Why do punk rockers tend to hate the Grateful Dead

Who is that?

 

Is this another mods and rockers thing?

 

Blackmore

 

Touché

 

good point.

I guess I just tend to think of Blackmore's arrogance at times. My bad

 

No UK punks hated the Grateful Dead, they barely registered in the UK, were irrelevant, and no one bothered about them, we hated The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Yes and Led Zeppelin!!!

 

Why did the punks in Britain hate the GOOD bands??

Why not hate ELP, Foreigner, Styx, Boston, Genesis, etc??

 

Because back in the day when punk was a contemporary reflexive artistic response (vs. now when it's just kind of a style), many of the people chasing that aethetic or at least espousing it saw the whole movement as a recoiling from not only the politics of hippy utopianism and pastoralism, but although the musical aethetics they saw as associated with it -- folkie harmonies, spaced out jaming, a blues foundation, as well as the arena scale of rock music of the day, all of which the Dead were seen as a kind of perfect embodiment of.

Of course neither the politics nor the aesthetics nor even the anaylsis was ever so clear or pure -- you know on the NY scene, Patti Smith was as much a spaced out utopian kind of artist as anyone; Television was a kind of jam band not that far off from say Quicksilver Messenger Service in some ways. And by the time you get to someone like Cobain, hating the Grateful Dead or hippies or hippie utopianism was just kind of a reflexive thing that you did to prove your cred in with your peers. At that point it was just fashionable B.S. with no real thought behind it I think, just a received bit of cultural baggage.

 

everyone hated them, even the hippies...

 

I tend to hate hate threads

 

That's all it ever was, in my eyes.

Down to the dress code.

 

Amen.

 

In addition to their anti-energy style and hippy idealism given the lie by 1970s global economic slowdown as above, there was the generational thing. Up until the 1970s rock had represented youth culture. But the stars of the 1970s by and large were the stars of the 1960s--like the Dead, Zepp, the Who, Pink Floyd, the Stones--or artists rehearsing 60s styles and beliefs. Punks wanted a music that was fresh and their own, not music that belonged to hippies from the 1960s.

Also: Terrapin Station and Shakedown Street were the contemporary Dead releases in the high punk era.

 

that's enough to make ANYONE hate the Dead.

Even Deadheads or the Dead themselves!!

I joke, but Shakedown Street was AWFUL. Even the good songs on it (title track, Minglewood, Stagger Lee) didn't sound good on that record. Hard to believe it was produced by Lowell George, easily the nadir of their studio output. The cover for Go To Heaven was their worst cover...but Shakedown Street is easily their worst album.

 

For the same reason most hardcore Deadheads don't give a blank stare for punk rockers I suppose.

 

Genesis by 77 hadn't gave up the ghost although Misunderstanding was just around the corner

 

This is as good of an answer as I've seen. The whole punk "year zero" thing can be viewed as an attempt to clear the decks to make way for something new. A lot of the pronounced hatred of various bands and styles was exaggerated--several punk musicians secretly enjoyed prog, for example, though it was unfashionable--but by the late 70s, the old classic rock landscape had grown so pervasive and self indulgent, punk provided the figurative kick in the **** that helped to energize a new movement. Of course, it wasn't too long before the punks started stretching out and experimenting, even sometimes indulging in neo-psychedelic stylings that wouldn't have gone amiss at a Dead concert.

 

It's funny, but most of these punks used as examples (Patti Smith, and later Lee Ranaldo) that supposedly liked the Dead to me weren't really "punks". Sure there's plenty of crossover but the fact of the matter is is that they're all a little too old and musically adept to fit comfortably under that moniker. The first true punk rockers were still teenagers in the mid to late 70s. Most of those others were pushing 30. That's a fairly sizable generation gap. They inspired the punk revolution and performed concurrently with it, but they themselves weren't a part of it, imho.

 

I secretly like all eras of Genesis (ducks for cover)

Phil Collins Genesis - 'Misunderstanding' and 'Thats All' in particular - remind me of the early 1980s. I can smell the house we lived in when those songs come on...

 

Amen!!

 

here's a patti story I've told before about the dead. this was in regards to a show i saw in the spring of 79 at amhersst. it was an interesting week regarding that show. garcia was a guest on the robert klein radio show which had a small audience and we managed to get passes. earlier that week, in patti's anti everything stance, she announced that if she ran into garcia at amherst she was going to beat him up, in jest of course. after the klein taping we met garcia in the hall and i told him what she said. his response was 'she could probably take me'. he always just rolled with the punches. of course no incident took place but patti did ramble on during her set about being tossed off the fillmore east stage during a dead show and how they like to play these songs that just go on and on and on...

 

Just be glad you don't know what the hairy pits combined with patchouli oil and 3 days of not bathing on the bus smells like...

 

we use to joke that the ramones could do a whole show in the time the dead tuned up for their next song.

 

I remember I was speaking in the 3rd person.

 

When I saw her in concert she said she was considering dying her hair but had a dream of a grey haired Jerry telling her, "Oh, come on."