You Don’t Wanna Know, composed of chapters written by the students she brought on tour, also now back in print and available as an ebook.
Rhoney Stanley is the author of Owsley and Me: My LSD Family.
Brent Wood is the author of the recent book, The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead Mystery Dances in the Magic Theater.
Musicologist Melvin Backstrom’s writing about the Dead is available via his website, including his Ph.D dissertation, “The Grateful Dead and Their World – Popular Music and the Avant-Garde in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-1975,” where he also offers Dead-specific guitar lessons.
Julie DeLong is the organizer of So Many Reads, a Grateful Dead book club.
Corry Arnold is the proprietor of a network of fantastic sites and blogs dedicated to independent scholarship about the Grateful Dead and the Bay Area music scene. Chicken On A Unicycle (his project with Ross Hannan) provides definitive dates for many ‘60s and ‘70s Bay Area venues, band family trees, chronologies, and more. The blogs Lost Live Dead, Hooterollin’ Around, and Rock Prosopography 101 all provide further scholarship, with the stories very often coming alive in the comments sections.
Comment
Sloane's paper
Is there any chance of Isaac Slone's paper being added here, or found elsewhere? Excellent work (no citation needed) as always.
That Fire on the Mountain chord
I don’t know, I’ve always heard an E major chord there. Played like this: xx6454. Pretty close to a C#m but that’s not what I’m hearing. And with respect to Rich I don’t think it’s an AMaj7.
“... and now it's too damn hot."
Jesse, Jesse, Jesse... After reading Heads, I was convinced you'd been following me around through the 80s and 90s, back and forth, coast to coast, from those magical Domestic Resurrection Circuses up in Glover back home to Veneta for the Country Fair. But having heard you call it the "Ory-GONE Country Fair," now I'm guessing not. Just plain Orygun, like when Bobby says, "This might be the first time I've been to Orygun and it didn't rain, and now it's too damn hot."
Seriously, though, I loved the book (Hell, I LIVED the book), and I'm loving these podcasts, too!
Jesse, Jesse, Jesse... After reading Heads, I was convinced you'd been following me around through the 80s and 90s, back and forth, coast to coast, from those magical Domestic Resurrection Circuses up in Glover back home to Veneta for the Country Fair. But having heard you call it the "Ory-GONE Country Fair," now I'm guessing not. Just plain Orygun, like when Bobby says, "This might be the first time I've been to Orygun and it didn't rain, and now it's too damn hot."
Seriously, though, I loved the book (Hell, I LIVED the book), and I'm loving these podcasts, too!
I read this in Melvin B's Thesis>Their use of such musical techniques
diminished somewhat in 1971 after the firing of second drummer Mickey Hart<
Mickey was fired???
I don’t know, I’ve always heard an E major chord there. Played like this: xx6454. Pretty close to a C#m but that’s not what I’m hearing. And with respect to Rich I don’t think it’s an AMaj7.