music as lifestyle / fashion

an email exchange with a friend led to the topic of concert footage he's seen, of bands like The Grateful Dead, allman bros, skynyrd....

He marveled at the lack of showmanship, even while some of the music was amazing.


I don't think you went to those shows to watch the band's performance. I think you went to let the music flow through you, whilst you danced awkwardly around on the grass, barefoot, perhaps with a tie dye clad bra-less waif, who was partially obscured in a cloud of patchouli funk. She was probably really hot, but you'd have to hose her down real good... That's just the allman brothers and the dead. Skynyrd... I think you went to those shows so your 200lb tube top wearing girlfriend could climb up on your skinny, homemade tattoo-adorned shoulders, and scream "whoo hoo!" while waving the confed. flag over her head... here's an alarming combo we studiously avoided when living down south. Skynyrd playing a 4th of July concert at the hockey arena in Biloxi. We were pretty sure THAT crowd would have made us pack up our sh*t and flee MS, that very night. GD and AB actually put out a fair amount of music I like hearing, especially when I'm driving. and they were known for putting on marathon-length concerts. filled with 20 minute guitar solos, and a bunch of guys just standing around...

My friend indicated that the serious deadhead types always made him uncomfortable, and would write this off as being a product of HIS own narrowmindedness.

My thoughts?

the true dead heads bugged me, too.
And honestly, how many bootleg concert tapes can you possibly need?
And was the '78 Alpine Valley version of Dark Star REALLY more profoundly trancendent than the '76 Red Rocks version?

I recall music conversations with them, never lasting long.

Me: If you like that, do you also like ______ (fill in the blank, CSN, Neil Young, allman bros, etc)

"No. I only listen to the 'dead."

Ok. good talk. let's do it again soon.

Any group of people that have decided that one band, or one narrow genre of music is the ONLY thing to listen to, and actually adopt lifeystle options and fashion choices to coincide... let me know when you've grown out of the posing phase of your life.


True dead heads; all the black clothes wearing, Morissey worshipping squids and the portly pale girls that loved them even though they were secretly gay; the unkempt self mutilating punkers who would hang out at the McDonalds in the Kalamazoo Center on saturdays when I was in high school...

f*ck 'em for their closed mindedness and music-fueled mis-placed elitist attitudes.
I'm 40 years old now, and some of them are still working in record stores, wondering which poorly attended show they should go to next....
but young women in tie-dyes... they were ok.
so very ok...

And while I'm at it, f*ck the sailing fanatics that will only listen to Jimmy Buffett on their boats.
you're a stereotype.
Put down the rum drink and change the CD already.
But, uh.... thanks for taking me sailing those times. I really dug it.