[nubjamin]

i'm not a huge dead fan, but i do appreciate their compositional skills (i don't know how anyone could not like a song like "terrapin station") and their legacy, particularly as it has been carried on by other bands like phish. they were the first band that i am aware of that really cared about their fans, and went out of their way to make every show a unique and multi-faceted experience. in particular, allowing free taping and trading of their shows was a stroke of genius, in my opinion. rather than bankrupting them, it allowed them to get their music out to the widest audience possible, and turned them into one of, if not the biggest touring acts of all time.

say what you will about the fans (and some of the people in this thread have been a bit close-minded and condescending, imo), but the deadhead/phishhead/hippie community has always been very tight-knit, accepting, and just overwhelmingly positive. i'll take a stoner deadhead crowd over a drunken fratboy crowd any day of the week, and twice on tuesdays.

some of the jams were bad, no doubt, but that's what happens when you take chances on stage. i think a lot of people just go to concerts to hear note-for-note reproductions of the songs they've already heard on the radio countless times. deadheads are the opposite: they expect something new every night. they demand it, in fact. and the band delivered. in effect, the jamming and crowd reaction becomes a kind of two-way conversation that makes the concert experience a lot more interesting and rewarding for everyone.

oh, and jerry really is a great guitarist. he played jazz, bluegrass, rock, folk... but he always sounded like jerry. he had a very personal, emotional style that people could really identify with.