The Ripple Effect: Deadheads share their stories
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What inspired the hosts to start The Ripple Effect series on the Grateful Dead?
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From NPR Music, I'm Felix Contreras.
And I'm Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento.
I was dreaming about The Grateful Dead the other night, and I have been more than usual lately. What was the dream? It was sort of work-related. It was around... like getting some audio for this project that we're doing. And it wasn't working. And some guy, random guy, just gave me a solution. It was like, it could have been a Grateful Dead song if everybody had names and characters. It was a little weird.
Like a taper came to your rescue. He was like, no worries, dude. I have recording equipment you can use.
He was sort of like that. He was like a wise sage guy who'd come by. He's like, I know the answer. If you do this and you fix this. And then I'm like, oh, cool. And then he just like, he disappeared.
That's amazing. I have also been having a lot of dreams related to the dead, but mostly about being in the parking lot and like trying to find someone or trying to get to my car or trying to like do something. And everyone around me is just like chilling and selling tie-dye socks and doing all their other stuff. And I can't figure out where I'm supposed to go. And then I just kind of give up and hang out and have the greatest time.
There's the lesson in life right there. Yeah.
How did the hosts describe the dream that sparked their search for audio solutions?
And I think the reason why all of this stuff is even in our dreams these days is because we're on the tail end of of working on this amazing series, The Ripple Effect. The Grateful Dead's long, strange trip might keep going forever. We're also the tail end of Days Between.
That's right. And, you know, Days Between is something we celebrate every year. It marks, you know, from August 1st, the celebration of Jerry Garcia's birth, all the way to August 9th, the anniversary of when he died. But this summer has been a little bit different. It's the first one in decades where there hasn't been an original member of the Grateful Dead on the road. And we knew that people would still be looking for ways to get together. We knew people would still be wanting to listen to the music. So we decided to go out different parts of the country, talk to fans, talk to musicians, talk to archivists and understand how the Grateful Dead built this massive legacy and where it goes from here.
So we put together some podcasts. We wrote some pieces. There's a wonderful photo show online you can find at npr.org slash Grateful Dead. All in the purpose of trying to figure out what happens next with Grateful Dead and music and the fans.
But we also knew that there were so many pockets of dead communities that we weren't going to be able to get into in our reporting. So that's why we put out a call out asking deadheads to let us know. what they love about the Grateful Dead's music, how they connect to the culture, and what they might say to people who are trying to dip their toes into the Grateful Dead extended universe and haven't quite been able to. So today we're going to listen to some of those responses, which I think, Felix, has been a really, really fun experience to dig into some of these voice memos we received.
Yeah, you said there were hundreds that we split up and divided between ourselves. I think we both came away with the same impression. Just being overwhelmed with the love of various things. The music, the fans, each other, the stories. Let's just get right into it because there's some really good stuff.
So the first one that I want to play is from a woman named Alexis Taylor.
Hi, my name is Alexis Taylor and I live in Park City, Utah. In 1992, I went to visit my sister at American University in Washington, DC. And we got in her car with her boyfriend and a good friend of theirs who was a taper and drove to Charlotte, North Carolina to see two shows.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What inspired the hosts to start The Ripple Effect series on the Grateful Dead?
0:00–1:39
2
How did the hosts describe the dream that sparked their search for audio solutions?
1:39–11:11
3
Why did the team put out a call for Deadhead voice memos and what were they hoping to learn?
11:11–14:26
4
What was Alexis Taylor’s first Grateful Dead experience and how did it shape her family’s tradition?
14:26–23:41
5
How did Adam’s unexpected story about a taper’s help illustrate the community’s generosity?
23:41–35:03
6
What unique insights did Alan Arkush share about meeting Jerry Garcia backstage?
35:03–42:13