By MILO MILES Illustration by Jerry McDonald about the only way you can't hear the Grateful Dead this summer is in the flesh. The band's absence has had a negative impact on national tour revenues already, but music stores offer jazz Dead, orchestral Dead, reggae Dead, archival Dead and post-mortem Dead. And, of course, there's Internet Dead. (See our guide.) (See our guide.) For those who must have it on stage, any number of outfits from Blues Traveler to Phish to direct Dead spinoffs like Bob Weir's Ratdog and Mickey Hart's Mystery Box can claim the Dead's living legacy. The last two groups were key parts of the Furthur Festival that played the outdoor amphitheater Great Woods near Boston on July 10. This was plainly a trial run for a substitute Dead, with added attractions like Bruce Hornsby and Los Lobos, who are coming off their strongest album yet, "Colossal Head." NOT FADE AWAY Dead linchpin Jerry Garcia dissolved nearly a year ago and by now it's safe to say what a relief it was, without implying any ultimate disrespect to the band. The Dead peaked in the early '70s ("Workingman's Dead"), retired for almost two years in late 1974, and became in practice a road show for the rest of their time together. Why they kept at it for so long, why it became so discomforting, and why Garcia spiraled down into drug destruction can all explain each other, at least a little bit. Many people are lucky enough to have known the sensation of a concert where the band, the audience, and the times are perfectly primed to fuse into a world apart from the everyday. A strangely giddy hope can fill every fiber of the participants on stage and off. At certain periods and places, the sensation was particularly intense: a Mississippi blues roadhouse in the 1920s, a Harlem big-band ballroom in the '30s, and most of all for our purposes, the so-called Acid Test happenings around San Francisco in the middle 1960s. With brains dilated by LSD, participants knew with religious fervor that these events were the start of a new culture, a new society, and a reborn humankind, at last as devoted to love and togetherness as it claimed and as opposed to pain as it claimed. The Grateful Dead, above all their fellow bands on the scene, would provide the ever-mobile soundtrack for this grand adventure. And behold, as Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Kaleidoscope and Jefferson Starship shriveled and slimed away into nothingness, the Dead persisted with the Acid Test dream, because keeping on affirmed they were serious about possibility. WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRAP IT'S BEEN Every other glittering shard cast off from the Acid Tests faded as the grim '80s wore on. A certain desperation settled over the Dead's popularity on the road. One of the few profound observations written after the demise of Garcia came from novelist Robert Stone, who was present at the creation, in a eulogy written for Rolling Stone: "But of that holistic magic vision of the garden set free, the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead is the purest single remnant. It was supposed to be an accompaniment to the New Beginning. In fact, it was the thing itself, all that remains with us." Which is reminiscent of critic Tom Carson's marvelous notion that Dead concerts eventually suggested Civil War re-enactments: the same glib, escapist entertainment packages that the band originally intended to bury forever. This is partly why the Dead's literal-minded inheritors like Phish are so unamazing. Rock ineffables can't be inherited directly. The true Grateful Dead of today -- Beck, or Orbital, maybe -- sound nothing like the originators. The old sounds have gone as far as they can go. Delighted hope had become hopeful duty had become hapless inertia. You can hear it in progressive bootleg sets. How much did the soured years weigh on Jerry Garcia? He struggled to escape the answer every night he played. Despising the Dead's Edenic ideal is beyond easy now. But it's worth noting that to dismiss the dream outright is to work for its opposite, which certainly threatens from just beyond the veil of reality nowadays. GARCIA AROUND The audience at the Furthur Festival offers a very fleeting rebuke to despair. Apparently, the barefoot Earth Mama and the half-naked Hippie Dude looks are here for the duration. Although Budweiser was a tour sponsor, its logo did not blanket the site and the Dead ancillary merchandise, as always, was sold by sanctioned small businesses, not some conglomerate of the superstars. The seven-hour show itself was like a parade of little pieces of the Dead, which put together still lacked a huge chunk in the middle, the shape of a (young and healthy) Jerry Garcia. His face appeared more than anyone else's -- on T-shirts and buttons and stickers and signs -- and was referenced slyly in a tune done by drummer Mickey Hart's Mystery Box band, "Down the Road." As opposed to Elvis, Jerry Garcia sightings are liable to be lookalike fans, wandering around in a slight daze. Dead friends and family animated the parts of the band on display. The Flying Karamazov Brothers delivered novelty juggling and music. Alvin Youngblood Hart was a competent, country neo-bluesman. Hot Tuna and John Wesley Harding were heartwarming, old-fart folk-rockers. Mystery Box was a world percussion ensemble that missed the buoyancy and drive Hart hears in other peoples' polyrhythms (though it sounded richer and more full bodied than on disc). In performances deserving elaboration, Los Lobos were a grand, unfulfilled gesture, Bruce Hornsby was a jovial disaster, and Bob Weir's Ratdog was a rabid stab at the future. Los Lobos are in a knotty position right now, symbolized by the progressive impulses of David Hidalgo versus the staunch roots-rockisms of Cesar Rosas. In light of the groundbreaking arrangements on "Colossal Head," the Furthur Festival seemed too retro for them (though their other option, the H.O.R.D.E. Tour, was no better). They squared the circle, finally, with a rugged segue from Fats Domino's "I'm Gonna Be a Wheel Some Day" to their stomping cover of the Dead's "Bertha." Bodies responded all the way to the lawn seats. Bruce Hornsby is a warm, welcoming performer beloved by his audience, but he combines the mechanical climaxes of Elton John, the rockless roll of Steve Winwood, and the spineless jazz of Spyrogyra into a fizz cocktail that leaves no taste five minutes after it goes down. And, sad to say, Hornsby was a key participant in the concert-closing jam. Weir's Ratdog was the core outfit, another one of his not-bad oldie-rock groups. Member Jimmie Johnson (pianist on all the classic Chuck Berry sides) roils the ivories better than anyone to play the Dead's music, and even he can't displace the overriding image, which is Weir's bad-ass ladykiller act, an unamusing spectacle. The Furthur Jammers did hit one number that managed to poke fun at toughness even as it blustered: Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." Without much ceremony, the Festival ended and the audience was left with only the persistence of memory. The heritage of Garcia still attracts the nicest and nudest crowd in rock, but that's not enough for long. The prognosis for going Furthur is: Not Dead, but ailing. How long can the Dead legacy live on? Join the discussion in Table Talk. Milo Miles reviews world music and reissues for National Public Radio's "Fresh Air." 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