An annual Easter aim of mine is to add something to my life that enhances my humanness such that I might better become someone who does the same with others. It can be anything. A place in nature. A poet’s letter. One very important year, it was a band.
I first learned that I loved the Grateful Dead — a group whose name feels spot-on for Lenten days — years ago on a lonely Easter. I was wondering how I’d get through the day, when I began listening to a random Dead show from 1974, and it was as if chords inside of me were being played by a hand beyond my own, but in the key of myself.
The Dead could rock harder than anyone, but it could be that the Dead rocked their hardest when they were playing gospel music. Typically, we think gospel is the bailiwick of the religiously inclined.
Dispense with labels, though, and you break chains and free the soul. Life resets.
Easter can seem like a somber holiday. An uplifting one, too, but death infused.
We know the story: a man was murdered, and three days later, he returned, advising that love is the way.
Love isn’t as simple as how we’re apt to talk about it now in a world where we “catch feelings.” There’s far more to love — vulnerability, courage, selflessness — just as there’s far more to the Dead.
The prime gospel period for the Grateful Dead was in 1970, which is also when the Dead performed the greatest about-face in American musical history.
Prior to this point, the Dead were intergalactic musical trailblazers with a grounding in the earthy rhythm and blues of this world of ours.
Then — somehow — they simultaneously emerged fully formed as this ancient American enterprise of down and dusty music that also feels like it’s perpetually waiting for us up around the bend.
These were barn dance musicians, hired to make life better for a few hours and, as a bonus, long into the future to come. Pilots for the ship of Eastertide.
I love listening to audiences love this music on the surviving tapes. Sometimes, you can hear the people dancing.
There’s a recording attributed to San Diego on Aug. 5, 1970 that is as Easter-worthy as art gets. The Dead didn’t play on this date — we don’t know when and where it’s from — adding to the tape’s mystery.
Among the numbers is “Cold Jordan,” and you never knew how the audience was going to clap along when the Dead played this song. Sometimes it’s on the off-beat, other times the on.
You’re impacted differently with every listen. In each instance, you want to get back out there into the thrum of life, which can be hard and why so many of us are apt to retreat and treat the manner in which we go about our lives as though it all amounted to a cave we can’t vacate.
But you must rise, dance, and go forth. So that others may follow, yes. But also so that you can follow you.
That’s the crux of Easter’s message. The Dead never had a need to preach. Their gospel music isn’t overtly about God. The focus is us.
After all, this is the same band responsible for the lyric that best encapsulates why we are here on this Earth better than any other: “What do you want me to do/To do for you/To see you through?”
See yourself and the world better this Easter by dancing with the gospel Dead. I bet you’ll feel like you’ve come back to life yourself.
Fleming is a writer.