About a month ago, the two surviving non-retired members of the Grateful Dead played their last ever show in California, bringing the long strange trip, nearly sixty years long, to a close. I wasn't at the show, but I knew many, many people who were, and when I visited California a couple weeks later I saw many t-shirts commemorating the event.
To be honest, I was never a big Grateful Dead fan. I thought, for the most part, that their music was boring, and that they were extremely overrated. Partly because back in the day, (late 80s up until Jerry Garcia passed away in the summer of 1995) I mainly listened to metal, punk, and alternative rock. But also, partly, because I just never understood the whole scene surrounding them. For many people, it was more than just a band. It was like a lifestyle, a club, or a cult. Over the years, I was subjected to many thousands of hours of their music. In college, it played almost constantly in the background, at both big parties and small gatherings, in the halls of the dorms, or on the stereos of my roommates. It became almost like a soundtrack to my early 20's. Maybe that's partly why I can now appreciate them better than I did then, as some sort of nostalgic vibe. People would gather and the conversations about the band, their songs, and the various shows they went to, would sometimes last for hours. With the Dead, you never went to just one show, you had to go to at least three, then maybe even follow them up and down the coast to catch a few more.
So, at the time I didn't understand that kind of fanaticism about one band. Maybe now I do, though.
Maybe, for that legion of tie-dyed "Hippie Freaks" it was just about wanting to belong. To find your tribe, your people. To bond over shared experiences, and shared music. And, if one band can make so many people happy for so long, provide that belonging, that sense of tribe, and shared bond, for so long, and in a positive and constructive way, that can only be a good thing. I don't care for Taylor Swift either- like with most of the Dead, I find her music to be "Dead Boring" but yet, if she makes hundreds of millions of fans happy with her soporific music, then more power to her and God bless her, because we certainly need more happiness in this world.
I've also grown to like...well, SOME of their stuff, over the years. Their earliest studio works, when Ron McKernon was in the band (who fans called "Pig Pen" for reasons I've never quite figured out) had a youthful passionate energy that a lot of their later, mellower stuff seemed to lack. That "In the Dark" album from the '80s had some decent catchy tunes as well.
So, even though the long strange trip is over, I would still thank them for giving so much of themselves to so many wonderful people in my life over all those many years. Even though I was never on that long strange trip with them, I appreciate all the postcards.