Two (2) pins and two (2) magnets, handcast concrete, ca. 2.0–3.0 in. Gift of Viki Schecter.

Viki Schecter, longtime Deadhead (and proud mother of a UCSC undergraduate) recently donated a set of four handmade Deadhead artworks to the Archive, shown here. These delightful pins and magnets depict four seminal images and icons in the Grateful Dead phenomenon: the famous Mouse/Kelley band logo, derived from Edmund J. Sullivan’s illustration in the Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam; the Owsley Stanley / Bob Thomas-designed Steal Your Face band logo; the squared Grateful Dead emblem, and a stylized version of Garcia’s bearded visage, bedecked in sunglasses.

Schecter created these “MANY years ago,” as she recently wrote. “I sculpted each design with Sculpy [a brand of polymer clay] by hand (except the round one, that was my husband’s belt buckle). I made a latex mold and filled it with cement. Each one is hand painted by me.”

Schecter sold three of the designs in Dead show parking lots, though not the Garcia pins: “Only people who knew me personally had a Jerry pin. They were not for sale. We actually had one friend find us at a show because they saw someone wearing the Jerry pin and knew they knew us.” Schecter also gave a Jerry pin to Bill Graham, before a New Year’s Eve concert—in fact, it may well be the pin that appears in The Official Book of the Deadheads (see p.131).

Deadhead crafts are an important part of the broader scene and phenomenon, and the Archive is grateful to Viki for her kind donation. Look for it in the upcoming exhibition, “Songs of Our Own: The Art of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon,” which will open in late April in McHenry Library’s Dead Central exhibit space. Many thanks to Ms. Schecter for her artisanry and generosity! ~ Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist

James D. McCallister, Fellow Traveler: A Rock & Roll Fable. Chapin, SC: Muddy Ford Press, 2012. Softbound, 351 + iv pp. $16.95

The Grateful Dead have always had a serious literary bent, from the Beat inheritance of the band symbolized by Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey to the extraordinarily literary qualities of their lyricists, from Bobby Petersen to Robert Hunter to John Perry Barlow. Deadheads responded with their own literary efforts, from wonderful impromptu parking lot poetry to formal, published efforts in a wide variety of genres.

James D. McCallister’s Fellow Traveler joins the list of Deadhead-penned novels with a fine allegorical treatment of the latter-day Dead scene. Centered on the experiences of several fans of a band called Jack O’Roses, clearly inspired by the Dead, the novel traces these intertwined lives as they navigate a world following the retirement of the band. Memories and evocations of that world during the band’s final decade bring to life a powerful vision of the last few years of the Dead scene, including some of the horrors of the band’s final tours in 1995, especially Deer Creek. In an eloquent and moving afterword, McCallister makes that point explicitly, saying that part of his reason for writing the novel was as a rejoinder to “the gatecrashers at Deer Creek, individuals who, on July 2, 1995, not only ruined what turned out to be my final Grateful Dead concert, but caused what would have been my final show to be canceled” (“Endnote,” p.[353]).

But the novel is far more than an elegy to a vanished scene: the characters are compelling, the dialogue crisp and believable, and the plot pulls readers along without sacrificing the literary flourishes that keep the book in mind well after the climax. Throughout, the nods to Deadhead culture and allusions to the band’s canon are subtle, well placed, and contribute to the sense that the Dead phenomenon, even in its last stages, can sustain high-level literary fiction.

McCallister considers his novel more of a genre effort than literary fiction, although some readers may disagree. Most would place Fellow Traveler alongside Philip Baruth’s lyrical and powerful debut, The Millennium Shows, recently re-released by Kearney Street Books. The acquisitions editor of that press, Gary McKinney, calls Fellow Traveler “a truly charming and deft literary achievement—a magical, captivating work,” high praise from the author of a pair of mystery novels featuring Deadhead sheriff Gavin Pruitt. McKinney’s works, Slipknot and Darkness Bids the Dead Goodbye,  follow what is often considered the first Deadhead novel, Alan Neal Izumi’s Dead Tour, published by Relix magazine in 1988, although McKinney’s are not set in the Deadhead milieu, which provides the context for Izumi’s narrative.

McCallister’s Deadhead bonafides are impeccable: a taper and later Shakedown Street vendor, he went on to become co-owner of a Deadhead shop, Loose Lucy’s, originally one of a chain of six such shops and now the last. Located in Columbia, Loose Lucy’s continues to provide South Carolina Deadheads with a sense of continuity and connection, even seventeen years after Garcia’s death and the retirement of the band. Some of Fellow Traveler was written while McCallister manned the shop, where I would often visit him when Columbia was still my home base.  (Full disclosure: McCallister acknowledges my friendship in the “Endnote” of the book, and I had the pleasure of reading drafts of Fellow Traveler as it went through a number of revisions before settling into its final, published form.)

Fans who came to the Dead phenomenon following Garcia’s death will find Fellow Traveler to be a fine evocation of the last years of the scene, just as scholars studying the broader literary aspects of the Deadhead experience will need to spend time with McCallister’s story. With more and more books devoted to the band and phenomenon appearing, it is important for scholars and thoughtful fans to also consider the fictional treatments that often limn and illuminate the most telling but often hidden currents that informed the Deadhead experience. For scholars, Fellow Traveler helps chart the cultural diffusion of the Grateful Dead phenomenon and the Deadhead experience—and for readers, it’s simply a fine read.

~ Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist

Geoffrey Gronlund, ed. Omphalos, Vol. 3 (Winter 2007). Bridgton, ME: Nine Point Publishing. Saddle-stapled pamphlet, 5-3/8 x 8-3/8 in., 24 pp.

Geoffrey Gronlund, ed. Omphalos, Vol. 11 (Summer/Fall 2010). Bridgton, ME: Nine Point Publishing. Perfect-bound paperback, 5-3/8 x 8-3/8 in., 88 pp. Signed by Stanley Mouse on inside front flyleaf.

Archive supporter Geoff Gronlund visited McHenry Library on August 25 and toured the exhibit, leaving behind a wonderful gift: two issues of a literary journal he edited and published from 2005 to 2012. Entitled Omphalos, the journal adds to the Archive’s holdings of Dead-related literature with a wonderful unpublished short story by Robert Hunter, entitled “Great Bell of the Atlantic,” which appears in Volume 3, and ten illustrations by Stanley Mouse decorating Volume 11, which Stanley signed.

Gronlund is a committed Deadhead and literary fan, dating his love for collecting small press printing and book arts to his discovery of a signed copy of Ken Kesey’s Last Go Round, purchased from an Ithaca, NY, bookstore in 2002. An avid reader of the Beats, Gronlund already credited Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac for much of his literary outlook, and Kesey linked that passion to the extraliterary (and literary) art of the Grateful Dead.

When Gronlund founded Omphalos, he never imagined that he would end up publishing Robert Hunter and Stanley Mouse, but these two volumes are a credit to his vision and perseverance. Mouse fans will be pleased to see how well Stanley’s paintings lend themselves to illustrating the poems in Vol. 11, making the point that the art of the Dead always tapped much deeper cultural wellsprings. (Several of the images are available as posters for sale at Mouse’s website, too.)

Hunter’s story fits in with a number of efforts he has written in recent years reworking his vision of Christian origins and Western myth, a body of work now reminiscent of Kafka’s Parables and Paradoxes project. A whimsical but brooding story set in a post-apocalyptic America, “Great Bell of the Atlantic” features some of the famed lyricist’s telltale whimsy and erudition, with semi-comic imagery wrapped with pointed allusions all cloaking some very thoughtful meditations on the human condition:

“Religiosity is the bane not only of government but of religion itself. It was never otherwise and, if the calculations were not erroneous, never could be. Contrary to Yeats, it appears the falcon can see the falconer pretty damn well, in point of fact, but does not care to return to the glove.” (15)

There are a few telltale Dead references throughout, such as “love light” and the bell itself, the central metaphor and subject, although it isn’t until the denouement of the story that the real Dead subtext unfolds, and we’re treated to Hunter’s vision of the Jubilee, which plays such a prominent role in his lyrics for “Sugaree”:

“Religion, law, philosophy, and science are among the means to approach it, but once the Jubilee is attained, they serve no further purpose and are replaced by art, music, baseball, and a whole lot of dancing.” (20)

In Leviticus 25:10, Jubilee is described as a celebration held every fifty years and widely interpreted as a time for forgiving all debts; Hunter’s take provides a whimsical and poignant telling of the metaphor that continues his long-running spelunking of the subterranean crannies of literature and myth that so much of his work has mapped over the years. Some of that he published on his website, others have cropped up as email publications—look for wonderful story cycle Red Sky Fishing especially—and in a variety of small press efforts, like Omphalos. The Archive is grateful to Geoff for thinking of us and bringing this to our attention.

Gronlund’s work as editor and designer is first rate, and the production—especially in Vol. 11—is superb. The color printing makes Mouse’s illustrations come to life, and even the earlier print pages gathered in the center of Vol. 3 are superbly rendered. Sadly, Omphalos has ceased publication, but it leaves behind an impressive legacy and some wonderful work, as seen in these two issues. Two good articles about Gronlund’s bookstore and printing efforts can be found here and here. Many thanks to Geoff for donating these issues to the Archive, and we wish him well with his next ventures.

Nicholas Meriwether
Grateful Dead Archivist

The sculpture of Garcia’s hand by Tom White, outside of Dead Central.

For Deadheads, the time between Jerry Garcia’s birthday (August 1) and death (August 9) has come to be called The Days Between, after the song of the same name. In keeping with the spirit of Hunter’s moving elegy, that eight-day period has become a time for reflection for those whose lives have been changed or touched by the Grateful Dead phenomenon. For some, that week has become a time for forgiveness and healing; for others, it is simply a time to remember and reflect on their experiences with the Dead and with Garcia in particular.

Since opening in June, the Dead Archive has become a destination for fans traveling to Northern California, often as part of a Deadhead tour to visit the Haight-Ashbury and take in a meal and a show at Phil’s Terrapin Crossroads or Bob Weir’s Sweetwater Music Hall. Noted band photographer Herbie Greene visited on August 14, just after the Days Between, and dozens of Deadhead baseball fans made a pilgrimage to the Archive before heading off to the third annual San Francisco Giants’ Jerry Garcia Day on August 3, benefitting the Rex Foundation.

Thanks to the generosity of Manasha and Keelin Garcia, who threw out the first pitch, the Archive was represented at Jerry Day and watched some fine ball playing (alas, the Giants lost). Moonalice, who honored the Archive’s public celebration with a great show at the library on June 29, gave an inspired performance to open the festivities; they played a fine set that built on their prowess as a first-rate original band who can also do ample justice to the Dead’s songbook.

The number of visitors to the Library spiked during The Days Between,  with fans coming from as far away as Germany, New York, and Florida to see the exhibit, “A Box of Rain: Archiving the Grateful Dead Phenomenon.” As the Archivist and the curator of the exhibit, I gave impromptu tours for several groups, and it was interesting to see what pieces engendered the strongest reactions (most visitors singled out the letters on display on the band’s conference table, especially the ones from Pigpen’s father to the band, and from the band to Richard Nixon).

One of the cards left at the Archive, celebrating Jerry’s birthday.

As the week progressed, the sculpture of Jerry’s hand, by Santa Barbara artist Tom White, became a focal point for several fan contributions, shown here. The Archive has thousands of fan letters and gifts like this; it is a pleasure and an honor for the Archive to now be the recipient of that attention, and to continue the tradition.

That tradition has now lasted for seventeen years after the untimely, early death of Jerry Garcia, and these expressions of the reverence and wonder that the Dead inspired seem no less heartfelt and immediate as the sentiments expressed at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park on August 13, 1995, when more than 25,000 of us gathered there to pay our respects. On behalf of the Dead Archive, many thanks for sharing your feelings with us, and with everyone who paid homage during this special time of remembrance.

~ Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist

DNA, Memoirs of the Messiah (Self-published, 2008),  6 x 9 in., 171 pp.

There has always been a strong literary bent to the Deadhead experience, most obviously in the lyrics penned for the band by Robert Hunter, John Perry Barlow, and Bobby Petersen, among others. A few of the scene’s deeper literary connections can be seen in their close association with Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion, whose group of friends included Beat icon Neal Cassady, hero of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel and Beat Generation manifesto On the Road. Cassady was part of Kesey’s group, dubbed  the Merry Pranksters, who recruited the fledgling Grateful Dead to perform at the Acid Tests in the fall of 1965.

That history was recounted in another seminal book, Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a bellwether of what would be called the New Journalism and a foundational text in the Grateful Dead library. Wolfe’s remarkable narrative helped immortalize the origins of the Dead and made a strong case for treating the group and their project with seriousness—an important nod at a time when the counterculture and rock music were hotly contested topics in the first flush of the culture wars over the meaning of the sixties.

Over the years, Deadheads have contributed to the burgeoning literature on the band and phenomenon, from mystery novels to poetry to scholarship in a wide range of disciplines. Most of those publications are obvious, with titles that most readers, and certainly any Deadhead, would recognize. But fans, cultural critics and historians interested  in the broader dissemination of the Grateful Dead phenomenon need to look carefully to trace how widely the Deadhead worldview has spread in American culture.  “We are everywhere” is a familiar Deadhead mantra, but often that ubiquity is cloaked and difficult to ferret out.

One book recently donated to the Dead Archive is a perfect case study in that subterranean ubiquity. Memoirs of the Messiah, a literary mélange of meditations, anecdotes and reminiscences, is not a Deadhead memoir, but it is salted with references to the band and scene, and charts the way that the Dead phenomenon has continued to evolve and spread in the years since Garcia’s death to become a significant strand in American culture. Written as a series of “revelations,” by a reluctant self-proclaimed messiah, the book presents Santa Cruz stand-up comedian, sometime political candidate and writer DNA’s thoughts about a variety of topics.

The author officially changed his name to DNA—one of the great lines in the book is, “Appointing your own name is guaranteed to agitate the other monkeys in the zoo” (p. 157). That is emblematic of the charmingly subversive tone to the book, although DNA’s style is far from iconoclastic. Indeed, Deadheads will recognize hallmark traits of the scene at its best, even though DNA’s story largely unfolds in a post-Jerry world.

That world is still defined by the absence of that luminous musician and avatar, and Memoirs of the Messiah is noteworthy for its evocation of a cultural landscape forever altered by Garcia. References to the Grateful Dead  pepper the book, from lyrics scattered throughout to Deadhead scenes, such as waiting in line in front of the Kaiser Auditorium in Oakland before a show.

DNA contributed a copy of the book to the Archive, but he has also been a friend in other ways, writing about the Archive for local newspapers. For more of his work, see his website. A fine article on his multifarious talents appeared in the Santa Cruz Sentinel here.

Fans of samizdat publications will find DNA’s book appealing and thought-provoking on its own merits, but for Deadheads and scholars the book is particularly interesting for the degree to which it limns the arc of the broader dissemination into mainstream culture of the Grateful Dead phenomenon. Memoirs of the Messiah is one of dozens of such works that will provide cultural historians and scholars of popular culture with a fascinating map of how the Deadhead experience continued in the years following the band’s formal dissolution.

Greene, Herb, 1942-, “Grateful Dead: Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann,” Grateful Dead Archive Online, accessed June 29, 2012, http://www.gdao.org/items/show/514561

The Grateful Dead Archive is pleased to announce its grand opening, June 29, 2012, with a concert by famed Bay Area band Moonalice on the lawn of UC Santa Cruz’s McHenry Library. The Library is home to the Archive, the Brittingham Family Foundation Dead Central, our dedicated exhibit space, and now, the Grateful Dead Archive Online, or GDAO, our cutting-edge website that enables patrons from around the world to participate in building the Archive and access digital images of thousands of the Archive’s treasures.

Since the announcement of the gift in April 2008, UC Santa Cruz has been working diligently to curate the band’s incredible trove of materials. Processing continues as we drill deeper into the band’s gift and secure additional materials from donors; a central, related component of this effort is the creation of an online archive, under the leadership of project manager Robin Chandler, showcasing thousands of images, artifacts and materials drawn from the Archive. This remarkable, innovative website also allows users to upload their own content and comment on Archive materials in a ground-breaking, socially constructed website devoted to the Grateful Dead phenomenon.

Grateful Dead Archive logo

Visitors to the Library can see our inaugural exhibition, “A Box of Rain: Archiving the Grateful Dead Phenomenon,” curated by Archivist Nicholas Meriwether, featuring a wide array of remarkable art, artifacts, and memorabilia that the band and more than 100 donors have contributed, and researchers will also be able to access processed materials from the Archive in the Library’s Special Collections Reading Room.

“It’s been a labor of love,” Meriwether commented recently, “and that labor will continue for many years as we process more of the Archive and secure additional materials, but we are excited to celebrate the milestone of the opening of the Archive and the website, GDAO, for researchers and the public.”

Grateful Dead Archive Online logo

Congratulations to Christine Bunting, Robin Chandler, Sue Perry, and Maureen Carey, who worked with Archivist Nicholas Meriwether and a team of staffers to process the physical and digital materials comprising the Archive and the website, and to the many donors who pitched in and continue to support the Archive and help it fulfill its mission to create a first-rate scholarly repository that will allow researchers to study this remarkable phenomenon. The long strange trip continues.

More On GDAO

Since the announcement of the gift in April 2008, UC Santa Cruz has been working diligently to curate the band’s incredible trove of materials. Processing continues as we drill deeper into the band’s gift and secure additional materials from donors. A related component of this effort is the creation of an online archive that showcases thousands of images, artifacts and materials drawn from the Archive. This innovative website also allows users to upload their own content and comment on Archive materials in a ground-breaking, socially-constructed website devoted to the Grateful Dead phenomenon.

The items presented online in GDAO represent the individual and collective creativity of the band, artists, photographers and fans. UCSC has worked hard to identify and contact rights holders to let them know about our online project, which is designed to support scholarship; we have had great success in locating dozens of artists, photographers, creators and rights holders who have granted us a license to display their works in GDAO. The license we use does not limit the creators or rights holders in any way: it only gives us non-exclusive permission to display scans on the site, which is a strictly not-for-profit, educational, scholarly effort. When we know who holds the rights to an image, and they have given us permission, we have incorporated that information in the metadata accompanying each work displayed. The Copyright Information and/or Copyright Statements displayed represents our best efforts to locate and secure that permission.

In some cases it has been impossible to identify and make contact with rights holders. For some materials, we are displaying the works on GDAO to enlist the aid of the community to help us identify and find rights holders we were unable to contact. If you have additional—or conflicting—information about an item you see in GDAO, and/or information about the copyright holder, please contact us at grateful@ucsc.edu and let us know. With your help, we can create a superb destination for fans, researchers, and scholars interested in understanding the mysteries and wonder of the Grateful Dead phenomenon. The long strange trip continues—thanks to you all.