Not Much Is Really Sacred

Re: More hullabaloo about community... fundamentalist Christians... the truly saved, the horribly damned, and the altogether doomed... moral codes and mailing lists.

Whether you want to call this a scene or not is up to you. As always, I prefer the term "coagulation". Regardless, there's something; a complex network of relations made up of bands, clubs, audience members, tapers, seers, and any number of other elements. At the core of all of this is the idea of an experience. Somewhere near the core of the jamband experience is the idea of the sacred: "a quality of mysterious and awesome power, other than man and yet related to him, which is believed to reside in certain objects of experience" (Berger 25).

Never far from the ever-bubbling surface is the idea that, through music, one can be in touch with the mystic, with some larger power (or the illusion of a larger power). Based on the fact that, for many, the sacred exists, it also stands to reason that its binary opposite - the profane - is also present. The sacred is set apart from the humdrum of everyday life. The profane is everything else.

Based on the idea that one can have a sacred experience at a live performance, certain nouns - people, places, things - tend to take on sacred qualities themselves, even if they aren't entirely synonymous with the experience. In Steve Silberman and David Shenk's "Skeleton Key", several renowned Grateful Dead venues - such as the Greek Theater in Berkeley, California and the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado - are described in near-religious terms as a "temple" (Shenk and Silberman 126) and "power spot" (Shenk and Silberman 242) respectively.

There are any number of other things that can be defined as "sacred". Band members are often spoken of in revered tones. In many cases, it goes beyond the mere celebrity of the band member being the person on stage playing the music; because the band member is the person playing the music, many see him as a direct connection to the personal experience. Likewise, drugs take on these sacred qualities. It is not uncommon to hear people refer to psychoactive substances as "sacraments" or "tools". Indeed, just as they have been for centuries, they are - if used properly - means by which the user can experience the infinite.

With such lines drawn between the sacred and profane come certain rules. At the most basic level, a code can be derived about how individuals relate to these sacred things. I've personally witnessed many folks' behavior change in the presence of members of bands. Many people portion their drug intake relative the performance schedule of the band, usually only partaking at performances. Often, it seems, if a person is ingesting drugs (besides pot) on a regular basis outside of shows, it is seen as a problem. However, if a person regularly uses drugs within the sphere of a show, it is more readily accepted.

Beyond simple behavior, something resembling a moral code emerges. "It is exhibited by bumper stickers bearing the logo 'Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty' (Shenk and Silberman 229). It is shown by the unwritten rule that Deadheads do not sell bootlegs or scalp tickets for a price above face value. Rather, bootlegs are given away and tickets sold at the price paid in an effort to spread 'the gospel' to other fans" (Wilgoren 198). It is seen as justifiably wrong to make a profit off of a band if one isn't a member of the organization itself, it's like stealing money from the collection plate at a church. Consider the stink raised several years back when the Pharmer's Almanac began to make a profit off of their work .

It is in this moral code that the coagulation begins to move from a bunch of music listeners with a common taste to a community. Because of certain beliefs of this community - an occasionally communistic idealism, a predilection towards experimentation with illicit substances, the idea that holding gainful employment isn't necessarily a means or an end - the community tends to isolate itself from the social norms existing outside of it. Any one of these beliefs is by no means universal within the coagulation. In fact, for the most part, just as jamband music might be considered the anti-genre, the coagulation might be considered an anti-community for lack of a unification in beliefs. Or, in other words: some people smoke pot and dance, others don't.

The way which the community relates to the rest of the world is quite interesting. In many ways, it is not unlike the sect of Christian Fundamentalists which Nancy Ammerman described in "Bible Believers". There are similarities on nearly every level. The first and foremost is the separation from the rest of the world. This manifests itself in a myriad of ways.

Since the fundamental root of the jamband coagulation is music, it stands to reason that music would be the separating point, just as the Bible would be the separating point for the Bible Believers. The Bible Believers tend to completely isolate themselves from society at large: for the most part, they don't associate with non-Fundamentalists. When they do, it's often described as "difficult" (Ammerman 95). Musically, many jambands fans tend to stay within the scene in terms of music they listen to. Socially and culturally, it's a world unto itself as well. What may be a major event within one world might barely ripple in the world outside.

David Kemper, one-time drummer for the Jerry Garcia Band (now playing with Bob Dylan) once spoke of the insularity of the scene: "For most of my career, projects led to other projects. The engineer on one album would mention me to someone on some other album. Word of mouth would get me jobs. The JGB led to nothing... A lot of people, musician friends, would ask me what I was doing, and I'd tell them I was in the Jerry Garcia Band, and they'd ask, 'Garcia from the Grateful Dead? I didn't know he had a band.'... I don't know what they'd be thinking in their minds, but clearly they had no idea that we'd go out and play for 17,000 people at a time. I'd tell them this and they'd be very surprised. Yet within the Grateful Dead community, the information was enormous, more avid than anything I'd seen" (Smolin 20).

Likewise, the scene is at the point where, if one wants to, he can stay completely within it for all of his needs. There's JamBands.com radio, hundreds of bands to listen to, a plethora of publications (such as this one) aimed strictly towards jambands fans, dozens of mailing lists, etc.. In short, one can lose himself in the coagulation if he wants to.

In describing the activities of the Bible Believers, Ammerman writes: "For many, almost every spare minute is spent on activities related to the church. The church is their leisure activity. If they bowl or play softball, they join the church teams. If they are handy at crafts, they make things for the nursery or Sunday School. If they like to read, they devour books about the Bible and Christian life. Even their radio and television consumption is dominated by Christian programming" (Ammerman 106).

? Consider jambands fans - myself included - who spend spare time working on web sites, copying tapes, making J-cards, sewing clothing to sell on tour, participating in various newsgroup and mailing list discussions, etc.. For many, it goes waaaaaaay beyond simply listening to music. In the case of jambands fans, this holds tight: between shows, webcasts, and buttloads of bands touring the country, it is rare to find the jamband fan who can't find anything to do with himself relative to the scene if he doesn't want to.

In "Ecstasy and Everyday Life" (a wholly fascinating essay about the idea of manufacturing the ecstatic experience through a theoretical institution), Philip Ennis writes that "one of the most important... tactics is to attach the clientele to your institution by as many different needs as possible so that they are held by a variety of obligations and dependencies" (Ennis 113). Keep the buggers busy.

And what, precisely, is wrong with any of this?

? People often rag on the Bible Believers for being a poor, deluded, misguided bunch. In truth, they're quite happy -- or seem to be, rather. A response to that would be that ignorance is bliss. Well, maybe so, but just what exactly is the real goal, anyway? Beyond that, there are dangers to becoming so wrapped up in a community that it begins to overtake. These dangers can be broken down into two main categories: the collapse of connection to the outside world and the denigration of the sacred experience itself. Both can be equally harmful, and both are intimately connected.

"Bible Believers" devotes much space to the problem of couples with one member who is "saved" and one who isn't. It can be a source of great tension between the two. For example, "a wife with an unsaved husband often finds herself in uncomfortable situations. Even if she has learned to live with his eternal damnation, she still must chafe at the temporal decisions he makes about their money, their friends, and their time" (Ammerman 140). In a similar way, the "saved" and "unsaved" can also be a source of tension in the lives of jambands fans. It is not uncommon to see conferences and the lives of jambands fans. It is not uncommon to see conferences and discussions about how to deal with a relationship with a non-head -- for example, the old Dead Net Central conference entitled "I love the Grateful Dead -- my spouse/partner doesn't!".

The collapse of relations with the outside world will leave one stranded, so to speak, in the jambands universe; not a bad place to be, at first. In "Ecstasy and Everyday Life", though, Ennis makes a valid point: [if] "the distinction between everyday life and the social setting of transcendent experience blurs and one of two things will happen: people will simply go elsewhere, or if they stay, they will lower their level of aspiration for a truly transcendent experience and be content with a diminished version of it, one that is available anywhere down the street, thus deepening the cycle of instability" (Ennis 113).

In other words, if the jambands world - potentially the home of the sacred - becomes the only world, then the sacredness disappears. If the sacredness disappears, and the outside world has been discarded - bridges burned - then one is left with a pretty hollow value system: a series of rules designed in relation to a mythic experience that suddenly no longer exists.

All of which is to say: this is a warning (to myself more than anybody) not to get so involved that that's all there is. After publishing "Hell's Angels", a massive tome about the legendary motorcycle gang, Hunter S. Thompson received a letter from a young reader which said, in part, that the reader wished to join the Angels when he grew up. Thompson advised him not to get sucked in:

"Remember this letter when you think about going out to California to ride with the Angels. And even that might be a kick if you can do it without getting caught in it. But the secret of not getting caught in it is to have something of your own... some kind of skill or talent or action that other people have to respect. That way, you can ride when you want, and back off when you want. Believe me, it's a hell of a lot better way to go...

"Like right now I'm a writer, not a motorcycle freak, so I can do a lot of things I couldn't get away with if all I knew how to do was ride bikes... My rent gets paid with no hassle and I have a lot of time to hunt, get drunk, and raise as much hell as I want to. But I couldn't do any of this if all I did was boom around on a bike and get in arguments with cops. It's amazing how much you can getaway with if you don't go out of your way to cause trouble..." (Thompson 628).

Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books, 1967.

Ennis, Philip H. "Ecstasy and Everyday Life." In Sociology and Religion: A Collection of Readings, ed. Andrew Greeley, 109-118. Chicago: Harper Collins.

Shenk, David and Steve Silberman. Skeleton Key: A Dictionary For Deadheads. New York: Main Street Books, 1994.

Smolin, Barry. "Drumming At The Edge Of Jerry: An Interview With David Kemper." Dupree's Diamond News 36 (Spring/Summer 1997): 14-21.

Thompson, Hunter S. The Proud Highway: Saga Of A Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.

Wilgoren, Rachel. "The Grateful Dead as Community." In Perspectives on the Grateful Dead, ed. Robert G. Weiner, 191-201. Westport: Greenwood