WHAT’S GOING ON: It’s Dead Out There
The legacy of the Grateful Dead is well documented:
* Heart of the hippie culture that emerged from San Francisco in the late 1960s, and still going strong around the world
* Still performing in stadiums 27 years after frontman Jerry Garcia’s death, spawning numerous side projects and acolytes
* Released more than 200 albums, and counting
* Famous for allowing, nay, encouraging fans to record their concerts
* Legions of so-called “Deadheads” follow the band on tour, seeing every show, no two of which are the same
Not bad for a band that had, what, ONE top-10 hit? (Touch of Grey, 1987).
Ha! But of course it wasn’t about “hits.”
“For me it was about the songbook,” says local music expert Peter North. “To this day they’re one of the biggest grossing bands out there – so obviously this music resonates well beyond corporate pop culture.”
If anyone’s going to do a deep dive into the music of the Grateful Dead, it’s Peter North. The longtime former host of CKUA’s Dead Ends and Detours show speaks of the Dead’s many musical journeys, and promises a “good representation of Edmonton talent” for the Dead Ends Live festival March 18-19 he’s co-producing at the Chateau Lacombe Ballroom and the nearby McDougall United Church. It will include The McDades (above) recast as the “McDeads” for a Saturday night tribute show (the band is also staging its CD release on Friday) along with the “Without a Net” jam on Saturday afternoon with ringers like Harry Manx, Mark Hummel, and Gordie Matthews doing their best to embody the “jam band” spirit the Dead stands for.
“That element of improvisation plays a big role in the Grateful Dead,” North says. “What I get a kick out of is how they let everything out of the barn whether it’s ready or not. That’s a rare thing.”
The legacy of Iron Maiden is also well documented – I’m just not going to do that again here.
Suffice to say it’s so large that its frontman Bruce Dickinson is a draw in his own right – coming to tell stories at the Winspear Centre on Friday, March 18.
Bruce is not just a prolific singer, songwriter, producer and performer – he’s a goddamned pilot, licensed to fly the biggest aircraft in the world. Also author, artist, you name it; he’s a true Renaissance Man – sometimes literally given certain Medieval fantasy themes in the lyrics of Iron Maiden. Fish Griwkowsky talked to him in a recent Edmonton Journal interview.
Fun fact: At the last show I saw – in 2016 at the doomed Rexall Place, where Bruce compared the closing of the building to the fall of the Berlin Wall – it was basically 95% white guys. Fathers and sons, it looked like, all of them in black T-shirts. Why this is the case remains a mystery. Perhaps it has something to do with nerd culture? Maiden is basically a horror comic set to music. But while nerd culture was once considered hallmark of manhood, or protracted boyhood, at least, you always see lots of women at the Comic-Cons (thanks to Anime, I suspect), so who knows?
