Eclectic Analysis! "Touch of Grey" - Grateful Dead

I am a dead head, that's all there is too it.
This is a music video of the dead doing "Touch of Grey."







Open Listening 1)
* The beating of the drum sticks starts off the song. There is a flash of hangs playing on a keyboard but they suddenly turn in to bones. Skeleton arms "tune" while the crowd cheers.

* The setting is seemingly at a concert. The camera switches point of views from audience, onstage and backstage. Lights spin around and out over audience. The stage looks far away.

* There is constant background crowd noise. There is a hollow beat sound, and a repeating set of notes.

*The band are skeletons! There is a large picture of their "logo" behind them. A skeleton face surrounded by roses.

*The drummer is smoking (a joint most likely?). Each skeleton clearly represents one of the band members. The skeletons move to play the instruments and sing.

*You can see the strings moving/holding up the puppets.
The skeletons are seriously rocking out.

*Chorus - "I will get by," followed by that same repeating set of notes. "I will survive."

*The drummer skeleton is wearing converse.

*The skeleton band turns into the real band, and back and forth.

*Someone from the audience throws a rose and the skeleton catches it in his mouth. Symbolism! The rose is the dead's symbol of choice.

*A crew member chases a dog across the stage on "the dog hasn't been fed in years." A crew member also tries to put the drummer skeleton back together, because apparently it had fallen apart in the visual world of the video.

*The band don't really look like rockstars. They look like normal, older men. They are not very attractive per se, but they look like they love what they do and they are having a good time.

*"It's alright."

*Equal camera time is spent on each band member. There isn't one "diva," or someone who stands out more than the others. It seems like a real group effort.

*Chorus changes to "we will get by, we will survive.

*As the song ends the camera pans up to skeleton arms controlling strings. Skeleton puppet master. Skeletons controlling skeletons or real people? Death controlling people? Aware strings would show and capitalized on that?

*crowd goes wild.

Historical Context? Psychedelic!

Grateful dead created their own distinctive sound, merging together forms and genres to musicifly one incredible experience. They formed in 1964 in Menlo Park, and became official in 1965, under the name "The Warlocks." Unfortunately, a band was already recording under that name, so Jerry Garcia opened up the Britannica dictionary and said "what about grateful dead?" In folklore, the story of the grateful dead is one where a soul has not been properly buried due to an unpaid debt. A traveller happens upon the soul and takes care of his debt, putting them at peace and the traveller is later rewarded somehow in life. Literally, grateful, dead. The band took to the Bay Area, where they became the heart and soul of the psychedelic movement around Haight-Ashbury. The band represented "all the elements of the San Fransisco scene and came, therefore, to represent the counter culture to the rest of the country." They were at the forefront of psychedelic music, which tries to recreate drug induced states of mind due to hallucinogens. Although they were part of the psychedelic movement, each song the band has could fit under a different genre. They combined rock and roll and folk and eastern sounds and classical and and and...
Their first CD, "The Grateful Dead" was released around the same time as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," by the Beatles.

The Grateful Dead established a huge network of underground fans before they "made it big." These fans became a HUGE part of their culture. "Deadheads" would follow the band on tours, and lines would form for days outside their concert venues. The Grateful Dead usually played large venues often outdoors and would have long improvisations. There was a freedom and buzz in their music and in the air that could not be captured in the studio.

The "Touch of Grey" music video was the first and only music video the Dead ever recorded. Coincidentally, despite their immense popularity, "Touch of Grey" was the only Grateful Dead song to ever reach the Top Ten on the music charts. The video played for MTV and widened their audience. The Grateful Dead defied the laws of music business and made millions of dollars despite not being at the top of the charts and with "real" albums.

The Grateful Dead were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, a year before Garcia's death.

Band Members:
Jerry Garcia - started playing guitar when he was 15 and also played bluegrass on the banjo. He founded The Warlocks in 1964 and took his blues background to influence the more psychedelic and experimental sound, in addition to country and folk influence.

Bob Weir - when he co-founded the band in 1964, he was 17.

Bill Kreutzmann - Drummer and older bohemian role model.

Phil Lesh - one of the most "extraordinary musical talents in rock history," he played bass and would have improvised jams with Garcia and Weir. He joined the band after seeing the Warlocks play at a pizza parlor in Menlo Park.

Mickey Hart - joined the band in 1967 and added a non-western sound flair.

Robert Hunter - also joined in 1967 as a lyricist and turned the Dead's lyrics in to complete, elaborate and beautiful stories.

Pigpen - Ron McKernan, played the harmonica and keyboard and added blues vocals.

There was also:
Tom Constanten (TC), Keith Godchaux, Donna Jean Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick and John Perry Barlow.

Jerry Garcia can talk about his band much more eloquently than I can

So as I was poking around for information on the "Touch of Grey" music video, I came across Justin Kreutzmann, Bill Kreutzmann's (the drummer) kid's BLOG! He was a roadie for the band, and with a strong background in film (previously working for the Smithsonian and Francis Ford Coppola) helped make the music video. In his blog, he transcribed an interview he took with Jerry about the video, among other things.
I find the interview to be very insightful and has done most of my work for me! I have cut out parts that are not particularly relevant, but the whole interview is available at the link above. I will proceed to highlight certain parts and relate them to my views regarding the video.


"The whole idea of the Grateful Dead doing a music video is kind of strange to everybody. Can you explain what brought that about?
Garcia: I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to do something with Gary Gutierrez, who did the animation on our early Grateful Dead film -- any opportunity to work with him is always fun. We were working on this album and I thought somewhere along the line the record company was going to require a video from us, so I sent some rough mixes of the tunes to Gary. They liked ‘Touch Of Grey,’ and it just sort of fell together. His idea was so good that everybody loved it immediately, and the record company went for it.

With this record and the video, do you think you’ll reach a whole new audience that might not have ever heard of the Grateful Dead?
Garcia: Hard to tell.

Also, it seems that now that you are middle age, that you’re involving your children more. Do you think it’s good for re-circulating?
Garcia: Sure. Especially if they find a place that’s comfortable for them. Annabelle (Garcia’s oldest daughter with Mountain Girl) has been wanting to do this kind of work for a long time. So I can relate to it because when I was 15, I already had my first electric guitar and here I am. It’s neat that we’re able to provide a context for the kids to work in.

Do you think this will be the big one -- the double platinum album?
Garcia: No telling. Every time we make a record, we always hope that somebody will buy it. And it’s disappointing when they don’t, but on the other hand, after 20 years of no particular success with records, I can’t say I’ll be crushed if this record doesn’t go platinum in a week.

It seems that the recording has a more live sound than on past albums.
Garcia: Yeah, the sound is good. It sounds more like the way we play -- more…it’s the way we perceive music to work. The studio is a little sterile, and the studio playing approach is a sterile approach compared to what we do. So yeah, we were able to capture some of that feeling for this.

You’re using a shortened version [of ‘Touch of Grey’] -- slowed down to articulate emotions out of the skeletons. Are you going to have trouble trying to lip sync that at half speed?
Garcia: I don’t know whether we’ll have to lip sync at half speed or not, I doubt that we will, but operating the puppets would be easier, probably. They have the option of changing the speed in a number of ways to make it easier for them to operate to whatever is the best operating speed.

Is there any fear that the skeletons might outshine the band in the video?
Garcia: I don’t doubt that they’ll outshine us. Probably better than us. They’ll be the stars of the video.


When we went over there today, it seems like what they’re trying to do is capture the characters of the original band members in each skeleton. Do you think they can get real close with that?
Garcia: Yeah, those people are really good at this stuff.

Can you give us a little history of how you got involved with Colossal and The Grateful Dead Movie?
Garcia: Gary Gutierrez is a great guy to work with. He has endless enthusiasm and he has great ideas, and his whole scene has gotten to be very successful in the last ten years. He’s really done well. It’s always nice having an excuse to work with somebody that you like and somebody whose work you like. And it doesn’t pop up that often in the music world where you get a chance to do something collaborative with other people apart from the music itself, which is a collaborative venture, at least the way the Grateful Dead does it. So, it’s neat to be able to include more people, more energy, more kinds of ideas, more minds. And it’s just fun to do.

It seems at this stage in the game, you guys can pretty much choose who you want to work with.
Garcia: Right. No matter how it comes up, it’s always interesting. This is a hot year for us, so far.

How has the tour gone?
Garcia: Good! What I remember of it.


Garcia: I first heard ‘Touch of Grey’…I heard Hunter do it. He does it with a different melody so I rewrote the melody. He did it completely differently, but I love the way it worked. I’m not sure what it’s about, either. But everybody seems to think it’s about growing older and something like that, so I’ll go along with that. It seems reasonable. I don’t know whether Hunter meant that in the lyric or not; but for me, the song has turned into an anthem in this last tour. Everybody loves it. It doesn’t matter what it originally meant anymore. It’s acquired a meaning. Hopefully, it does mean different things to different people. I like to not tie things down, if possible. But it’s a great song to sing. It’s a great song to perform. It really works well. So from a musician’s point of view, does the song have a life of its own? It has a life of its own, so it’s a good choice.

Skeletons and the Grateful Dead have been synonymous throughout the years, and it seems like it would have been hard to bring in the skeleton idea after all these years without the band being tired of it.
Garcia: Yes. There’s that, and it’s almost gotten to the point where someone mentions skeletons, everybody goes, ‘Oh no.’ But the tie-in is obvious, and if it is a good enough idea, like Gary’s last creation in the skeleton world with the Uncle Sam skeleton with the top hat, we still use it here and there as a logo or to identify us. I don’t know whether I’d accept this from anybody else, but I think Gary’s ideas are funny enough and fresh enough. They’re the way he wants them to be. Even though the idea of skeletons is not exactly a new one to us, this version of it may be terrific. This might be something special, so that’s the reason for going for it.

Now that this is your last record for any company, that basically makes you free from the music business. You’re not under contract. You can do the greatest Mary Poppins tunes you’ve ever heard. Are you guys going to maybe move in a different direction as opposed to album, tour, album, tour, sort of?
Garcia: Well, we never really have done that very much anyway, at least not that strict in the music business sense. We don’t know. We are wide open. We’ll see how this record does. Events have carried us this far, and we’re just going along and that seems to work pretty good and we sort of take a hands-off approach. Kind of let things happen. So we’ll see what happens -- where this gets us. Right now, we’re in motion. We’re on our way somewhere. It’s hard to tell where.

The video is like a performance piece except that it starts on a darkened stage with the band coming out and doing our little pre-show thing. It’s based on the Grateful Dead in performance, as far as our fans know us, and we don’t come out with a big splash or anything. We sneak on stage and fool around in the dark for a long time. Well, this takes it from that point. It starts at that point with us puttering around. But there’s something a little funny. You can’t quite see everybody, and then we’ll reveal the skeletons when the lights come up and the performance starts. The skeletons are full-sized, articulated skeleton puppet guys that will play the first part of the song and then there’ll be a bunch of stuff that happens to them like skeleton gags, and they eventually will sort of transmogrify into us playing live ‘cause they represent us anyway. They’re wearing our clothes and playing our instruments and so on. That’s the sense of it. So it’s skeletons to us. And it’s sort of a play on the ‘I will survive.’ Something about that, plus the Grateful Dead idea, in a large way, and hopefully, it will be funny and it will look good and it will work.

And will there be more videos if this is successful?
Garcia: Sure. Anytime you are successful in the music business, there will be more.

Syntax - groovy

In some bizarre sense I feel as if the syntax of "psychedelic" music is that is has no syntax. Although I am sure there are definite attributes to constitute sets of sounds as such, I am not as well versed in the technical to be able to point that out. Although I believe there is overdriven guitar and aplified feedback, often times with a eastern sounding influence. How to tell you exactly what that is, I do not know.

The song itself goes like this:

"Fooling around in the dark" -> intro -> verse and chours combined in to one, with the chorus tagging on at the end of the verse ("I will survive")-> repeated -> interlude slower section -> verse/chorus -> repeated -> slower interlude/conclusion.

There are two guitarists, one bass player, one keyboard and two percussion. There is heavy cowbell through the song that keeps a steadfast beat. Jerry is on vocals. There are repeating melodies and the song follows the pattern very closely. There are a series of ascending notes just before "I will survive", and a catchy 5-note sequence on the keyboard in between "I will survive," and "I will get by." I feel like they used space well and did not try and cram too many notes or too much sound into it at once.

It was directed by Gary Gutierrez, with whom the Dead had worked with on their animated video. Gutierrez animated the beginning part of the skeletons tuning up, then it switched to life size puppets. A little over half way through the video, the skeletons "transmorgify" into the human band members for most of the rest of the piece.

The song is recorded at a slower tempo so the puppets can match movements as accurately as possible. Each band member had a team of designers and animators/puppeteers that tried to copy their "idiosyncrasies" as closely as they could. Each puppet has the personality of its human counterpart. Jerry's oldest daughter Annabelle created the puppets.

The music video was recorded in front of a live audience on May 9, 1987, which gives the piece a performance feel, just like the Dead's music was geared toward.



There is a "Making of the Touch Of Grey Video and more!" movie that goes behind the scenes of the video.

Sound-In-Time - Clocks are running late...

Jerry Garcia is my best friend. Although I have never met him, I feel that way. His voice is as familiar to me as my own father's. Maybe because I grew up with it, but his voice immediately effects me in unidentifiable ways. It is comforting and happy, it calms and excites me at the same time. He's like a best friend or brother or uncle that I trust explicitly, and whatever he says, goes. He is my god. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but he certainly is god-like in a way, his music pulsing through my veins and inspiring my faith.

Because at their live concerts the Grateful Dead spend so much time improvising, and that is included in the beginning of the video, there is this tremendous excitement that comes over me when the noticeable beginning of the song bursts through the "tuning" and playing around.

I see:

skipping.
arms waving in the air
a girl in a dress dancing around in circles in a field banging on a cowbell
sing-a-long
a church miracle session, people singing and raising their arms to the sky, overcome by faith and peacefulness

Skeletons are singing "I will survive," is that irony? Sort of an eternal "getting by."

There is so much imagery inherent in the language of the piece. I see green cows being milked to fuel lamps, and teenagers struggling to read in class, and emaciated dogs and thick red velvet curtains being drawn to block out the blinding blue dawn (or in reference to another Dead song "Scarlet Begonias," the yellow sky), clocks running around an apartment cluttered with sleeping bodies, someone painting the sky by number, clouds exploding with mixes of silver and grey swirling all around me, winning love like its a game, people wearing shoes for gloves... and of course, skeletons and roses.

The ascending notes before the chorus quicken the heartbeat with anticipation and excitement.

A note on recording style:
"JK: It seems that the recording has a more live sound than on past albums.
Garcia: Yeah, the sound is good. It sounds more like the way we play - more...it's the way we perceive music to work. The studio is a little sterile, and the studio playing approach is a sterile approach compared to what we do. So yeah, we were able to capture some of that feeling for this."

While it is clear that the sound would have had to be recorded in a studio to be dubbed over the skeletons, I would agree with Jerry that the Grateful Gead and Gutierrez did a good job of capturing the live feel of the music happening there and then through video.

Virrrrtualll Feeeeeling - Marvin Gaye?

I would say the overall feeling is... Jolly. The cowbell and higher more emphasized keyboard motifs really pull you into it. The song is uptempo and you can't help dancing/swaying to it. The sets of notes carry you away as you sway and rise upon your toes, reaching for more. As the camera pans over the concert, you see all the people in the audience dancing and swaying and rocking out and they are all having a great time and so are you! The concert setting provides an extra jolt of energy. Also the fact that skeletons are singing inspires a sense of awe and spooky awesomness. Like, dude! Skeletons are singing! Alright! It seems that the crowd just knows, somehow they just know, that whatever the Grateful Dead play, it will be good. And it will be fun. You can tell by the way they play, that they do it because they love it, they groove on it, they're not doing it for money or fame, they're doing it cuz they get off on it, and they know they can give that same sense to the audience. So they play until they get tired, and then they quit. Simple. Generous. Joyful.

There is a real excited sense about this piece. You feel as if you are participating in the song, and you are on the brink of something fantastic. "Dawn is breaking everywhere," you've just had a great night (probably on some form of psychedelic drug), and you are ready to start a new day. There is a youthful enthusiasm and "I can do anything" attitude, as enhanced by the lyrics "I will survive." It's exciting and carefree, "I don't care cause, it's alright!" The song is like a motivation speech, there is a sense of pride and self-empowerment, and Jerry is smiling and encouraging you on into life.
If you think about it, their songs are about all sorts of things, sad, bluesy, upbeat, funny, hopeful, abstract, but they are never mean. There is never any harshness or ill will expressed. The audience knows they're not gonna get hate outa the Dead.

In a VERY strong way the virtual feeling of this piece parallels the cultural context. If psychedelic music aims at recreating hallucinogenic highs, I can imagine this hits close to home. The Dead were all about a free, laissez-faire sort of attitude that was ever so popular at the time. The excitement and freedom this song conveys were two of the main feelings of the time period.

Yet through all this, there is a surprising contradiction with the lyrics. The jolly upbeat tone of the music, contrasts with the dark and gloomy nature of the lyrics. Yet it is also paralleled through the lyrics' resolutions to said problems. Thus, I shall discuss textual representation.

Textual Representation - Cows Giving Kerosene

Robert Hunter is a genius.

Must be getting early
Clocks are running late
Paint by number morning sky
Looks so phony

Dawn is breaking everywhere
Light a candle, curse the glare
Draw the curtains
I don't care 'cause
It's all right

I will get by / I will get by
I will get by / I will survive

I see you've got your list out
Say your piece and get out
Yes I get the gist of it
but it's all right

Sorry that you feel that way
The only thing there is to say
Every silver lining's got a
Touch of grey

I will get by / I will get by
I will get by / I will survive

It's a lesson to me
The Ables and the Bakers and the C's
The ABC's we all must face
And try to keep a little grace

It's a lesson to me
The deltas and the east and the freeze
The ABC's we all think of
Try to give a little love.

I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
but it's all right.

Cows giving kerosene
Kid can't read at seventeen
The words he knows are all obscene
but it's all right

I will get by / I will get by
I will get by / I will survive

The shoe is on the hand it fits
There's really nothing much to it
Whistle through your teeth and spit
causeit's all right.

Oh well a Touch Of Grey
Kind of suits you anyway.
That was all I had to say
It's all right.

I will get by / I will get by
I will get by / I will survive
We will get by / We will get by
We will get by / We will survive

"This from Robert Hunter's online journal, January 8, 2006:

Flipping through a green hardbound 1980 notebook I come upon a run of pages in which I discover "Touch of Grey" - dozens of verses that gradually fall away until the familiar ones emerge. As I read, I'm not otherwise than the person who wrote it down. It's the blear light of dawn after being up all night. I sit at the kitchen table in a 16th Century house in rural England, turning what I feel into images, awash in that writing trance in which I spent, and spend, so much of my life; a place that doesn't have much relationship to the nominal time stream. If I could slip back physically and change anything, perhaps I'd rip out those pages. No getting the genie back in the bottle."

Wow. So Robert Hunter wishes he never wrote the Grateful Dead's only chart making song? Robert Hunter was responsible for giving the Grateful Dead a beautiful and metaphorical voice through story-telling. I have to relate you to Terrapin Station - one of the most beautiful story-telling songs that comments on it's own voice. But I digress...kind of. It's still relevant to your dead education.

Alternate Verses:
Even this is bound to pass
Not the first, you're not the last
Fortune smiles then turns away
but it's okay
When it goes from bad to worse
Not the last, you're not the first
Today's tomorrow yesterday
So what's to say?
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive
It's a lesson to me
The Ables, the Bakers and C's
The ABC's of the fast ball curve
Trying not to lose your nerve

The first refrain, "must be getting early... looks so phony," suggests how quickly the morning has crept upon them. It has a sort of "morning after" feel, where the party is winding down at dawn. There is a sense of contentment that the party has lasted this long, yet annoyance at the morning's onslaught. The clocks are running late suggests a certain disregard towards time. The paint by number morning sky is seen through hazy drunk and psychedelic glasses. For people who live mostly during the night, the morning sky could appear oddly colorful.
The second part, "dawn is breaking...it's alright," introduces the carefree and contented nature of the song. According to Robert Hunter, Jerry wrote the line "light a candle, curse the glare," in reference to a comment made by Adlai Stevenson about Eleanor Roosevelt's death, "she would rather light a candle than curse the darkness." (How did he come up with that?! How did he know that?!... amazing). Playing on that line creates a character opposite to that of Eleanor Roosevelt, who's compasion and good nature would never let her be angry at the night. The Dead however, could light candles after partying all night, and have the disposition to wish ill-will upon the dawn. But! It's alright.
I will get by, I will survive - is probably one of the most self-explanitory lyrics ever. Despite what may be, I will be ok. Peace and Love, man.
"I see you've got your list out... but it's alright," refers to what I mentioned earlier about anger. Hunter is confronted with passion or anger concering something, and he rolls it right off his shoulder like a water dropplet on a duck's wing. You can say what you want to me, but I'm at peace, everything's alright.
"Sorry that you feel that way...touch of grey," a play on the idiom, "Every cloud has a silver lining." Well, silver has a grey in it. This introduces a cycle of sorts, from cloud -> silver lining -> back to the grey of the cloud. Take it at face value. But! It's alright!
"It's a lesson...keep a little grace," Ables and the Baker's and the C's is a potential reference to military code at the time, now it's the known alpha, beta, charlie. "I'm not sure what it's about, either."
The next two verses focus on the problems people and society are facing. Making rent, caustic problems with the environment, schooling systems, could drive a person crazy with worry and struggle. Sometimes you have to step back and take a breath. Think of the big picture and your job at the moment. And as Jerry inspires me, have faith that everything will be alright.
The shoe is on the hand that fits? Well that doesn't make sense... exactly! Sometimes life doesn't always add up, but you have to grin and bear it and everything will turn out alright.
Oh well a touch of grey, kinda suits you anyway - sure, it could be about getting old, for that certainly does make sense. But it also could mean that it's ok to be sad sometimes. Your lining doesn't always have to shine silver.
The change at the end of the song in the chorus from "I will get by, I will survive," to "we will get by, we will survive," places emphasis on the communal aspect of the Grateful Dead's music. In their music business, trusting in their fans and playing for them, not focusing on CD sales, and in their personal philosophies of humanity.

"I'm not sure what it's about, either. But everybody seems to think it's about growing older and something like that, so I'll go along with that. It seems reasonable. I don't know whether Hunter meant that in the lyric or not, but for me, the song has turned into an anthem in this last tour. Everybody loves it. It doesn't matter what it originally meant anymore. It's acquired a meaning. Hopefully, it does mean different things to different people. I like to not tie things down, if possible. But it's a great song to sing. It's a great song to perform. It really works well. So from a musician's point of view, does the song have a life of its own? It has a life of its own, so it's a good choice."
- Jerry Garcia.

I think this takes some pressure off of Robert Hunter and the feelings he expressed. It might be heavy for him, but each person takes something else away from his words.

Onto-Historical - Talking "Heads"

I believe there have been hints here and there relating to the onto-historical world of the Grateful Dead's music video "Touch of Grey." Everything within the piece is so intertwined. Yet I think the main point about their onto-historical world can be seen in the way through which they approached this music video.
Keep in mind, this is the first and only music video the Grateful Dead actually made. This stems from their non-corporate beliefs. Their philosophy of music was their sound-in-time-in-cultural context. They played for themselves and for their fans and for their music for music's sake. This break from structure was a huge feeling of the 60's.

The Grateful Dead also expanded across a vast multitude of genres. Their style is noticeably theirs, but contains an open-mindedness of influences. Lullabies to country to rock, they used it all. Their "fluid, open-eared interchanges, ecstatic mood swings, and visceral impact," are paralleled by the drug and rock and roll culture they were surrounded by.

All of this comes through in the world they set up for themselves. By choosing to stage the music video at a concert, they are staying true to their normal venue and performance style. The place is filled to the brim, as normal, and the band is at first casual with their music. They are far away, tuning up and getting ready to play. There is no grand entrance or fireworks, just sounds. Then their seriously realistic world turns slightly upside down through the introduction of puppets! This convention works wonderfully, because the skeletons are able to be as naturalistic as possible. Even though they are guitar and drum playing skeletons (which could never happen in real life), they are acting as the members of the band, completely normal and causal, jamming on their instruments. This contradiction parallels the all-natural ideals of the 60's along with the visually and imaginatively enhanced influence of the drug culture and psychedelic music. Even through you can see the puppet strings, the audience/viewer is asked to suspend their disbelief and make friends with the skeletons. The tempo and tone of the piece assuage any fears that the world is one of danger or fear.
Being that this was filmed in front of a live audience, everyone in that hall was able to experience the world first-hand. But what about me? I am distanced from both the historical context and onto-historical world through time and medium.
Yet I think the message and feelings are still valid. If you decide the song is indeed about ageing, well ageing is timeless! I know it may sound contradictory, but everyone faces the challenges of getting old, and most people face challenges at some point in their life about how to pay rent, and society is still concerned about the education of our youth. While the musical style and groovy-ness of the sounds and sound progressions may be more relevant to the 1960s, the lyrics are timeless.

Open Listening Part II

The Grateful Dead have never played or recorded the same song twice.

You're thinking...that's a lie. How can that be possible?

Well! Let me tell you. Most songs that you hear by popular artists today are very clear in their script. There is a beginning, a middle and an end, and the same song on two different albums or in concert could sound more or less identical. This is not the case with the Dead, which is what I find so intriguing and wonderful about their music.

Improvisation! They let the music take over themselves and they just play. Many of their songs duplicate on other albums, but they are never the same. Each album is a recording of a particular venue, so the series of songs they play all blend in to one another. Sometimes it is near impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The Dead will also often take the liberty of drifting off course in the middle of a song and jamming with each other until they feel like going back to what they wrote. It was all about experimentation through sound.

This is how I feel for my "second" listening. It sounds different every time I listen to it. There are notes I pull out, ways Jerry says certain lines, and beats that I find each time. But here goes:

*the skeleton's hands move to frets in the general sense following the notes coming from the real guitar.

*It's hard for me to pull out specific instruments and their parts because it all blends so beautifully together.

*the teal overtones of the animation are classic Gary Gutierrez.

*The band members don't play to the camera, they keep it as real as possible.

*You almost stop realizing when they switch from humans to bones.

*Their sense of humor and ease is really apparent through their "skeleton jokes."

*The dog that runs by during "dog hasn't been fed in years," is carrying a converse shoe attached to a leg bone that in the next shot you see a techie trying to reattach to the drummer skeleton's foot.

*The crowd roars when they turn into people. Almost as if they're cheering the transitioning effect.

Meta-Critique - "I will survive"

I think I could get very nit-picky and critique a lot in this section. However, I do not believe that was the purpose of an eclectic analysis - to follow philosopher's guidelines to the T. I do believe this served to open our minds to a variety of different ways of approaching an analysis of a piece of art, both in different viewpoints and theories, and through themes as well. Therefore, I will spend a short time on each section, explaining my thoughts on my work.

Perhaps the largest critique I could make would be of my attachment to the Grateful Dead. I picked this piece because I have a pre-disposition towards the band and their music. This bias is difficult to remove, as Heidegger and Husserl have discovered. Therefore, I think separation from biases is ideal and not actually possible. Yet mine still is quite strong.

Open Listening - perhaps my best section. Although I had heard the song many times before, I had never listened for the purpose of listening and through watching the video was able to pull out new things in the song and through this first exposure to the video. I feel I was able to separate this piece and refrain from a comparative analysis.

Historical Context - I feel as if there is too much historical context to cover regarding the 1960's-1990's, so I stuck with the history of the band. I think I covered thoroughly enough for these purposes.

Syntax - This is where I feel the most lacking. I do not have the ear or the mind or language to describe with accurate musical syntax what I am hearing. I can tell you an overall pattern and things that stand out.

Sound-in-Time/Phenomenology - It was difficult at first to separate out virtual feeling and phenomenology. The lyrics also kept finding their way into my phenomenology and virtual feelings. I feel I could have been more metaphorical.
It was hard to find a lot of information regarding specific recording styles of the video. I was not able to get "The Making of The Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey Music Video and more!" which I think would have given me plenty of insight into the recording style and process of making the video. It might have helped with syntax as well. Oh well, "I will survive."

Virtual Feeling - I feel I was not as detached from my feelings of the piece to the feelings the sounds were representing. This is perhaps my greatest area of realistic improvement. Also my attachment to the piece has infiltrated once again. I am not quite certain if I was dominating the music and using it for my release, because I was not necessarily feeling particularly "jolly" while I was listening to it, it is what the music sounds like to me, but some happiness is inherent.

Textual Representation - I think this was another way of looking at how the lyrics influenced virtual feeling.

Onto-historical and Open Listening II went just fine.


All in all I enjoyed writing this in a blog. It made it available for other people to see, and it was less daunting and less formal than a print, staple, turn in paper, which could be a negative issue.
As I had mentioned previously, I am removed from the video. The Grateful Dead were very much "in the moment" as seen through their improvisation and adverse feelings towards recording studios, which is probably why this was their only music video. The medium of video further removes me from the experience. Yet so does 21 years.

I hope this was insightful,
signing off,
Lisha