As I have discussed in prior chapters, there were an array of issues with the actual performances coming out of the Grateful Dead during the years 1992-1995. What I have not yet discussed are the issues with 'deadheads' during those years. I put the term 'deadheads' in quotes because, for the moment, it is a term that will be used as a catch-all. However, very shortly, we'll see that term used a bit more selectively and with harsher levels of discrimination.
I'll start with some of the basics of this discussion. First, to be a deadhead, you have to love the Grateful Dead. It does not mean that you have to be an apologist and not be critical of them, but you do have to some serious love for this band. Second, here is my list of absolute requirements that will disqualify you from being a card-carrying deadhead:
* If you went to the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show more for the party than you did for the music, you were not a deadhead.
* If you absolutely had to have drugs or alcohol to enjoy yourself at a Grateful Dead show, then you were not a deadhead. BTW - I'm not being a teetotaler here, I'm just conveying that if you, in your basic biological 'natural state' dont enjoy the Grateful Dead, then you're not a deadhead. If you did drugs at every show that is fine. But if you could not enjoy yourself without drugs at a Grateful Dead show, you had bigger issues to work on.
* If you did not know at least half of the names of the songs they played that night, then you were not a deadhead. That is not to say that couldnt walk out of the show mesmerized after witnessing something that was previously unfamiliar and now not be a potential deadhead. That happened all the time. Sometimes people saw the band, were totally blown away, and learned what all the songs were a bit later.
* If you talked a lot during the show to your buddy next to you, then you're not a deadhead. Deadheads LISTEN to the Grateful Dead. Saying something really quick during the music once in a while is not some kind of foul. But if you talked through an entire song on multiple occasions (other than drums and space), then you were not a deadhead.
* If you got shut out of more shows than you got into, then you're definitely not a deadhead. Showing up without a ticket, generally, is fine. But the caveat with the previous statement is that you were willing to do just about anything (short of violent crime or sexually debasing yourself) to secure a ticket. That means paying an exorbitant fee or trading something of extremely high value for a ticket is totally acceptable. So I'll restate this rule in a slightly different way; if you were perfectly content to just sit outside in the parking lot while the Grateful Dead played to a paying audience, then you were not a deadhead
Sadly, a great number of the people at Grateful Dead concerts (inside the show and certainly outside the show) were not deadheads. This was as true as it was in 1973 as it was in 1993. As a real deadhead, you just kind of put up with it. Sadly, I was not there pre-1986. I have heard from reliable sources and also believe that 1986 was the year that the quality of Deadheads started to diminish in relation to the quantity of people at the actual concerts. This was mainly in part due to the full blown stadium tours with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, along with Bob Dylan. The exposure those tours afforded the 'scene' was way more than it was ready to absorb.
It was pretty cool outside of a Grateful Dead show. There were lots of friendly people having a good time. Many of them having arrived from a variety of disparate places (geographically, economically, and socially) There were handcrafted items for sale and a sense of freedom from the everyday trappings and expectations of society. It seemed to be its own polite society unto itself. There were also a lot of social lubricants being freely passed around too. Generally, everybody liked that...sometimes a little too much. But up until 1986 the coolness of the Grateful Dead 'scene' was just a poorly kept secret that allowed it to exist with only a bit of hassle here and there. After 1986 it became a known destination for the masses and resulted in a classic case of 'the tragedy of the commons'; which is to say, a greater number of people took rather than gave.
There was a certain amount of inevitability to the scene's demise. Back in the 60s and the 70s it was en vogue among younger people to be very kind to your fellow human being. That began to very slowly transition in the 80s, and by the 90s it was mostly en vogue for a lot of the young (particularly men) to be aggressive. You could maybe blame punk rock, gangster rap, violence on TV, or the slow erosion of Victorian etiquette, but regardless of who or what was to blame, a certain segment of newer deadheads were very aggressive and a lot of that aggression would manifest itself after shows when they were drunk. It was an ugly element that had always been there, but now it was a trend among the younger deadheads that were 'on tour'.
Running in parallel, you had another very silly side to the deadhead community during those final years that was 'on tour' mainly there to sell wares. They had stumbled onto this big party and figured out that they could stay pretty buzzed and be a carnival barker while bringing in lots of cash.
Somewhere in all this were the real deadheads. Some of the real deadheads sold things, some of the real deadheads even got aggressive once in a while, and lots of them got buzzed. But none of them were aggressive most of the times. And none of the real deadheads were constantly figuring out ways to fleece people outside of the show. Maybe lots of the real deadheads got buzzed, but they mostly managed it in a mellow kind of way. The best deadheads I've met are kind of like the Grateful Dead band and crew themselves; passionately anti-authoritarian whilst simultaneously being politely uncooperative.
But people at the Grateful Dead concerts, by and large, during the years 1992-1995 were shit. I like to think that if you could empty out all of the people that were there just for the party (frat boys, curious voyeurs, drug takers that were not interested in Grateful Dead music, etc), and then get rid of those that were just 'on tour' parasites (i.e. - professional vendors), you would probably end up with about 60%-70% of the audience numbers that flocked to shows up until the 1995. That would leave you the Grateful Dead playing the occasional stadium in huge markets, but mostly shed-style outdoor venues and featureless basketball / hockey arenas. What I imagine is the audience mostly plateauing at 1984 and 1985 sizes. Imagine 30% to 40% of the audience being gone. You would basically never have more than 20-40 people outside of a show while the concert was going on. Maybe if they played a Berkeley Community Theater or a Red Rocks you would get 100+ shut out, but there would be less than 10 of those types of shows a year.
For you deadheads that were around in 1985 and before, it was a mellower scene right? There was still some craziness now and again, but by and large, the deadheads were different. I wish I got to experience that. My early years (1988 and 1989) had crowded shows and crowded parking lot scenes, but they did not have a lot of aggressive elements going on among the fans. I did not start seeing that until around 1992. And as I've said, 1992 is the beginning of the end. Not only for the band itself, but for the culture of deadheads. It was sad to watch it happen.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
The Midnight Audiophile - Chapter 3
For every severely devoted hobbyist that constantly tinkers with the items in their hobby, there has to be a moment when you are actually satisfied. Make no mistake, a tinkering hobbyist is different than a collector. A collector may reach points of satisfaction, but they tend to chase things around a lot and their collection (more often than not) just morphs around the idea of eventually being satisfied.
A tinkering hobbyist is the cyclist that is regularly taking parts on and off their bike, perhaps making it more rugged, or faster, or allowing it to add more-value-for-the-money. A tinkering chef may futz with gear a bit, but oftentimes they're experimenting with different herbs, sweeteners, rise times, roasting times, etc.
The tinkering audiophile may have an array of things they're chasing, but the most hardcore of them are trying to seek out truth. The truth? Yes, the truth. The accurate and real sound of instruments (they be percussion instruments, brass, woodwinds, strings, the human voice, or something else along those lines) is what the hardcore seek. A truly accurate replication of music from a time and place being played back in a living room. The aural truth of an event testifying over and over, at the whim of the audiophile, in his or her listening room.
People say sound is subjective. It is not. We sometimes put people away in jail (or to death!) based on audio recordings of their crimes. We recognize our friend's and family's voices from rooms we cannot see them if we hear them talking, Somewhere deep in our lizard brains we know the sound of a piano is different than the sound of a violin. We know the truth of these things because, with experience, they have characteristics that imprinted themselves on us, and thus define them in our aural memory for as long as we live. Instruments we hear pressurize air in a certain way. And depending on the environment (an empty room, or a room with lots of people talking, in a small room, etc), we know that these sounds we hear may sound different, but still instantly recognizable.
If you get a hearing test done, and you are able to hear in both ears at most of (if not the entire) frequency range that humans can hear at, then sound is not subjective. If you have impaired hearing, then sound will be subjective. But leaving the hearing impaired out of the conversation for a moment, the only other disadvantage that could be viewed as subjectivity is the 'untrained' ear.
The untrained ear may not pick up on sibilance, but the moment it is pointed out to the listener, they can easily pick up on it. So we all hear the same exact things, but we may not all be trained to articulate what we're hearing or sieze upon all the layers found in the waves in order to readily explain all of the nuances. A lack of vocabulary to describe sound (or a lack of skill to detect it) does not necessarily mean we hear differently.
Many audiophiles explain that they have preferences. They say things like, "I like a warm sound that is very musical". When they say things like that they are talking about the presentation of the music being played back through their system. Some audiophiles will say things like, "I try to have a very neutral presentation in my system". And then they have a few audiophile buddies over to hear that system and they gently tell their friend that his system is, "not so much neutral as it is a bit cold and sterile". Quite a confusing vocabulary!
But would the original audiophile with his preference for a 'neutral presentation' ever sit in front of a violinist and say something like, "please play me something with a neutral presentation". I think maybe the violinist would shake her head and laugh. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???
You dont get a "neutral presentation" from the violinist. You dont get something "warm and musical" from the violinist. You get a violin playing. You get the truth! So any audiophile that speaks in such a language of "golden glows" and "brittle highs" is either
a) imitating his buddies
b) imitating what he reads in magazines and audiophile review websites
c) still training his ears and doesnt know any better
d) legitimately knows why a system sounds wrong and has the proper vocabulary to describe it
It either sounds like the truth or not.
Now, one thing very few (if any?) systems will ever achieve is being able to play at the sound pressure level of louder unamplified instruments (think trombones, etc) . Nor will any system (ever?) be able to accurately replicate the sound of a full orchestra. However, there have been a few people that have tried over the decades, but we'll leave those endeavors out of this conversation for the moment.
When you put a system together, your first requirement should be that you can sit back and enjoy it (another top requirement should be whether you can afford it or not - please use common sense and dont go into debt for these things). Your next priority should be that it sounds relatively convincing from a tonal perspective. And perhaps a few final considerations should be how it looks, and how easy it is to operate.
A lot of audiophile will read that prior paragraph and be saying, "geez - why is he not talking about the room that the gear will be playing in", as one of the top priorities. I have not left that out. It is actually bundled into the first priority of "that you can sit back and enjoy it". If the speakers are too big for the room, then you wont enjoy it (crazy low end energy will dominate the listening sessions). If you have a small room and multi-driver speakers that you have to sit close to, then their respective sounds will not have a chance to integrate before they hit your ears. The scenarios go on and on with the wrong-system-for-the-room. Bottom line, if you have chosen gear for the room poorly, you will not enjoy the system.
Personally, after having a bad experience (and spending a criminal amount of money in the process to try and fix the problems) with room issues due to big speakers in a small room, I err on the side of smaller speakers for a rooms now. I'd rather come up shy in low frequencies than have them overpower and muddy everything else....but I have not had that problem for years. Anyway, my point is that "enjoying the system" means not having screwed up the system / room interplay.
So assuming that you've met the requirements of a system that you can enjoy, and that is sounds relatively convincing from a tonal perspective, now you can begin to tinker with it.
A tinkering hobbyist is the cyclist that is regularly taking parts on and off their bike, perhaps making it more rugged, or faster, or allowing it to add more-value-for-the-money. A tinkering chef may futz with gear a bit, but oftentimes they're experimenting with different herbs, sweeteners, rise times, roasting times, etc.
The tinkering audiophile may have an array of things they're chasing, but the most hardcore of them are trying to seek out truth. The truth? Yes, the truth. The accurate and real sound of instruments (they be percussion instruments, brass, woodwinds, strings, the human voice, or something else along those lines) is what the hardcore seek. A truly accurate replication of music from a time and place being played back in a living room. The aural truth of an event testifying over and over, at the whim of the audiophile, in his or her listening room.
People say sound is subjective. It is not. We sometimes put people away in jail (or to death!) based on audio recordings of their crimes. We recognize our friend's and family's voices from rooms we cannot see them if we hear them talking, Somewhere deep in our lizard brains we know the sound of a piano is different than the sound of a violin. We know the truth of these things because, with experience, they have characteristics that imprinted themselves on us, and thus define them in our aural memory for as long as we live. Instruments we hear pressurize air in a certain way. And depending on the environment (an empty room, or a room with lots of people talking, in a small room, etc), we know that these sounds we hear may sound different, but still instantly recognizable.
If you get a hearing test done, and you are able to hear in both ears at most of (if not the entire) frequency range that humans can hear at, then sound is not subjective. If you have impaired hearing, then sound will be subjective. But leaving the hearing impaired out of the conversation for a moment, the only other disadvantage that could be viewed as subjectivity is the 'untrained' ear.
The untrained ear may not pick up on sibilance, but the moment it is pointed out to the listener, they can easily pick up on it. So we all hear the same exact things, but we may not all be trained to articulate what we're hearing or sieze upon all the layers found in the waves in order to readily explain all of the nuances. A lack of vocabulary to describe sound (or a lack of skill to detect it) does not necessarily mean we hear differently.
Many audiophiles explain that they have preferences. They say things like, "I like a warm sound that is very musical". When they say things like that they are talking about the presentation of the music being played back through their system. Some audiophiles will say things like, "I try to have a very neutral presentation in my system". And then they have a few audiophile buddies over to hear that system and they gently tell their friend that his system is, "not so much neutral as it is a bit cold and sterile". Quite a confusing vocabulary!
But would the original audiophile with his preference for a 'neutral presentation' ever sit in front of a violinist and say something like, "please play me something with a neutral presentation". I think maybe the violinist would shake her head and laugh. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???
You dont get a "neutral presentation" from the violinist. You dont get something "warm and musical" from the violinist. You get a violin playing. You get the truth! So any audiophile that speaks in such a language of "golden glows" and "brittle highs" is either
a) imitating his buddies
b) imitating what he reads in magazines and audiophile review websites
c) still training his ears and doesnt know any better
d) legitimately knows why a system sounds wrong and has the proper vocabulary to describe it
It either sounds like the truth or not.
Now, one thing very few (if any?) systems will ever achieve is being able to play at the sound pressure level of louder unamplified instruments (think trombones, etc) . Nor will any system (ever?) be able to accurately replicate the sound of a full orchestra. However, there have been a few people that have tried over the decades, but we'll leave those endeavors out of this conversation for the moment.
When you put a system together, your first requirement should be that you can sit back and enjoy it (another top requirement should be whether you can afford it or not - please use common sense and dont go into debt for these things). Your next priority should be that it sounds relatively convincing from a tonal perspective. And perhaps a few final considerations should be how it looks, and how easy it is to operate.
A lot of audiophile will read that prior paragraph and be saying, "geez - why is he not talking about the room that the gear will be playing in", as one of the top priorities. I have not left that out. It is actually bundled into the first priority of "that you can sit back and enjoy it". If the speakers are too big for the room, then you wont enjoy it (crazy low end energy will dominate the listening sessions). If you have a small room and multi-driver speakers that you have to sit close to, then their respective sounds will not have a chance to integrate before they hit your ears. The scenarios go on and on with the wrong-system-for-the-room. Bottom line, if you have chosen gear for the room poorly, you will not enjoy the system.
Personally, after having a bad experience (and spending a criminal amount of money in the process to try and fix the problems) with room issues due to big speakers in a small room, I err on the side of smaller speakers for a rooms now. I'd rather come up shy in low frequencies than have them overpower and muddy everything else....but I have not had that problem for years. Anyway, my point is that "enjoying the system" means not having screwed up the system / room interplay.
So assuming that you've met the requirements of a system that you can enjoy, and that is sounds relatively convincing from a tonal perspective, now you can begin to tinker with it.
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