Bob Weir has died
rollingstone.comParticularly relevant to HN is that Bobby's primary writing partner for decades was John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
https://www.eff.org/john-perry-barlow
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel,
I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I
ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You
have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address
you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always
speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally
independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.
Many of Bobby Weir's best-known songs had lyrics penned by Barlow. The world is a brighter place because of their partnership, and a little more grey in their absence.
This always makes me laugh. Comically pretentious & naive. Like schoolboy poetry.
The EFF, FOSS, Stallman, Barlow, so many things seem childish or naive now, but not back then. Maybe it’s just me. I wish I could go back.
Besides their music, their mail-order ticketing system and the resulting fan envelope art are quite amazing: [Apologies for the scary link]
https://www.gdao.org/fan-art?filters[match]=all&filters[quer...
quite the flood of painted envelopes, some days!
And tons of free tunes on relisten.net!
archive.org has a ton as well
https://archive.org/details/gd1980-08-21.sbd.miller.99034.sb... is one I can recommend (Grateful Dead Live at Uptown Theatre on 1980-08-21)
May the four winds blow you safely home.
It was a privilege to see him perform many times.
This made me think that, for a band known for its guitarists, what great vocalists the Dead had - Weir, Garcia, Lesh, Pigpen, particularly when doing harmonies.
Anyway, bye-bye Bob, thanks for all the music.
> Winter rain, now tell me why
> Summers fade and roses die
> The answer came, the wind and rain
> [...]
> Circle songs and sands of time
> And seasons will end in tumbled rhyme
> And little change, the wind and rain
Fare thee well, Bob.
As my wife said, Bobby was our Jerry. We never got to see Jerry play, but we saw Bob several times and are so grateful for it.
I saw him perform 26 times in my life, and still those were rookie numbers. Still I thought there would be so many more too. Thanks for all the music, Bobby Weir.
This is definitely sad news. From I remember, the early Internet seemed to be inhabited mostly by deadheads. When you think of open source, remember the music and the thousands who would tape and share the experience of Bobby playing with the band to millions.
RIP.
I wonder if Mayer will continue to carry the torch, or if the music will stop.
The music never stops
He would want us to be stewards of the music... and people still talking about it in 300 years.
Sad. Rest in peace Bob. Thank you for your art.
Fare thee well Bob! What a life in music.
End of an era
Truly a long, strange, trip. RIP.