No, nothing’s gonna bring him back: today we have celebrations of him instead of celebrating with him, and with all due respect to the soldiers that soldier on, legacy must be polished to a gleam that more and more people can see every year, not less and less.

The Grateful Dead isn’t making anymore Enthusiasts, so we have to–we, all of us, top to bottom. This music is good. It is good for you. It is a punch in the dick of the enemies of fun. The men (and Mrs. Donna Jean) who made it were enthusiastically human at all times: they left behind good stories; their stories were the stories of their time; we should tell these stories.

We should tell them well.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/57295533 w=400&h=300]

For fuck’s sake, this is not the way to do it.

The horse that the Garcia family (well, the ones who are legally allowed to do so as the Garcia family) chose to back is a guy who directed an Elvis movie in 1970. The website for this project lists his email address: it is an AOL account. (Go check, but I warn you: the trailer posted above starts playing automatically, so I linked to the bio page and you can click to the main having already hit the mute button.  I’m not going to make any sort of joke here because webpages that start playing music automatically aren’t funny. I never have nor will claim any privileged–or even particular–knowledge of any other man’s mind, especially not a two-decades dead rock star I never met, but I’ll tell you one thing, and I would lay it all on the line–the lives of family–that Garcia would have absolutely fucking HATED IT when webpages start playing automatically. Have a go-see: Jerry: The Movie )

There’s nothing even here, that’s the funny part: an interview with Garcia in which he expounds upon his love of music? Stop the presses. The story of his first guitar? If you zoomed out, you would see Parrish standing 10 feet away mouthing the words along with him.

The only good thing about this is that it won’t get made.

But something should.