I listened to the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty<\/i> album this evening. Just played it straight through.<\/p>\n
I don’t really know what prompted me to think of it. Some random association from years ago, perhaps. But I’m glad I did.<\/p>\n
It’s a beautiful collection of songs, with an amazing level of musicianship, and a great tribute to many American musical genres all at once. Yet back in 1970 that album was something else as well.<\/p>\n
It was the center of a particular way of being in the world, one that today seems nearly incomprehensible. There was a kind of idealism there that I think has been long beaten out of us.<\/p>\n
I am sure that a younger person hearing that album would appreciate it on a musical level. But the cultural language it speaks would probably remain completely opaque.<\/p>\n
I wonder how many cultural artifacts become lost in plain sight. They remain available — transcribed from paper, celluloid or acetate, but they represent a cultural mindset that is either fading away or already long gone.<\/p>\n
Without cultural context, a song can lose its deepest meaning — it’s a hand-me-down. The thoughts are broken, perhaps they’re better left unsung.<\/p>\n
I don’t know, don’t really care. Let there be songs to fill the air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I listened to the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty album this evening. Just played it straight through. I don’t really know what prompted me to think of it. Some random association from years ago, perhaps. But I’m glad I did. It’s a beautiful collection of songs, with an amazing level of musicianship, and a great tribute … Continue reading “American Beauty”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24220"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24221,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24220\/revisions\/24221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}