{"id":3837,"date":"2010-11-04T19:30:33","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T23:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=3837"},"modified":"2010-11-04T21:30:01","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T01:30:01","slug":"please-explain-the-grateful-dead-to-a-13-year-old-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/please-explain-the-grateful-dead-to-a-13-year-old-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Explain: The Grateful Dead\u2026to a 13-Year-Old Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DPBLfzTPCDc?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Last night my 13-year-old son asked my wife and I if <strong>The Grateful Dead<\/strong> were any good. I quickly answered, &#8220;They&#8217;ve got some good songs, but generally they were really sloppy with lots of pointless improvisations and bad singing. We&#8217;ve got some friends who like them a lot.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know you love &#8216;Bertha&#8217;!&#8221; said my wife, and that I do.<\/p>\n<p>My wife, who&#8217;d been to 10 Dead and Dead-related shows in her college days, couldn&#8217;t give them a much better explanation. She objected, however, to my later characterization of them playing no more than 30 minutes of coherent music during a 3-hour set. &#8220;&#8216;Drums and Space&#8217; only took up 45 minutes of a set!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But what about songs like &#8216;St. Stephen,'&#8221; I replied, &#8220;which start out on fire for 20 seconds before veering off into a few minutes of Jerry&#8217;s mellow improvisations before returning to the main theme?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So they&#8217;re like Pink Floyd?&#8221; my son interjected, referring specifically to a short film of the Syd-led band playing &#8220;Interstellar Overdrive&#8221; at some famous Happening that was shown prior to the screening of that recent Doors&#8217; documentary.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously I&#8217;m not going to be of great help in setting up the Dead for a fair listen by my boy. I&#8217;ll play our son the half dozen songs I like a lot by The Dead as well as some of those long jams and terrible cover songs, but help me put into words what this musically attuned 13-year-old boy might expect. And please, don&#8217;t attempt to corrupt the kid. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night my 13-year-old son asked my wife and I if The Grateful Dead were any good. I quickly answered, &#8220;They&#8217;ve got some good songs, but generally they were really sloppy with lots of pointless improvisations and bad singing. We&#8217;ve got some friends who like them a lot.&#8221; &#8220;I know you love &#8216;Bertha&#8217;!&#8221; said my <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/please-explain-the-grateful-dead-to-a-13-year-old-boy\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[41,38,127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}