Poking a Dung Pile

  Home Grown The reporting in the first season of Dead and Gone stands in stark contrast and opposition to the story Patricia Gioia tells in her book, The Berkeley Marina Murders:  One Family's Story.  Ms. Gioia raised eight children—three daughters and five sons.  Mary Regina (named after the Virgin Mother, "Queen Mary") was the seventh child and youngest daughter.  In the preface to her book,  Gioia tells us: "After Mary's death, I collected countless newspaper articles, made endless notes of telephone conversations, and filled box upon box with legal documents, all relating to our court case.  It is an inventory of pain, with nothing discarded, because I promised Mary one day I would tell her story." (p. 11) Her book is a  self-published  work of love and memory.  Many Deadheads recognize "Do-it-yourself" as an important maxim in the community's traditional ethos, and will probably appreciate this work. Examples of Deadheads abiding ...

  "A Glee" In the quote from Joe Berlinger I included in my last post , one might detect a note of glee related to the potential Berlinger recognized in the podcast's first season: " As a former Deadhead, lifelong music fan and crime and justice filmmaker, I thought I died and went to heaven [my emphasis] when listening to Payne and Jake’s meticulously researched podcast.  Dead and Gone  is an incredible weave of music history, social justice, and active true-crime investigation – three areas that I have been lucky enough to explore in most of my past work as a filmmaker." Let's not lose sight of the fact that two young people were brutally murdered on the night of August 15/16, 1985.  And let's not lose sight of the fact that a man was arrested for their murders, that he was tried for these murders, and that it's demonstrably the case that he did not receive adequate representation during the trial .  A jury found him guilty of first degree murder w...

After a year of reading through court documents, newspaper clippings, academic work, fiction and writing this blog, I've grown chary of even minimal participation in the culture industry.  Podcasts and blogs now belong to popular culture and like films, radio, television, streaming platforms, etc., they produce standardized cultural goods for consumers who are rendered passive and docile by entertainment.  True, podcasts and blogs can motivate some to be more active and creative, but, for the most part they entertain and distract making it more likely that many of us will remain docile creatures. Some who listened to the first season of Dead and Gone recognized the trade-offs in commercializing the stories of missing and murdered Deadheads.  They recognized that the podcast might bring TenderfootTV and Double Elvis profit and further notoriety, but if it brings attention to the cases and elicits new information, then commercializing them is worthwhile. The podcasters...