Derek Writes About a Dead Side Project
An anti-Deadhead on the significance of Jerry Garcia's solo debut
With the exception of a couple ill-fated late seventies runs, the Dead almost always took early January off—but they never rested. The first few weeks of each new year were dedicated to solo bands and side projects.
In that spirit, I want to launch a side project of my own. Over the next few weeks, I’ve invited some friends to share their thoughts on the Dead.
First up is Derek Sapienza on Jerry Garcia’s solo debut “Garcia.” Derek is an automotive journalist on the streets and a painter/photographer/musician between the sheets. He’s also one of my closest friends whose musical taste has greatly influenced mine.
As a good child/consumer of the ‘90s, I bought into the 1960s wholesale. Too-dark granny sunglasses from the head shop in the nearby college town, factory-made tie-dye shirts, pre-ordered cassingles from the Apple Records mailer, endless hours spent watching Nick at Nite – yeah. Up with people, baby. I was all for it.
But I never liked the Grateful Dead.
Maybe it was because all the drug dealers in my town liked bad Dead. The then still-warm Dead, you know? Those Just For Men “Before” model looking motherfuckers, churning out jams groaning under the weight of too much auto-wah and phony piano sounds. Or maybe it was that table of Jerry Garcia collection neckties perpetually on discount down at Kauffman’s. Anyway, I wasn’t having it. It all felt cheap. And by the time I discovered punk, whoo boy. They were anathema to me.
I didn’t dig the Dead until my thirties. In fact, I didn’t even get into the Dead. I got into Garcia. The rest just fell into place.
Maybe it’s because there isn’t any bullshit on Garcia. Well, uh, there is, but even “Late for Supper/Spidergawd/Eep Hour” have flashing moments of brilliance, so there. There’s the familiar lyrical territory that any Deadhead would recognize from the era – smoky crooked card games in the back of Spaghetti Western bordellos, the Old West by way of the Warner Bros. backlot – but there’s also the full emergence of Jerry the fatalist.
Long down a digit and clad in head-to-toe black, already once brushed with death and an avatar for Robert Hunter’s lyrics on songs like Black Peter and Attics of My Life, yes. But the indifferent folly of life is the unavoidable locus here. A heavy meditation on the semiotics of ephemera in 39 scant minutes, from a thirty-year-old man who should by right be too young to know better. Could this be the beginning of the feel-bad ‘70s? I don’t know for sure, but I’m here for it.
Your hand breaks one way, so goes your life. It goes another, so do you. Home can be anywhere so long as yesterday doesn’t find the address. Is this a one last time kind of night? Or can you both believe in the lie for a little while longer? A friend of mine says that Jerry Garcia is the only person who truly gets Knocking on Heaven’s door. I think they’re right, and this record is a big reason why. The Dead is a myth. Garcia was made by a human. It never lets you forget that.
Jerry could’ve assembled an ensemble cast (a-la If I Could Only Remember My Name) that would’ve had the Warner execs crashing the boards for a big Christmas release and dreaming of a new house in Malibu. Instead, we get Billy Kreutzmann on drums and Jerry on everything else. If the Dead once represented the bloat of post-60s excess to me, Garcia is the stunning rejoinder. Rarely does it feel so good to be wrong.
But why was it this record, and not one of the many, many others in the Dead universe, that did it for me? For one, it’s a myth-buster; an unfiltered, illuminating session spent with one of the most ubiquitous avatars of the 20th century. I mean, really, does Jerry Garcia mean anything more to the general public in 2020 than a tie-dye handprint or maybe an ice cream flavor? Does his legacy carry any more intellectual weight at this point than a Ché shirt? I didn’t think so for a long time. Garcia, better than any other Jerry, Dead, or Dead-Adjacent project, reminds you that he should. Now, and for a little while longer at least.