Language In Dead Culture
The culture of Grateful Dead fans is a recognized subculture in American society. The definition of a subculture is "a religious, economic, or regional etc. group identified by shared patterns of behavior which differ from those of the surrounding culture"(1). The Grateful Dead fans are called and call themselves Deadheads. The Deadhead subculture uses language to express the tone of the culture. The culture is a culture with a strong sense of community. This is tied into the lyrics of the Grateful Dead by their literal meaning and by the symbolizing meanings. The Deadhead community has terms for different segments of deadheads; places at Grateful Dead show; items both outside and inside a concert; and a basic terminology used through out the culture. Each variation has a connotation as to the feel for the culture. Some basic terminology for Deadheads is tour, head, dye, and show. The first term that should be defined is the name Dead head. The book Skeleton key a dictionary for deadheads describes a deadhead as "someone who loves -- and draws meaning from -- the music of the Grateful Dead and the experience of dead shows, and builds community with others who feel the same way.(2)"A Head is another name for a Deadhead b
ut the term is normally only used among the different individuals of the culture. An example of this would be when one deadhead introduces a friend to another deadhead "Joe this is my friend Mike, he's a Head." The term show is another way of saying a grateful dead concert. The reason that heads call the concert a show is because a concert implies listening to music while a show describes the carnival like atmosphere of a grateful dead concert. The term Tour is used as both a noun and a verb by Deadheads. The noun meaning is a list of Dead shows that the band has performed in a given season i.e. "summer tour". The verb meaning of the term tour is to follow the band on a given series of shows. A Dye is a Deadheads shirt generally a tie dyed T-shirt. Deadheads Are a kin to baseball fans in that they keep track of what songs the boys have played every night of their history, 30 years 2,318 shows, 408 songs played a total of 37,118 times (5). The shows are chronicled within a book called Dead Base which was updated every couple of years during the bands active years. dead heads commonly call this a base. the interesting thing about a dead base is that While the songs are all listed of every show Heads have developed a short of short hand writing to list the songs. An example of this short hand be " Casey Jones, Hurts Me Too, Mama Tried, Till the Morning Comes, Dancin, Candyman, Top of the World, Morning Dew, BIODTL, China>Rider, Dark Star> St. Stephen> NFA> GDTRFB> NFA E. Uncle John (5)" this is the show that the Dead played on 10-11-70 at Marion Shea Aud., Paterson state col., Wayne NJ (5). A head would understand that the list while including the completely spelled out song titles also includes song titles that only use the first letter of each word in the title, I.e. Beat It On Down The Line, BIODTL; Not Fade Away, NFA; and Goin Down The Road Feelin Bad, GDTRFB. A Deadhead would also recognize which titles were shortened I.e. China, china cat Sunflower; Rider, I know You rider and Uncle john's, Uncle john's band. The other oddity that is presented is the use of commas and greater then signs( when written it's an arrow). the commas represent when a song was completely concluded before the band went into the next song. the greater then symbol represents when a songs we
Some common words found in the essay are:
Grateful Dead, Wharf Rat, Shakedown Street, Sunflower Rider, Bob Weir, Dead Base, Dye Deadheads, Wayne NJ, grateful dead, Deadheads Deadhead, Inc Copeyright, shakedown street, uncle john's, dead base, hippie crack, wharf rat, uncle john's band, key dictionary deadheads, dead heads, deadhead subculture, dead song, dead concert, skeleton key dictionary, song shakedown street, grateful dead concert,
Approximate Word count = 1549
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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