The unlikely shared origins of bluegrass and blockchains [video]

Whew! As a long-time lover of The Green Pill, it was great getting to sit down and talk about a few of my favorite topics with Kevin.

Studying and telling the weird and wonderful origin story of cypherpunk, and its roots in Grateful Dead taper culture (and deeper than that, in bluegrass and traditional music) has become a big part of what my life is about.

I wonder: have y'all started to get the sense that, within the music industry, there's a recent / sudden desire to paint bluegrass (and other old-time) as a rural, uneducated, overalls-wearin', simpleton sort of music? And I sometimes wonder if there are industry propaganda machines (including social media bots, etc) at work in these areas, trying to pigeonhole certain genres in the ways that they view as easiest to sell/control.

Cuz like... (and I mean, I know you already know this very well), go look at Maybelle Carter or Ralph Stanley or Tony Rice... they wore sharp suits and played complex music. This whole weird trend of trying to turn bluegrass into an early 90s country aesthetic is so bizarre to anybody who is actually in the bluegrass scene.

Obviously bluegrass has always been about bringing a musical tradition down from the mountains in a form factor that's fit for the technological innovation of the day (at first, AM radio distribution in major cities). And in that sense, it has always been an urban phenomenon. So it's weird to watch this spin.

And sometimes it feels like, before I can even tell the stories of Jerry Garcia taping Bill Monroe shows with a reel-to-reel, I first have to clear the air about what bluegrass is and the evolutionary musical environment in which it has emerged, etc.

Anyhow, I hope y'all enjoy. It was really fun to record this.