Cosmic And Funny

"Popper is the singer, pretty sure he writes most of the material as well. I get the impression Blues Travelers audience is not dis-similar to Deadheads" -Craig Nelson, blog reader.

Where do blog babies come from?

I was just trying to recall, last night, a conversation that I had had with someone shortly after Jerry Garcia was pronounced dead.
It ran around the theme of "what are the deadheads going to do now; where are they going to go in their VW buses covered in decals now?"
And this person mentioned a few band names that were being tossed around as possible replacements for Jerry and the boys. Each one was delivered with a derisive shake of his head...

"Some people are saying The Dave Matthews Band..." (shake of the head) "Neh"...or Phish (looking at the ground and shaking head), or maybe Blues Traveler (shake, shake).

I had a feeling that the dead would eventually replace Jerry and go on, but it would only happen after enough time had passed to remove the appearance that the guy was being replaced.

The deadheads were very much into the autobiographical aspect of the band, which actually was busted down on Bourbon Street (set up like a bowling pin, as a matter of fact) and had ridden on "the bus to never-ever land" with Cowboy Neil at the wheel. And it was a good thing that they had gotten on before the bus stop exploded and left a smoking crater on Bob Weir's mind, but I don't want to spoil that story. The fact is, though, the deadheads appreciated the fact that the dead were singing about things that they actually hallucinated, nothing phony or made up, there. They took their songs from genuine illusions.

The Dave Matthews Band did enough improvising and stretched their songs out, ala Phish, enough to potentially interest deadheads. But, there is an almost fatal flaw in the lack of originality which the name "The Dave Matthews Band" could be seen as a harbinger of. "Hey, I thought of a great name for our band!" type of thing.

I don't think fans of bands such as "Moby Grape" or "The New Riders of the Purple Sage" were ready to wrap their minds around that name. Especially when the landscape abounded in dead clone bands like "Lobsters From Mars," "Further" and "Glass Camels."

Plus it implies that Dave is "the leader" and the others are his band, like what happened when Ziggy "became a special man, then we were Ziggy's band," in the David Bowie classic "Ziggy Stardust." The dead were all about "the music plays the band," and Jerry once said that people think he is the lead guitarist because his guitar is the loudest, "but, actually I'm following everybody else."

The Blues Traveler idea made me smile, wondering if anyone actually thought the deadheads might be looking for another heavy musician to follow around, maybe so, on a hit of acid, they could pretend he was their departed hero.

Just, to underscore the cosmic connection to things, the first time I heard Blues Traveler, without seeing them, the song ("Run Around") reminded me of something a friend of mine, who was overweight and vexed about that, would write.

The way Popper facetiously sang the line "Hey baby, let's stay in touch!" in that song was right up my friend Bill's alley, who had a very cynical view of relationships as seen through the eyes of a fat kid, who may have been told that by girls, as they walked away at a brisk pace.

So, it didn't surprise me to see how fat Popper wound up being.

And, the fact that my friend Ben Jernigan is a huge deadhead and wound up playing on the album of a guy whose name had come up in a conversation about replacing Jerry Garcia, kind of brings things full circle.

Where do I fit in? I'm still working that out...

If I went to see the remainder of the Grateful Dead, rather than Phish, it would be because of the playing of Phil Lesh, the bassist. "Phish" is kind of a portmanteau of his name, too, which is also cosmic and funny.