A few people have asked me recently how I stay relaxed. One way I relax is by listening to music and some of my favorite tunes are from history’s greatest improvisational band, the Grateful Dead. Though my generation came later and I’ve never taken the psychedelic drugs that fueled the development of their music, I remain a big Dead fan. Many times, I’ve gotten a stress headache and been cured of it (without taking anything) just by listening to these songs.

We have a lot of Steem members from countries beyond the Western world, where the Grateful Dead was not well known. And its reign was from 1965-1995, a thirty year period that predates many people on this platform. Since the Grateful Dead’s best music came in its live performances, it’s hard to get into the band without hearing its past concert recordings or watching the few good quality YouTube videos that exist of the Dead playing at its creative peak.

The Grateful Dead in Concert in 1980. Creative Commons via Wikimedia.com by Chris Stone.

Therefore, I feel it is my duty to introduce this band to anyone who may try and appreciate its music. Music like this means something different to each person. If you’re able to get in tune with it, it can be quite powerful.

Here are three of my favorite songs, which are chosen partly because they help relax me. And I think these three can appeal in different ways to a larger audience, while many of the band’s improvisational tunes (such as Dark Star) require a deeper love of jam. One of the most relaxing tunes ever written or played is the Grateful Dead song called Ripple, but given that a detestable quasi-cryptocurrency took that name, we’ll go with three other songs.

Each recording is a snapshot of that time and place, but you can listen to the same song performed 10 different times and it will never be the same. Dead songs were always organic and always changing. As John Perry Barlow, who wrote one of these songs with the band, once stated: “Grateful Dead songs are alive. Like other living things, they grow and metamorphose over time. Their music changes a little every time they're played. The words, avidly interpreted and reinterpreted by generations of Deadheads, become accretions of meaning and cultural flavor rather than static assertions of intent.” http://www.litkicks.com/BarlowOnNeal

These choices merely scratch the surface. Beyond them, if you have more than a passing interest in discovering the Dead, there is much, much more. Enjoy.

China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider

The video above is one of the few concert films from the band’s early years. It was recorded at a live show in 1970. Generally, you’re fortunate enough to find an audio recording of a live song from back then; videos are very rare. But here, you can listen to their raw sound and see what a young Grateful Dead looked like, fronted by Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir.

This two-song combination was a common staple in the band’s live shows. It came to be known as China Cat->Rider. The band’s seamless transition from one song to the next included an improvisational bridge that was never played exactly the same way twice. If you get into listening to any of the longer tunes, you’ll notice there’s usually a recognizable core, surrounded by jamming that was utterly unique to that moment in history. At times, you would hear strains creeping in from bluegrass, jazz, Spanish guitar, R&B, and other influences.

As for understanding these lyrics, don’t bother trying… just enjoy the song. People have written entire websites and theses trying to decode the meanings of these songs, China Cat being a popular target. The song’s writer, Robert Hunter, was an early test subject for LSD research at Stanford University (which, according to Wikipedia, was secretly funded by the CIA) and he was high when he wrote this song. Yes, there was meaning (and sometimes double meaning) in some of his lyrics and they made references to other songs and poetry that influenced the band. But Hunter himself said that if China Cat was what people wanted, he could spin out lyrics like this in about 10 minutes. So analyze it all you will, but it’s a dreamy stream of consciousness more than it is anything profoundly meaningful.

Cassidy

Cassidy was an unusual song for the Grateful Dead. And yet, it became one of their signature pieces. Beloved by fans, it impacted a number of people who were not necessarily Deadheads themselves.

The song presented a duality between old and young, male and female, and other opposites. The song was partly a tribute to Neal Cassady, a friend who the band had known who had passed away. He was a carefree soul who influenced many of them with his freewheeling life. His counterpart in the song is Cassidy Law, at the time a new baby who had been born to two well-loved members of the band’s circle. So the song is about one life lived and another beginning. The band gave the rights to this song to Cassidy’s mother.

As for this song’s greater impact, legions of Deadhead fans named their children after its namesake. In the 1970s and early 1980s, there were two other Cassidy figures that were popular in American culture. First, there was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a late 1969 movie that probably influenced the Grateful Dead, among others. Butch Cassidy was an Old West rebel hero; the Dead also were fighting against the establishment and conformity of their age. Second, there was the actor/singer David Cassidy from the Partridge family TV show.

And yet, the Wikipedia entry for the name Cassidy credits the Grateful Dead song (first played live in 1974 and recorded in 1981) with popularizing it as a first name for children. Prior to the 1970s and 80s, Cassidy was a family name only. Indeed, if Butch or David Cassidy were influences, one would think there would be at least as many boys named Cassidy as girls. Instead, look at these statistics. The name was used briefly for boys, though not that much.

A search for "Cassidy" on babynamewizard.com.

But there was a huge baby boom for girls named Cassidy right around the time of the Grateful Dead song’s release. The name Cassidy's popularity continued into the 1990s and had an unexplained bump later, but has been declining in use ever since. To humanize this statistic, please see the many comments on the YouTube videos of Grateful Dead Cassidy songs; about half of the comments are from people who say they were named after the song. That’s pretty neat.

Uncle John’s Band

This is a feel-good song. It’s hard to hate, aside from the one swearword in it, which rankled authorities when it came out in 1969. It’s a song about non-conformity, but also about peace during a violent time (“ain’t no time to hate”). If you listen carefully, you’ll hear references to counterculture bands of the past and present. There’s a folksy structure and the vocals are sung in a close harmony. It’s actually brilliantly written.

As always, don’t try to interpret the lyrics too much. The song’s writer Robert Hunter once said that this was a song about trained circus fleas, which turned out to be a joke, but it showed he wasn’t overthinking the matter. Just enjoy it and the song will create its own meaning for you.

References

Robert Hunter and China Cat Sunflower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hunter_(lyricist)
An example of some of the lengthy analysis of a Dead song (China Cat): http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/china.html
Baby Names (“Cassidy” search in graphic above): http://www.babynamewizard.com
Uncle John’s Band: http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/uncle.html
Writer John Barlow on Cassidy Song: http://www.litkicks.com/BarlowOnNeal
Wikipedia’s entry on the first name Cassidy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassidy_(given_name)
Wikipedia’s entry on Uncle John’s Band: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_John%27s_Band
Analysis of Uncle: http://www.dead.net/features/greatest-stories-ever-told/greatest-stories-ever-told-uncle-johns-band-0

Top image: Scan of album artwork, Creative Commons via Flickr.com by Wickenden.