RIP Phil Lesh, who passed on while I was writing this. In the first part of this post, I analyzed the Live/Dead recording of “Dark Star” and compared it to several other versions. In this part, I survey the academic literature about the tune, of which there is a surprisingly large amount. First, let’s consider …
Category Archives: Music
Dark Star part one
Just after I posted this, I learned that Phil Lesh died. RIP Phil. See also the academic literature review in part two. Space: the final frontier. “Dark Star” is the ultimate Grateful Dead jam vehicle, and the purest experience of the band, at least as far as the true believers are concerned. The song also …
Modern Band Music Theory
I met Dr Jim Frankel, the founder of MusicFirst, back when I was a grad student. We have been mutual admirers in a passive way since then. It was a pleasant surprise when, over the summer, he asked me to contribute to their new Modern Band curriculum, specifically, the music theory component. It’s now being …
He’s Gone
Back in the twentieth century, there was no easy way to find out what a song was about unless its lyrics were self-explanatory. Grateful Dead lyrics are rarely self-explanatory. I always enjoyed “He’s Gone”, but had the feeling that it was a bunch of inside references that I wasn’t privy to. I turn out to …
Black Peter
The other night at Rosh Hashonah dinner, my stepbrother was playing my guitar and found his way into “Black Peter.” This was not because he had ever sat down and learned it, but because it’s embedded so deeply in his unconscious that he could teach it to himself in real time. This is yet another …
Anyway, here’s Wonderwall
When MusicRadar assigned me to write about Oasis, I was not overjoyed. I figured I would start with the Wonderwall meme and go from there. Once you move past the joke, though, it becomes an interesting question: why did this seemingly unremarkable song become such a standard for amateur guitarists?
MusicRadar column on “Lilac Wine” by Jeff Buckley
My latest MusicRadar assignment was to pick something from Jeff Buckley’s Grace to write about. I chose the weird old showtune. The column was mainly an excuse to meditate on the difference between classical timekeeping (expressive, rubato) and pop/rock timekeeping (metronomic and steady). I also got into Buckley’s complex gender presentation.
The Grateful Dead as improv comedy
One of the Grateful Dead’s most endearing qualities is their self-deprecating sense of humor. They are easy to make fun of, too.
A nice Jerry line from the Cornell Scarlet>Fire
My last post was a study of Scarlet>Fire from 5/8/77, and I don’t feel that I completely exhausted the topic. I want to zoom in on a particularly nice line that Jerry plays at the 11:53 mark on the released version: Jerry’s playing is beguiling throughout this whole recording, but there is so much of …
Continue reading “A nice Jerry line from the Cornell Scarlet>Fire”
Scarlet>Fire 5/8/77
Did the Grateful Dead play their best show at Cornell University’s Barton Hall on May 8th, 1977? True connoisseurs usually say no, pointing instead to something from the peak years between 1969 and 1974 (or, if they are contrarians, something from the Brent era). The argument is that Cornell only got so hyped up because …