Grateful Dead?

I've been a lurker on this site since its beginnings and have been introduced to so much great stuff.  That's why I love the site....it opens eyes to bands/genres that had before been hidden.  And I'd like to do the same with the Dead...it seems the fanbase is petrifiying into just what Micky mentioned....zoned out pothead music (nothing wrong with it if it's your thing).  I'd love for Al DiMeola and Shakti McLaughlin fans to turn on to Jerry.....for Gong and Clearlight fans to see the kinship....for Ash Ra fans to freak out to one of those early Fillmore shows.  

 

Now as for this, "The bare bones essense of prog is one thing. .and one thing only...structure."  Well, I'm sure the majority would disagree with such a narrow view....and where would PA be if this were even remotely accurate?  Amon Duul fans would disagee and, hell, so would Crismon fans (what the hell else were they doing with live shows in '69?)....to define prog as such would turn PA into a strictly symph and Italian prog site (and, though I love Genesis, I always wish they'd let Hackett loose during live shows...let him Jerry it up a bit....all those damn Genesis bootlegs I have sound exactly like the records, so I don't play 'em).

 

But, I hear you Marky....prog SEEMS to be a Brit/Euro thing, but where did those ideas come from?  Free-jazz, maybe?  Would the Stones/Beatles/Mayall be anywhere without Muddy Waters, Little Richard and Elmore James....the evolution is very clear and the Dead are right there at the heart.  Still, I understand those who think the Dead don't belong.....they weren't ELP and the gap is obvious, but by turning over a few stones you'd see the connection....Emerson was highly influenced by modal jazz and that third wave movement, so was Jerry; Emerson saw his music as an electrified classical music fusion and Jerry understoon this dynamic as well (though he only dabbled in it in his later music with the Dead -Flood/Allah/Terrapin - but it always had its influence, if not so overt.  I'm not trying to say that the Dead were a symophonic prog band, and if the site is solely for that type of music, then, yes, the Dead have not place here.  But this site represents so much more....

 

BTW, did you ever hear get into side two of Jerry's first solo album?  It could be mistaken for anyone from early Tangerine Dream to mid-70s Eno!

 

Sorry again for running down second generation American prog....but somehow I don't think Dennis DeYoung is losing any sleep over it.

 

You can feel their imprint on the Krautrock and Canterbury scenes; they were right there at the beginning of space rock/psychadelia - practically invented it for Gawd's sakes; Jerry Garcia was doing jazz-fusion stuff before the term even existed!  They were doing 45 minute Coltrane-inspired, free form covers of "Louie, Louie" back in '64.....in the era of the two and a half minute single and the art house folk scene, these guys were kicking down barriers and taking music in unheard of tangents.  They were doing things with feedback and electronic devices in 1965 that Klaus Schulze and his crew were "pioneering" in 1970....no respect, man, no respect.

 

But I've beaten at this door before and have been told the same old "no room for folk-country jam bands" excuse.  All I'd like to do is open more people up to the Dead....a great American progressive rock band....Styx?  Rush?  Kansas?  Recycled prog.  The Dead are the real things!

 

While that is certainly true, there is a difference between the jam band approach and something like Hawkwind.  In addition, that was not the focus of the Grateful Dead in the way that you would it expect it to be for a band to be included as part of the genre.  ELP strayed into ragtime now and then, yet we don't classify them as a ragtime band.