When kids like the Dead, new art in person and online, and the week in online discoveries

The Sunday supplement #99

I met a colleague for a drink one night this week, and the bartender serving us, a woman in her twenties, had a large tattoo on her forearm of the Grateful Dead art “A Skeleton Amid Roses.” It was in tribute to her grandparents, she said, who’d passed away, Jewish deadheads in Ohio who encouraged her parents to name her Cassidy, after the song.

I thought, grandparents!

She expalined she was a musician herself, and she liked the Dead, though not Dead & Company. (Respect.) Generally speaking, she preferred new stuff that wasn’t jam-band-ish, but perhaps Dead-adjacent, country-inspired? I asked for some suggestions and wrote them down. I knew a few, didn’t know others, and as a Dead fan generally—though, likewise, not a fan of Dead & Co—I ended up enjoying a bunch of songs a lot.