These two players have been worshipped during their hay days and mourned at their deaths like gods. So, sometime in the future, after the passing of the people who heard and saw Elvis or Jerry live, will either of these two still have ‘cult-status’. Or will they have sunk into the dustbins of the collective conscience.
Whaddya think?
Elvis is far more of a cultural icon. If nothing else, the fallout from thousands of velvet paintings and tacky knick-knacks will ensure his immortality.
Neither of my parents knew who Jerry Garcia was when I just asked them, though both had heard of the Grateful Dead. I didn’t know who he was until well into adulthood and the first time I heard of the Grateful Dead I was in high school (this was the late 80s).
Jerry Garcia is well known among people who follow music of his era, but everyone knows who Elvis was.
100 years from now, nobody will be alive to say they saw Jerry live in concert. With so few witnesses to what made the GD most special and distinctive (supposedly), their reputation will be largely based on their studio albums & stories/anecdotes passed on with little first-hand corroboration.
As for Elvis…if you had to list 10 people from the 20th century who will absolutely-positively be remembered 100 (or 300) years from now, he’s got a pretty good shot at making it.
No comparison whatsoever.
Oh…I thought maybe you were proposing that they be taken out of cryogenic suspension in a hundred years (because neither one of them is really dead, ya know) and forced to fight to the death.
I was gonna give Jerry the edge on being able to take more punishment, but Elvis knows karate and, I believe, had a slight (and I do mean slight) weight advantage over JG.
I’d say Elvis in a walk.
Obviously, the Elvis impersonator industry is far more powerful that the Jerry Garcia impersonator industry. They will work long and hard to preserve their jobs in perpetuity.
Besides, how many Jerry impersonators have you seen vs. how many Elvis impersonators.
The gold lame will still be shining long after the tie-dye has faded!
Every round fat guy with gray hair and a beard is a Jerry impersonator. Deadheads call them “faux Jerrys”.
As for the comment from Arhive Guy about studio albums being what folks remember the dead for, please. The dead must have 30 live albums available.
But I still give the edge in personal cults to Elvis.
Elvis had a lasting effect on the nature of pop music; Jerry Garcia did not.
Why is this question even being asked??!!?!?!
ELVIS.
Jerry Garcia is by far a better musician, but not a widely known one. Personally, I hate any and all Elvis music, but more people know of and have heard of him than Jerry Garcia.
100 years from now, Elvis will be better known by everyone, Jerry Garcia will probably be better known by other musicians.
Yeah, yeah, not to mention the thousands of bootlegs out there from avid/rabid fans. But still, hearing them “live” in your living room isn’t the same as being there, with the colors and the contact highs and the endless doodling. The GD will be a cultural curiosity 100 years from now, but little more than a footnote, except for the underground cult that will no doubt perpetuate. As for
:rolleyes:
I hadn’t thought of the legions of Elvis impersonators out there. Indeed, Vegas wouldn’t be same without them. But will they be there in a few genarations? My own guess is that Elvis is still the king in another 25 years from now (50 years after his death), but that some time after that the Dead’s music keeps Jerry going and that in another 25 years out after that there’ll be Saturday night meetings of the “Assemblies of Jerry” with lots of music and costumes and whatever brand of mindbending chemicals are in favor at the time.
Jerry Garcia? I can remember exactly one song he or his group sang.
Not to be sweepingly rude, but when I was in high school, the Dead played once for free in the park across the street. All my friends left when they started playing.
This says more about you and your friends than it does about Jerry and the rest of The Grateful Dead.
Jerry and the Dead? Good band. Kind of influencial to the whole “jam band” scene. Lasting mark on the vast genre of “rock”: not much (despite what some dead heads might like to think).
Elvis, on the other hand, was one of the first. There’s no denying your roots, and almost all rock musicians today have roots in Elvis. You can’t possibly say the same about the Dead (not that I don’t like them, but I call 'em like I see 'em).
Ridiculous comparison.
Elvis was a cultural icon and one of the defining male vocalists of the 20th century.
Garcia was a supremely talented musician, bandsman, and cultural guru in the folkie/roots-music/acid tradition (I don’t consider him OR the Dead to be purveyors of “rock,” anyway…as I’ve said elsewhere, their music was an amalgam of folk/blues/bluegrass/jazz/avant-garde AND rock).
Like comparing strawberry cheesecake and meatball grinders. They’re both really great; depends on what you’re in the mood for.
quote:
Originally posted by partly_warmer
Jerry Garcia? I can remember exactly one song he or his group sang.
Not to be sweepingly rude, but when I was in high school, the Dead played once for free in the park across the street. All my friends left when they started playing.
This says more about you and your friends than it does about Jerry and the rest of The Grateful Dead.
I should have been clearer. Just about everyone in the park left. And we’d been listening to some really shit bands, earlier.
And let me add. From my recollection, the Dead were regarded, in Berkeley, in the 1960s, by high school students, as one of the most ridiculously untalented groups that had ever tried to claw their way into fame. They came from right across the bay–we knew them very well.
Garcia’s “art” is already on the low road to being forgotten. While Elvis offends many delicate sensibilities, he still was a quite talented singer, with a knack for entertaining a wide variety of audiences. Garcia amused a bunch of drugged sycophants who followed him from concert to concert like zombies. As we used to say in Berkeley, “The Grateful Dead Should Be.”
This says more about you and your friends than it does about Jerry and the rest of The Grateful Dead.
The surviving members of the Dead are still selling lots of concert tickets and recordings, albeit not on quite the same scale as when Jerry was alive.
There are also quite a few bands that specialize in covers of Grateful Dead music. The difference between them and the Elvis impersonators is that the Dead cover bands (usually) do not attempt to look exactly like the members of the Grateful Dead look(ed). Rather, they perprtuate and build on the music itself…sort of like classical musicians continue to play and build on the works of people like Beethoven and Mozart.
The music of the Dead will live on, and through it the spirit of Jerry Garcia.
As you can prolly tell from my username, I am a Deadhead!