He’s real aware of my consciousness. He writes songs for me that say what I would have said if I had any kind of agility with language, which I unfortunately don’t. | | | | Robert Hunter at the Grateful Dead's Club Front in San Rafael, Calif., November 1977.
(Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “He’s real aware of my consciousness. He writes songs for me that say what I would have said if I had any kind of agility with language, which I unfortunately don’t.”
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| | rantnrave:// "Could I write a book about you?," ROBERT HUNTER asked his longtime songwriting partner JERRY GARCIA in a long, revealing, beautiful open letter a year after the latter's death. They had worked together for decades, lived together for a time and spent much of their creative lives speaking for each other, in a way. I use the words "speaking" and "for" loosely. "I have a preference," Garcia once said, "for the ambiguous." They had lived and worked at close proximity at first and at a distance later on, writing American classics from "DARK STAR" and "RIPPLE" to "SCARLET BEGONIAS" and "TOUCH OF GREY." Hunter, the only person inducted into the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME as a nonperforming member of a band, died Monday. He wrote songs for the ages with bandmates BOB WEIR and PHIL LESH, too, but Garcia was his musical soulmate and most enduring collaborator. Their roles were separate but intertwined. "I edit some of [his lyrics] mercilessly," Garcia said, sometimes because they were way too long for a song, even a GRATEFUL DEAD song, and sometimes in search of the mystery and ambiguity beneath Hunter's mythical American landscapes and stories. Hunter sometimes rescued Garcia's musical scraps—Garcia was a somewhat reluctant songwriter—by insisting they should be songs and making them so with his words. Sometimes a complete set of lyrics, sometimes just enough to get the band going and then he'd return later to fill in the blanks. Garcia established a songwriting ethos: "I wrote once about 'cue balls made of Styrofoam,'" Hunter remembered in 2015. "Jerry took objection to the word Styrofoam. He said, 'This is so uncharacteristic of your work, to put something as time dated as Styrofoam into it.'" It's no accident their work has endured. It was meant to. "You knew," Hunter wrote in that open letter, "one decent song was worth a dozen cobbled together pieces of s***. Pop songs come and go, blossom and wither, but we scored a piece of Americana, my friend. Sooner or later, they’ll notice what we did doesn’t die the way we do." Both men knew the songs could speak for themselves, and could speak for them, too, in a way that, say, a book could never do. Hunter answered his own question: "Could I write a book about you? No. Didn’t know you well enough. Let those who knew you even less write them." RIP... After Garcia's death, Hunter wrote with artists including ELVIS COSTELLO, BRUCE HORNSBY, JIM LAUDERDALE and, most notably, BOB DYLAN. All but one song on Dylan's 2009 album TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE are Dylan/Hunter collaborations. "He’s got a way with words and I do too," Dylan said. "We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting"... Asked to name "a favorite lyric or line," he said: “'Let it be known there is a fountain that was not made by the hands of men.' That’s pretty much my favorite line I ever wrote, that’s ever popped into my head. And I believe it, you know?"... While other American opera companies and orchestras canceled upcoming performances by PLÁCIDO DOMINGO, who was accused six weeks ago of sexual misconduct by multiple women in multiple opera companies, New York's METROPOLITAN OPERA stood by him, with a starring role in a production of VERDI's MACBETH scheduled to open tonight. But under increasing pressure from fellow performers and employees, Domingo's half-century tenure with the country's most prestigious opera company came to an end Tuesday, with Domingo saying, "I have asked to withdraw and I thank the leadership of the Met for graciously granting my request," and the Met saying, "The Met and Mr. Domingo are in agreement that he needed to step down.” He's accused of groping and sexually harassing women and professionally punishing some who rejected his advances. He denies the accusations... The BALTIMORE SYMPHONY will open its season this weekend after settling a bitter, summer-long labor dispute with musicians... RIP JON BOX. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Perhaps it’s prog, maybe it’s stoned-as-f*** highfalutin dinosaur rock made as punk was bursting out all over, but–to many–"Terrapin Station" is a multi-sectioned peak of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s long songwriting partnership, touching on many of the Grateful Dead’s strong suits. There are mysterious moods, cryptic lyrics, and places for all kinds of lead guitar/bass/drums. | | |
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| Twelve years. Thousands of hours of sleuthing. No answers. On the hunt for the three most enigmatic minutes of music | | |
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| A Journal of Musical Things |
| This is the tale of two Norman Rockwells, one from 2017 and one from 2019. One is an album by a multi-million selling artist; the other is a well-respected indie musician. | | |
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| Across the world, more music is being listened to in increasingly varied ways. Based on research conducted by IFPI in 2019 across 19 leading music markets, the IFPI Music Listening report provides an insight into music listening habits. | | |
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| The essential DJs, speaker builders and bass mechanics on Jam Pony Express, Miami Bass and the lost art of regulating. | | |
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| The story of Gibson’s main rival, Fender, is somewhat less famous but wholly more successful – particularly since the arrival of CEO Andy Mooney in 2015. | | |
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| Charlie's out on parental leave, which means no one is here to stop Nate from going off the rails. And you know what means... JAZZ! As soon as dad left the room, Nate enlisted his favorite journalist, jazz and sports writer Natalie Weiner, to come on the show and discuss her incredible 1959 Project - a day-by-day chronicle of jazz during one of its most pivotal years. | | |
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| With great power comes great responsibility. | | |
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| Sample clearance is a dilemma for a lot of artists. We look a two companies who think their technology could offer a solution. | | |
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| The band’s lyricist opens up on how they came together, made their most beloved records and got turned onto LSD. | | |
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| Saxophonist John Coltrane was born on Sept. 23, 1926. On what would have been his 93rd birthday, scholar and historian David Tegnell offers this guest installment of Deep Dive with Lewis Porter. | | |
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| Ahead of a rare European performance at Le Guess Who? festival, Dirk Baart looks at the significance of Ustad Saami and speaks to his producer Ian Brennan. | | |
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| Minor2Go's royalty-free loops have been used in hit songs by Drake, Polo G, Gunna, Lil Tjay, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, and more uncredited. | | |
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| The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019, or C.A.S.E. Act, is currently making its way through Congress, and it stands to have a significant impact on musicians and labels across the country. | | |
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| In a new memoir and an album of songs they wrote as teenagers, the feminist pop stars look back at their traumas, triumphs and life as identical twins. | | |
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| Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a superstar of the pre-rock era, traveling the country in a customized bus and performing for tens of thousands, but never got press to match her stardom. What if she had? | | |
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| Paul Wilson looks at how the audio hobby is changing, and maybe not for the better. | | |
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| The Grateful Dead lyricist died on Sept. 22 at age 78. He leaves behind over 600 songs, many of them totems of psychedelic rock. | | |
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| We take a look inside photographer Peter Beste's new book "Defenders Of The Faith" and explore his quest to capture the humble battle jacket as a cultural art form. | | |
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| David Ma speaks to DJ Premier about the immortal 1994 single. | | |
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| | | | | | | "Let there be songs to fill the air." |
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| © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group |
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