Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads - Softcover

Shenk, David; Silberman, Steve

 
9780385474023: Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385474024 ISBN 13: 9780385474023
Verlag: Crown, 1994

Inhaltsangabe

For fifty years and more than two thousand shows, the Grateful Dead have been earning the "deadication" of more than a million fans. Along the way, Deadheads have built an original and authentic American subculture, with vivid jargon and rich love, and its own legends, myths, and spirituality.

Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads is the first map of what Jerry Garcia calls "the Grateful Dead outback," as seen through the eyes of the faithful, friends, and family, including Bill Walton, Elvis Costello, Tipper Gore, Al Franken, Bob Bralove, Dick Latvala, Blair Jackson, David Gans, Bruce Hornsby, Rob Wasserman, and Robert Hunter. Skeleton Key puts you on the Merry Pranksters' bus behind the real Cowboy Neal, uncovers the origins of Cherry Garcia, follows the dancing bear on its trip from psychedelic artifact to trademarked icon, and unlocks the Dead's own tape vault.

Informative reading for the new fan or the most grizzled "tourhead," Skeleton Key shines throughout with Deadheads' own stories, wit, insiders' knowledge, sincere appreciation of the music of the "band beyond description," and the diverse and soulful culture it inspires.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DAVID SHENK is the author of six books, including The Genius in All of Us, Data Smog, and The Immortal Game. His book The Forgetting inspired an Emmy-winning PBS film of the same name and was featured in the Oscar-nominated film “Away From Her.” He has advised the President’s Council on Bioethics and contributed to The New Yorker, National Geographic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Gourmet, Harper's, Spy, and NPR. Shenk lives in Brooklyn. More at davidshenk.com.

STEVE SILBERMAN is an investigative reporter whose feature articles have appeared in Wired, The New Yorker, and many other national magazines. He is also the author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (Avery/Penguin 2015) and one of Time's selected science tweeters (@stevesilberman). More at stevesilberman.com.

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man's tribute to Jerry Garcia, 1942-1995

        Skeleton Key:  A Dictionary for Deadheads is 400 pages of lore, history, interviews, and thoughts on the Meaning of It All, from what guitarist Jerry Garcia calls "the Grateful Dead outback" - the diverse global community that is nourished by the music of the Grateful Dead and the shared experience of Dead shows.

        Skeleton Key is a labor of love and "deadication" by Deadheads David Shenk and Steve Silberman, published by Doubleday/Main Street Books in 1994.  Skeleton Key celebrates the magic, humor, and significance of the Deadhead community, while it investigates the history of the Long Strange Trip - from the days of be-bop jazz and the Beat Generation writers whose literary adventures inspired many Deadheads' own on-the-road journeys, to now, when Deadheads swap

Aus dem Klappentext

man's tribute to Jerry Garcia, 1942-1995

Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads is 400 pages of lore, history, interviews, and thoughts on the Meaning of It All, from what guitarist Jerry Garcia calls "the Grateful Dead outback" - the diverse global community that is nourished by the music of the Grateful Dead and the shared experience of Dead shows.

Skeleton Key is a labor of love and "deadication" by Deadheads David Shenk and Steve Silberman, published by Doubleday/Main Street Books in 1994. Skeleton Key celebrates the magic, humor, and significance of the Deadhead community, while it investigates the history of the Long Strange Trip - from the days of be-bop jazz and the Beat Generation writers whose literary adventures inspired many Deadheads' own on-the-road journeys, to now, when Deadheads swap

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From American Beauty to the Zone: American Beauty    
Album #6, released in November, 1970.   David Grisman plays mandolin on "Ripple" and "Friend Of The Devil".

Robert Hunter, lyricist, on American Beauty:
"American Beauty shows the GD playing, singing and songwriting skills in full stride.  We had the confidence of a successful record (Workingman's Dead) behind us, plus a shared sense of direction that was in tune with the times.   The Band, The Byrds, Poco, CSNY & Dylan were all exploring traditional music augmented by the power of rock & roll.   Psychedelia had had its moment (marking the GD forever in the public perception) and we were continuing to evolve what we believed to be the logical next step in American music, hence the title.

There is an underlying tone of sadness to American Beauty (Phil's father had just passed away, Jerry's mother was dying in the hospital as the result of an auto accident) reflected in the colors of such tunes as "Box Of Rain," "Brokedown Palace," "Attics of My Life" and "Ripple."  On the up side, "Sugar Magnolia/Sunshine Daydream" reaffirmed the important business of just getting stupid and being in love, while "Truckin'" announced, as early as 1970, what a long, strange trip it already seemed to have been.  This didn't refer only to the GD, but to the ten years of bluegrass, old timey & jug band configurations leading up to the rock & roll departure.  Grateful Dead Live  '71 , Europe '72 & the Garcia solo release (also '72) staked out the GD's musical territory in a definitive way.  It wouldn't be until 1975 and Blues for Allah that we would break with that feeling and extend the territory into less definable musical spaces, neither psychedelic nor tradition-based.  This amorphous state of transition lasted until 1985, when In the Dark once again found us in command of our direction in a way comprehensible to the public.

American Beauty remains the favorite studio record of many fans and members of the band, mustering, as it does, all the resources at our command in a futile but game response to the rising tide of commercially safe music which had already begun a counter mission to recover its monopoly of the American airwaves and record racks in the '70's."  

Cherry Garcia

Ben & Jerry's salute to the Great One: a designer ice cream, infused with flakes of dark chocolate and bing cherry slivers soaked in amaretto, which made its debut in February, '87.

"At least they didn't name a motor oil after me," Garcia is reported to have quipped when sent a sample to taste.  Half of his royalties go to the band's in house charitable group, the Rex Foundation.

"Nothing really rhymed with 'Grateful' or 'Dead,' explains Jane Williamson MacDonald, the 100-show veteran who came up with the idea in '84, in a Ben & Jerry's store on Exchange Street in Portland, Maine.   "So I said, 'For me, Garcia is the heart of the band,' and within 15 seconds, out popped 'Cherry Garcia.'  We wrote it down and laughed hysterically for ten minutes, and then put it up on the suggestion board."  As luck wouldn't have it, that store burned down soon afterwards, the idea literally going up in smoke.

"So I sent them a postcard," MacDonald says.  "But I didn't sign it.  I just put a heart at the end.  It was a political postcard   that's what Ben liked most about it.  It was a drawing of Ronald Reagan as 'Ronnie Reggae,' with dreadlocks;  it said, 'Fire up the Sky,' and there were missiles exploding everywhere."

At the behest of a friend, MacDonald phoned Ben & Jerry's headquarters a few months after the flavor came out to identify herself.  "I told her who I was, and she said, 'Wait a minute, could you say that again?"  I started to repeat myself, but before I finished, she put her hand over the phone and started screaming, 'I found her! I found her!'  She went wild.  In June, I was the guest of honor at their annual shareholders' meeting.  They sent us shirts and plane tickets. I got a year's worth of ice cream.  You know how Andy Warhol said everybody gets their 15 minute of fame?  I've had way  over 15 minutes. This has been one of the most hysterical things I've ever experienced in my life."

In 1988,  Cindy Scott, Arts Editor for the California Aggie at the University of California at Davis, took the cue and ran with it, conjuring up "Eyes Cream of the World," a fantasy ice cream parlor with Dead flavors only.   Some of her flavors:

Touch of Grape   ò  Blackberry Peter   ò  Sugar Mango   ò   Jack Strawberry   ò   In the Mint Chip Hour   ò   He's Gone Bananas   ò   Fudge Ripple   ò   Wharf Raspberry   ò   Gimme Some Lemon   ò   Looks Like Rainbow (also available as Box of Rainbow)   ò   Rocky Road to Unlimited Devotion   ò   Beat it On Down the Lime   ò   China Cat Sundae   ò   Mocha Stack Lightning   ò   Amaretto Getaway   ò   Might as Watermelon    ò   U.S. Blueberry   ò   Mexicali Blueberry   ò   Minglewood Blueberry   ò   Walkin' Blueberry   ò   Dupree's Diamond Blueberry   ò   Stella Blueberry

Scott also suggests some flavors that might not go over too well in the parking lot, such as Jack A Roe (a caviar swirl), Stagger Beet, Cucumberland Blues, Friend of the Deviled Egg, and Uncle John's Clam.  Says Scott, "there'd be a choice of Casey Cones, Sugaree, Throwin' Cones, or The Other Cone.  Row Jimmies optional."  

False Jerries

Garcia look alikes who catch Heads' eyes at shows.    Hair color and weight can be used to date faux Garcias to a specific vintage. "Did you see that guy?  He looked a lot  like Jerry   the '82 Jerry."  

On the Bus

The moment that you realize you are a Deadhead is sometimes called "getting on the bus."  "I got on the bus after that Fox show in '77, and started touring heavily." (A loss of interest is sometimes described as "getting off the bus.")

Most Deadheads recognize the phrase from Weir's lyric to "The Other One," "The bus came by, and I got on, that's when it all began   with Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to Never Ever Land."  "The bus" was the Merry Pranksters' "Furthur," a renovated and customized 1939 International Harvester, bought by Kesey in the spring of 1964 for the Pranksters' road trip to the New York World's Fair, driven by "Cowboy" Neal Cassady [link to Cassady page at Literary Kicks site].

The bus became a countercultural icon after the publication of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.  According to Wolfe,  Kesey first uttered the phrase on the way to Houston, Texas, as he struggled for an ironic declaration of policy about...

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Verlag
Crown
Erscheinungsdatum
1994
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385474024
ISBN 13 
9780385474023
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
CROWN
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