“If you get confused, just listen to the music play”

“You see that girl over there?” asked someone in the crowd. “That’s Mariah. All the hippies in Berkeley know her. She’s like the queen of the hippies.” As I stood in the back of the crowd, too intimidated to participate in the psychedelic hoedown, I focused on Mariah, trying to understand her and to imagine what she was experiencing in that moment. Dreadlocked, beaded, and barefoot, Mariah twirled and pirouetted to Stu Allen and Mars Hotel’s rendition of the Grateful Dead’s “Ramble on Rose.” Her eyes were closed, but she knew exactly where she was in space and in relation to the other members of the crowd, as if she entertained a divine omniscience, or harbored a perfect balance between self-awareness and awareness of her surroundings. While her hippie minions battled to win her attention, she kept her eyes shut and danced with herself, focusing on her own experience. She was not controlling her movements — her movements were controlling her. It seemed like she had turned her thoughts off and her feelings on, and was channeling the feelings buried deep within her subconscious.

I knew nothing about her life, but I did imagine something about the concert-goers as a collective group. From my perspective, this crowd came to see Stu Allen and Mars Hotel to accept and embrace the chaos that society brings. And the best way that Mariah, and the rest of the crowd, could cope with that chaos was to hear it, to sing it out loud, and to express it through movement.

The music of the Grateful Dead echoes and precisely captures the chaos that human beings experience on a daily basis, encapsulating “chaos” in the broadest sense of the word. Jerry Garcia’s bluegrass undertones, Bob Weir’s rhythm guitar technique, Phil Lesh’s jazz infused bass, Tom Constanten’s classically trained ear, and Mickey Hart’s polyrhythm all bring about a mishmash of sound, and the simultaneous separation and unity of the musicians mixed with the long, improvised instrumentals create confusion. All of the elements and layers come together to embody chaos itself. The organized chaos offers the listener a space to physically hear, to tangibly grasp, and to take hold of the chaos that he or she is experiencing in the world. Listening to a live performance of Grateful Dead music is even better; the more raw and drawn out the music is, the more evocative and expressive the listener’s experience is. The listener is also surrounded by other listeners who are undergoing a similar catharsis. Ultimately, experiencing the music of the Grateful Dead in the flesh gives the listener the opportunity to come face to face with the chaos in his or her life, to dance it out, and to join a community.

At 8 p.m. on February 20th, hippies, cowboys, and I gathered at the Ashkenaz Music and Dance Community Center to see Stu Allen and Mars Hotel, a Berkeley-based cover band, perform the music of the Grateful Dead and recreate the chaos we experience in our daily lives. A barn in the midst of an urban street, the Ashkenaz stood out but remained humble. On the wood-paneled exterior lay a colorful mosaic dedicated to the preservation of People’s Park, a park that served as the heart of the counterculture movement in Berkeley in the sixties. As I waited in a long line, ranging from flower children to old cowboys, I debated whether I should purchase a souvenir from one of the vendors that lined the exterior of the venue. Did I really need a crystal, a beaded necklace, or a dreamcatcher? I definitely needed a dreamcatcher, but before I could make moves, I found myself at the front of the line. Upon entering the venue, I was swamped by a flood of colorful lights, which came from the stage, the paper lanterns, and the stained glass, and which illuminated the protest art and rock and roll posters, the kaleidoscopic tapestry above the stage, and the instruments.

“Welcome home, little sister.” Sensing my discomfort, a woman approached me, greeted me, and adopted me into her “family” of free-spirited bohemians, offbeat introverts, and too many grandfathers to count. I sat down in the back corner to get a glimpse of the entire venue, composed of a stage, a dance floor, a bar, and tables on which the concert-goers could set their beers. Two men decked out in tie-dye sat down next to me, and, noticing that I was a newbie, introduced themselves. In no time, I learned about these men and their experiences as deadheads, and that both have attended more than a hundred Grateful Dead-related shows. They taught me about the origin of the band name and the myth that underlies the Grateful Dead, showing me this poem from the Egyptian Book of the Dead:

We now return our souls to the creator,

as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness.

Let our chant fill the void,

in order that others may know.

In the land of the night,

the ship of the sun,

is drawn by the grateful dead.

When Stu Allen and Mars Hotel came out, my new acquaintances told me that it was unacceptable to sit down and that I had to stand up. But, they left me alone to experience the show on my own, and ventured towards the front. Amidst the pandemonium of psychedelic ballerinas and mystical cowboys, motionless within the tempest of flowy skirts and weed clouds, I stood face to face with chaos itself.

Stu Allen, the lead guitarist and singer, took on the role of Jerry Garcia, while Mars Hotel, comprised of a rhythm guitarist, a bassist, a keyboardist, and a drummer, represented the rest of the Grateful Dead. Without an introduction, Stu Allen and Mars Hotel set the show into motion, starting the concert with “Jack Straw.” The song describes a rebel traveling across America, bringing light to themes of death and the American Dream. “We used to play for silver/Now we play for life” perfectly captures the essence of the Grateful Dead, for it juxtaposes the optimism of “the good life” with the inevitability of death. Stu Allen and Mars Hotel expressed these conflicting forces through sound, marrying happy-go-lucky bluegrass with evocative psychedelic rock.

The same occurred when the band played “Ramble on Rose,” an ode to a fleeing lover. Allen penetrated the wholesome country rhythm with erratic guitar riffs and untamed improvisation, giving a new dimension to bluegrass.

To add to “Jack Straw” and “Ramble on Rose,” Stu Allen and Mars Hotel played renditions of Hank Williams’ “You Win Again,” Aerosmith’s “Walkin’ the Dog,” Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” and Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again.” The band covered these blues, hard rock, country, and folk songs in the style of The Dead, fleshing them out using psychedelic instrumentals and improvisation. The crowd drank in the psychedelic country music because it gave them the opportunity to bounce and shake their troubles away and to physically sweat out their stress. Still too embarrassed to dance, I stuck to tapping my foot, and as a result, I had a different experience. The combination of the country and psychedelic rock, the dually charged lyrics, the cheerful bluegrass sounds, and the intense instrumentals haunted me and made me think about the philosophy that underlies the Grateful Dead. The first act was over.   

As the crowd gathered around the stage for the second act, my new friends told me that the second half would be different from the first. Stu Allen and Mars Hotel would play the music of the Grateful Dead in its purest form, meaning it would be extemporized, endless, evocative, and most importantly, chaotic. The band began with “Playing in the Band.” The song, which is about a simple man in a simple band, was dominated by instrumentals and rarely included lyrics. For several minutes, the musicians simultaneously performed solos — the drummer followed a polyrhythmic beat, the lead guitarist improvised a harmony that took the form of a musical stream of consciousness, the bassist experimented with repeating rhythms, and the keyboardist improvised. Struggling against one another, they created the perfect chaos. As separate as the musicians were, they were still pulsing to the same beat and tempo, vibrating to the same energy.

Stu Allen and Mars Hotel created a similar sound when they played “St. Stephen,” which paints a picture of a Christian saint. The band expressed the spirituality that is contained in the lyrics of the song by performing a twenty minute improvised instrumental, which fluctuated from musical precision to pure mayhem.

In performing “Cumberland Blues” and “Stella Blue,” Stu Allen and Mars Hotel introduced a violinist, adding a layer to the chaotic amalgamation of sound. The band finished with a ‘Dead-style “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” topping off the trippy-ness and the dreaminess of the night, or at this point, morning. 

The second act of the show transcended the borders of the mundane world, and I am not exaggerating. With eyes rolled back, open mouths, and spastic movements, members of the audience seemed reborn. The music flowed through them, stimulating their bodies to dance and their mouths to sing. Their movement sped up and slowed down with the tempo, and their dance moves were a direct expression of the feelings that the music evoked. The chaos of the improvised instrumentals mirrored the chaos of the concert-goers’ lives, and forced the members of the crowd to face the chaos that haunted them, to accept and embrace it, and to take it into their own hands. By listening to and dancing to the music of the Grateful Dead, the concert-goers felt at ease. Flowing with the chaos instead of staying still amidst the chaos was meditative.

The period from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. on February 20th, 2019 was a dream.

Article by Sophie Turovsky