![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ungrateful Dead
Aug. 7th, 2006 08:19 am
Last night as Rob was taking me to work, I was flipping through radio stations looking for something, anything, with no commercials. The only song on was the Grateful Dead's 'Touch of Gray' (I dunno if that's the title or not, but it's the only memorable line other than 'I will survive'...) and I said something about it being the only Grateful Dead song I could tolerate. I then started thinking that the only song I even know by the GD is 'Touch of Gray' and how the only reason I know it's a GD song is because the video seemed far too cool to be wasted on a sappy song like 'Touch of Gray' & I always stopped watching the video when the skeletons turned into Jerry Garcia & crew.
I've always told people, and believed it myself, that I do not like the Grateful Dead. This has since evolved into was me realizing that I do not know whether I like or don't like the Dead because I only know the one song by them. I could have been sitting in the car, or at work, or here at home, happily singing along to many a GD song, not knowing it was by the GD & not caring. So I asked people at work, and no one knows any GD songs, not even Shirla, who was, at one time, an honest-to-goodness hippy. She stood there in the office w/her head tilted, recollecting that she thought she had owned a GD record at some distant time in the past, & said she thought she remembered most of their music as being unremarkable.
So this morning I'm sitting here reading about the completely amazing amount of musical talent & backgrounds of the numerous folk who made up the GD over 30 or so years, including Micky Hart & Bruce Hornsby. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is useless for my quest because even though it lists the timeline, musicians, musical technology, pasts & futures - it lists no song titles other than confirming that 'Touch of Gray' is indeed the title of that song.
Aha, I did find the 'Complete Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics' website... I do remember 'Hell In a Bucket', and I remember not liking that song. It's from the same album as 'Touch of Gray', so I don't know if I should actually count it or not. And 'Truckin'... don't like that one, either. So it's 2-to-1 against. I think a lot of the songs I thought were GD songs were actually Crosby, Stills & Nash songs, like 'Marrakech Express'. Most of the songs on the 'CAGDL' website seem to be folk songs, like 'Alligator' or 'Must Have Been the Roses'. Most radio stations, even oldies stations, won't play folksy stuff unless it's Joni Mitchell doing 'Big Yellow Taxi'.
I dunno, I get on these kicks sometimes.
I've always told people, and believed it myself, that I do not like the Grateful Dead. This has since evolved into was me realizing that I do not know whether I like or don't like the Dead because I only know the one song by them. I could have been sitting in the car, or at work, or here at home, happily singing along to many a GD song, not knowing it was by the GD & not caring. So I asked people at work, and no one knows any GD songs, not even Shirla, who was, at one time, an honest-to-goodness hippy. She stood there in the office w/her head tilted, recollecting that she thought she had owned a GD record at some distant time in the past, & said she thought she remembered most of their music as being unremarkable.
So this morning I'm sitting here reading about the completely amazing amount of musical talent & backgrounds of the numerous folk who made up the GD over 30 or so years, including Micky Hart & Bruce Hornsby. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is useless for my quest because even though it lists the timeline, musicians, musical technology, pasts & futures - it lists no song titles other than confirming that 'Touch of Gray' is indeed the title of that song.
Aha, I did find the 'Complete Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics' website... I do remember 'Hell In a Bucket', and I remember not liking that song. It's from the same album as 'Touch of Gray', so I don't know if I should actually count it or not. And 'Truckin'... don't like that one, either. So it's 2-to-1 against. I think a lot of the songs I thought were GD songs were actually Crosby, Stills & Nash songs, like 'Marrakech Express'. Most of the songs on the 'CAGDL' website seem to be folk songs, like 'Alligator' or 'Must Have Been the Roses'. Most radio stations, even oldies stations, won't play folksy stuff unless it's Joni Mitchell doing 'Big Yellow Taxi'.
I dunno, I get on these kicks sometimes.
