En su extensa y aclamada biografía sobre los Grateful Dead, "A Long Strange Trip", Dennis McNally comenta sobre el período que va desde finales del '67 hasta entrado el '68, época en la que se encontraban ensayando el material que iba a terminar en su segundo disco, "Anthem of the Sun", obra maestra de la psicodelia de todos los tiempos.
El fragmento citado está en inglés, ideal para que practiquen algo de lectura los que están aprendiendo el idioma.
"Over the next year, in the playing of "The Other One" and "Dark Star", Lesh and Garcia would lead the band through explorations that rock and roll had never imagined, a four-handed guitar-and-bass-as-one-instrument that was something altogether new. In the course of the fall's shows, the six of them took their new material and became the Grateful Dead. Playing together night after night while high as could be, they quite often found themselves in a state of grace, and they discovered that they were on a mission from God, serving the universe and evolution. They came to realize that the Dead was far bigger than the sum of six souls, and in fact had become a beast quite separate from them as individuals. As one of their best critics, Michael Lydon, noted somewhere later, "Certainly they are the weirdest band, black satanic weird and white archangel weird. As weird as anything you can imagine, like some horror comic monster who, besides being green and slimy, happens also to have seven different heads, a 190 IQ, countless decibels of liquid fire noise communication, and is coming right down to where you are to gobble you up". And in playing they found faith. They were still painfully human, often inept, and certainly torn by their human frailty. But in the background, always, there was a shining faith. Six charmingly demented loons had been touched by the divine. Clearly, God has a sense of humor".
Para el amante del rock desprevenido que conozca a los Grateful Dead sólo de mediados de los '70 en adelante, el párrafo podría llegar a sonar como algo difícil de comprender. ¿La solución? Meterse un tiro de "Anthem of the Sun" (1968) o "Live Dead" (1969) directo al cerebro con un par de buenos auriculares, y a ver si la descripción que hace Dennis no resulta luego totalmente acertada.
