Phish: "Spawn of the Dead!"

The Stream of Conch-Us-ness with Sunny Sun-Downer
Phish: the “Spawn of the Dead”
(Here is the "Un-Edited Version" of the article published in the October 22, 2009 [g.c.] issue of the Desert Valley Star [desertvalleystar.com])
In my previous article titled, “The Heroes of Woodstock, 41 Years Later,” I’m sure I shocked people that know me when I wrote that the Grateful Dead weren’t one of the bands that I was “really into” back in 1968, like I was with the bands Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Iron Butterfly, Canned Heat, Country Joe and the Fish, and the Animals (growing up in a family that practiced yogic meditation, I loved listening to Eric Burdon singing about a soldier staying behind to “…meditate, but it won’t stop the killing, or ease the hate,” in his anti-war tune, “Sky Pilot”).
What was my problem with the Dead? Actually my younger brother, Bill, was hip to the Dead before me, having brought home the “Working Man’s Dead” album a couple of years later (the title being a play on the fact the band had recently been covering Merle Haggard’s song "Workingman's Blues" in concert). Maybe it was the “non-psychedelic” album cover art (they just kind of looked like a bunch of “ruffians standing on a corner” to me) or possibly even (Western Dysfunctional Society-spawned) sibling rivalry that wouldn’t let me “be upstaged by my YOUNGER brother,” but their music also just didn’t grab me. It wasn’t something that compelled me to get a big glass bowl of water, shine a light on it and swirl food coloring into psychedelic swirls (my own simple version of a “60’s light show”) like the others did, as I grooved to their mind-altering sounds! (Later my brother and I would place an electric fan in a box with a hole in it, cut the same-size hole in a record that we attached to the fan and shine a flood-light behind it, creating a “poor man’s strobe light” to add to the effects- after I transcended the “sibling rivalry,” of course).
So, how did I get over my “nonchalant insouciance” to the Grateful Dead, a group I would end up following for a good portion of my adult life? Well, that didn’t completely happen in 1972 either, the 1st time I actually went to see them at the Long Beach Arena with my new friends I’d made in North San Diego County after having just graduated from High School in Orange County. It was an interesting enough experience in general, but I don’t think I was prepared for the marathon-length of the experience, as the longest-lasting impression I have of that night is remembering thinking, during the drawn-out drums and space segment, “when is this going to be over?”
This was obviously before I started to pick up on a connection between a special tribal spirituality and this “Necropolis” (Floating City of the Dead) with its “Dead-Heads” and its before-and-after-party-and-vending-scene (everything from Acid to Zen-Inspired Art: tie-dyed, painted, wearable and otherwise, grilled cheese to “Da-Kind”-Veggie-Burritos, bumper-stickers like “Who are the Grateful Dead and Why Are They Following Me?”, etc.- if a Dead-Head’s imagination could conceive it, we saw it in “The Lot,” as we affectionately nick-named the parking lot outside of a Dead show (with the “Heart” or busiest section, dubbed “Shakedown Street,” after the Dead tune of the same name).
The Grateful Dead themselves, I personally found out upon meeting them much later (1984, maybe?) at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, were a bunch of “Zenned-Out Marxists” (as in Groucho Marx). As written in my publication, “The ConchUs Times- The Journal of the Dead Buddhists of America, for Those Appreciating Grateful Dead and Buddhist Meditations and Cultures” (that coincidently debuted at the 1989 Long Beach Arena Dead show) in the article, “The Dead and the Dharma,”(quoted from 1973’s “The Dead Book,” by Hank Harrison, who was the Dead’s 1st manager and also, strangely enough, Courtney Love’s father) “…we get an example of the early influence of (a kind of “Beatnik style”) Zen Buddhism from an account of the band then known as ‘The Warlocks,’ trying to come up with a new name. Jerry Garcia turned through the dictionary ‘I-Ching’ style (hap-hazardly) and said to bassist Phil Lesh, ‘What do you think of this one: The Grateful Dead?’ Phil fell off his seat in giddy rails of laughter… but it had the right ring, something for everybody, an infinite array of associations: Egyptian, Gothic, Mystic… Jerry had stumbled upon a reference to the collected folk ballads of Francis Child… The ballads of the Grateful Dead are songs about ghosts who return from the grave to conduct unfinished business. If they are allowed to complete their duties, they are ‘grateful.’ They ran over to share it with the others: ‘Grateful Dead! Sink your teeth into that identity, boys!’ Thirty sets of dentures bit down on steel nails. ‘It’s a koan fit for an iron Buddha…’ ” (And just like a Zen Koan, some things are not decipherable by conceptual thought, so please don’t strain your brain on that one!).
The “Zenned-out Beatniks,” also played a major part in the Dead’s early days, as is mentioned in “Skeleton Key: the Dead-Head Dictionary,” (where the ConchUs Times Journal, coincidently, is entered on page 53… or 58?) quoting Beat-poet Michael McClure, “The Beats gave each other permission to be excellent… Their enduring intelligence is with us in such diverse places as punk magazines, meditation halls- and Grateful Dead shows!”
Fast forwarding decades, the “Phenomena of Jerry Garcia” has come and gone, the “Left-Over Dead,” are still touring, occasionally together, but mostly with their solo projects called “Phil Lesh and Friends,” guitarist Bob Weir’s “Ratdog,” drummers Mickey Hart’s “Planet Drum” and Bill Kreutzman’s mostly Hawaiian island-based “Backbone,” which all serve to keep a lot of Dead-heads satisfied- especially the older ones. But the younger ones have not been idle since Jerry’s transition to the other side 14 years ago, with Dead spin-off bands like “String Cheese Incident,” “moe,” “Psychedelic Breakfast,” “Particle,” “Dark Star Orchestra” and “Railroad Earth, among others. What others, you ask?
Well, there is another spin-off band that, like “accomplished sons making their parents proud,” have filled arenas to the magnitude that the Dead once did: Burlington, Vermont’s “Phish,” composed of guitarist Trey Anastasio, keyboardist Page McConnel, bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman (who, in one of the only ways that they’re NOT similar to the Dead, the band is named after!) They have come quite a long way, following in their “psychedelic-music-generating-mentor’s footsteps, since their 1st gig at a Burlington club called Nectar’s in 1984 to becoming one of rock n’ roll’s biggest acts: grossing over $61 million in ticket sales (to say nothing of merchandise sales) in ’99 and 2000, the last two years before their break up.
Staying true to their mentor’s m.o. (research the “Acid Test” daze for more on the Dead’s early “theater-of-the-strange-explorations,”), these “Descendants of the Dead” would also engage in “acid-drenched” or “hot-mushroom-cocoa-influenced” performances over their “formative years,” but added their own twists. In some of their rehearsals, for example, they would engage in what they came to call “Zen Language Ball.” Blind-folded, and without speaking to one another, someone will start an improvisation of guitar chords, say, and the others will join in as the “Zen Spirit” moves them, grabbing a note as inspiration strikes, and bending and stretching the melody and/or the beat, writing new music out of thin air, in total darkness. Again, (flashing back) I found Rock Scully (the Dead’s 2nd manager) quoting Garcia as the Dead are about to record their album, “Blues for Allah”… “We’re going to go into the studio w/no preconceptions…It’s a chance to hang out together and let ideas evolve from absolute coldness, from absolutely nothing.”
In an amazing show of modern magic, Phish will be in Indio, from Oct. 30 through Nov. 1. The event, dubbed Festival 8, will be the band’s first three-day festival on the West Coast. Over the course of three days, they will perform eight live sets. The event will also feature other attractions, including art installations. For its Halloween performances, Phish will keep its tradition of playing an entire album by another band. A news release did not warn about “wolves in hippie clothing” that have frequented the previous festivals there, so be warned all you peddlers of the sacred mind-expanders!.
Festival 8 will mark Phish’s first festival since its August 2004 farewell concerts in Coventry, Vt. Come dance and make their “parents” proud!
-Sunny Sun-Downer’s email is conchustimes@yahoo.com