Among the most interesting  but often overlooked scholarly resources for the study of the Grateful Dead are auction catalogs: there have been several high-profile auctions of Dead-related memorabilia over the years, and their catalogs have reproduced images and ephemera that are immensely interesting for fans—and very helpful to scholars studying the band and its cultural impact.

The first auction of Dead materials to really make a national splash was called “Life on the Golden Road with the Grateful Dead: The Ramrod Shurtliff Collection,” held in 2007. Drawn from the collection of one of the band’s longtime crew members, the auction provided a glimpse of the remarkable range of materials that illustrated the Grateful Dead phenomenon. That auction was followed by “More Skeletons From the Closet,” which featured materials from the estate of longtime crew member “Ram Rod” Shurtliff. Bonhams followed that with “Visions of Garcia” in May 2012, producing a fine 112-page catalog featuring unpublished photographs along with some remarkable illuminated set lists by Garcia, along with some of his drawings, sketches, and other ephemera.

Recently, Julien’s Auctions, a Los Angeles-based company specializing in pop culture memorabilia—chiefly sports, film, and rock music—hosted an auction featuring hundreds of pieces that pertained to the Dead. With a picture of a young Jerry Garcia gracing the cover, the 333-page glossy catalog features items from Garcia band manager and longtime crew member Steve Parish’s collection, but its major contribution documents the art of the Dead and the broader Haight-Ashbury context that incubated the Dead and so many other iconic bands of the sixties. Sketches, drafts, and posters by Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Randy Tuten, and others chart the arc of Grateful Dead imagery and its broader context of the burgeoning psychedelic art emanating from the Haight. Of particular interest are the dozens of printer’s plates for various Family Dog posters, most of which have never been displayed.

Since the high bidders in these auctions tend to be collectors, not cultural heritage institutions, the catalogs end up being the only way for most scholars to know about, or see images of, those materials. And while some collectibles possess little evidentiary value, many do—especially manuscripts and other one-of-a-kind items.

Some of the insights provided by these catalogs  are expected: rare photographs documenting the band’s early days, instruments that help scholars and fans understand the band’s craft. Other glimpses are more precious, such as three books from Pigpen’s library: Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Pictures of the Gone World, and Gregory Corso’s Gasoline. The significance? All three pieces demonstrated the degree to which McKernan was interested in the Beat movement—not just as a reader, but as a practitioner, as his doodles and poem decorating the volumes  suggests.

For scholars, these catalogs can be cited with some assurance, since auction houses go to great lengths to verify provenance and originality—their credibility rests on the authenticity of the materials they sell.

Julien’s joins Bonham’s and Butterfields in documenting some of the fascinating, colorful and compelling artifacts and art that inform the Grateful Dead phenomenon and its dissemination into American culture.

Addendum

Archive supporter Jesse Jarnow emailed to say that I missed an auction: “Great post about auction catalogues, though missing the Guernsey’s (May 8th!) 2002 auction of Wolf & Tiger with lots of Jerry’s clothes, handwritten notes from his days as a music teacher, etc.. Nice catalogue, too.” Jarnow, a fine journalist and author, wrote a thoughtful account of the auction here. Thanks for pointing it out, Jesse – - and if any reader has a copy of the catalog they would like to donate, the Archive would be most grateful.

This backstage pass recently surfaced in the Archive during processing, and represents one of the earliest examples in the collection. Its simple lettering demonstrates that the central concern backstage during those early years was quick identification—security personnel could quickly and easily spot who should be there, and who should not.

Over the years, the Dead’s backstage passes evolved into highly sophisticated designs, often incorporating pop culture icons like film stars and comic book heroes. It’s interesting to note that when the band used trademarked images, they were careful to secure permission, even though passes were not sold; I had an interesting chance conversation with the former head of Marvel Comics at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about that and he remained impressed with the band’s scrupulousness. “It wasn’t easy to negotiate copyright clearance for those images,” he recalled. And all to make colorful, memorable, disposable passes that, once affixed to clothing, were often hard to preserve.

For some runs of shows and even whole tours in the late 1980s and 1990s, the band hired artists solely to create passes. Some tours featured designs that fit together like pieces of a puzzle, forming elaborate images that incorporated signature Dead icons and motifs. Although these artistic efforts can be seen as part of the band’s approach to doing business artistically, those designs had a very practical dimension as well: they were hard to counterfeit.

Some backstage pass designs were based on designs and symbols from the band’s extensive library of images, such as iconic posters by artists such as Stanley Mouse and Rick Griffin; others might be simple motifs, sometimes taken from a sketch by Garcia or even a doodle by one of the bandmember’s children. Some passes featured visual puns based on the band’s name, sometimes repeated over the course of several years.

The rich imagery adorning the Dead’s backstage passes means that researchers who want to delve more deeply into the band’s iconography, and their pioneering approach to the visual art that accompanied their music, will be rewarded by a close examination of the backstage passes in the Archive. This early, simple design documents how an interesting, often-overlooked artform began.

The Dead have spawned innumerable cover bands over the years, some of whom have gone on to earn enviable followings in their own right. In addition to well-known names like Dark Star Orchestra,  hundreds more carry on the band’s improvisational legacy in almost every state, as well as several other countries. But the Dead’s legendary free-form jams and deft song-writing have also influenced countless other bands, many of whom credit the Dead for inspiration that may be difficult to detect at first—some fans of Sonic Youth, for example, were surprised when Lee Ranaldo discussed his years as a Deadhead and his admiration for the band (see his comments on Europe ’72 here).

Viva la Muerte, an up and coming band from North Carolina recently signed to New York’s Ex Umbra Records, just released their fine debut, All the Birds—a title that for Dead fans immediately conjures up “Brokedown Palace.” Lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Matthew Armstrong makes no secret of his affection for the Dead, although no one would mistake the album as a straight-ahead Dead tribute: Armstrong and his bandmates wear their influences lightly, creating a sound that is unique and contemporary but suggests depths that only come from deep learning and sustained immersion in a wide variety of genres.

That may be why All the Birds has such a haunting presence. Too many jam bands focus on the Dead’s skillful multi-voiced improvisational acumen without understanding its deeper roots in folk, blues, bluegrass, and jazz. VLM’s songs and musicianship are original and refreshing, and give the sense of a band that didn’t just study the Dead—they used the Dead’s approach as a template for their own education, going back to those sources and forging their own connection to those primal musical wellsprings.

Armstrong’s songwriting adds an artistic dimension to his other efforts, which include novels, short stories, journalism, and even critical work on the Dead phenomenon—an essay on his experiences in Dead cover bands was recently published in an academic anthology (Full disclosure: which I edited, and was delighted to be able to include). That adds a nice bit of symmetry to the album, as if we’re hearing the musical counterpart to his thoughtful reflections, which discussed the challenges and rewards of performing the Dead’s music. With his songs on All the Birds, Armstrong provides a powerful demonstration of what those rewards can be, for this is the kind of subtle tribute that also defined the Dead’s own approach to American roots music, honoring them while making them indisputably their own.

~ Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist

Update!
We are back on track and all systems are go.

Thanks again for your patience!
~ The GDAO Technical Team

Two (2) pins and two (2) magnets, handcast concrete, ca. 2.0–3.0 in. Gift of Viki Schecter.

Viki Schecter, longtime Deadhead (and proud mother of a UCSC undergraduate) recently donated a set of four handmade Deadhead artworks to the Archive, shown here. These delightful pins and magnets depict four seminal images and icons in the Grateful Dead phenomenon: the famous Mouse/Kelley band logo, derived from Edmund J. Sullivan’s illustration in the Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam; the Owsley Stanley / Bob Thomas-designed Steal Your Face band logo; the squared Grateful Dead emblem, and a stylized version of Garcia’s bearded visage, bedecked in sunglasses.

Schecter created these “MANY years ago,” as she recently wrote. “I sculpted each design with Sculpy [a brand of polymer clay] by hand (except the round one, that was my husband’s belt buckle). I made a latex mold and filled it with cement. Each one is hand painted by me.”

Schecter sold three of the designs in Dead show parking lots, though not the Garcia pins: “Only people who knew me personally had a Jerry pin. They were not for sale. We actually had one friend find us at a show because they saw someone wearing the Jerry pin and knew they knew us.” Schecter also gave a Jerry pin to Bill Graham, before a New Year’s Eve concert—in fact, it may well be the pin that appears in The Official Book of the Deadheads (see p.131).

Deadhead crafts are an important part of the broader scene and phenomenon, and the Archive is grateful to Viki for her kind donation. Look for it in the upcoming exhibition, “Songs of Our Own: The Art of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon,” which will open in late April in McHenry Library’s Dead Central exhibit space. Many thanks to Ms. Schecter for her artisanry and generosity! ~ Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist

Five (5) underground newspapers, ca. 1967: The San Francisco Oracle, Vol. 1, No. 8 (August 1967), 40 pp. The City of San Francisco Oracle, Vol. 1, No. 10 (October 1967), 32 pp.  The Haight-Ashbury Maverick, Vol. 1, No. 7 (1967), 16 pp. Southern California Oracle, No. 5 (August 1967), 32 pp. Southern California Oracle, No. 7 (November 1967), 24 pp.  Gift of Charles Stolzenbach.

This collection of five underground newspapers makes an important contribution to the Archive by documenting some of the broader cultural currents informing the Bay Area scene in the critical year 1967. The San Francisco Oracle is considered one of the premier underground newspapers of the 1960s, responsible for pioneering the split-stream method of color printing (where colors were applied to the press as the rollers were moving). Although it only produced a dozen issues from September 1966 to February 1968, the Oracle was quite successful: from an initial run of 3,000 copies for the first issue, print runs swelled to 125,000 copies by the sixth, the first to use the split-stream method. Selling copies was an important source of income for hippies, who served as the newspaper’s principal distribution mechanism.

For scholars, the Oracle is important for a number of reasons. As an important community voice of the Haight, it represents a vital form of contemporaneous evidence: articles on issues the neighborhood was facing at the time depict the scene as it appeared to Oracle staff, who were a part of the Haight; even the want-ads provide snapshots of themes and currents in the Haight-Ashbury during its heyday. For historians, the prominence of Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Michael McClure in the Oracle’s pages shows how these elder statesmen of Bay Area bohemia were a vital and visible part of the Haight’s flowering, alongside emerging voices and visions, such as Lenore Kandel and Rick Griffin. The October issue, for example, features a lengthy piece by William S. Burroughs and a five-page interview with Tim Leary, along with a poem by Lew Welch, a poet whom Robert Hunter credits as an important influence. These two issues are especially welcome, since most copies show some variation, and these differ from those reproduced in the facsimile edition produced by Regent Press in 1991.

The Oracle is well known, due to editor Allen Cohen’s prominence as a poet along with the paper’s own visibility, fueled by the critically-acclaimed 1991 facsimile edition. That edition informed a welter of new critical studies of the Haight, but many other ephemeral newspapers of the time have not fared so well. Two other contemporary efforts included in this gift are the Haight-Ashbury Maverick and the Southern California Oracle, the latter with two particularly nice issues. The Haight-Ashbury Maverick took its cues from the Oracle in its sensibility and design; poems, essays and illustrations vividly capture the Haight sensibility, even as it peaked and began its decline. One sketch, “The Eight Thirty Bus,” by Robin, conveys the hippie worldview nicely:

There before us, and about 10 feet below us was a young man of about 35 years/standing-reading the NEW YORK TIMES, in a dark grey business suit. Waiting for his prompt 8:30 bus to come and fetch him and bring his soul back to his dark frey [sic?] desk where he would sit—in constant fear of everything. It took us near 10 minutes to cease our wild laughter/then it happened—I became the laughter of life, the chuckle of intelligence, and the pity of wisdom. Silently I returned to the window and wondered if perhaps the man glaring up at me couldn’t detect the smile of truth in my eyes. My pity forfeited to the tickling of life and I burst out laughing again/I was 2 hours old now and would stay that way forever and ever. (p.3)

Underground newspapers have been recognized as critical sources for scholars studying the sixties for decades, and these issues will be helpful to not only those studying the Grateful Dead but a host of related contexts. The Archive thanks supporter Charles Stolzenbach for his generous gift.

~ Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist

James D. McCallister, Fellow Traveler: A Rock & Roll Fable. Chapin, SC: Muddy Ford Press, 2012. Softbound, 351 + iv pp. $16.95

The Grateful Dead have always had a serious literary bent, from the Beat inheritance of the band symbolized by Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey to the extraordinarily literary qualities of their lyricists, from Bobby Petersen to Robert Hunter to John Perry Barlow. Deadheads responded with their own literary efforts, from wonderful impromptu parking lot poetry to formal, published efforts in a wide variety of genres.

James D. McCallister’s Fellow Traveler joins the list of Deadhead-penned novels with a fine allegorical treatment of the latter-day Dead scene. Centered on the experiences of several fans of a band called Jack O’Roses, clearly inspired by the Dead, the novel traces these intertwined lives as they navigate a world following the retirement of the band. Memories and evocations of that world during the band’s final decade bring to life a powerful vision of the last few years of the Dead scene, including some of the horrors of the band’s final tours in 1995, especially Deer Creek. In an eloquent and moving afterword, McCallister makes that point explicitly, saying that part of his reason for writing the novel was as a rejoinder to “the gatecrashers at Deer Creek, individuals who, on July 2, 1995, not only ruined what turned out to be my final Grateful Dead concert, but caused what would have been my final show to be canceled” (“Endnote,” p.[353]).

But the novel is far more than an elegy to a vanished scene: the characters are compelling, the dialogue crisp and believable, and the plot pulls readers along without sacrificing the literary flourishes that keep the book in mind well after the climax. Throughout, the nods to Deadhead culture and allusions to the band’s canon are subtle, well placed, and contribute to the sense that the Dead phenomenon, even in its last stages, can sustain high-level literary fiction.

McCallister considers his novel more of a genre effort than literary fiction, although some readers may disagree. Most would place Fellow Traveler alongside Philip Baruth’s lyrical and powerful debut, The Millennium Shows, recently re-released by Kearney Street Books. The acquisitions editor of that press, Gary McKinney, calls Fellow Traveler “a truly charming and deft literary achievement—a magical, captivating work,” high praise from the author of a pair of mystery novels featuring Deadhead sheriff Gavin Pruitt. McKinney’s works, Slipknot and Darkness Bids the Dead Goodbye,  follow what is often considered the first Deadhead novel, Alan Neal Izumi’s Dead Tour, published by Relix magazine in 1988, although McKinney’s are not set in the Deadhead milieu, which provides the context for Izumi’s narrative.

McCallister’s Deadhead bonafides are impeccable: a taper and later Shakedown Street vendor, he went on to become co-owner of a Deadhead shop, Loose Lucy’s, originally one of a chain of six such shops and now the last. Located in Columbia, Loose Lucy’s continues to provide South Carolina Deadheads with a sense of continuity and connection, even seventeen years after Garcia’s death and the retirement of the band. Some of Fellow Traveler was written while McCallister manned the shop, where I would often visit him when Columbia was still my home base.  (Full disclosure: McCallister acknowledges my friendship in the “Endnote” of the book, and I had the pleasure of reading drafts of Fellow Traveler as it went through a number of revisions before settling into its final, published form.)

Fans who came to the Dead phenomenon following Garcia’s death will find Fellow Traveler to be a fine evocation of the last years of the scene, just as scholars studying the broader literary aspects of the Deadhead experience will need to spend time with McCallister’s story. With more and more books devoted to the band and phenomenon appearing, it is important for scholars and thoughtful fans to also consider the fictional treatments that often limn and illuminate the most telling but often hidden currents that informed the Deadhead experience. For scholars, Fellow Traveler helps chart the cultural diffusion of the Grateful Dead phenomenon and the Deadhead experience—and for readers, it’s simply a fine read.

~ Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist