I never listen to their albums, it's kind of bizarre sounding to me. My SO has roughly a thousand GD shows on CD, trading live music is his hobby, and I hear a lot of live GD. I guess I was kind of judgmental and weirded out by it at first, but they're probably one of my favorite bands now, stoned or not.
The more I read this, the less amused I am by it. It's not a clever or original point, and I don't feel like it's a stereotype that's all that based in the reality of the band. The Dead do some weird shit and go off on long musical tangents, but it's all based around fairly solid rock and roll songs. And the culture that surrounds them is largely based around dancing, so I don't see how you can't "tap your foot" to it. Albeit much of the dancing is done under a lot of different drugs, but still. At the Dead-inspired show I was at tonight I was dancing while stone-cold sober.
I also don't see where Onstad gets off getting all high and mighty about drug induced ramblings.