DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)
By:
April 7, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… late-breaking obsessions, avoided discoveries, and devotions delayed! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
I didn’t hate everything about the Grateful Dead.
“I like Shakedown Street,” I said at the rare party I went to in college.
“Ugh, that’s their worst album,” someone sneered, then everyone ran from me as though I’d farted. Socially I guess I had, but as someone who took everything personally even I let this one go, because in my heart I knew the Dead really sucked.
And it wasn’t just the band, it was the tie-dye, the toe rings. It was “Ripple” and co-eds trying to play “Ripple.” It was the smell of patchouli and the dead funk of weed. I hate weed.
All this nonsense actually began in high school, where teenagers’ yearbook pages were filled with, “What a long strange trip it’s been.” “Thank God I am leaving this,” I sighed, only to be flung into the belly of a Dancing Bear when I arrived at Ithaca College.
For those of you unfamiliar with Ithaca, it’s like Woodstock with snow drifts. Maybe it’s changed, I haven’t been there in ages and I owe my roommate a visit, but back then I decided to teach all those Deadheads a lesson by graduating in three years. In May 1995 I left town and buried the Dead. Few mourned.
I’ll say it was around 2010 that I heard “Box of Rain.” I don’t remember how it happened, but I do remember listening to it again. By choice, not blasting through someone’s wall. This was a couple years after a terrible break-up, where my boyfriend had left me because I was, essentially, a mess. “What do you want me to do/To do for you, to see you through?” Suddenly, I could understand what he’d been dealing with. From the Grateful Dead. Of all people.
When I learned “Box of Rain” was written by Phil Lesh about his dying father, I thought of my own father, long-gone even then, and silently asked him, “What do you want me to do?” I was a mess again. But in a good way.
I don’t know if I can bring myself to buy a Dead album, there’s still baggage. (What do you want me to do? Those were a tough few years.) But since I don’t have them forced upon me, I am free to love “Truckin’” and “Sugaree” and “Fire on the Mountain.” Deadheads and I share the horror that “Touch of Grey” is their only hit. I discovered Bob Weir hates tie-dye, which I found endearing. And did you know Mickey Hart (with Merle Saunders) revamped the mid-’80s Twilight Zone theme, with Jerry Garcia playing the do-de-do-do part? I tried to score an interview with Mickey about it but no luck. Still, I don’t take it personally. I kinda like those guys.
DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Mandy Keifetz on FAITH | Heather Quinlan on THE GRATEFUL DEAD | Carlo Rotella on SMOOTHER GROOVES | Art Wallace on MICHIGAN | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on TAYLOR SWIFT | Josh Glenn on ART | James Scott Maloy on BE-BOP DELUXE | Jake Zucker on LIGHT SLEEPER | Gabriela Pedranti on THE BIG BANG THEORY | Adam McGovern on DOGS | Tana Sirois on COLLABORATIVE EVOLUTION | Rani Som on LED ZEP | Holly Interlandi on HOT SAUCE | Jeff Lewonczyk on TWIN PEAKS | Nikhil Singh on PRE-TEEN DAVID LYNCH PROBLEMS | Christopher Rashee Stevenson on O’NEILL & THE SEA | Fran Pado on SHARKS | Juan Recondo on BEN GRIMM’S INNER LIFE | Miranda Mellis on KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD | Mimi Lipson on SOBRIETY | William Nericcio on ELYSIUM | Crockett Doob on SLEATER-KINNEY | Marlon Stern Lopez on PAT THE BUNNY | …and more!
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!