Dead Songs in Depth

    

Information of interest to members of this community.
  

    
See Hunter's latest journal entries at
http://www.dead.net/RobertHunterArchive/files/newjournal/55journal_Sept_03.htm
l
  

    
>If you don't speak inappropriately at inappropriate times you'll
speak >little of import.

I like that! Having spent a large part of my life in trouble with
*someone* over doing just that.
  

    
Yup... this is the deal:

From Hunter's journal...

> I have little raw creative energy these days than I once had -
energy I could always count on. That forces an economizing focus which,
before, was more of a luxury and somewhat accidental. The upside is
that I'm less bedeviled by my creativity. No longer a compulsion, it
remains a necessity. I don't really know any other way. Where would I
be without the free gift of an access to words which is second nature?
Working in some other kind of salt mine, I presume. Or a timber mine,
excavating petrified wood.<

Just keep on diggin, you ol' son'uv, a... um... gun,

David, tell the Man I said hello, if you choose.. He knows where to
find me. I'm well behind but on his trail.

"Who are those guys?"
  

    
"No longer a compulsion, it remains a necessity."

i like that.
  

    
Announcement: Just in case you somehow escaped hearing about it, the book
version of the Annotated Lyrics website, which is much more than just a book
version of a website, entitled The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics,
is now available from Simon and Schuster. Foreword by Robert Hunter,
Afterword by John Barlow, illustrations by Jim Carpenter.
http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/cagdl.html
  

    
I'll be reading from and talking about the Complete Annotated GD
Lyrics and my other Grateful Dead books tonight, October 4, 2006, at
the Napa City-County Library from 7 to 8:30 pm. Please stop by if
you're in the area!

http://www.co.napa.ca.us/Library/Site/4/0/329/OctoberAuthors.aspx
  

    
That work is a thing to be cherished. I wish I could be there to hear
the reading and Q&A. Alas, I'm on the Least Coast.
  

    
It was a fun evening--there was a "crowd" of about 30 folks, and I had a
great time talking about how the whole thing came to be. I played the sonic
collage David Gans and I had constructed for "Ramble On Rose," which
interpolates the various musical references into the recording from Europe
72 (Johnny Cash singing "I Walk the Line," a Bessie Smith version of
"Alexander's Ragtime Band," etc.), and received a nice bottle wine (at least
I assume it's nice--I don't drink...) and a generous honorarium (something
that NEVER happens) from the Napa City-County Library.
  

    
Heads up everyone--
I am planning to take an extended hiatus from updating, adding to, or
correcting the online version of the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.
I'm pretty busy these days, and just find that I can't do it justice
any more. Several possibilities present themselves:

1) Someone else could take over
2) Perhaps dead.net could host it and turn it into a forum
3) I could just leave it where it is and have it be a static thing.

Thoughts?
--David
  

    

thoughts about dead.net running it as a forum:

you can't see my thoughts because they just ran out of the room, 
screaming, and with their hair on fire.
  

    
Oh. Well, never mind, then. The best option seems to me to be to find
another brave soul who would take the project on and continue to run it
from the University of California at Santa Cruz site, with me acting
as a mentor or in some kind of gray eminence (I've always wanted to be
a Gray Eminence--might kinda suit me anyway...) role. Volunteers?

Or maybe the whole site could just stay in extended hiatus as remain
posted as a static artifact...
  

    
I'm not volunteering cause I got too many other things to do but I'm curious
how much updating there tends to be?  It certainly would be fine if it was
static for a while.
  

    

I am such a wuss.  Now I feel bad, David!  So, let's talk about Dead.Net.

You know the story over there - advanced cat herding.  My concern would be 
that the Annotated has been managed by one big cat with a big brain and 
the wherewithal to do the research.  If that gets turned over to 
EveryCat, then what's the end result going to look like?  

Perhaps we should take this to email, since I don't think <marye> is 
reading along in here and I bet she'd have some really good ideas.  I'm 
not opposed to hosting the Annotated as a forum on the Site; I'm just 
opposed to its degradation.  
  

    

I think DeadNet could be persuaded to take it on, not necessarily as part of
the forums section.
  

    
I've emailed Mary separately within, since she seems to be pretty
involved with the new incarnation of the dead.net site. I've also asked
Alan Trist for his opinion on the possibility.

As to how much updating: as much as you want! I usually receive around
5-10 emails per day (adds up over time!) with pointers, corrections,
possibilities, etc. The deadsongs.vue conference was meant to take up
some of the responsibility for finding a place for folks to talk about
the songs, and I think that should gradually help. But say you get a
comment that says something about an allusion you might want to add to
the annotations. I generally try to check these things out, to make
sure that the reference is authentic (that is, that it was really
written, or stated, or is somehow based in reality, though I wouldn't
want to define "reality"), then secure the permission of the person
making the statement that it's ok to post their comment, then going in
and putting in the necessary html--it gets to be a lot of work per
comment. At first, this was fun for me, but it does become cumbersome,
and I have to weigh it against everything else I want and need to be
doing with my time. Hence, my desire to bail. 

I look forward to hearing more from Mary, Alan, David, and anyone else
who might have thoughts about how or if to migrate the site.
  

    

I bet MaryE and I could do that from our moderator email account. off to 
email.
  

    

I'd make the case or Rhino to host AGDL on dead.net.  The forum would be a
place to collect information.
  

    

just realized I was in the .vue conference.  (Hi, World!)
  

    
Hi back at ya iz!  Yeah, it would be good if it could be hosted on dead.net
but definitely not open to being altered by everyone and using the forums to
collect info and insights that could be added to it.  That sort of editing
and annotation is kind of what I do and it would be fun.  But I know I
wouldn't have the time.
  

    

pauli, dude, you so sound like a volunteer to me.
  

    
Maybe a small team of volunteers, under the direction of Mary, say
(whom I have emailed separately again about this...), in which case I
could still participate. Just can't take it all on anymore.

Thanks very much for the good ideas and developing enthusiasm!
  

    
i refer to the site a lot and just wanted to say thanks for all that work,
David. dead.net would probably be perfect but its more of a resource than a
forum thing...
  

    
if the dead.net approach proves prohibitive in some way, and if there
was a desire to make it more commentable or even editable to some group
of people in the future, then I could volunteer my largely unpopulated
WikiTheFlood (http://thedeadbeat.com/theflood/) as a permanent home.
  

    
Christian--
That seems like such a great idea! It's definitely wiki-able, I'd say.
Let's monitor what happens with Rhino, and then, yay!
  

    
I'm happy to help out in any capacity within my capabilities.