Why do punk rockers tend to hate the Grateful Dead

I have that cd by the Eleventh Dream Day, haven't heard it in years. I drove my wife crazy playing it in the car. I think I made a cassette of it, didn't have a cd player in my car then.
It still sounds good to me.

 

Kids used to answer everything like that. Why did you water the carpet with the garden hose?............. They would say "because"

 

Which Mick Jones? You need to be more specific.

 

Great cover!

Here's one: How Punks See The Grateful Dead

 

I loved saying "Because." It's the perfect answer for anything! And it's so SNARKY! Yes! "Because." I'm going to start using that again.

 

It's a trap!

 

It all began with this T-shirt:



Lydon was wearing it when he first met McLaren and his boys.

When punk broke, that raw energy made all the prog-rock bands seem limp and laughable. I suppose that the Dead were the closest thing that the USA had to progressive rock at that time, so they were the obvious choice for all the derision.

 

Dead junkies are what you consider 'Happy, trippy hippies'?
At least the punks come by it honestly.

Why do punks hate the Grateful Dead? Because they meander in circles and never end up anywhere than they haven't already been. I can't speak for all punks but the Dead just embody everything about society that 'we' want to get away from. And the most offensive thing about them is that they're just boring.

 

Punk hated everything. Everything hated punk. The rest was disco.

 

Speaking only for myself, I considered The Dead and their fans to be an alien breed. The jug-band roots didn't help matters, and the musty hippy vibe really wasn't my bag. Also, for the most part, they weren't psychedelic enough to be of interest, either. Having rejected them heartily in the 1980s, I felt they were a lost cause. However, many years later, a friend of a friend (meaning an Internet friend) pointed me toward a show from the '72 European shows, then to Legion of Mary shows, and finally some Garcia Band stuff that made much more sense to me. So, this aging punk/indie guy has found my way to appreciate The Dead, even if I don't love every last note they've played, the way some folks do.

 

Never trust a hippy.........

 

Perhaps because they detest rock music and all other styles of music that actually require musical abilities.

 

If you squint a little he kinda looks like Jonathan Winters in drag.........

 

My main listening is jazz, Miles, Coltrane, Monk, etc.

I love the Grateful Dead, and have a very, very large collection of GD live recordings. The improvisation and interplay the GD achieved is mesmerizing. Branford Marsalis sat in with GD 5 times, and he is very particular about what constitutes good music. David Murray, Ornette Coleman and Charles Lloyd also played with Dead, amongst others.

Why do Punks hate GD? Could it be envy of the GD musical prowess? Or that there were was a high proportion of groovy girls dancing at the GD concerts? No mosh pit for guys to hit guys?

 

Because some people are narrow minded, as some of these posts show. But things were never that simple. Jerry Garcia had B__hole Surfers albums in his collection. The Clash and GD had at least some mutual respect. I saw Violent Femmes open for the GD and Mickey Hart was dancing at the side of the stage. Lee Renaldo, Greg Ginn, Patti Smith, the Meat Puppets and many other punks liked the Dead. And despite the cliches, I know a lot of hardcore Dead fans who are also big fans of punk bands. And those same people are also usually jazz fans. Instead of the Deadheads who only listen to "jam bands" - bleagh. Seek out quality music in its many, many varied forms instead of sticking to only what you are most comfortable with, and you will be richly rewarded.

 

I'd say the Primal Dead ballroom era (65-67) is some of my favorite garage rock, when compared especially to all those Nuggets/Pebbles comps of regional 60s bands who only had a 45 or private album out.
In the Dead's case, back when they were living in LA when Owsley was making all those crazy psychedelics and they were chomping Dexamyl to speed through recording their first album....that's pure pre-punk Beatnik rock (which Jerry and Bob Hunter were definitely beatniks at one point). The whole San Francisco scene had its hard rock/punky stuff lying under the surface...Blue Cheer, Quicksilver, Moby Grape, all have that garage punk roots feel.

You have to remember also punk is a categorization and has sub genres. I consider myself punk rock but I tend to like the proto-American era side which was more rock and roll (in the case of Heartbreakers esp when they had Hell, and the Dead Boys) and experimental/progressive rock (Television/Voidoids ). Clinton Heylin's Velvets to the Voidoids was a true eye opener and a great book to read as he is a fact obsessive which I really like. So many VU-veined snotty rock groups like Rocket from the Tombs and Mirrors (my personal fav) just kick ass. A lot of the time these guys were purposefully trying to be offensive, wearing swastikas to studios where the engineer was Jewish and offending him to the point of telling them off, stuff like that. Self destructive but in a non-suicidal fashion, which for a lot of artists took it too seriously (a la Sid Vicious who was all image and wound up dead real fast as a result). The Heartbreakers UK tour in late '76, had to switch to speed which was provided for free even though they still introduced a lot of bands to dope which to those self destructive UK bands following in the image of the Heartbreakers and RFTT proved to be fatal for some (after all, RFTT member/writer/amphetamine extraordinaire Peter Laughner, meant a death by the drink, acute pancreatitis, age 24. His story and writing is amazing, one of excess. Picture an even more warped Lester Bangs without the DXM binges.)

 

The one whose cap my icon at left is wearing (BAD/Clash). It's called A Patchwork Girl, but funding dried up.

 

Maybe the Dead are too laid back without adequate punk angst level.

 

Dead—Technicolor Hippies.

Punks—Black and White Hippies.

I wanna be sedated.

 

Because the Dead can actually play their instruments and punks are secretly jealous? Or because jamming is anathema to the punk ethos.

Or because every revolutionary 'movement' has to despise what went before.

Or because punks had never really listened to the Dead and hence didn't understand what they were about - among other things, a DIY ethos that had much in common with punk.

Because punks failed to see that they and hippies had a common enemy.

 

Why do punk rockers tend to hate the Grateful Dead

Because by 1977, the Dead epitomized everything that nascent punks of the time were rebelling against: beards, breezy jamming and dope smoking.

The supreme irony being that groups such as the Grateful Dead were themselves rebellious punks in their formative years, in the days when having long hair as a man would often lead to you winding up on the business end of a cop's billy club.

 

Is that you, Ian?

 

Envy.

Unlike most punk rockers, the Dead could actually write songs and play their instruments.

 

One group that sort of helped close the gap were the Meat Puppets.

Liking punk in the mid 80s meant a lot of the groups SST Records were big - people who knew I liked the Grateful Dead and punk thought they combined both - even if it was just because of countryish songs played fast like "Lost" on the 2nd album. I love Up On The Sun.