Grateful Dead American Fantasy Soundtrack

Plus Nightsteel and Sword & Sorcery Streetwear

Fantasy author Jennifer M. Baldwin published a terrific essay titled “American Fantasy in a Box of Rain.” She makes a compelling suggestion that if there were a great American fantasy soundtrack, the Grateful Dead would play the most prominent part in it. She first draws a connection to psychedelic music and fantasy literature:

For me, psychedelic rock & roll has a lot of fantasy connections. It’s why hippies and college students were all saying “Frodo Lives” in the 1960s, making The Lord of the Rings into a huge American bestseller. We all know Led Zeppelin was putting Tolkien references into their lyrics. And the weirdness of an LSD trip can definitely feel like traveling into another world, a magical world (so I have heard).

Jennifer then discusses the imaginative and fantasy-inspiring lyrics of Robert Hunter, which she says “blend Americana with mystical imagery; a very grounded, homespun sensibility with a dream-like lyricism.” Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics to many of the Dead’s classic songs. I profiled what I love about his lyrics starting at 6:11 in the following video from The Contrarians in which I was on a panel to discuss our top three favorite lyricists:

Jennifer Baldwin then makes the case for the “fantasy vibe” of the Dead with the following:

I think we tend to associate British bands like Zeppelin, or heavy metal and prog rock in general with fantasy — which makes sense. These genres and bands are often heavily influenced by fantasy literature. And fantasy literature has, to Douthat’s point, been generally associated with European culture for a lot of its history (though this has changed more recently).

But the Dead are also a band with a fantasy vibe, it’s just that their vibe isn’t always drawing FROM fantasy literature but instead from a different corpus that includes American history and folklore as well as classical literature, the Bible, the folk, blues, and country traditions, and, of course, the Ken Kesey Merry Prankster LSD stuff from their early years. The Dead are American Fantasy to me because of the way they bridge so many different influences, while also bringing their own original visions to bear on these source materials. It’s old and new, traditional and experimental. Earthy bluegrass and psychedelic flights of fancy.

I’m somewhat embarrassed I never considered the Grateful Dead as an appropriate addition to my personal Appendix LP list before reading this post, and I appreciate Jennifer connecting the dots for me. Check out Jennifer M. Baldwin’s blog where she “writes regularly about role-playing games, old movies, and dusty Ballantine paperbacks.” You can also subscribe to her Jennifer M. Baldwin newsletter here:

Nightsteel

A new heavy metal band called Nightsteel caught my eye for two reasons. First, they released three videos from an upcoming album that feature armored sword-wielding warriors. Second, vocals for five of the songs on the album are provided by Travis Wills, who is the singer for the recently reformed Crimson Glory. Travis had big shoes to fill following the previous Crimson Glory vocalists: Todd La Torre, Wade Black, and the legendary, late Midnight. I’ve been impressed with live videos I’ve seen of Travis fronting CG at the Keep It True Festival, so I’m excited to hear the full Nightsteel release.

The following is a description of the band from their Bandcamp page:

Nightsteel is a brand-new Greek metal band that embodies the spirit of classic 80s metal, reviving the magic of the genre in a very special way. Their music will take you back to the old glory days of the 80’s when heavy metal music was on top of the game!

You can check out the video for their first single here:

Nightsteel’s debut album comes out 11th of April, and you can pre-order it here:

Sword & Sorcery Streetwear

The universe is telling me I need to level up my wardrobe as I came across two items recently on clothing that combine sword & sorcery with heavy music aesthetics:

First up is Fantasy Initiative, a clothing brand started by Justin Slaughter, who started out selling merch for touring bands. A Matter article called Fantasy Initiative brings sword and sorcery to streetwear provides details on Justin’s designs and origin story. Here is an excerpt:

Since starting the company in 2021, designer Justin Slaughter has built a devoted audience that anxiously awaits his semi-regular Saturday drops, hoping to score a coveted shirt, hat, tote bag, blanket, poster, or water bottle. Many of those fans probably couldn’t pick Frank Frazetta out of a lineup, but Slaughter says that’s okay.

“I like to believe that I’m making a clothing company that is influenced by sword and sorcery and wizards and dungeons, but you don’t have to love sword and sorcery to be able to think my stuff is cool,” he said recently over coffee in the Old North. “I take a lot of influence from other streetwear brands and clothing companies and popular fashion and things like that.”

Check out the Fantasy Initiative Instagram page for more information. H/T to Lyn Perry’s S&S Roundup for turning me onto the Matter article.

Next, the amazing artist James Bousema posted the following on Bluesky:

James has done terrific album cover artwork, which I profiled in a previous Critical Hit Parader issue:

I will be following James Bousema’s Bluesky account and webstore for announcements on his first t-shirt offerings.