Leftists Give Grateful Dead Props, But Not This Leftist

Jordy Cummings in Red Wedge Magazine:

"What can be said about the Grateful Dead that has not been said before? They are on one hand somewhere below Coldplay and Nickelback on the list of hatred-objects for Leftists of who came of age between the late 80s and late 90s [...] As the Marxist scholar and Deadhead Carol Brightman points out, the intelligentsia never understood the Grateful Dead [...] Actually looking at their concrete musical achievements, they are in more ways a west coast counterpart to their contemporaries in the Velvet Underground, who had the luxury of a relative lack of success keeping their historical reputation unsullied[...]"

1) I like Coldplay. I came of age in the 1970's, and for all I know my opinion of Coldplay might be much different if I had any idea what their lyrics mean or what they do besides the music.

2) Has any member of the Velvet Underground ever said anything about the Dead being their counterparts or comrades or that they liked their music or anything else about them even a tiny bit positive? I think Marxist Deadhead Carol Brightman may be going a teeny ways out on a limb here.

3) As I've said before on this blog, anyone who thinks success is a burden or that failure is a luxury doesn't know a damn thing about failure or about how fortunate they are. I would suggest working with the homeless for several years or more in the hope of developing some depth as a yuman being.

4) I almost forgot: in case it wasn't already obvious: I've never liked the Grateful Dead. Like Timothy Leary, they had the dumb luck in the mid-60's to be in the same place at the same time with some people who were relatively deep, and rode that commercially for decades. The Dead are the quintessence of "grinning-hippie capitalism," whether Hunter S Thompson was thinking of them when he coined that phrase, or not. The Velvet Underground, on the other hand: made of 100% authentic awesome.