Hippies vs. Hipsters

Jesse Jarnow wrote a fantastic article about the Grateful Dead's evolving place on the cultural approval matrix in this month's Relix magazine: How The Grateful Dead Got Hip (Again)

Related: Bill Stites wrote a similarly-themed essay for my former venture, Boomsalon. Since the article was so good and the website is now defunct, I figure I'd repost it here, so as to prevent it from being lost forever into the cyberether.

The Greatest Band Ever
Bill Stites

I can't remember when or how I first became aware of the Grateful Dead. Growing up in the 80s they were part of the cultural background static - a curiously recurring character in my developing American mythology, one that seemed to become more and more contradictory as it grew into focus over time.

As a child, I would see those mysterious red and blue skulls, and those oddly fruity dancing bears, on the t-shirts that the 'bad kids' wore - the ones with the long hair and the Visine droppers. And I regularly ate an ice cream called Cherry Garcia, which I (naturally?) assumed was named after one of those grown-up desserts - "Bananas Foster" or "Baked Alaska" - whose taste it presumably approximated. When I told that to my parents one day they shared a good laugh and informed me that in fact there was a person, Jerry Garcia, who had given the flavor its name (and how was I to know that?), but they never bothered explaining to me who he was, or why he had inspired such a damn good ice cream. Something to do with the 60s, they said. Come to think of it, they might not have known themselves.

Once that highly-charged name - The Grateful Dead - did sink into my consciousness, I understandably concluded that they must be some kind of metal band, somewhere between Dio and Iron Maiden on the I-can't-believe-people-listen-to-this-crap continuum. But that didn't jibe with the clips of ancient-looking men playing what sounded like country music that I'd occasionally encounter on TV.

Well before I knew what these supposedly grateful Dead were about, though, or, aside from the bearded fat guy who'd had an ice cream named after him, who they were, I became certain of one thing: I hated them.

I saw how their name was used as a punchline, guaranteed to elicit knowing chuckles from parents and late-night talk show audiences. Eventually, I learned that there was no greater insult that could be levied towards a person, no faster way to strip him of his credibility, than to tar him with the label 'deadhead.' Even the word itself sounded bad - certainly I didn't want, at such a tender age, to develop a dead head. And once I learned that these disreputable people - who actually allowed themselves to be called that nasty name - would devote months of their lives to following these fat old fucks around, attending every show, it was pretty much open season.

Why exactly that was so funny to me I can't quite remember. If I ditched out on my job tomorrow and embarked on a mission to visit every baseball park in America - something I dreamed of doing at around the same age - it would be nothing less than a sepia-toned journey into the heart of our great nation, a soulful and patriotic personal quest. I might even be able to publish a book about it when I got back. Obsession in and of itself is not necessarily cause for mockery in this culture; hell, it's one of our defining characteristics as Americans. But how could anybody be that obsessed with those ridiculous-looking old men in the tie-dyes on TV? How totally lame.

And so I repeated all the same tired bromides so many others did about a band that had never done anything to us: "You'd have to be on drugs to like that music," "I'll be grateful when they're dead," ho ho ho. You'd think the fact that I had neither been less than totally sober in my life, nor really heard any of the Dead's actual music, and yet still made such pronouncements would have alerted me to the fact that I was not expressing my own original thoughts. But you try telling that to a 14-year old and see how far you get. It's not like many of them have any original thoughts to speak of anyway. (I sure didn't.)

To my everlasting shame, I was even wannabe-punk rock enough that when Garcia passed away, 10 years ago today, I publicly rejoiced, delighted that this maddeningly inexplicable cultural icon had been felled, grateful that these Deadheads, and the contradictions they embodied, would at last be vanquished from the land. "Get a job, hippie! Victory is ours." Once again, never having had a job, and lacking any clear sense of what it meant to be a hippie in that day and age, did not deter me from siding with the elusive 'us' who had somehow been vindicated by the man's death. After all, everything and everyone around me, every cultural weathervane I could perceive, told me that the Dead were a laughingstock, utterly uncool, the very embodiment of all that is shameful and wrong.

So you can imagine my surprise when, only a couple months later, I first heard more than a few minutes of their music, and instantly fell deeply and irrevocably in love.

In love with Garcia's sweetly cracking voice, fragile and human, real in a way that I'd never known a singer could be. In love with Bob Hunter's lyrics, timeless and distinctly American - stories of misfits and losers, and the fleeting shards of hope that kept them going. In love with the improvisation, violently abstract and yet completely communicative. And, eventually, in love with the sheer anachronism of it all - the very fact that they had persisted so long, remaining more or less themselves as the whole world changed around them.

And yet, a decade later, we Deadheads - yes, I now wear that label proudly, so bite me - still all too often keep ourselves closeted, having internalized the embarrassment we're still told we should feel, its patent absurdity notwithstanding.

Well, fuck that. Here's how it is: The Grateful Dead are the hippest goddamn rock band there ever was, and if you don't get it, YOU'RE the one who's not cool. That is no longer my - our - problem. I am embarking on a campaign, starting now, to see to it that those brilliant bastards finally get the respect they deserve, and I shall beat it out of you, o reader, with every rhetorical bludgeon I possess should you attempt to resist me.