Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Let It Grow

"As well to count the angels dancin' on a pin" is one of my favorite lines in a Grateful Dead song. It comes from the song Let It Grow - the third and last part of the entire song Weather Report Suite - released on "Wake of the Flood" - 1973. David Dodd (author of The Annotated Grateful Dead) has proven himself to be a literary scholar of Grateful Lyrics by researching the literal and historical references of lines from Grateful Songs. Below is an example of what I am talking about:

From the article "Angel/Angelogy", by E. Ann Matter, in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages. "Aquinas devoted fourteen books of the Summa Theologiae to the nature and powers of angels. he held that angels have form but not matter, and are therefore eternal and incorruptible. Angels are able to assume bodies; these bodies can take up space, so only one angel can be in a particular place at a certain time. In contrast, Duns Scotus asserted that angels consist of both form and a noncorporeal matter particular to them alone, which makes it possible for more than one angel to occupy the same place at the same time (De Anima, XV: De rerum principio, VII-VIII). The ensuing debates over these positions may have given rise to the early modern legend that the Scholastics argued over such questions as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."

The feature show for this week's Shakedown Stream contained a Let It Grow coming out of Terrapin Station in the 2nd set that is amazing (one of the best I have heard). The boys jam the tune for well over 20 minutes before going into drumz.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if you mentioned it during the podcast but the featured show (02/09/79) happened to be Brent Mydland's Grateful Dead debut.

    ReplyDelete

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