Job vacancy: Keeping the dead alive

The University of California at Santa Cruz are hiring a Grateful Dead archivist. You can be pulling down $52,860 – $68,892 a year - the only problem being you must have a masters in archive management and, as the advert puts it:

Expert knowledge in the history and scholarship of contemporary popular music, or American vernacular culture, preferably the history and influence of the Grateful Dead.

Filing the Cherry Garcia ice cream might prove troublesome.

[via Boing Boing]

Psychobit: John Dawson

John "Marmaduke" Dawson has died.

Born in Michigan, Dawson's lucky break was joining Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. This loose ensemble also found jugband space for Jerry Garcia, with whom Dawson would form The New Riders Of The Purple Sage. The presence of Garcia ensured that the band got work and found an audience supporting Jerry's more famous concern - although it wasn't until Garcia was replaced by Buddy Cage that The New Riders took on a life away from the Grateful Dead.

Dawson guested on Dead albums Aoxomoxoa, Workingman's Dead, and American Beauty, but it was the New Riders into which he threw his energy, touring with the band through a number of line-up changes until they eventually called it a day in 1997. Dawson wasn't a regular member of the revival of the band in 2007, but showed his support by turning up for the occasional guest slot.

John Dawson was 64; he died from stomach cancer.

The Dead want it all

Carrie Brownstein was putting together an online mix for her NPR blog, and wanted to include a Grateful Dead track. She politely asked permission. And the response?

they refused unless we promised to do a piece on them on All Things Considered. In addition, we would need to run a feature on The Dead on the site. Here's a sentence I've never written: Someone needs to take a bong hit and chill out. Just a simple "no thanks" would have sufficed. Are The Dead really in need of publicity? Because I swear there's a dancing bear sticker on every third car I see in Portland. And now I've written a paragraph on them anyway, for free, not even in exchange for a song. Doesn't that count?!

You don't even have to scratch a hippy very hard to find the hard-nosed pigopolistic pig underneath, do you?

Undead dead support Obama

As the US prepares itself for Super-Duper-Hyper Tuesday - Wolf Blitzer's been down at BestBuy this very afternoon, bulk-buying all the big screen TVs he can fit in the back of his car - more endorsements for Barack Obama, as what remains of the Grateful Dead announce a gig in his honour. There's to be a live stream on iclips; it's promised as a one-off reunion of the band's members.

Which, interestingly, suggests they see keeping Hillary off the ballot as a more significant cause than getting a Democrat into the White House.

Garcia's wife sues to free recordings

Deborah Koons Garcia, widow of Jerry Garcia, is suing the company which administers his estate. Koons Garcia claims the company - of which she is a member - is frustrating attempts to release unheard Garcia material, and should have packed its affairs up at the end of 2005 anyway.

Other beneficiaries of the estate, including Jerry's daughter Keelin Noel Garcia, have their own legal battle already running with Deborah. Keelin claims Koon Garcia's handle on financial affairs has been "shoddy".

A judge will affect to care as soon as April 13th.