The Lady And The Rose Summary

Attending The Lady and the Rose: The Great American Psychedelic Metaphor, by Dr. Joseph A Smith, was interesting to say the least. The main point about this lecture was that, the band, Grateful Dead, was apart of the psychedelic rock band movement in the 1960s. Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experience of psychedelic drugs. Musicians like The Beatles pioneered this rock movement. Even though the Grateful Dead sang in that genre, they still sang many different genres like country western and folk, and they influenced bands of all these different genres. Since we try and focus on some superlatives in this class, I did some research on the topic and the was actually the first “jam band”, meaning that their performances featured extended musical improvisation

Smith gave an example of this in one of the videos that he showed us, where before they started to sing their song, they would just stand up on stage, jamming together, playing the guitar. They also influenced indie-rock music; they were the so-called “godfather” of this music genre, or a precursor. They also influenced other bands as well such as the Allman Brothers Band, Neil Young, Pearl Jam and Phish. Going into more of what Dr. Smith talked about during the lecture, he mainly focused on the lyrics of the bands songs, and how they were a metaphor to the psychedelic rock genre. He said that their music not only explains what it is like being on acid, but the aftermath, a reflection of what it was like looking back. The “music takes you of to never ever land”. For example, he played the song “Monkey And The Engineer”, written by Jesse Fuller. Some of the most important lyrics include, “One day the engineer wanted a bite to eat, he left the monkey sitting in the drivers seat. The monkey pulled the throttle, the locomotive jumped the gun, and did 90 miles an hour down the mainline