From: rafael@cats.ucsc.edu (David Konerding)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Re: Questions for musicologists
Date: 12 Aug 92 20:16:03 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu


	I can't quantify what makes the Dead sound so *good* as well as several
posters with far more musical experience than I.  The poster who wrote the
long message about modal jams expressed *very* well (as well as a human using
a language could) how the Dead cause a "music high".  Everybody "on the bus"
knows about that music high and has probably experienced the rather overcoming
appreciation of the band from the crowd after they cause that high and keep
the high going during their best jams.  If you've ever seen Jerry Band at the
Warfield, or saw the Dead when they played *really* great shows in tiny venues
you know what I'm talking about- when Jerry ends the song by noodling at
high speed without playing any really good sounding notes, and everybody
starts cheering REALLY loudly, hugging, smiling, etc.  You don't see this
at many shows unless the band really jams.  The Dead did it and still do it
well.

	However, one thing that's helped me recognize that music high and
the Dead's ability to produce it is the use of psychedelics- specifically,
the peak experience at the end of a real trip on a psychedelic drug.  My
experience is limited to the two most popular- psilocybin and LSD.  Anybody
who's experienced the peak from those two drugs knows what I'm talking about
and will probably agree that it can't quite be quantified in language.  The
closest I've ever heard is: "you feel like you're one with the universe and
you've got all the power and happiness within your body".  Even that doesn't
do the peak experiences I've had justice, convincing me that it's really
impossible within our language to communicate exactly WHAT you feel like when
you peak (although I think people are trying to when they survive near-death
experiences, which I consider to be naturally occurring psychedelic peaks)

	When you peak, you feel an inexpressable emotion of extraordinary
goodness (or badness- I've seen bad trips before, and have stopped tripping
from fear of having one).  The music high I feel from the Dead is amazingly
similar.  During the best parts of Dark Star I get it- listening to Live
Dead over and over while it gave me the chills because it was so good was
what got me hooked to the Dead originally.  But my favorite example of
the Dead's skill is Two From the Vault- I think the second disk, first three 
tracks exhibit some of the finest playing I've heard from the Dead (although
they've got probably hundreds of hours that are as good as this, in some
vault somewhere).  Listen to Other One->NPC->Lovelight- it's so damn GOOD,
the goodness earlier musicologists who analyzed the dead on r.m.gdead
described.  What do they do that makes it sound so good?  

	I can think of at least one thing the Dead do that sounds good-
they hit all their instruments at the same time!  Well, that's sort of
simplifying it, but here's an example- at 9.5 minutes into the Other One
from TFTV , Jerry gets really quiet singing "You know he had to die", and then
the band gets really quiet and noodling, Jerry whips out a killer "You
know he had to diiiiiiiiiieeeeee", then WHAM, Jerry and Bob hit a KILLER chord
and then go into a jam that fills out most of the rest of the song. During 
that single moment, I really DO feel like I'm peaking!  I have no clue in the
world how three or four musicians hitting a certain note at the same time can
*do* that, but the Dead do it, and have been doing it at shows for years.
That's why I go to Dead shows- because they can make me feel like I'm peaking
without taking acid!  I get chills when they do it.  My friend gets the same
chills when Dylan sings "My Back Pages", and Dylan definitely does it to me when
he sings "Hurricaine".

	There are other things the Dead do.  They build excitement and
electricity in the crowd very well.  I don't know how they do it- the above
paragraphs were my attempt (a weak one) at describing how the dead do it in
one way, but there are hundreds of others.  Parts of Jerry's guitar on
The Other One on TFTV make me think of- I don't know why- sex.

	A plug for Phish: of all the bands I've seen live, Phish makes me
feel the best.  I dunno how.  But their timing, their inventiveness, their
goofiness- all of that combines at a show to make me feel *excited*.  Like
many humans, I like to feel excited.  At other times, they do stuff that
creates tension-- how can listening to a particularly weird part of Phish
music make me- and all the people I know who've listened to it- get
physically tensed up?

	Oddly enough, during my readings I came across a chapter in a book
by a mystic named Gurdjieff where Gurdjieff's friend studies the effect of
music on people.  She notices that certain music stimulated conversation,
certain music caused people to fall asleep(!) and certain music caused people
to cry.  So the phenomenon is not limited in any way to late 20th century
psychedelic music, although I think that the late 20th century champion
tripper musicians like Santana and Garcia have captured it best.
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead