Reading Notes: Signpost to a New Space and Stoned Sunday Rap

Garcia, Jerry, Charles Reich, and Jann Wenner. 2003 [1972]. Garcia:
A Signpost to New Space. Cambridge,
MA: Da Capo Press.

For an analysis of when the meetings recorded in the book
took place, see http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/11/signpost-to-new-space-and-stoned-sunday.html

Garcia: “I don’t think of my work as being full time
work. What I’m doing is my work, but I’m playing!” (Reich 2003, xiv). #why

“One night I went to hear Jerry play a gig with Merle
[sic] Saunders at a small place in Berkeley and one by one, for ‘no reason’,
the rest of the Dead showed up too, and eventually they got on the stage and
started playing. As Jerry says, they just liked to hang out together. … ‘The
question is, can we do it and stay high? Can we make it so our organization is
composed of people who are like pretty high, who are not being controlled by
their gig?’” (Reich 2003, xv).

see my analysis of possible dates for that gig:

http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/11/grateful-dead-at-new-monk-berkeley-ca.html

Garcia: “he himself is a prodigious worker” (Reich
2003, xv).

“the most profound meaning of Jerry Garcia’s life and
art … is the commitment to growth and new possibilities, personal and
artistic” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], xix).

Garcia: “It’s cool with me for life or death, either
one is OK … I’ve made my pitch, I’ve put my stand in for the life side of the
cycle” (Reich intro to Signpost, Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], xxi).

acoustic guitar in the Army (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 5

Nick Gravenites,
Nick the Greek, was around the coffeehouse scene, early 1960s (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 7)

“good times is the key
to all this” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 13)

from hip teacher in the 3^rd grade to weed to
music to acid: “it was like a series of continually opening doors” (Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 19).

Garcia: the “freedom lie … the big lie is
that freedom means absolutely and utterly free, and it really doesn’t mean
anything of the sort” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 37).

Could you handle CSNY type success? “I might be able to
cope with it, but I don’t think that I could be really that comfortable with
it, you know, because I … the place where I get strung out is … is .. I’d
like to be fair, you know, I want to be fair, so I don’t like to pull the thing
of having somebody at the door that says ‘No, fuck you, you can’t see Garcia’ (Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 48). #burden

Garcia saw Mickey
Hart “last night”, I infer either 10/14-15/71 at BCT (Garcia et
al. 2003 [1972], 49).

Ripple: “The little ‘ripple in still water” part
is a haiku, 17 syllables” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 55) s-Ripple

#chiaroscuro: “The thing that I’ve been seeing since
Altamont is that periodically you have darkness and periodically you have
light, like the way the universe is in the yin/yang symbol. There’s darkness
and light and it’s the interplay that represents the game we’re allowed to play
…” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 57) #chiaroscuro

#order-chaos: “We’re trying to guide ourselves into a
place where we can become more music, where we can play more music and have it
get to higher places and express finer and subtler things. And that has to do
with being able to more or less control the circumstances in which we’re
playing. And you can only play so much high music in gyms and then you’re
squeezing it out of yourself and it’s not really happening” (Garcia et al.
2003 [1972], 59).

Garcia solo record, he’ll play all the instruments: consonance vs. dissonance:
“Because it’s all coming from my head, it’s going to at least agree. But
then you get this unified, too-much-agreement sort of sound, and you don’t have
that excitement of interchange” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 60).

“The whole studio trip is composing. That’s why I’m
doing a solo record. It’s as a composer, not a performer. I’m not going to try to
[61] be a band. I’m going to try to be a composer, because the 16-track is the
perfect way to do it” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 60-61).

“now you can create any sound you want in a recording
studio. So why not just go and do the sound that you hear in your head? It’s
like scratching an itch. The idea of having that complex code of writing music
is so that you can get the sound in your head out, and it’s a very imperfect
way to do it. There’s huge, big flaws in the notation system because it only
tells you about pitch and meter; it doesn’t tell you about the shape of a note,
except in the crudest way. It just doesn’t cover the amount of sounds
available. Most modern composers invest their own way of writing music” (Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 61) #studio #ear

“Our whole trip with making records has been to learn how to make records, to learn how to
deal with a tune. To be a musician means to be a composer and to be a 16-tracks
recording virtuoso and so forth – it’s an expanded role” (Garcia et al.
2003 [1972], 61)

GD first record Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 62

GD 1966, second record, Phil, Healy good on his feet Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 63

“Anthem of the
Sun is really the performance of an eight-track tape; Phil and I performed
it and it would be like four hands and sometimes Healy would have a hand in.
We’d be there hovering around the boards in these various places at Criteria
Studios, Miami, and in New York” (Garcia, Reich and Wenner 2003/1972, 64).

Aoxomoxoa Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 65-67, nice praise for MOTM and DDM. “The record is
one of my pets. I really like it. I was always sorry that it came out so fucked
up and then didn’t sell and all. It was one of our most expensive ones—it
might’ve been the most expensive one.
–how much? eighty thousand?—An easy
that” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 66-67).

JGMF: “one of my pets” is an interesting
expression. The Movie was, of course, another of his pets that cost them the
better part of a fortune. Part of the narrative I need to weave through is the
Dead’s bond of brotherhood, and then some, also, obviously, business partners.
My basic narrative is that Jerry considered walking away, or at least having
everyone on their own bottom, in connection with the hiatus. He’d become Jerry
Garcia, Robert Hunter would become Robert Hunter, the Godchauxs and Weir and
Hart all had to take on more for themselves. But the model failed, for all of
the reasons involved with going into business for yourself, and with a future
convicted felon who cut himself a $225,000 check and bailed. And in that
moment, I think the GD guys, for the first time, but not for the last, carried Jerry instead of him carrying
them. They threw him a life preserver, he probably needed it, let him save
face, probably didn’t even bust his balls too much for letting the serpent into
the would-be Garden. Jerry fucked up, and I think as from 1976 he essentially
parameterized his commitment to the Dead, as he had with Laird Grant and maybe
a few others – he’d never seriously consider leaving the band again.

JGMF: “one of my pets” con’t: In fact, expensive
boondoggles were a little bit of a Garcia trademark – we could think that way
about Aoxomoxoa, the Dead’s Europe
’74 tour, the record companies, and Egypt in 1978, in that frame. In 1973 he
considered working on a screen adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic Cat’s Cradle (the material core of
which, substance Ice Nine, furnished the name of the Dead’s publishing company,
run by longtime running mate and house anthropologists, Alan Trist). Four years
later he’d opt instead for Vonnegut’s Sirens
of Titan, a project picked up and put down a number of times which remained
undone at Garcia’s death. Definitely the “creative type” in this
respect, long on vision and balls, but implementation can be problematic. Hence
the managers, accountants, lawyers, record companies, ‘quippies, bodyguards,
typists, and all the rest.

Live Dead Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 67

3/3/68 “It was already too late by then. That was kinda
like our swan song to Haight Street. … It was really a great day, but that was
the end of it” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 67).

After Aoxomoxoa,
“in debt to Warner Brothers for around $180,000” (Garcia et al. 2003
[1972], 68).

Workingman’s they
rehearsed for a month or so before the NO bust. January 1970? (Garcia et al.
2003 [1972], 68).

“we were feeling more like a good old band” (Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 69)

How did Lenny Hart’s Perfidy affect the making of
Workingman’s? “The album was a tremendous joy. Being able to that was extremely positive in the midst of all
this adverse stuff that was happening … It was the first record that we made
together as a group, all of us” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 69).

WD and American Beauty, “It’s just us, bouncing
off each other. It was the first record that we made together as a group, all
of us. Everybody contributed beautifully and it came off really nicely.”
praises songs, “that was the year we got turned onto singing” …
praises the mixes [Barncard] (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 69).

Casey Jones “I always thought it’s a pretty good
musical picture of what cocaine is like. A
little bit evil. [70] And hard-edged (Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 69-70) #drugs

Workingman’s stuff
Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 70, brief Wally Heider’s vs. PHR mention.

American Beauty Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 71. “I
tried to block the whole trip out. You see, my mother died while we were making
that record. And Phil’s father died. It was raining down hard on us while that
record was going on” (Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 71).

Skullfuck Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 71

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 72 why are you doing an album
yourself?

I’m doing it to be completely self-indulgent—musically. I’m
just going on a trip. I have a curiosity to see what I can do and I’ve a desire
to get into 16-track and go on trips which are too weird for me to want to put
anybody else I know through. And also to pay for this house!

…

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 73 I don’t want
anyone to think that it’s me being serious or anything like that – it’s really
me goofing around. I’m not trying to have my own career or anything like that. There’s a lot of
stuff that I feel like doing and the Grateful Dead, just by the fact that it’s
now a production for us to go out and play, we can’t get as loose, as we had
been able to, so I’m not able to stay as busy as I was. It’s just a way to keep
my hand in so to speak, without having to turn on a whole big scene. In the world that I live in there’s the Grateful Dead, which is one
unit which I’m a part of, and then there’s just me. And the me that’s
just me, I have to keep my end up in order to be able to take care of my part
of the Grateful Dead. So rather than sit home and practice – scales and
stuff—which I do when I’m together enough to do it—I go out and play because
playing music is more enjoyable to me than sitting around and playing scales.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 73: You’ve done some playing with
Tom Fogerty.

The drummer in that band now plays with the Sons of
Champlin, and Merle [sic] Saunders
has a small recording team of his own as well as composes and I’m going to gig
with them. It’s that kind of thing – a loose hangout.

Q: even though you tour a lot, you still do a lot of playing
outside the band, like with Merle [sic] Saunders.

Yeah, I still do that. I hope to do a few gigs with Howard.
It’s just that I love music. I love an opportunity to go out and play. I’m a
total junkie when it comes to playing. I just have to play. And when we’re off the road, I get itchy, and a bar’s
like the perfect opportunity to get loose, and play all night or whatever’s
comfortable. With guys that are good players, Merle [sic] or Howard or
anything, it’s always a complete open jam scene.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 73 Q Could you ever play with
another group?

If I had another life to live, I could. Just like I could
dig playing with Howard for a long time, or Merle [sic], all those guys. I
enjoy [74] playing and if I had more of me to go out and play those gigs, I’d
do it immediately.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 74 Q The Howard Wales record came out really nice.

It came out pretty successfully. It could have come out
better. It could have come out really fine,
in my opinion. I’m talking about the way it fell together, because none of the
material was written or anything. We either worked it out in the studio or it
was totally improvised; like “South Side Strut” is just a jam, it’s a
thin which just happened, with all those changes and horn parts, we did it all
live. It was very loose, but the results came out remarkably sophisticated.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 74-75 business disorganization. Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 75 JG We didn’t give a shit. We were just happy freaks,
man, we didn’t know anything about money, or bills, or anything of the rest of
that stuff.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 75 ironically or not Lenny was
the one who first really tried to get them organized. Maybe so he could rip
them off better. #Lenny Hart

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 75 Q What happened at the
Carousel? #v-Carousel

The cat that owned the place was overcharging, from what I
understand. At the time Ron Rakow was running the Carousel Ballroom and he got
called ‘mismanager’ and all the rest of that, stuff, but in reality there was
no way to make it work. … It was a great scene, even though it failed”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 76 Lenny Hart said “OK, boys, I’ll take care of you,” and we
thought, “Ah, at least here’s a manager that we don’t have to worry about,
he’s an old business man and he’s Mickey’s father, well, we can trust him, of
course we can trust him, you know, he’s his father.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 76 Sam Cutler had come back to the US after having gone through the
Altamont scene and he was looking for something to do – he came and hung out at
my house for awhile … Sam started looking into it and they discovered that
Lenny had really been taking a lot of money … Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 77 we
were recording Workingmans Dead when
we actually fired Lenny; we’d just been busted in New Oreland and things were
looking heavy, this New Orleans threat hanging over our heads … [Ramrod said
it’s him or me, they got rid of Lenny]

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 78 says last time they talked
[July 1971] there was talk about “starting a small record company”.
is that still real?

JG: “It’s as real as it was then, that is to say, it
still depends on … getting out of our present contract, or it expiring. … See,
Grunt Records is still RCA. … It’s not truly
independent. And our fantasy is to be completely
independent if we can do it.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 78 [WB is not that bad] I don’t
object to the idea of record companies at all, in fact, record companies are good.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 79 [don’t want to compete with
record cos, just put out their own stuff.] All we’re trying to do is survive
and be independent.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 80 we don’t have to be a crashing
huge success … the idea would be to keep it marginal so we don’t have to
escalate our trip.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 81 Q about the California Book of the Dead, which
Garcia addresses rather obliquely. What is this?

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 82 The question is, can we do it
and stay high?

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 83 discussion of 6/21/71 his
recollections

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 84 Q about touring, he uses
spring ’71 as reference: It’s getting trickier and trickier to do it, it’s
getting harder and harder. In Boston we played for two nights and even so there
were still about three or four thousand people outside each night that weren’t
able to get in because the place was sold out, and the police maced them and
did all that … I mean you being to wonder why you’re doing it if what you’re
doing is leading people into a trap.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 84 Q on playing with NRPS and GD

Playing the pedal steel is not much physical exertion; you
just sit down, and it’s all very close work. It’s more like working out with a
sewing machine than it is standing up and playing ball, which is the way
playing guitar is. It’s not such a totally physical trip. It’s little motions.
So it’s easy for me to sit down and play the pedal steel, I can play it for
eight hours in a row without hardly noticing it. But the New Riders are trying
to find another steel player, so they can tour more independently.

Q about Altamont Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 86-87

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 87 “you can’t put that out
without it turning up on you somewhere”

Q why Altamont?

A friend of mine, Steve Gaskin, capsulized it better than I
ever could … ‘Altamont was the little bit of sadism in your sex life, that the
Rolling Stones put out in their music, coming back. It was the karma of putting
that out for all those years, it was that little bit of red and black.’

p88 Q do you accept that little bit of evil in life?

Well, it’s there, whether you accept it or not.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 89-90 more Altamont

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 90 Q If Wild West had happened,
hadn’t been brought down … then Altamont would’ve never happened the way it
did.

JG: kind of demurs. “We blew it.”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 90 Q What happened to Janis?

#drugs

JG: I think it was a mistake; I think it was an accident,
like driving your car off the road. [Interesting: that’s what killed Jerry’s
mom.] I don’t think that there was any why
to it, really. She prpbably hadn’t had smack for awhile or something like that.
She probably had a few drinks or something after a gig, coming back to the
hotel, take a hit and on out, go to sleep for the night, and it was probably
more than she expected and she just died. That’s how easily it can happen, it
can happen to anybody if you don’t know what you’re getting, and that’s the way
it is when you’re having to deal with things that are illegal.

[91] I think that it’s the law that killed Janis, if
anything killed her, because she couldn’t go and get exactly the right hit for
herself of exactly the proper purity in a drug store and do herseulf up; she
wouldn’t be dead now. … I don’t think that fame killed her, I don’t think that
being a celebrity killed her. She just accidentally, like cutting yourself with
a razor or something, just accidentally died.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 91 Q: And Jim Morrison?

It’s just everybody dies. He was a musician, and that’s the
only reason people are talking about him dying. If Jim Morrison had been
anybody else, nobody would be talking about Jim Morrison dying. And that’s the
same with every other musician. Statistically, people die, and that’s all.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 91 Q: what do you listen to? A: I
listen to all kinds of stuff, just all kinds of stuff.

Q: Do you listen to the Band’s records?

Paraphrasing: I listen and think they’re getting repetitive,
but then “after a few weeks it starts creeping into the back of my mind
and I start thinking ‘Wow, what was that tune?’ And I go and find the record
and put it on. It’s like scratching an itch.” NB Jerry loved the sound
of RR’s guitar, like in Going, Going Gone

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 91 which tunes on the new [Band
record] do you like?

JG: “I love ‘Life Is A Carnival’ – that’s beautiful.
Shit, that’s great. All the stuff in there, all those great parts. The Dylan
song is great, too. [I Shall Be Released] I love that song. I’ll probably sing
that with the barroom band.”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 92 Q You like Robbie Robertson?

Yeah, yeah, I went and visited with him one day, when we
were on the East Coast. And I really dug being able to sit down and talk to
him. It was just like that kinda stuff you do where you’ve never met anybody
before, but you know what they do, and you respect them. We were both kinda
there cause we’d been on that tour-we’d met before, actually-on that tour with
Janis, that Canada thing. We got off on their music, of course, and they dug
our music, ’cause really, they’re kinda similar. We just have slightly
different viewpoints of an almost similar trip.

When I got together with him, we were talking on pretty
groovy grounds, in terms of mutual respect and understanding. It was good. We
talked about guitars, and pianos, and music … and I went over and dug his
studio. Just a friendly scene. It’s one of those things that sometime in the
future, I’d love to be able to spend some time and actually work with those
guys, actually play music together with them, under some circumstances or
another.

How would you describe his guitar playing?

He’s one of those guys who descended from Roy Buchanan and
those Fifties Fender-pickers. I can hear where he’s picked up a lotta his
stuff. His approach to it is more or less orchestral. The kinda stuff he plays
and the music, is like punctuation, and structural. He’s an extremely subtle
and refined guitar player, that’s the way I think of him. I really admire him.

How would you describe your own guitar playing?

I don’t know. I would describe my own guitar playing as
descended from barroom rock and roll, country guitar. Just ’cause that’s where
all my stuff comes from. It’s like that blues instrumental stuff that was
happening in the late Fifties and early Sixties, like Freddie King.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 93 #influences

When I get ready to go on the road, I make up cassettes of
all my favorite music. Country and Western stuff. Just whatever. Ali Akbar
Khan. Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Any English groups?

Beatles.

They’re not an English group …

I don’t really like the English bands too much. A few of the
older ones, yeah. Traffic is good, Stevie Winwood is great. Some of them I
enjoy listening to, but I don’t enjoy them in the sense of the soul. There’s
something that I listen to music for which … Neil Young has it, but Elton John
doesn’t, for me. It’s well-executed and everything, it’s good music, but it
just has to do with how it makes feel. I love American music. I love Indian
music, too. I even love English music. Actually, there’s a lotta English stuff
which I like a lot, but I’m just tending to be general. You know what I think
of as being the English sound, the real sound, is like Pentangle. Pentangle, to
my ears, is the English sound, because it’s very much that sort of madrigal,
Elizabethan thing, very crisp. Economical. But it’s not in any of the trends.
It’s more basic.

Other rock and roll bands?

I like Crosby. Stills and Nash and all the various elements
that they do, their solo trips. I like Neil Young’s stuff a lot, it’s real
great. I like his sensibilities. The Band, I love the band, I really like the way
they play, and their idea of what music is, is really neat to me. Crosby, Still
and Young are into a political bag, which I don’t like that much. But their
singing’s so good, their whole thing is. They’re entertainers. Crosby’s such an
incredible ham, a ShowBiz guy, but it’s alright. Their singing is strong. Their
whole musical scene is so together. It comes across really well.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 94

“I talked to Crosby today. … Steven is an extreme dude.
He’s a guy who goes too far, all the
time. Takes a lot of drugs, stretches his mind out a lot, he’s into some kind
of complex, competition scene with his father. Something which you and I
couldn’t know about, really. He’s too far ahead. But he’s a good dude, he’s got
a good head. I respect him and dig him. He’s not any kind of asshole or
anything, even when it seems like he might be. They’re all real good guys.
Graham Nash is a fine guy. Crosby’s a good old happy California hippie, L.A.
version.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 94 says Croz helped with his
singing. “I think that nothing really communicates like the human voice.

It is really the ultimate instrument. I used to think of
myself as a guitar player but hearing singing, and seeing it up close, has
kinda made me want to sing a lot; it just makes me want to do it, I don’t
really know what it is . . . and it’s real satisfying to sing. I’ve always
gotten off on a good singer, and that’s what I’m basin’ it on.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 94  Q Did the group called Planet Earth ever turn
out anything?

No. Everybody is off on their own trips still. It’ll
probably happen one of these times, it’s a question of timing. Everything that
I’ve ever done on anybody else’s record has been a matter of timing, we’re both
in the same town.

That’s part of where our music wants to go, but it’s record
companies and the music business structure that’s making it that difficult. It
should be possible for everybody to do everything, especially in music, where
music can only get better when people get together in different combinations.
But record companies wanta be exclusive. They’re getting looser and looser and
hopefully the thing could get [95] loose enough where everybody could do
whatever they want. That would be ideal.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 95 what guitarists have you
learned from the most?

A: I think Freddie
King is the guy I learned the most volume of stuff from. When I started
playing electric guitar the second time, with the Warlocks, it was a Freddie
King album that I got almost all my ideas off of, his phrasing really. That
first one, Here’s Freddie King, later it came out as Freddie King Plays Sutfin’
Music or something like that, it has “San-Ho-Zay” on it and
“Sensation” and all those instrumentals.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 95 Q when did you begin playing
pedal steel?

Pedal steel was an instrument that was on my mind since back
in the days when I was a banjo player. I didn’t think that I wanted to get that
serious about it because I knew it was extremely difficult and that I’d have to
spend a lot of time to actually get into it. It’s so difficult, man, and my
playing is so mediocre I can’t begin to tell you how embarrassed I am about my
playing on the damn thing, really, it’s lamentable. Oh, I get off on it’s
really fun, but that doesn’t mean that I can do it well; it’s kinda like
standing up on a pair of skates, it makes you happy.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 95 what new things have you
heard?

I’ll tell you what I’ve heard lately that I really like a
lot, these two kids in Stinson Beach, the Rowan
Brothers, Chris and Lorin Rowan.
I love their music. Me and Kreutzmann and Phil have been doing some sessions
with them because Dave Grisman,
who’s one of their managers, is an old friend of ours from bluegrass days (he’s
the guy that plays mandolin on American Beauty, there’s some nice mandolin on
“Friend of the Devil” and that, a real good musician). And these two
kids –one of them’s nineteen, and the other’s twenty two- from New England-just
write some really really pretty music and soulful songs, really high. It’s
fantastic, their music is just sparkly, brand-new, shiny. That’s like the
latest turn-on for me. They’re super, and they’re right at that point of just
starting out and nobody knows about them. I hate to see them go into the music
[96] business; I wish somebody could just say, “Here, man, here’s $5000 so
you can live for another six months without having to sell out. “The music
is too good for it. They could be, given the proper kind of exposure and stuff
like that, they could be like the Beatles. They’re that good, their music is
that good.”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 96 how do you stay so high?
#drugs

I smoke a lot of dope. … would you like some?

“one man’s poison is another man’s dope”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 97 how do you manage to stay so
optimistic?

Music is a thing that has optimism built into it. Optimism
is another way of saying “space.” Music has infinite space. You can
go as far into music as you can fill millions of lifetimes. Music is an
infinite cylinder, it’s open-ended, it’s space. The form of music has infinite
space as a part of it and that, in itself, means that its momentum is
essentially in that open place.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 98

“music can contain all of it. It can contain your
bummers, it can contain your depressions, it can contain the black despair,
man, it can contain the whole spectrum. The blues is a perfect example. The
blues is that very effect, operating in a very sublime way. You hardly ever
hear anybody say they’re depressed because they’ve heard a lot of music. That’s
a pretty good example, right there. Even the worst music-the poorest, baddest,
most illthought- of music on earth-doesn’t hurt anybody.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 98 JG says he loves Lennon’s
album

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 100

The GD is not for cranking out rock ‘n’ roll, it’s not for
going out and doing concerts or any of that stuff, I think it’s to get high.

To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget
yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an
understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. And I
think every human being should be a conscious tool of the universe. That’s why
I think it’s important to get high.

I’m not talking about unconscious or zonked out, I’m talking
about being fully conscious. Also I’m not talking about the Grateful Dead as
being an end in itself. I don’t think of that highness as being an end in
itself. I think of the Grateful Dead as being a crossroads or a pointer sign
and what we’re pointing to is that there’s a lot of universe available, that
there’s a whole lot of experience available over here. We’re kinda like a
signpost, and we’re also pointing to danger, to difficulty, we’re pointing to
bummers. We’re pointing to whatever there is, when we’re on- when it’s really
happening.

You’re a signpost to new space?

pGarcia et al. 2003 [1972], 109ff – part 2 – A stoned Sunday
rap. My notes on timing: ca. 6 mos. after first interview published in RS. Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 180 Owsley still in the joint. 205 Europe trip still in
future tense. 217 Ace almost done. 225 tonight, mixing Bobby’s album.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 112 Alan Trist” JG: “He’s a fantastic guy”

JG con’t “I’m only one component of the Grateful Dead,
I’m an equal unity with everybody else in it and everybody else is really far
out, you know what I mean? Like Alan [Trist], man, Alan is fantastic, he’s like
some kind of cosmic diplomat. He’s a guy that there isn’t anybody; there’s no
way that ou can dislike him, you know what I mean, he never disturbs any karma,
ever. He’s fantastic, really man. … Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 113 I’ve known
Alan since he was eighteen and he and I met down in Palo Alto.

pGarcia et al. 2003 [1972], 114-115 Garcia refers twice to a
big pivot “two months ago” when he decided “yeah, OK, I’ll do
it. Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 115: “I’ve gone a lot of places not
deciding and not choosing and not, and not willing in any way, you know what I
mean … it’s like up until like two months ago everything’s been free form, I’ve
been improvising, I’ve been taking it as it comes.”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 116 JG “I’ve always been in
reserve in terms of, you know, whether I’m going to run full out and use it all
or whether I’m going to, you known, lay back and see what happens, and I’ve
been laying back to see what happens for a long time now I feel like, you know,
but see, like, the whole Grateful Dead thing has been kind of like, ah, you
know, like waking up, you know what I mean, it’s like ah, you know ah, ah ha,
here we are. It’s drying out he wings and all that wrrr, you know, looking
around.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 134 I could draw you … a picture
of the GD, man. It’s got like six or seven weird legs, mismatched pairs, and
one moth-eaten eagle wing and one bat wing, and it snorts fire and it’s
cross-eyed … and it jumps up and kicks around and laughs real loud.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 137 MG to Annabelle: “You’re
the noisiest little kid I’ve ever known.”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 180 MG: “Anybody want a
peanut butter and jelly sandwich? JG: “No thanks, too dry.” He asks
for a cup of tea.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 182 MG to CR: “you mustn’t
care whether it’s a joke or not. You know, if in doubt, take it as a
joke.”

Garcia
et al. 2003 [1972], 183 PB&Js arrive

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 197 JG “I feel like life is
what’s happening, so I want to do what I can on the life-side of the whole
life-death cycle”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 1977 JG: “I resent having to
use what I could use for tripping out … to work on stuff.” artistic
freedom. JG more talk about commitment in life. Two months ago, Garcia et al.
2003 [1972], 198.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 198 .”… life or death,
either one is okay. … but I’ve made my pitch, I’ve put my stand in for the life
side of the cycle.”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 205 MG has gone down to town to
buy Jerry some cigarettes, and brings back some sunflower seeds.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 212-214 Annabelle is eating
sunflower seeds, putting lots of honey in a tea cup. Garcia et al. 2003 [1972],
214 she dumps something. Jerry stokes the fire.

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 209 discussion about food:
“I don’t really care about food. I’m not really into my physical self very
much at all … some day I’ll pay for it.”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 223 MG brings in some flowers,
candy-striped camellias

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 224 JG “Ozzie and Harriet
consciousness”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 229 “I’ll eat anything
equally and with little relish or with none at all. That’s from years of
smoking and, you know, beatnik living, you know, crackers and …”

Garcia et al. 2003 [1972], 229 more food talk, JG mentions
yogurt, MG: Did I hear a call for yogurt? I have some yogurt. [turns out Jerry
did slyly eat a half a pb&j.]

REFERENCES

! ref: Garcia, Jerry, Charles Reich, and Jann Wenner. 2003 [1972].
Garcia: A Signpost to New Space. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

! ref: Reich, Charles. 2003 [1972]. Introduction. In Garcia,
Reich and Wenner 2003 [1972], xi-xxi.

! ref: Wenner, Jann. 2003 [1972]. Foreword. In Garcia, Reich
and Wenner 2003 [1972], vii-x.