I will forever love the Grateful Dead. I have grown and experienced so much through their music that the Dead will always be a part of me. Because of this i have wanted to get a Dead related tattoo for awhile now. Their are two slight problems with this; first the Grateful Dead for better or worse are associated with drugs, an association that would most likely hurt me when applying for certain jobs, and second there are just two many different designs to choose from.
In order to remedy the first problem i have decided to put my tattoo on my left bicep. This will allow me to hide my tattoo with a simple t-shirt. If my possible employers don’t know that I have a Grateful Dead tattoo then there is no way that any drug-related association can hurt me. The solution is simple, but i did kind of want to put the tattoo on my forearm, but this would be a lot more noticeable and inconvenient to hide in hot weather so bicep it is I guess.
The second issue is a lot harder to solve. The Dead have a ton of artwork associated with them. The most common include; Dancing Bears, Steal Your Face, Skulls and roses, and dancing Terrapins.
The Dancing Bears are probably the most well known dead artwork. I like the dancing bears, but they are a lot wider than they are tall which doesn’t fit well on a bicep. The Dancing Terrapins come from one of my least favorite Dead albums so i don’t see myself putting them on my body anytime soon. Because of that these two are out.
My favorite Dead related art is the Steal Your Face. It’s cool and well known and can come in versions with extreme detail. However, this tattoo doesn’t allow for the incorporation of Lyrics very easily. The Skulls and roses are very intricate and do allow for lyrics to be easily incorporated. If I choose to include lyrics, I will probably go with them.