An unusually thought-out expression of the old Dead-as-artifact argument, in which the music's appeal to post-baby boomer generations is actually an insincere, postured misunderstanding of 'what made the Dead great.' Calling Fare Thee Well "a paint-by-numbers image of one filled out with anachronistic elements suitable to 2015, not the 1960s or 70s" makes that clear. But then, Shapiro drops the hammer of enlightenment on his inferiors: "The audience then manufactures an experience with this counterfeit group that allows it to believe it is reliving the past, creating in effect a counterfeit of a counterfeit." So, this may be a reality all its own, but it bears only a distant likeness to the original. Even the band itself doesn't realize what this (apparently) great social theorist does - that actually liking the music and wanting to celebrate that with fellow fans is part of the Grateful Dead equation only if the music is presented in its original historical context by all the musicians who first performed it. For Shapiro, any appeal that the performance of their body of work has today must found in the reenactment of those times by the naive or nostalgic, struck dumb by Instagram and reality TV (or something, I couldn't follow his argument after he totally divorced the tunes from the fans' reason for attending Fare Thee Well).

I feel an open letter comin' on...

Robert E. Shapiro,

Clearly, you're a deep thinker. You have invoked Socrates' cave allegory to describe media. You have accused modern society of being shallow and impatient. You really nailed that low hanging fruit, man. I'm sure someone, somewhere is snapping out of it and burning all their tie-dyes and all their bootlegs from before [what would you prefer? 1973? The moment they signed with Arista and shuttered their indie label?] so as to be in the present with fun, sharp-minded guys like you. But your assumptions about modern culture have blinded you to the real reason that the Dead still has purchase in our culture: damn good songs and an endlessly regenerative - if sometimes uneven - method of presenting them. We who attended (or, like myself, wish we could have attended) Fare Thee Well are not trying to re-enact your version of the past for an audience on Instagram. We're acting (present tense, cowboy) out our own versions of being a fan of the Grateful Dead. You say "get your own decade," but we don't want your decade or your Grateful Dead anyhow, because we don't need them. We each have our own. Yours seems to have been on mothballs since Pigpen died, and that's cool if you're into that, but mine is alive, rockin', a few men down, and yes - they're on Instagram.

"Crazy rooster crowin' midnight

Balls of lightin' roll along

Old men sing about their dreams

Women laugh and children scream

And the band keeps playin' on"

Signed,

Your (grand)son's fellow Deadheads

/rant