There are several words which, when uttered, indicate I am about to have a miserable time. The following list is by no means exhaustive*, but here is a sample: Disneyland, Las Vegas, John Mayer, The Grateful Dead.
This past Memorial Day Weekend**, I combined them all. I went to Disneyland, then Vegas, to see John Mayer perform Grateful Dead songs. To celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday, I set myself up for certain misery. By the end of the weekend, I’d grown to appreciate all of those words. I even made it home in time before the end of Hot Topic’s 30% off sale on tie-dye Mickey Mouse t-shirts.
Let me give you a brief overview of my general attitude toward the aforementioned five words:
I “get” Disneyland. In small doses it’s not always miserable, especially now that I have a kid and nieces and nephews. The joy comes from witnessing theirs.
I “get” Las Vegas, but it’s not for me. Vegas is the Drake of cities, and anyone who enjoys it needs to get “Meet the Grahams”ed. No one there is truly happy. They are on edge. Feeding addictions that will never satisfy them. Indulging in ways they wouldn’t elsewhere. And yet there I was this past Memorial Day Weekend, heading to Delilah with all of my ice, heading to Delilah with all of my ice.
I “got” John Mayer, when “No Such Thing” was popping. He was the epitome of Bush-era basic male whiteness. He was easy to hate then, but it feels like he’s spent at least two decades atoning for all the bland poppiness. I don’t get it but I do.
I never “got” The Dead, before. They were from a different time. I was born in 1991. Frat boy music in my era was the Chainsmokers and David Guetta—who were staying at the Encore and DJing the Beach Club this past Memorial Day Weekend, respectively—not Phish and Dave Matthews Band. I grew up listening to Ludacris, who was performing at Zouk Night Club, despite a wasted shirtless bro outside the Palazzo yelling, “It’s not 2005 anymore!” I loved ska, but jam bands were embarrassing. Jerry Garcia was a Ben & Jerry’s flavor. The skull logo was a corporate commodity, like mouse ears. Seeing it on a t-shirt or bumper sticker meant you were in the presence of a rich old white person who once believed themselves to be rebellious. The Dead didn’t seem to have a definitive album to latch onto, and I didn’t want to dig through the bootlegs.
After seeing Dead & Company at The Sphere, I kind of get it all, now. Not really, but kind of. I at least have a better idea of how someone could fall so wholeheartedly into the subculture.
For Passion of the Weiss, I wrote an article about how that subculture is one of the first to play out over the course of nearly 60 years. The essay is also about how extending the life of an artist through recordings, even after they’re dead, is a relatively new phenomenon. We now have a new technological revolution to reckon with that makes everything stranger and more complicated. Yeah, I’m talking about A.I., sorry.
Music has probably been around for most of human history. It might predate language. It’s innate. No Dead fan would argue that the primary function of a musical artist is to channel vibrations from some sort of universal consciousness. Everything is a vibe these days, but vibrations weren’t captured in recorded form until the late 19th, early 20th century. We spent millenia performing and exchanging musical experiences without preserving their recordings.
Recorded music didn’t become widely accessible and broadly commercialized until the 1950s and 1960s. During this time—which feels like ancient past but isn’t—we began to associate songs with individual artists, whether or not they were the author. Many artists recorded renditions of folk songs or covers, because that’s what music had always been. In a different century, Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” would have literally blown through the wind wherever he went: his own spin on a common tune with no traceable originator. Because it became a hit, people associate it exclusively with him.
A.I. presents more copyright issues that will play out in years to come, as the courts, legislature, and industry all inevitably fail to keep up pace with the technology. What we know for sure is that we now have the capability to extend artists from throughout the history of recorded music, albeit in altered form, indefinitely. This no longer means that the sounds and stories of musicians carry on in our minds, hearts and memories. If you type the right font, or use the right filter, The Dead could now literally live forever.
Is that what we want? Is that what we need? Or do we just want to stare at screens regurgitating zombified forms of the past century’s pop culture and not think too hard about it. I’m not really sure. Here’s the link to the article I wrote: https://www.passionweiss.com/2024/06/04/dead-and-company-the-sphere-las-vegas/
Click it and read if you dare. See if you can find the part I reused in this post! Thank you again for reading this newsletter.
*and, in fact, the opposite list might be easier to complete
**another trio of words which, if travel is involved, indicates probable misery