this week's deadcast explores the entwined roots of the #GratefulDead & longform #improv #comedy, including an interview with wavy gravy. before founding the sufi choir, allaudin mathieu helped invent (& personally named) The Harold, an influential structure for longform improv, alongside del close, who'd collaborated with the pranksters & the dead at the LA acid tests. close's partner john brent was one of owsley's early LSD distributors (as was w. gravy). https://www.dead.net/deadcast/dead-and-sufi-choir-371 #podcast /2

this week's deadcast uncovers the #GratefulDead's multiple connections to the sufi choir. vasheest philip davenport later did arrangements for the dead's songbooks. before that, he elicited robert hunter's first published writing, "starship grateful dead: an instruction manual", featured in the san francisco oracle of the spiritual revolution (a successor to the earlier haight street oracle). https://www.dead.net/deadcast/dead-and-sufi-choir-371 #podcast /3

maybe the strangest connection in this week's #GratefulDead-cast: also on the bill at winterland in march '71 was the fire-walking kalias shugendo buddhist sect, including a young initiate named jigme, aka the composer arthur russell! then a composition student of allaudin's, a few archivists (& one ex) think that young #ArthurRussell is in michael parrish's photos, on the left, obscured by a mic stand. they'd record at alembic with allen ginsberg that summer. https://www.dead.net/deadcast/dead-and-sufi-choir-371 #podcast /4