So I went to a Dead concert the other night.
It’s kind of funny that I never really embraced the Dead until late in college. After spending my last two years here, I managed to leave Vermont with only a respect for them … but not much else. I had a chance to see the original Grateful Dead in Des Moines, but I passed. I never got around to seeing them until an old high school friend offered me a ticket to the Other Ones show two years ago. It was a blast, as was the concert the other night.
While I was listening to them, I realized what makes them so hard to understand. Music, despite what it seems, is really a form of language. When music is successful, it manages to convey its message—usually of a raw emotion—directly to the listener without words. The lyrics can often get in the way of the message, but many times they don’t—and the meaning of the music passes through without the encumbrance of a lyric.
Shorter songs tend to give us short, concise messages. Long jamming sessions by the Dead, and others, tend to be babbling. If one isn’t into the idea of music in this way, a 25-minute version of the Beatle’s ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ would sound long and dull. For those ready to embrace the emotion behind the music, it would be interesting—assuming that one wished to experience this kind of emotion.
I did, so it was good for me. I was most willing to turn off my mind, relax, and float downstream.
This is not dying. But I could understand how one could be confused.
