Suck

"a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun"
for 17 June 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Hit & Run CLXXXIII

Great rockers never truly die,
and it's probably no surprise
that Jerry Garcia is still
communicating from beyond the
Dark Star. Wendy Weir, sister of
Grateful Dead second guitarist
Bob Weir, has, in fact, been in
regular telepathic contact with
the rotund showman since hours
after his death in 1995, and now
she's compiled her conversations
with Garcia's Oversoul in a new
book titled In the Spirit:
Conversations with the Spirit of
Jerry Garcia. For the enduring
Dead entourage, it's got to be
encouraging to know that Garcia
is still yielding new material
in the Beyond. And if the book's
pan-galactic spiritlord lacks
the self-effacing wit that made
Garcia charming in life, people
in the know seem to appreciate
this new brand of oracular
hocus-pocus: Dead keyboardists
Keith Godchaux and Brent
Mydland, who both died before
Garcia himself, posted favorable
reader reviews of Weir's
book at Amazon, before being
exorcised by Amazon ghost-bots.
And Weir entertained AOL members
at a chat session last night.
We, however, weren't willing to
go miracling with the chat-room
riffraff and got directly
in touch with Weir for
what we hoped would be Suck's
first post-death interview
with Jerry Garcia:

We're hoping we might be able
to do an interview with
Jerry.
Unfortunately, I can't
do that. The conversations
described in the book are
telepathic conversations, and
that's done by entering a
state of meditation and
raising my energy to a place
where it's really clear and
safe. Then I can reach out to
him telepathically. It's sort
of like a radio station; each
individual has their own
frequency. And you can tune
into their frequency and reach
out your intent to communicate.
And they can either respond
or say, "Hey, I'm busy," or
not say anything at all.
Is Jerry ever busy when you
call?
Oh yeah, he's got a lot of stuff
going on up there.
What's something he might be
doing when you call?
Sometimes he's just been off
working on his own stuff. The
idea is As above so below. In
our spirit world, we also have
a lot of things that we're
working on. Growing, helping
others. There are a lot of
things a spirit can be doing.
So depending on what he's
doing, he might say, "I'll talk
to you next week."
Is he playing with Jimi Hendrix
and stuff like that?
Where he is, which is where we're
all going, basically, music is
everything. Sound is all. It's
light, it's energy, it's
sound, it's color, it's all
interwoven. It's just
incredible. So is he playing
music? Not necessarily. Is he
creating music with his
energy? Oh, definitely.
Does he have information on
other people who have moved
on to the next level? For example,
Kurt Cobain's mom didn't want
him to join "That Stupid
Club." Did Kurt make it up
there?
When we communicate, Jerry's
greatest concern is with
people who are still on
Earth. It's not with people
who have passed on, but people
who are still living. So
that's where most of our
conversations are focused.
Suck.com was started in August
of 1995, right after Jerry
died. Is there any chance that
Jerry's spirit may have
infused Suck? Is there
transmogrification like that?
His spirit infuses the people
involved. So it depends on
those who are part of the
project and how they feel
about him. It's an individual
thing.
You know, the opening
riff to "China Cat Sunflower"
is really simple, but I can
never make it sound as
"bright" as Jerry did. Do you
think you might get some tips
from him?
Each one of us is unique. Jerry
has his sound, and you have yours.
Yeah, but nobody's interested in
my sound. They're interested in
Jerry's.
Well, you need to explore that
too. And don't be like Jerry:
Be like yourself.
Speaking of which, what does
Jerry think of imitator bands
like Phish or, more
specifically, of Dead cover
bands like Solar Circus, where
these guys who are kind of
overweight and wear glasses
grow beards so they'll all
look like Jerry?
He supports the expression of
the music, and his spirit is
in the music. He wouldn't say,
"This band does this, and that
band does that." It's the essence
that's important; it's the
spirit that's important. So if
a band supports that essence
and can really lift people up
and make them happy, then
that's positive.
One of the book's most intriguing
claims is that the Dead's best days
are ahead of them.
That's my feeling.
What's in the cards?
Is the band's next success going to
be on this plane or the next?
I feel it'll be here. Time is
irrelevant, so I don't know
when it will be. But the
spiral has gone full circle,
and they're able to start anew,
at a higher level of awareness.
Mickey Hart got involved with
a lot of Joseph Campbell–type
philosophy. Is that the kind
of higher awareness you're
talking about?
No, it's more of an individual
awareness.
Jerry always wore a black
T-shirt, except on special occasions
when he would wear a red
T-shirt. Does he wear a white
T-shirt now?
It all depends on what he's doing;
he can wear anything he wants.
A lot of times I'll see him in
different forms, and sometimes
I'll just see him as a beam of
bright light.
How often do you communicate?
Right now, all the time,
because we're doing
publicity on the book and
because he's the co-author —
or as some people have
said, the "ghost writer" —
we're talking all the time.
So can't you do a quick
co-interview, where you get in
your energy state, where Jerry
might be able to field some
questions from the media?
No, that's not a place where I'd
feel comfortable.
Are you speaking for Jerry?
I'm speaking for myself in that
regard. In the book, I
communicate what he says, but
I do it in a really safe place
energetically. But to be on
stage or out in an environment
where there are a lot of
people and I have to open up
energetically, that's taking a
real risk, and I'm not willing
to do that at this point.

In the Spirit: Conversations
with the Spirit of Jerry Garcia
debuts this week.

"Whither new media?" In this
blighted age, the only reporter
with the courage to ask this
poignant yet bold question is
Dan Kennedy, the poignant yet
bold columnist for the Boston
Phoenix. In a jeremiad we got
about halfway through, DKBP
railed against the benighted
state of online journalism. But
somehow, he failed to convince
us that we need to join up for
his particular rehabilitation
project. Part of the problem may
be Kennedy's penchant for what
A. J. Liebling called, "On the
one hand this and on the other
hand this and on the other hand
that" news writing. The Web's
new wave of independent
journalism may be "a future that
will never arrive," but it also
"may be no exaggeration to
suggest ... that the Web is the
most important advance in
publishing since the Gutenberg
press." Salon is bold but too
erratic; Slate is consistent but
too controlled. It may be too
early for webzines to reach
financial stability, but "even
so, it's rather amazing" that
more webzines aren't financially
viable. While the strenuous
shilly-shallying set us back,
Dan's definition of who is and is
not doing real journalism really
threw us for a loop. The
Atlantic Unbound apparently
doesn't qualify, but Consortium
(with a reported 500 to 1,000 "hits"
per day) apparently does. Honest
efforts like Online Journalism
Review and original ones like
The Smoking Gun don't even get a
mention; and while Feed's mix of
interviews, analysis, and fact
gathering is "thoughtful," it's
just not journalism the way,
say, Larry King is journalism.
And the Susan Lucci–like saga
of whether Matt Drudge is a "real
journalist" goes on and on. In
the end, while we know that
Slate and Salon (and those two
only) passed Dan's sniff test,
we're not entirely sure which
nostril he was using. But we
know we should be paying
attention, because his name's
Kennedy and he has something to
do with Boston, so he must be,
like, the president or something.

Then again, maybe Dan Kennedy
should have gotten an eyeful of
Ron Rosenbaum's latest Dispatch
at Slate. During the past few
weeks, the Edgy Enthusiast (and
Dizzy Dylanologist) has been
regaling Slate readers with the
story of his experiences on the
Internet. As You've Got Mail
viewers may know, Rosenbaum
firmly believes that laboriously
typing and retyping manuscripts
helps him hone his not-quite
inimitable style. And after a
couple weeks of this stuff,
we're starting to believe him.
Because apparently when you let
the man near a word processor,
he poops out screeds so tedious,
blithering, and self-indulgent
that we're expecting any day now
to see Ron's Homepage on
Geocities, featuring KMFDM
lyrics, photos of his homies'
trip to New Orleans, and the Top
Ten Reasons Why Jar Jar Binks
Must Die. In his latest
long-winded caper (and when we
say we quit reading halfway
through this one, we mean it),
Rosenbaum gripes that his Mac
keeps crashing (!) and gets into
a flame war with some unlucky
Slate reader, whom the
ungracious essayist repeatedly
slams as a "Chat-room Poseur."
Sadly, there are no editors in
chat rooms, so while we see a
full dose of New York
Observer –brand bile directed at
the hapless poseur, we never
quite figure out what's driving
the humorless rant. Apparently,
the poor schmuck facetiously
suggested Rosenbaum wasn't as
techno-unsavvy as advertised —
a remark the columnist, who
apparently harbors a Howard
Hughes–like dread of technogeek
germs, couldn't allow to pass.
Don't worry, Ron, we believe
you're new to the Web! But
Christ Almighty, we're trying to
stay awake over here! Just send
the guy that Vonnegut
commencement speech and
be done with it.

courtesy of the Sucksters

"a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun" for 17 June 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

"a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun"
for 17 June 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.