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May 17, 2005
I returned from the day clinic after having some cancer cells on my legs and back surgically removed to hear the news that Kylie Minogue has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and has cancelled her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour tour in Australia.
 Cancer has a layer of meanings in our culture at the social, scientific and cultural levels even though it is a biologically based disease.
The word "cancer" has taken on broad cultural meaning as a metaphor for a number of uncontrolled and self-destructive processes---cancer everyday as a cultural metaphor for something evil. Those with the disease become cancer patients with its sick role and given styles of coping and managing. Many patients still experience a diagnosis of malignancy as a notice of imminent doom, whilst many see the sick individual as solely responsible for their healing.
I've been recuperating this afternoon listening to the Grateful Dead's 1978 four-disc set Closing of Winterland.
 This is a legitimate piece of rock and roll music history that heralds both the closing of the venue, and the effective end of an era shaped by a city, people and place.
During the 1960s and '70s, San Francisco's Winterland Arena was home to some of the era's most memorable rock concerts, hosting such musical legends as Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and The Who, The Band and Bruce Spingsten.
When the world-famous venue closed its doors in 1978, rock promoter Bill Graham commemorated the event by organizing one last farewell concert--and he chose his favorite band the Grateful Dead to bring the party to a close.
By the end of the 1970s, the Grateful Dead were commonly seen to be at the beginning of their musical decline as drugs began to erode the unit from within. Despite the husband and wife team of Keith Godchaux (keyboards) and former Muscle Shoals session vocalist, Donna Jean Godchaux (vocals), leaving the band shortly after this concert, the band's improvisation and in-the-moment musicality continued to remain the core of their concerts.
The improvised music of Terrapin Station and Playing In The Band is a jazzy Dead, and very different from the Pigpen/Fillimore music of the 1968-70 period. The jazz-oriented framework, which started to be tentatively explored on Wake of the Flood and put in place with the much underrated Blues for Allah, was done through quietly appropriating Miles Davis' fusion experiments of 'In a Silent Way' and 'Bitches Brew.'
Around 1972-75 Miles pointed to a door into another musical universe and he'd go through it every night when he played a concert. He and the band would create this weird free-flowing stuff and share what they made with the audience. It is a way of way of music-making more akin to the Dead playing Dark Star than to conventional jazz. The improvisation in Dark Star can differ greatly from night to night. Similarly with Miles.
Judging from the Closing of the Winterland CD The Grateful Dead circa 1978 was not a freakish hold-over from the 60s: an anachronistic hippie band that would never fade away and just went through the motions of playing their sets. The bracket Terrapin Station and Playing in the Band on disc 2 are the new launch pads for improvisation (replacing The Other One); an interplay that leads to an extended foray into a musical space that formed into free-flowing aural collages.
Though there was not much of a segue of the Terrapin Station blending into Playing in the Band, the musicians expand and elaborate on the song form, always implying the melody, groove, sense, and mood of the vocal in their solos. Thus, the better the song, the better the solo. In jazz improvisation the song form is often abandoned entirely as the soloists tackle harmony and rhythm in their purest, most abstract form.
Alas the 1980s were different story. Garcia was ill, there was a lack of inspired original material to fire them up as musicians, and they went through the motions. Apparently things looked up in the early 1990s.
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Gary - hope the cancer removal does the trick and everything goes ok.
A few more pieces on the Dead and you'll nearly have me convinced to give them another go. Although I've tried I just haven't been able to "get it" so far. Where would you recomend I start? I have a few Dead vinyl albums and I even asked a dedicated deadhead to give me their best live concert 2 x CD set.I can't work it out. It just hasn't grabbed me yet.
On the cancer issue I get iritated by all the coverage on media on Kylie and everyone saying "she'll beat it", "she's determined" and "Kylie's battle". There is no evidence that a "positive attitude" or "fighting spirit" or "determination" makes any difference whatso ever and it is a gross insult to people who have cancer to imply that somehow a person's attitude is responsible for cure, remission or progression. It's the nasty narcisitic creeping Oprahisation and Hillsonging of our lives.