Where Have all the Deadheads Gone?

 Written in December of 1997: "Keeping Those Lamps Trimmed and Burning."

On Aug 9, 1995, thousands of mourners gathered at Portland, Oregon's Memorial Coliseum to pay homage to the late Jerry Garcia. At the time, there was no question as to the presence of Deadheads and the strength of the wide-reaching community. I saw them, three generations' worth, tossing long-stemmed roses and pixie-dust toward a make-shift shrine for Jerry.

Almost three years later, many Deadheads have been cut adrift, having to pick through new and different scenes scattered across the nation. And the search for those tough-to-describe moments of standing on mystical thresholds of possibility that the Grateful Dead helped to facilitate in such abundance continues.

Is there any way that now, we–who are it and definitely on our own–can continue to create environments that open up those thresholds of magic? Can it be Dead-related or should it be something entirely new? Dan Cohen-Peltier, owner of the Portland-based tie-dye and memorabilia shop Think Good Thoughts, is definitely experimenting. His efforts to bring the community together at local music events have been wading through the murky areas of these tough-to-answer questions, providing insight into some of the possibilities. Cohen-Peltier's focus is zeroing in on the Zen Tricksters.

***

Obviously, the binding force that glued the amorphous body of us Deadheads (by the 1990s, numbering well into the hundreds of thousands) together was the Grateful Dead. Described as everything from an "audience with a heightened sense of adventure" to a group of freeloading, stoned-out gypsies to a cult, we are a phenomenon that developed alongside the band. Indeed, the Grateful Dead were never a band in any way disassociated from their audience. Rather, their initial beginnings were inimitably linked to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the Hell's Angels, and the parties mutually thrown. Certain Fillmore tapes reveal make and PA problems due to the excess numbers of fans on stage while on the Haight-Ashbury scene, the Dead threw innumerable free concerts. Audience and band were one.

Throughout their development and growth in popularity, some physical separation between band and audience was inevitable, but the psychic spirit of the Acid Tests endured. My sister Jean always said that waking up in the "lot" scene of a Grateful Dead run was like waking up in your favorite neighborhood. "There we'd all be, in our pajamas greeting a new day. After breakfast, you could be out and about amongst all your favorite people, and all you had to do was get ready for a show."

Though Jean's tastes may not have been universal for Deadheads–some preferred the isolation of room-service hotels while others never went on tour–it is undeniable that a key ingredient to the statement "There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert" was the audience. Deadheads made for a comfortable and colorful cushion between the compressed limitlessness of a Dead show and the cold, harsh reality of urban America's concrete corridors waiting outside. Deadheads created the ambiance to which the band members adjusted their tone and output. Deadheads fostered the situation that prompted Bill Graham to quote one of his ushers at the 1971 closing of the Fillmore East as saying, " 'The Grateful Dead aren't just music, they're an environment.' "

As such an important component of the scene, one would think that we could gather in a field and just make it happen. Right?

***

For the past two years, Cohen-Pletier has been gathering names for a growing mailing list announcing upcoming Deadhead-related events. The Think Good Thoughts logo, featuring the easily distinguishable Steal Your Face, also appears in local newspaper club listenings beside names of national jam bands. A few recent shows Think Good Thoughts has been promoting include Zuba, God Street Wine, the JGB Band, David Grisman, and the Crystal Ballroom New Year's Eve extravaganza with the Zen Tricksters.

Cohen-Peltier has a vision; he would like to set up environments where the spirit, the magical IT that kept people coming back to Dead shows year after year, can happen. The mysterious IT was something like music; it was an organic tapestry weaving past and future into the fabric of the present moment. The IT was that curious blend of people and music that could turn a temporal, non-event into one of magical timelessness. The IT was the experience that Cohen-Peltier recognizes as being impossible to describe. "Trying to explain IT in words," he says, "is to limit what is ultimately an infinite experience." (Unfortunately, language is almost all we have.)

During a Dead show, "there would be that one moment of 'Oh yeah!' " says Cohen-Peltier. "Suddenly, you would remember the reasons why you came." He describes a psychedelic coalescence of forces that assisted one's ability to "push the envelope" of his or her consciousness. The Dead were conducive to such an environment as they created an open and enormously emotive musical landscape. "Most music, for me, is like standing on a beach with the waves lapping at your toes. But when listening to the Dead, it was like being fully submerged in the ocean." As far as continuing the possibility for these expansive, psychedelic experiences in the future, Cohen-Peltier says that "creating forums like the Dead experience is a way to get there, it's a forum that I know."

Initially, Cohen-Peltier's vision inspired him to establish UDHOPE (United Deadheads of Portland and Everywhere). The idea was to have an amorphous body of Deadheads contributing whatever ideas they had concerning local and worldwide events that would pull the community together. That way, the community would mirror the spirit of the Dead where they actively dissuaded leadership and celebrity monomania; it would be a collective endeavor. With little feedback and low participation in UDHOPE, Cohen-Peltier's next step was to begin promoting shows under the locally recognized heading of Think Good Thoughts.

While the shows have been quite successful, Cohen-Peltier has been looking for more. Not all the spinoff bands from the Dead scene–the JGB Band, Ratdog, and Second Sight, among them–are able to "step aside" and allow themselves to become a conduit for the bigger, transcendent sounds of the psychedelic experience. Cohen-Peltier calls that ethereal sound the "seventh member" of the Dead.

Not finding that experience initially did not leave Cohen-Peltier without hope. Instead, it fostered a fascination for a band that was able to get close the oceanic musical experience: the Zen Tricksters. Hailing from Long Island, New York, this Dead-cover band initially seems to be an unlikely candidate for rallying the community spirit. Cohen-Peltier recognizes Phish's ability to "rip holes in the cosmic fabric of the universe," but they have their own gig. Phish are creating their own environment with their own music. The Tricksters, on the other hand, are allowing themselves to be conduits for what it is that the Dead's music is able to conjure. "In fact," Cohen-Peltier notes, "they hit the nail on the head." Not only that, but Cohen-Peltier feels that the music should be played. And why not? Did chamber groups and symphonies stop performing Mozart merely because he died?

The focus on Cohen-Peltier's end of assisting the Deadhead community to continue is now coalescing around the Zen Tricksters. His new management company, Peak Experience, will be booking them nationally. Here in Portland, we are blessed with the annual New Year's Eve concert, advertised as an event "for Deadheads," encouraging the beer swilling, party crowds to poke around elsewhere for their New Year bacchanalia. The question still lurks, though, does the Deadhead experience have to be closely linked to the Grateful Dead's music?

***

On a dark, wet November night, a crowd gathers outside the Portland Art Museum's Grand Ballroom where the David Grisman Quintet is scheduled to play. A woman with dreadlocks and a patchwork dress is quietly vending handmade clothing. She is one of many with the tell-tale index finger poised high for a miracle. A congenial, long-haired chap, Eli, who says that he hails from the "Deadlot," is also waiting on potential loose tickets. 

For Eli, it was the fact that everyone had one thing in common that made the Dead scene special. He acknowledges that related events do provide some of the same talismanic keys, but they are not quite the same. "The Hog Farm's parties are true," he says. And you can do it yourself, "you can still have an Acid Test, but Jerry's just not there." Eli adds that Rainbow Gatherings potentially provide that special release for people, but "unless you're an avid drummer, you can't really do it. You can't get there."

In Eli's version of the IT, he makes no bones about the special presence of Jerry. It is for this reason that he doesn't avidly search after a Grisman ticket. When asked if we can create such an environment agin, without Jerry, he looks wistfully up the block with the sounds of ankle bells and quiet requests for tickets trickle through the halogen-lit rain. "Well," he says, pondering, "it has to be an environment where you can let go of the day-to-day control and be willing to take risks to be different. It has to be that P.T. Barnum-carnivalesque where anything could happen."

Perhaps the Zen Trickster's New Year will deliver some of the magic. Perhaps the show will open the thresholds of wonder and possibility, making for one more "transitive nightfall of diamonds." Perhaps Cohen-Peltier is on to something and together with the Tricksters will be able to live up to his vision of "taking the best bigs of the and bringing them into the future."

***

Inside the Grisman show, deep green and rich purple lights saturate the stage. Blue smoke billows forth in thick clouds, and the Ballroom echoes with sanguine harmonies. A special feeling wanders the aisles and lifts with Grisman's tremulous licks. It is obvious that this is a different type of event. Larry, one of the Ballroom's friendly ushers, says with a smile, "We normally get the shirt and tie crowd, but these folks are from the 70s: love, peace, and happiness." A couple of Grisman's longer pieces from Dawg '90 get the full workout, finding psychedelic, discordant breakdowns that reconnect to the melodic ballad structures through gentle teasings. There are even clusters of gyrating dancers on the balcony where they can find a little space to move. Still, Eli's words about that single-focused audience and carnival atmosphere ring true: this Grisman show is a sit-down event.

The audience-band interaction comes mostly with the request to dim the house lights. Grisman responds sardonically, that "we have to have the 'dawn-of-man' lights." After the laughter and cheers subside, Grisman finds the quiet moment to introduce his next number, Dawg's Waltz, adding, "This one's for Jerry."