Meet the Grateful Dead Archivist
In the March Atlantic, I wrote a piece about the soon-to-open Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and about the academics who study the Dead. It's a fascinating subculture of really nice, very interesting people, one of whom--Nicholas Meriwether--was today chosen for the job of official Grateful Dead archivist.
Dead scholarship is a fun subject--I'd waded into it as a break from politics--but a lot of comedians couldn't resist the urge to poke fun at the job of archivist. Here's Jon Stewart:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Anyone genuinely interested in the subject would do well to start with Meriwether's excellent overview in the introduction to his 2007 collection, "All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon." It lays out the wide variety of scholars across many disciplines who've found reason to study the Dead. And it seems also to have cinched for him a job that anyone who knows him would agree he's absolutely perfect for. Congrats, Nick!