crayon-angle asked: Hi John. I just watched a wonderful video of you and Megafaun covering the Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil." I was wondering what your relationship with the Dead is? Are you a big fan? Have you seen them live? I only ask because in the past year I've become very obsessed with them. Only problem is I'm kind of alone in my love for the dead as most of my friends are more into Emo or punk. Seeing you cover them came as a sort of vindication for me as you are one of my favorite musicians.

I was a reactionary Dead hater when I was a teenager because in the town I come from everybody loved the Dead and liked to drop acid/smoke weed and go to the shows and I was into Strictly Hard Drugs That Can Kill Me and super-judgey about anything that seemed hippie to me. Prior to this dark period I had been kinda into the Dead though I couldn’t really understand how they’d become this countercultural thing when their music was essentially country-rock.

In 2007, I decided to investigate this band, because as a grown-up one of the things I enjoy doing is examining my biases to see if they’re bullshit or not. The Dead, as it turned out, are fucking amazing; a band that remained deeply engaged with playing their music for decades, who always put the live show ahead of the album / album sales, and who (while very on top of their business, don’t get me wrong, they knew what they were doing) did not care at all about when or whether they were hip or anything. They were dedicated to 1) their music and 2) the people to whom that music spoke.

In this sense they are, I hope obviously, a model for me; they always grew, but didn’t just grow & change for the sake of it; they were more into listening than being heard. their relationship to the audience while playing for that audience can only be described as a loving relationship. I think that’s deeply inspiring. I think most people who hate on them are usually acting out scene politics (”I hate hippies” / “I hate jamming”), though I can get my hate on still about hippie gender / sexual politics – there’re lines in “Looks Like Rain” that ruin it for me every damn time. Still, what can you do, asking a band / musician to be perfect is absurd. When they are playing together and really listening and in that response-loop with the audience, there is absolutely nothing like them – they carved out a space that was theirs alone, which I cherish.

I like the ‘68 shows a lot even though I’m not really a Pigpen guy, once they hand him the mic I tend to check out; I think ‘73 is generally undersung but there’s a reason why ‘72 gets all the props, they were routinely on fire in ‘72. My friend Matt is very into ‘74, and more people should know about the Wall of Sound – I feel like ‘74 shows often suffer from Wake of the Flood material, which I don’t like as well as American Beauty / Workingman’s Dead / Aoxomoxoa et al. ‘77 is a miracle. There’s some rad shows from ‘76 though too which are very worth seeking out, like the Oakland one.

I also know a guy, a doctor, a grandfather, who was struggling with depression after losing a leg after an accident that shouldn’t have cost him his leg, and another doctor asked him “do you listen to music at all to relax or escape?” and he said no, I’ve never really been into music much, and the doctor said, well, you might try listening to the Grateful Dead, they really help me, and the guy who’d lost his leg took his doctor’s advice and the music really elevated his spirit in that way that only music can do, and to this day provide him with joy and comfort and space to reflect. I think the Dead are really amazing for this purpose: they don’t speak directly to your malaise, but they help you transcend it. That’s very incredible, in my opinion.

There are some preliminary thoughts on the Dead from me, and now I must retrieve a casserole from the oven, it’s past dinner time.