Archive for April, 2008
Grateful Dead’s archives have final resting place at UC-Santa Cruz – San Jose Mercury News
In Broadcatch, Tullycast on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 2:45 pmSAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (YES!)
The Grateful Dead’s long strange trip through American popular culture is landing in a library at the University of California-Santa Cruz, preserved for future generations of study by scholars and stoners.
Three decades worth of archival materials – from business records to stage backdrops – have been donated by the band to the school’s McHenry Library, where a room called Dead Central is being dedicated to a beloved band dubbed “the largest unofficial religion in the world.”
UC-Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal joined Dead drummer Mickey Hart and guitarist and singer Bob Weir in a buoyant press conference Thursday at San Francisco’s aging Fillmore Auditorium, the site of 51 Dead concerts. In honor of the event, Blumenthal was given a tie-dyed T-shirt.
“All of this stuff doesn’t belong to us – it belongs to the culture that spawned us,” Weir said. “It seemed like getting it into a campus archive, with access for the people in the community that gave rise to it, was the right thing to do.”
The seaside campus was the “most enthusiastic” and “organized,” which helped it edge out two heavyweight suitors, Stanford and UC-Berkeley, Weir said.
“Santa Cruz is the seat of the neo-bohemian culture that we’re a facet of,” Weir said. “So there could not have been a more cozy place for this collection to land.”
The gift does not contain any of the band’s vast musical recordings; those are stored in a Southern California vault belonging to producer Rhino Entertainment. The university said it will work with Rhino on how to access musical material.
But it does contain valuable artifacts that document the band’s ascendance into one of California’s most durable and influential musical phenomena. Currently held in a 2,000-square-foot San Rafael warehouse, the collection includes the Dead’s first recording contract, life-size skeletons of band members used in the 1987 “Touch of Grey” video, and an estimated 50,000 to 75,000 fan letters from around the world, many decorated with elaborate art.
“What you’ll see is our conversation with the people who loved us, and vice versa,” Hart said.
A blue-chip team including several Silicon Valley-based fans – among them venture capitalist and musician Roger McNamee – will oversee a $2 million fundraising campaign for the archive. Seagate Technology CEO Bill Watkins has volunteered technical support.
Formal academics never meant much to the Dead.
But fans say their image-rich lyrics about such themes as love, trust and rebirth are worthy of scholarship. The song “Box of Rain” is as central to Deadheads as Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” was to Beats and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” was to Modernists.
For musicologists, there is value in studying how the Dead’s repertoire updated many of the nation’s older musical traditions, from bluegrass to jazz, said Fred Lieberman, a UC-Santa Cruz music professor. “They were the quintessential American band,” said Lieberman, who first proposed the archive idea to Hart, with whom he has collaborated on three books. This will boost the university’s scholarship on American culture, he said.
However, the gift may do little to help the university shed its image as a mecca of hacky sack and patchouli oil – and, in fact, is likely to attract a tie-dyed pilgrimage. In recent years, the school has worked to refocus attention on its ambitious scientific research efforts. It has even cracked down on its traditional April marijuana smoke-in at Porter Meadow, barring non-students and overnight guests.
Campus librarians said they would welcome Deadheads to the grassy lawn outside the library.
The library already has the vast and eclectic archive of the late Aptos composer Lou Harrison, and was looking to expand.
“This is the first step toward having a library that is a destination for scholars interested in studying an important aspect of America’s vernacular music,” he said.
The survival of the archives through turbulent decades is due to a devoted staffer named Eileen Law, who was hired in 1972 to take care of the Deadheads and who worked with the band for the next 34 years.
Among other jobs, she tended the mail that flooded into a San Rafael post office box.
“Pretty soon I found myself being the keeper of everything – press clips, posters, all their vinyl. I kept getting more and more stuff,” she said. “Everything I could collect, I did.”
At the press conference, UC-Santa Cruz librarians assured Law, who is unemployed, that she’ll play an important role in the cataloging of the material.
“I had faith that something good would someday happen to it,” Law said, grinning.
Fans rejoiced at the news of the gift – and instantly began offering their own contributions to the collection.
“Can we submit material?” one fan asked on the band’s Web site. “I have my own stash – much of it from the parking lot scene, ‘83-’95.”
IF YOU’RE INTERESTED
See library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/GD_archive.html or e-mail grateful@ucsc.edu.
April 18, 2008 | Bill Maher | Part One
In Broadcatch on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Catholic University, Hosting Pope, Keeps Dissenters Off Campus
In Broadcatch on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 4:55 amBy Nadine Elsibai
April 17 (Bloomberg) — Pope Benedict XVI will get the
royal treatment today when he speaks at Catholic University of
America in Washington. Actor Stanley Tucci got the hook.
Tucci, the star of “Big Night,” was prevented from
taking part in a university forum in 2004 because he favors
abortion rights. He’s not the only one who’s been turned away.
A contractor with the school bookstore in 2003 canceled a talk
by Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s delegate to Congress,
and the university president initially delayed funding a campus
NAACP chapter, both over the abortion issue.
“I don’t think it’s necessary to offer everybody who
believes whatever, especially what is contrary to the church,
the pride of place that a platform on this campus provides,”
said Father David O’Connell, the school’s president.
That policy will make the 121-year-old institution, the
only Vatican-chartered graduate and research center in the
U.S., a fitting host for Benedict XVI, who as cardinal was in
charge of enforcing church doctrine.
Benedict, 81, making his first visit as pope to the U.S.,
will offer a message of encouragement to the heads of the more
than 200 U.S. Catholic colleges and universities and
superintendents of the 195 dioceses in his 5 p.m. address. His
talk follows a Mass he will say at the Washington Nationals
baseball stadium.
While he’s expected to face some protesters during his
Washington visit, including supporters of victims of sexual
abuse by clergymen, many of the 6,400 students at Catholic
University are offering only enthusiasm.
Procession for Pontiff
Three nights ago, 300 students held a candlelight
procession through the campus, with stops to say the rosary, in
honor of the pontiff. The Campus Ministry sold baseball shirts
with his name in block letters across the back to raise money
for its missions. Students in the architectural program
designed the chair he’ll use during his talk.
University officials say that while students are free to
debate contentious issues in the classroom, such views
shouldn’t be highlighted elsewhere.
That policy was evident in October 2004. O’Connell halted
plans to invite Tucci to speak at a seminar on the Italian
cinema, because of his ties to Planned Parenthood, a group that
favors abortion rights, said Victor Nakas, a university
spokesman.
Contrary Positions
“Catholic institutions should not honor people who take
prominent, public positions diametrically opposed to the
Catholic Church’s teachings,” Nakas said.
In February 2003, the scheduled appearance by Norton was
canceled by the bookstore contractor after students complained
about her pro-abortion stance, Nakas said.
In the spring of 2004, students filed a petition seeking a
campus chapter of the NAACP. The request wasn’t honored until
O’Connell met with the civil rights organization’s then-
president, Kweisi Mfume, to get assurances that the students
wouldn’t have to follow the group’s national policy endorsing
abortion rights, Nakas said.
Jennifer Plante, Tucci’s publicist, said her client was
unavailable to comment. Tamainia Davis, a spokeswoman for
Norton, and Robert McIntyre, a spokesman for the NAACP, didn’t
immediately provide comment.
“Catholic colleges here are more challenged by the
American notions of academic freedom, which tends to be very
absolutist,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal
Newman Society, a group dedicated to strengthening Catholic
identity at church-affiliated schools.
Georgetown’s Different
That hasn’t stopped Georgetown University, a private
college in Washington run by the Jesuits, from allowing groups
and speakers whose positions don’t always follow the church.
H*yas for Choice, a gay rights and pro-abortion group named
after the school’s Hoyas nickname, recently hosted “Choice
Week” on campus.
Catholic University’s strict environment is relatively
new, said Mark Judge, a 1990 graduate. There was “a lot of
hedonism in the 1980s,” he said.
The “president is an orthodox guy who is faithful to the
magisterium,” said Judge, a Potomac, Maryland, freelance
writer. “Whereas before, that kind of orthodoxy was not
tolerated, now it’s celebrated.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Nadine Elsibai in Washington at
nelsibai@bloomberg.net.
.
