Canonical Business Books: The Checklist Manifesto

The problem with business books is that they are like lessons on how to draw an owl. (See Seth Godin's blog post on this subject, but the diagram below should explain what I mean.) 

My beef with business books is that they tend to promise so much and oversimplify a solution while providing too many details to support a thesis that is usually based on generalities. Like, "if you do this (author's thesis here), your business will be wildly successful." The supporting examples provided are usually squished in to prove the author's thesis, but taken in a different context could prove other entirely different theses. 

Usually, a business book will make a fine point, one that could be synthesized into a 2-page document, while the rest of the book will leave me feeling like I wasted my time. After making its point, there are chapters of support (always good) but the examples given, even while they seem like "classic" examples that occur in every company, never seem to resonate well. The chapters will end with a conclusion like..."See? All you have to do is x, y, and z and your company can follow in the glory of [stereotypical big companies here]." 

The problem is...in reality, there's always a whole lot more tweaking to do. There's no easy, one-size-fits-all answer.  

Nevertheless, there are some good business books that offer some great lessons. Dr. Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto is not really a business book, as the author writes more about medicine than business, but it's a book about doing better work. And in the end that's what all business books do. 

The Checklist Manifesto identifies the greatest problem of our age: Information. We have too much of it. Complexity is the very real and detrimental side effect of this technological world we have created. While it's tempting to go hide in the mountains--I do this every weekend--we have to deal with the complexity we created and the disappointing fact that we created all this technology to make our lives easier but in essence our lives are palpably more complicated than they were even 10 years ago. Though we aren't serfs working on a plantation, we do still spend an inordinate amount of time working, despite the fact that technology is a tool, meaning that it should help us accomplish tasks faster. But don't fret about all the work we've created for ourselves. There is a solution to the work we have created for ourselves and it's a simple one: The Checklist. 

The Checklist Manifesto's premise is that up until recently humanity's greatest problem was ignorance. Now it's ineptitude. Or eptitude, making sure that we apply the knowledge that we do have consistently and correctly to whatever problem we are trying to solve. The most recent anecdote I can offer that illustrates this principle is what happened during a meeting at work a few weeks ago when somebody stated that we don't have the specs for the approved products of Big Time Customer X. A colleague quickly got on his Smartphone and bam, there were the engineering specs for approved products for Big Time Customer X. There is too much information out there and it's too easy to Google it, and yet sometimes it's so overwhelming we don't even think to look, nor do we know how to filter the bullshit, and apply the knowledge that to which we have such easy access.

The goal is not to be crushed by this information but to learn how to synthesize it, communicate it, and use it well. 

Following the lead offered by aviation, Dr. Gawande offers some evidence of the power of checklists and proffers advice, given his experience in medicine working with the World Health Organization, on how to effectively implement checklists in our complicated lives. 

The idea of using checklists stems from the early history of aviation. After the test flight of the B-17, which crashed killing several people, pilots realized that, with 4 engines and all the related controls and gauges, there was too much information for one pilot to handle. Pilots have been well aware of the idea that memory and judgement are unreliable and fallible, and it's interesting that other professions have been slow to realize this important point.

Checklists have now become an essential element of aviation. Dr. Gawande narrates his visit with Boeing's "checklist writer," who relates  the thousands of situations for which there are checklists and the very scientific process of writing checklists. There is an inherent tension between brevity and effectiveness. Too short and there's no guidance. Too long and it's not a checklist--it's a novel (tl;dr might be the response). 

Once you have everybody's input and analyzed all possible situations, you get it onto one page, with big, clear font, and you laminate it. 

Writing checklists involves the two basic principles of writing: 1) Know your audience; and 2) Anticipate reader questions. And it's really an art. Especially given how much information we have to do deal with. 

Another point Gawande makes is that that we don't just need checklists but co-pilots to read them to us. "That's not my problem" is the worst thing you can hear when working with a team and step 1 to avoid hearing this statement is to know each member of your team and to understand the purpose of your team, so you don't have to hear that awful phrase. When the team knows each other and has a shared purpose, an awful lot of problems can be avoided. It's surprising how many surgeries take place without doctors and nurses knowing each others' names, as Gawande describes operations he has observed and gives statistics on how often not introducing each other takes place in the operating theater. Shocking!

Indeed, the greater the improvement in teamwork, the greater the drop in complications. 

There's also importance in what you don't need to put on checklists. There needs to be room for judgement, especially in complex operations. 

Dr. Gawande distinguishes between simple (several steps, baking a cake), complicated (multiple moving parts, launching a rocket), and complex (dealing with the human element), and it's an important distinction. Complex processes require the greatest room for judgement.

It's amazing how a one-page document can have such a huge effect. Subsidiary benefits of checklists include standardization, which makes it easier to develop metrics and measure progress. Gawande describes how incorporating checklists at one hospital reduced their line-infection rate from 11 percent to zero. In this particular hospital they prevented 43 infections, 8 deaths and saved $2 million. Just with a one-page checklist. 

My favorite anecdote from the book involved the rock band Van Halen, who was very specific in their extremely detailed contracts with concert venues. Each step was very critical to setting up and accommodating their sound equipment. They would write deep in their contracts on like page 17 that in their dressing room they wanted a bowl of M&Ms, but without a single brown M&M. In other words, someone would have to remove each brown M&M by hand. This demand wasn't because the band was made up of egomaniacs (or maybe it was), but because not following this step showed if a venue followed the band's very specific, step-by-step process. Van Halen ended up cancelling a show in Colorado when the venue forgot to remove the brown M&Ms, because they knew that the venue was not detail-oriented enough to follow their process. 

Another excellent point is Dr. Gawande's observation that we are obsessed with having great components but pay little attention to making them fit together well. This is true of medicine, which is what he is referring to with this point. Optimizing a system isn't about optimizing parts, but making things work well together. He gives the example of trying to build the world's greatest car with car parts: the engine of a Ferrari, the brakes of a Porsche, the suspension of a BMW, the body of a Volvo. And what we get is a really expensive piece of junk. The same is true of putting together teams of workers or athletes or even musicians. It's always how you put together the talent, rather than the individual talents of each member. 

In a world in which we live with too much information, it's important to make things as short and clear as possible. Use bullet points. Anticipate reader's questions. If the inquisitive reader wants to know more, give them a link. But, otherwise, repeat the mantra with me: 

• One page
• Massive font 
• Big space between points 
• Laminate it!

Dr. Gawande's thesis (Life is complex. We need checklists) is spot on and you should read his book if making checklists is truly an interest of yours, but I just saved you 200 pages of his detailed  descriptions of surgical operations, which are very interesting and insightful, but let's face it: There's too much to read out there. Which is why we need checklists! 

Data Movers: The Pipes Our Information Travels

Unseen, unnoticed concrete buildings, the kind you pass every day but never consider, these are the places where our data are moved. Make a call, send a text message, post an update on your Facebook page, your bits and bytes are moving through a glass tube about as thick as one of your hairs. 

Hub

Pumped underground or overhead, hanging from telephone poles, all of this information hovers in a critical balance. 

Traffic jams start at times when most people turn on their computers and connect to the world outside their own, slowing down the arrival of this information or dampening its quality. 

Aerial view of information traffic

All of this information relies on power. Not all power is alike. Noise, blips and blurps are all words that take on a whole new meaning when we work with electricity. Total Harmonic Distortion isn't the name of a thrashing speed metal band but is what happens when we don't have a quality source of energy. Because we’re bandwidth hogs, consuming data from numerous devices just about anywhere we want to, we’re also energy hogs.

DC Plant

The name of the game is five 9s reliability. 99.999%. But even still our information is vulnerable and its path can be easily interrupted by little things we never think of: a glass pipe bent at a funny angle, a bad drop from the utility lines to our house, a generator that doesn't turn on when it was supposed to because of a bad transfer switch, a brownout in the grid caused by a heat wave that triggered 100s of air conditioners to turn on at the same time. 

Our information is just going through pipes. And there are leaks and clogs just like with water. Everything flows when there is a clear path. But there's always impedance. 

DC Cabling

The next time your phone drops a call or your YouTube video takes a long time to buffer, think about the long path that information has to go. It's going through these buildings and huts in places you'd never think of. Climate controlled with blinking lights flashing on and off, humming with daily activity. The constant drone of a busy freeway outside your airport motel window. 

Rainbow Spaghetti

These are the Data Movers. And they're working 24 x 7 x 365, relying on thousands of pieces of computing and power equipment. In one of these huts, maybe 35 square feet in area, you can see the names of 30 big and small  manufacturers of conductors, resistors, capacitors, chips, copper, silicon, and plastic. In the large master information centers, you've got thousands of square feet of rainbow spaghetti wires, fiber coming in from underground and information blasted through satellite dishes.

Data Movers

And this is where our lives hang in a strange balance between what's real and what's virtual and where these realms overlap. 

Great Roads of the Pacific Northwest, Vol. 2: Cerrando el hoyo/Closing the Loop. Linking some lesser known trails in the Chuckanuts.

With my hiking partner, I'm working on book project number 2: Great Roads of the Pacific Northwest. Everybody knows about the great hiking in the region, but what about all of those great roads, which are wonderful not only to drive  and ride bikes on but just plain walk. Together, we have a list of some 15-20 roads that we will pare down for a book that will serve as a sort of anti(guide). Entry 1 was on the Endless Road to Soggy Saddle. 

Here's entry number 2 in our notebook. And it's a route that we have given the name "Cerrando el hoyo" or Closing the Loop. Below, I offer 2 maps indicating the general and specific location of The Loop, which begins at the Clayton Beach parking lot off of Chuckanut Drive.

The Triangle by my name is approximately where we had lunch, near the top and a massive clearcut. We call it the site of the Battle of the Bulge

Heading east from the Clayton Beach parking lot, we head up an old logging road,  Fragrance Lake Road. According to an old guy in the parking lot, you used to be able to drive this road straight to the lake and he was bummed that he couldn't do that anymore, but we couldn't share his disappointment, as walking roads is what we live for.

Finding peace in the Chuckanuts

About a mile up the road, there is a point where the road splits and we take the road less traveled, the road that doesn't go to Fragrance Lake. We head head right or Southeast more or less off another spur. This road leads to a fairly well-known lookout where, on an especially clear day after a rain, Mount Rainier looms enormous to the South. Experiencing Mount Rainier from this spot is rare but great views of the San Juan islands and the Olympic Mountains can be had most days of the year.

After this spot, the road gets weird. Only mountain bikers go beyond this lookout and midwinter it's rare even to see them. The road continues up and up through various stages of forest growth. Somewhere on the drive from Bellingham to the Clayton Beach parking lot you cross from Whatcom into Skagit County, where the logging policies are a bit more aggressive, which makes for spottier clumps of forest. There's also a unique light, which is difficult to capture with a camera, that is caused by the space between the trees--mostly hemlocks and doug firs with the occasional cedar.

Where the road starts getting weird. I like the spacey light between the trees

On the map above, the spot indicated with an arrow and my name is approximately where we eat lunch, near the top of a mountain and a very apocalyptic scene of a clearcut that we call the site of the Battle of the Bulge.

The site of the Battle of the Bulge. The trees lost. Doomsday Scenery at its finest.

The walk continues through this doomsday scenery of slash pile destruction and then descends down a spur of the Lost Lake trail seen on the above map, which is a beautiful section of deep, dark, mossy forest and then connects back to Fragrance Lake Road, which leads us back down to the parking lot at Clayton Beach. All in all, the Loop encompasses about 8 miles with an elevation gain of approximately 1700 feet with lots of ups and downs in between.

Deep, dark, spooky and green. Just how I like it.

A cold, cloudy January morning didn’t stop us from traversing this loop on the Chuckanut Mountain ridge. Chuckanut is an interpretation of a Lummi word meaning “Long beach far from a narrow entrance,” and these mountains represent the only place where the Cascade mountain range stretches down to the sea. Famous for their leaf fossils from the Tertiary Age, the Chuckanuts also have a lot of glacial erratics, which I call “erotics” and make wonderful jungle gyms for Lupe. 

What's nice about this jaunt is that it's relatively calm for being in the Chuckanuts where there are so many trails densely packed together, all with parking lots full, even on rainy days. There are loads of hikes  to be had on the very developed trail network that criss-crosses over the Chuckanut range. Nevertheless, just about everybody here does the same dang hikes. The most popular of which is the Oysterdome hike where, on fair weather days, people are lined up as if it were an amusement park ride. Oysterdome is a wonderful hike with a great view, but there are better views to be had in the Chuckanuts, one of which I'll save for another post because it requires traversing a strange road to get there.

Great Roads of the Pacific Northwest, Vol. 1: The Endless Road to Soggy Saddle

With my hiking partner, I'm working on book project number 2: Great Roads of the Pacific Northwest. Everybody knows about the great hiking in the region, but what about all of those great roads, which are wonderful not only to drive  and ride bikes on but just plain walk. Together, we have a list of some 15-20 roads that we will pare down for a book that will serve as a sort of anti(guide). 

Foggy Bottom on the Road to Soggy Saddle: This is the view that I think of when I think of the PNW

Here's the first entry in our project, a screed on The Road to Soggy Saddle:


When I lived in Ireland, one of the prime additions to my vocabulary was the concept of the local. Your local is the pub by your house, the old standard, the constant steady where you'd go and everybody knows your name. Your local wasn't flashy (unless you lived in a flashy neighborhood) but was good and consistent and had been around for donkey's years. But it was reliable and there was a sense of coming home, which is essentially the origins of the word "pub," which is a public house (Irish, almost by definition, do not ever drink at home...you more than make up for your abstaining  at home by drinking at the pub, which is your home away from home).  

The Olympic Mountains and Whidbey Island from Soggy Saddle

Soggy Saddle is our local. In terms of walks, it's not flashy. It's not a trail to glory carved by thousands of boots on a July day. It's a forest road that leads through clear cuts and demolished land to some decent views. The cynic would say "nothing to write home about," but we keep coming back to it as if Soggy Saddle offered postcard panoramas of a space forgotten. You always know what you're going to get with Soggy Saddle. You don't arrive with great expectations of walking over a glacier or peering up to a rock face that defies gravity or your very threshold for beauty. It's just a walk through broken forest and shrubs. For how close Soggy Saddle is to our home in a relatively small but certainly populated college town of 100,000 or so, Soggy Saddle remains desolate, not a soul in view, which is how I like my walks. 

An ice field and Mar overlooking Bellingham Bay

When you hike in the Cascades, as big as an area that the Cascade encompass, the most common trails welcome the visitor with parking lots that rival those of WalMart. You arrive at your trail on a weekend in late August and there are literally thousands of Subarus full of weekend warrior families getting hike # 3 of 5 for the year. Dads toting packs with babies stowed on top, the family dog roped on top of the Subaru with the rocket carrying case that resides there year round, reducing the fuel efficiency of the Subaru, for the 5 trips up to the mountain that the family makes. They're so civilized. You'll most often be welcomed with a perfunctory hello and not an ill thought would cross the family's mind as you walk by them. They are perfectly OK with hiking this trail with half of Seattle and a good portion of Everett, too. They are so happy.The Washingtonians are so polite about the whole thing it just frightens me. I look forward all week to my outing, drive 100s of miles to what looks like a beautiful location in the guide book thinking I'll be getting some peace and quiet to reflect and just get away for a bit, and I arrive at the parking lot for the trail and I see half of Seattle--well that disturbs me. I know. I'm not from here. And I will always be an alien in this part of the world. Which is weird because I've felt more at home in remote villages in Mexico or on the streets of Shanghai than I do living in my own country in the Northwest, but part of this equation is my belief that if I'm going out to nature to get some R and R. Even in my overpopulated home state of California, it seems easier to find peace and quiet. One does not have to drive far north of San Francisco to get into godforsaken wild and wooly coasts where it seems not a soul has trodden upon. And I like that.

Close Encounters with a Creepy Critter aka Lupe

Which is why I seek out the weird hikes. Soggy Saddle is not even a hike. It's a walk on a logging road that any day now I could return to and share the road with a large logging truck carrying out the last few decent sized trees left here. Actually this is the case when you're driving on the road that leads to the road to Soggy Saddle. Once, when I was driving that road in my pickup with Lupe hanging out the front window a logging truck came so fast and occupying the whole road that I had to take evasive action and swing into a ditch and Lupe flew out the window. But Lupe's a tough dog and she bounced up and sprinted after that logging truck, barking at it, wanting to kick its ass. That's just the kind of dog she is. But I'm the type that recognizes that the road is here so that trucks can get logs and bring them to mills who bring them to Home Depot. In this part of the world we live in houses are made from wood. And you have to be OK with that fact to live here. Just like if you eat meat you should know what it's like to slaughter an animal. Of course, if you know what it's like, you'll never eat a feed farm factory raised animal ever again. But that's another story. I'm OK with the logging trucks and I don't have any illusions about the public lands, which I really love, but they truly are lands of many uses. And the reason there are roads there is not so people can hike or recreate in whichever way they choose--shooting cans, blowing up small animals--but so that we (the public...or the government) can maximize the profits made in their investments in those lands. Just a fact of life that I don't argue with. 

Icicles on the eroded roadside

I'm not happy hiking with half of Seattle. If I wanted to hang out with thousands of people, I would have made my to WalMart to spend my day. It's not that I don't like people because I'm OK hanging out with 23 million people (much more people than there in the whole of the PNW) on the condensed streets of Shanghai. It's just that when I'm outside, I need some quiet with my soul. And that's where Soggy Saddle fits in. It's tranquil because it has been destroyed by people in the past. There's not a false sense of preservation that you get, for example, especially so in National Parks, which are nice and pretty but are just glorified zoos. (Would you really witness animals acting like they do in Yellowstone outside of the park's borders? Of course not!)

What's interesting and telling about a place like Soggy Saddle is that it's so rich with animal life. Rarely do I see spores from animals on any of the glory hikes listed in all the guide books read by everybody else. But every time I'm up at Soggy Saddle I feel like we are going to see a cougar. I've seen some very fresh cougar tracks and scat. I once saw so many steaming piles of bear scat that I had to turn around. Soggy Saddle is crawling with the critters who hightailed it away from those glory hikes with parking lots full of people.

Bobcat, coyote and Lupe tracks. You can see her way up ahead.

There is something deceptively beautiful about Soggy Saddle besides the fact that it's a place not too far from home where we are just about guaranteed not to see anyone else. It's so removed, even if there are slash piles and litter strewn around and bullets laying in the muck. At the gate to the forest road leading to Soggy Saddle, there lies the refuse from a dishwasher. Somebody left their boat there as if it were the detritus from the last great flood. Tarps hang in the swamp around the gate. All other refuse is just haphazardly thrown about like the remains of a battlefield after a bloody fight. It's just god awful. But endearing.

A cure for claustrophobia

There really are 2 kinds of people in this world: Claustrophobes and agoraphobes. We fall definitely into the former category, which is a horrible fate because living in the Northwest, we live engulfed in claustrophobia--constant low-hanging clouds, deep dark forests, haphazardly created towns constructed with no real thought of how to manipulate light, thereby increasing it (the entire purpose of sound architecture), in a place where light comes at a premium for so much of the year. To cure our claustrophobia we have to drive to the East side, the other side of the Cascades where Western Washingtonians feel an impending sense of agoraphobia. They look down on the eastern side not just because the people are different but they just can't seem to fathom the open skies, the abundance of light. It's quite scary to them. But that's where I feel at home. Our other cure for claustrophobia is to head up to Soggy Saddle, big and open views of clear cuts and river valleys. It's a sad thing about the clear cuts, but if there weren't clear cuts, there wouldn't be views. It's really crazy in this evergreen state but it is really, really difficult to find land that hasn't been destroyed by the hands of industry. Even the nice forest walks are second growth. Only tiny pockets of land where even helicopters couldn't pull the trees out of the canyons cliffs so steep no man could log them (which brings up another entry on the Great Roads of the ONW--The Hidden Pockets Where Not Even Helicopters Could Pull Out Trees).

Slash pile, dog, mountain. That's the North Twin Sister lurking over Lupe.

Lastly, the name. Why Soggy Saddle? The day we realized the beauty of Soggy Saddle we snowshoed in the rain up to its hump. No views--the clouds were in the way--and we were so soaked that we were soggy. My partner tried to light a cigarette at the top and well...it was too soggy to light. But there was something so satisfying about the walk. A consistent upwards grade, a climb that offers enough exercise to get the heart going and clear the soul. Hiking in such cold rain we earned our pizza and beer at the North Fork Beer Shrine in Deming, our post-walk ritual and the greatest place in the galaxy. And that to me is a perfect day. An 8-mile hike--quiet with views, nothing extraordinary, a pint or 2 of extraordinary stout and a pizza bigger than my face. 

Ice crystals and sunset over the Lorax mountain range.

Soggy Saddle: If you lived here, you'd be home. And Soggy Saddle is my home away from home. 

Sunset over the Lorax mountain range

Self Confidence

Self confidence and assertiveness should be my New Year’s resolutions every year and should have been my resolutions for all prior years of my existence. When I'm at my worst, it's my self confidence that kills me, which is unfortunate because of what Jack Welch said: "Control your destiny or someone else will."

Here’s what I know about self confidence:

It’s a skill (and therefore trainable).

Definition: Self confidence is the ability to believe in yourself to accomplish something bigger than yourself.

Self confidence is a function of repetition, which means don’t bail after the first fail. Here is one of the most important rules for life: Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule. It takes somewhere around 10,000 hours to master something, anything worth mastering (an instrument, a language, a specialized skill). Even youthful prodigies like Mozart and Jimi Hendrix failed during those first 10,000 hours at their crafts. And guess what? There are like 10 billion to 1 odds that you are at Hendrix or Mozart levels of innate talent in whatever it is you do.

To be self confident, you need to be the captain of your ship.

Get away from people who tear you down.

You have to catch yourself when you’re good: Analyze what went well instead of what went wrong. Example: A basketball team down on its luck should analyze tapes of when it did things well rather than be hyper-focused on the mistakes it made. Self-awareness of faults is important to a point but then you need to key in on what you’re good at. You have to know your core competencies and transfer them to the right fights. Picking the right fights is another component to this crucial battle.

Make a list of all the things you are, a note to yourself. A mantra to repeat every day. Here’s mine:

Kendall, congrats on living an extraordinary life. You’re persistent, approachable, and you know people. You know how to dig into the heart of a problem and solve it. You’re a storyteller—when you write, you’re like a sculptor, slowly but persistently getting to the marrow of the issue, and sucking it down. You know how to connect with people and find out what makes them tick. Congrats on getting a PhD before you turned 40. And an MBA. You are a Master Doctor Master. But what you really are is a writer and a researcher. And an enjoyer of life.

Bottom line: No one will believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. Practice believing in yourself. Read this mantra every day.

Lastly, a thought from an amazing human being for these times: Elon Musk. Musk is at the nexus of Transport, Energy and Space Travel. He’s CEO and Chief Technology Officer of Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity.

In an interview with Chris Anderson, curator for TED, Anderson asked Musk just how he does it. What is Musk’s special sauce???

Musk has no real answer at first. Here is a guy who is going to get us to Mars before any national government will and he’s kind of speechless, which isn’t a sign of a lack of self confidence but a quiet confidence. Anderson then suggests that it’s Musk’s ability to think at a system level of design—to pull together design, technology and business into one package and synthesize it in a way very few people can.

And here’s the critical thing: Musk can feel so confident in that click-together package that he can take crazy risks and bets his fortune on it.

Musk’s response to Anderson's statement is that you should start with a framework for thinking—physics—and boil things down to fundamental truths. Which is true. Fundamentally. But it’s his confidence that does it. You can’t get to Mars without some confidence.

1980 Dead: On the Cusp (again)

Every year for the 30-year history of the Grateful Dead’s touring history is a year of transition. You could calmly and sanely assert that 1972 is a transition year. And so are 1973 and 1974, it could easily be argued. 1971 and 1977 are transition years, too. Oh, but 1970, what a year of transition that was. And 87 and 90, too, man. And you could keep going for hours, debating how each year is a year of transition.

Blindfold a Dead aficionado and put on a recording from just about any show and they will easily  be able to tell the vintage of the show. Because each of these years of transition is so marked, so inherently different from the other years of transition. Because they’re all years of transition with wild change, exploration. Each song takes on a new life depending on the year, the show, the synergy with the audience, which is why I can’t get my hands on enough Dead show recordings. So, I picked up Dave’s Picks Volume 8 from 11/30/1980 from the Fox Theater in Atlanta, and we find the Dead in fine form.

In 1980, the Dead are really on the cusp. Once again, they're just always on the cusp of something great because they’re always in transition, never afraid of changing and digging deeper and going further. It’s what’s missing, what would send them to the other side of the cusp, that makes the journey worth it for the Dead. And makes collecting the next show so worth it.

1980 Dead

1980 is a vintage that I wanted in my collection and this show is a fine representation of that year. I had to get my hands on some 1980 Dead because my old Dead Set CD wore out from playing it so much.

I also had a theory about 1980 that I wanted to test out. I like all eras of the Dead but I definitely lean toward that magic window of 1972-74 as my preferred era. Even still, Brent has the most technical chops of the Dead keyboardists (if we’re not including Bruce, who most Deadheads seem to ignore when considering this question) and his tenure during the 80s is outstanding. But while Brent has the most chops, both on keys and certainly as background vocalist, with his harmonies much cleaner than those of Donna, what I don’t like about the Brent years is that there’s just a bit too much Brent. What was great about Keith, and is probably the reason I like 72-74 as my favorite years, is that he knew how to get out of the way. Keith’s magic was in the understatement. While Brent’s essence is the overstatement. When Keith is on, he’s brilliant. But he never dominates. Brent, particularly in the late 80s, is consistently brilliant but dominates to the point that we don’t hear the magic from the other guys in the band. In fact, in many instances, Brent must be covering up for Jerry and the rest of the boys’ bad nights.

A young Brent Mydland on the keys

But here’s my theory: In 1980, Brent was still the new keyboardist and he was still unsure of himself and he didn’t drown out the other members of the band with the brash 1980s sound of his synthesizer sounds, which every once in a while are titillating, but too often are just plain cheesy. I base my theory also on Dick’s Picks 5 from 12/26/79 Oakland, which has some outstanding playing by Brent but nothing in which he dominates too much.

Despite the fact that every year is different, there is one overarching thesis behind the music of the Grateful Dead: A Rainbow of Sound. In 1980, Brent takes the baton from another great piano player and continues this musical mission. And indeed, he adds his own very unique textures to The Rainbow of Sound. And I don’t mean to take away from his brilliance by noting his tendency toward cheesiness because the Rainbow of Sound is very much alive on this recording, and Brent is a big part of this colorful sound that we love about the Dead.

1980 Garcia with Tiger. He got really good sounds with this guitar

There  was another reason I picked up 11-30-1980. The setlist. There were a couple of songs that were a bit lacking in my collection--a “Saint of Circumstance,” the promise of a truly exploratory post-hiatus “Playing in the Band,” a “Bird Song” (always one of my favorites), an extraordinary “Scarlet Begonias-->Fire on the Mountain,” which does really cook and is different but stands up to the 77 versions of this mammoth combination of songs. Jerry's playing is really sizzling. But what stuck out, besides the songs I wanted, were the little details. One of the best versions that I know of “Little Red Rooster.” “Feel Like a Stranger” has an extended and very worthy Jerry solo. A tender but powerful “Loser.” “Ship of Fools” has never been performed with such vigor, such tenderness and depth--really enjoyed that one. Another standout is the as-advertised “era-defining ‘Deal.’” The first set clocks in at 100 minutes; “[F]ast or slow, Jerry or Bob, routine or rare: they nail them all.”

My personal favorite from the recording is “The Wheel,” which is one of the slower versions I’ve heard and it’s very serene, calm and uplifting and profound at the same time. Definitely worth having in your collection if you’re a fan of The Wheel. There’s a moment at the end where it sounds like they’re going to transition into Playing, but we go straight into China Doll. (The setlist is not unlike that of Dick’s Picks vol. 29 (May 19th, 1977, also from the Fox Theater.) It’s funny to hear this hesitation, the reluctance between the players--the drummers are off for the Playing segue but Jerry takes it back down to China Doll. Here, we know the band is just really making it up as they go. It truly is fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants music. Totally unplanned. Seemingly unorganized, yet still it has its own system and the parts fit very well when it all works itself out. And certainly there are musical blunders by our heroes in this recording. But that’s the inherent risk of making music as you go, literally composing a new song every night.

Flawless this show is not but good and worthy it most definitely is.

The sound must also be commented. The Matrix recording--a blend of a Dan Healy soundboard and a Bob Wagner audience tape--sound makes for an imperfect yet warm sound. Big, meaty, spacey, deep, like being stuck in a deep forest with a pagan ritual going on. I’ve been listening to too many (not enough) perfect soundboards lately, so it was nice to hear a more ragged recording but with a deeper verosimilitud.

During the transition from “Space” to “The Wheel,” you can actually hear someone in the crowd quietly ask, “What song is this?” There are a couple of other moments in which we are very close to the intimate conversations that those people around the recording device are having. And these interruptions do not take away from the recording. In fact, they make it more real and more warm. The crowd’s energy is well integrated into the sound of the music. There are certainly imperfections in the recording but these imperfections give it life.

(Another added bonus are the liner notes by Nick Paumgarten, whose New Yorker piece on the Dead is about as canonical as a 2/13/1970 “Dark Star.” Worth checking out.)

I've always loved how the Dead had Oriental rugs on stage, making for a loose atmosphere. It was like they were playing in their own living room

As always for the Dead, the beauty is in the paradox. The imperfection makes for perfect listening. Their playing is serious fun. When they are really tight, telepathically playing each note as if it’s their last, there is a looseness that holds them together. Each individual part is so good that it makes the collective that much better than the sum of all the parts. We're in the meat here for the Dead--they're not in their wild youth of the 60s and early 70s, and they've most definitely hit their stride, but they haven't yet taken that stride for granted. And there’s just enough Brent to keep it very colorful but not too much that we lose what's good about the Dead: the Dead.

Things to be Thankful For

Things That I'm Grateful For:

1) That I was close to my mom as a kid because being close to her taught me to respect women. She gave me a sense of style in how I dress and how I present myself and she has taught and continues to teach me to appreciate food. Also, she taught me to appreciate stories and that's probably why I like to write. She also taught me to be OK with my emotions. I don't know if you've noticed but men who aren't close to their mothers tend to bottle up their emotions, which can have some potentially explosive negative consequences.

2) That I'm an only child not because I'm selfish (I probably am), but because it gave me time to be OK with myself, something I'm also very, very thankful for. It also means that the friends I have are close, because they're like the only family I have.

3) That I like reading (I'm not a boring snob that thinks TV is evil--I do have a few shows that I'm very loyal to and though I don't have TV I really do miss watching sports). But reading helps me think. When you read an author, that is as close as you can be to someone. When we are speaking to people in conversations, it's difficult to organize thoughts and only a rare few can extend a number of thoughts together in a way that's both coherent but without bravado or having to show off to an audience. Sure, writers sometimes show off to their readers and some don't organize their thoughts well but we can close their books or leave their web pages if we don't like them. When I'm stuck in a conversation with someone like this, it just makes me want to grab a book. 

4) That I'm not afraid of getting out of my shell  I've learned more by traveling--both in the US and abroad--than I have completing any other activity. I have an MA, a PhD and an MBA that taught me a few things, but traveling taught me a whole lot more.

5) That I've been fortunate enough to choose where I live and that I've been able to live in awesome places. These are the following places where I've spent 3 seasons  or more in less chronological order: Menlo Park, CA; Walla Walla, WA; San Francisco; Berkeley; Barcelona; Madrid; Dublin, Ireland; Lawrence, KS and Bellingham, WA. These places are extraordinary world class places and all have taught me great things, usually from the inhabitants who lived there. 

6) That People Have Taken a Chance On Me I'm so thankful that people have taken a chance on me. There's a sort of blind leap of faith when you enter into important relationships and I'm thankful that people like my wife or my current boss took a leap of faith to marry me or hire me, respectively. The world is a better place because those things happened. 

7) That I have an ear for music and that I still have hearing left to listen to it If it's worth listening to, it's worth listening to loud. I'm not sure I get the concept of background music and I have a very wide palate for music. Music is the essence of our soul and no art is closer to what we are as humans. Music literally gives a pulse to our lives and makes life meaningful. I'm so glad that I can hear it and be moved by it. When it's good, it's really, really good. People who are immune to music make me think they're immune to life and that would be really sad if true. 

8) That I'm OK with God I think I've talked with God on several occasions. I very much lean science first and I like to see hard data before deciding on things, so it's hard to just take a leap of faith and believe in something that exists only in your head, but sometimes I let my defenses down and it's nice to think that there's a creator, who can also be our adviser, and that there's angels that watch over us.

9) That I met Lupe, my batshit crazy flat-coated retriever/border collie mix, who taught me the meaning of the word Love. Without Lupe, I wouldn't have met Marcos, my Lab/greyhound sweetheart of a buddy, who sweetened the pot for my wife Kirsten when we decided to get married.

With Marcos and Lupe in a beautiful place