Are those patterns of sound actually in his head? Before they make their way down those nerves that stop at his fingers, are they in his head? The fingers - by what strange, studiously practised yet wild alchemy do they know each vibration, each note, each tone, each juxtaposition they tease out of the fretboard? The guitar itself is alive, throbbing and sparkling with colours and light. Garcia's on his guitar.
Garcia's on his guitar. The world's condensed into this river of sound that swirls around his instrument. The world flows from his guitar. This is worship. This is faith. I'm crazy.
And it's just air, Christ, just air, twisted and stretched and bent, air changed by magic into sound, air thick with smoke and marijuana and the sound of Garcia's audience clapping its hands, all air, but air bent on paths that are accidental, improvised, and invented.
Like every teenager who ever had a passionate affair with sixties rock and its offspring, I dreamed, several years back, of myself on a stage, bending air with a guitar, exploring the stratosphere with my fingers as they hopped across a fretboard. But, unusually, it wasn't Hendrix or Page or Clapton I imagined myself as, the guitar an extension of the body, following and shaping the body's rules and patterns. It was, instead, Garcia, his fingers imparting to his guitar a life and magic all its own, the musician almost audience to his own performance, his flight of creation. The pain compressed in that index finger that Garcia severed, one day, as he was chopping wood, mingled with the sweetness coming from that fusion of brain, fingers and strings. The beautiful, sweet, bearded face. It was always Garcia.
Garcia playing and singing 'I Shall Be Released'. And it kicks in, as it was bound to do sometime. The power and the genius of Dylan, behind Garcia as he transforms the song into something it had always and never been. It's only words. Released. Only a word, but a word with such resonance. History, desire and prophecy mingled in that word, in the voice that gives it resonance and depth. Words, but words from Dylan.
Garcia on guitar. Dylan reinventing song. The closest I'll ever come to religion.
And I was always too lazy - too afraid of being no good? - to ever learn the guitar.
Garcia's on his guitar. The world's condensed into this river of sound that swirls around his instrument. The world flows from his guitar. This is worship. This is faith. I'm crazy.
And it's just air, Christ, just air, twisted and stretched and bent, air changed by magic into sound, air thick with smoke and marijuana and the sound of Garcia's audience clapping its hands, all air, but air bent on paths that are accidental, improvised, and invented.
Like every teenager who ever had a passionate affair with sixties rock and its offspring, I dreamed, several years back, of myself on a stage, bending air with a guitar, exploring the stratosphere with my fingers as they hopped across a fretboard. But, unusually, it wasn't Hendrix or Page or Clapton I imagined myself as, the guitar an extension of the body, following and shaping the body's rules and patterns. It was, instead, Garcia, his fingers imparting to his guitar a life and magic all its own, the musician almost audience to his own performance, his flight of creation. The pain compressed in that index finger that Garcia severed, one day, as he was chopping wood, mingled with the sweetness coming from that fusion of brain, fingers and strings. The beautiful, sweet, bearded face. It was always Garcia.
Garcia playing and singing 'I Shall Be Released'. And it kicks in, as it was bound to do sometime. The power and the genius of Dylan, behind Garcia as he transforms the song into something it had always and never been. It's only words. Released. Only a word, but a word with such resonance. History, desire and prophecy mingled in that word, in the voice that gives it resonance and depth. Words, but words from Dylan.
Garcia on guitar. Dylan reinventing song. The closest I'll ever come to religion.
And I was always too lazy - too afraid of being no good? - to ever learn the guitar.
8 comments:
Man, you write so well. I am linking to this. Also check out two version of Playin In The Band I just put up.
Thanks, ventilatorblues. I wrote that blog after reading yours on 'Dark Star', so I'm glad you liked it.
Btw, have you seen 'Dead Ahead', one of their concert videos? They do this fantastic jam, where they segue from Franklin's Tower into Fire on the Mountain, it's really terrific, there's this long percussion jam where Kreutzmann and Hart really go wild. And Garcia builds it back beautifully, into 'Fire'. I was wondering, while watching it - did the Dead ever do a similar jam between 'Franklin' and 'Playin' In the Band'? I just felt that would have worked amazingly, if they ever did.
Havent seen this video. I dont know if they ever did a Franklin > Playin'. Would be interesting to hear it if they did. One wonderful jam involving a Playin' that comes to mind is the one from 11/17/73 : Playin'>UJB>Dew>UJB>Playin'
very nicely put scribbles. I heard prophecy..:)
hey there's a comment i seem to have deleted from my blog accidentally, and i've no idea why, can't remember doing it, i'm sure the gods of the blogworld are playing a trick on me and i've no idea how these things happen. so apologies to whoever...um...to whatever i've deleted. no offence. pure accident.
Hey
That deleted comment was from me. Nobody's fault but mine. :)
murmur, i'm saddened, this is unworthy of you. as though one needed excuses to be lazy!!!
read the ranciere link you sent, btw. beautiful, poetic, but is it really very profound? my scepticism about postructuralism as politics is, as you can see, deepening!!!!
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