Long Strange Trip

It was the Fall of 2013 and I had just moved to San Francisco. Ambitious as I was to bask in the culture of the city that I read about since my teenage years, I inaugurated the start of my stay in the Bay Area by going to a Dead show. Granted, I'm not a total Deadhead, yet I'll always have a smile on my face whenever a track from American Beauty pops up on my iPhone. Apart from a few beers, I wasn't as "turned on" as the people that filled the UC Berkeley Greek Theater that September evening who were either smoking one-hitters or microdotting miniature-sized squares of LSD before the surviving members of the Grateful Dead took to the stage. As I sat on the BART (Bay Area Rail Transit) train three hours later, I started asking myself: "What is it about the Grateful Dead that has led to such a devoted fanbase for over 50 years?"

The answer to that question lies in Amir Bar-Lev''s four hour documentary, Long Strange Trip. A devoted Deadhead, Bar-Lev spent 14 years trying to film a comprehensive and authorized look at the Bay Area band that has since become synonymous to the American Counterculture. From clips of Ken Kesey's infamous Acid Tests to stoned-out film crews peaking on spiked coffee attempting to film the band at their creative peak, no stone (or stoned rambling) is left unturned in this massive archival documentary. The film begins and ends with clips of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Jerry Garcia's favorite movie) symbolizing the rise of the band and it's monster-like evolution with a sense of humor and irony similar to how Jim Jarmusch used clips of The Three Stooges to tell the story of Iggy Pop and the Stooges in his documentary, Gimme Danger. Like a Grateful Dead show, the film goes into anecdotes and music familiar to Dead novices-like Hugh Hefner being spiked with acid by the band during a filming of "Playboy After Dark" as "Truckin'" plays in the background-to surreal sounds and images of the band and fans during their marathon tours that led to both nirvana and bedlam, such as when violence became the norm at shows in the 1980s. 

Beyond the smoke, spinners and drawn out solos is a bittersweet look at the band's 30 year career ending with the tragic demise of Jerry Garcia in 1995 told by the surviving members of the band, their road crew, and Deadheads who evolved into members of the Establishment, (i.e. Sen. Al Franken), an anomaly if there ever was one. After sitting through Long Strange Trip, I found myself drawn to listen again to "Morning Dew" and "Brokedown Palace" with a new set of ears and appreciation to a band that many people of my generation have dismissed as "jam-band hippie music." Long Strange Trip won't make you a converted Deadhead overnight, yet it will leave a few heads nodding and fingers tapping over a band that has made a cultural impact for half a century.