Substrate: Poems

Another greatly admired poet and Deadhead is Jim Powell. His long awaited new collection of poems Substrate: Poems is now offered from Pantheon Books. Powell is the author of many books on lyric poetry and translation from Classical Greek and Latin, and he was a MacArthur Fellow in 1993 for poetry.

True Legacy

One other note about Peter Conners. In response to Ben Ratcliff's article on the Dead in the April 12th issue of the NY Times, Conners has written a reply that made the Times Letter section on 4/26. He notes "The article should also be a reminder to Deadheads that fetishizing artifact over experience threatens the values of spontaneity and creative possibility that super charged every Dead show. Let's use the live recordings as a way to perpetuate the celebratory rituals of music, dance and unity that are the Dead's (and Deadheads') true legacy."

Growing Up Dead

Poet Peter Conners who claims he was born in a small town called America, has just published his memoir with Da Capo Press: Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead, which chronicles ten years of his life from a suburban Rochester teenager through 1995 as a serious Deadhead. Conners is known for his prose poetry collection Of Whiskey and Winter (White Pines Press, 2007), his well regarded novella Emily Ate the Wind (Marick Press, 2008), and as being founding co-editor of Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction. His new book is being touted as part memoir, part social history, and for (as noted in Publishers Weekly) "offering a perspective often missing from other Dead chronicles."

Conners is currently on tour himself giving readings from the book and doing interviews. In June he is scheduled for several events: on the 3rd David Gans will interview him for "The Grateful Dead Hour" (www.gdhour.com), and this conversation will be continued from the 10th to the 24th on "The Well" (www.well.com); Conners will also be at Books Inc. on June 4th (601 Van Ness in San Francisco.)

Deadheads and Licklider

Another older book still being reviewed is Patrice Flichy's The Internet Imaginaire. (MIT Press, 2007), an introduction to the history of the Internet. Book reviewer Paul E. Ceruzzi admits to being a Deadhead and a heavy user of the concerts available via the Internet Archive. He therefore holds particular interest in Flichy’s chapter 3 which "discusses communities of people who had been excluded from traditional access to computers, among them the fans of the Grateful Dead rock band who traded information on the San Francisco Bay area network, the Well” and to imagining if Deadheads were as important to the creation of the Internet as the visionary computer scientist J.C. R. Licklider. Ceruzzi's review can be found in the March 2009 issue of ISIS, published by the History of Science Society.

Deep Time

Wai Chee Dimock's book Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time received lots of praise and some criticism when it came out in 2006 from Princeton University Press. It's still being reviewed and it continues to be controversial. A recent review by Paul Giles can be found in the Dec. 2008, Vol. 69, No.4 issue of Modern Language Quarterly. As Ms. Dimock's publisher notes, she reads "American literature as a subset of world literature. Inspired by an unorthodox archive--ranging from epic traditions in Akkadian and Sanskrit to folk art, paintings by Veronese and Tiepolo, and the music of the Grateful Dead-- Dimock constructs a long history of the world, a history she calls "deep time." Giles says the book "is testimony to the often brilliant critical practice that functions through cross-referencing and juxtaposition, illuminating distant and proximate, high culture and low culture, in the light of each other. " No wonder Blues for Allah is an inspiration for Dimock.

Dead reckoning

Close on the heels of the NY Times ranking of favorite Dead shows, now John Swansburg has posted on Slate (4/29/09) his very own humorously sardonic guide to Deadheadedness. Find yourself in Dead Reckoning: What Your Favorite Grateful Dead Song Says About You (http://www.slate.com/id/2217149/)
Hmmm... my favorite song? Not telling.

CA. Capital rocks

The same building that once housed the Oasis Ballroom is soon to become a popular new destination for music fans. The Sacramento Rock and Radio Museum with help from the Tucker Media Group will open in June celebrating 40 years of rock music, rock radio, and rock art. The space will be filled with posters, handbills, and memorabilia of performers like B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, the Ramones, the Rolling Stones, and Nirvana who played local venues. On display will be the poster for the March 11th, 1968 Grateful Dead and Cream show at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium.