The Grateful Dead Reader

by Dodd, David; Spaulding, Diana

• ISBN13: 9780195147063
• ISBN10: 0195147065
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Here is an exciting collection of writings about The Grateful Dead,offering both classic and hard-to-find essays, reporting, and reviews.Arranged in chronological order, these pieces add up to nothing less thana full-scale history of the group--from Tom Wolfe's account of the Dead's firstperformance (at an Acid Test in 1965), to Ralph Gleason's 1967 interview withthe 24-year-old Jerry Garcia, to Mary Eisenhart's obituary of the greatguitarist. Powerful, incisive, and always imaginative, these selections includenot only outstanding writing on the Grateful Dead, but also superb pieces onmusic and pop culture generally. And alongside the words of Tom Wolfe, GeorgeW.S. Trow, and Robert Christgau, readers will find poetry, fiction, drawings,and an offering of rare and revealing photographs. Fans will be fascinated bythis anthology's many interviews and profiles, interpretations of lyrics, andconcert and record reviews. Yet The Grateful Dead was more than a band--it was acultural phenomenon. For three decades it remained on one unending tour,followed everywhere by a small army of nomadic fans who constituted a virtualcult. The writers in The Grateful Dead Reader both celebrate and analyze thisphenomenon, in such pieces as Ed McClanahan's groundbreaking article in Playboyin 1972, fan-magazine editor Blair Jackson's 1990 essay on the seriousness ofthe drug situation at Dead concerts, and Steve Silberman's insightful essays onthe music and its fans.The Grateful Dead Reader brims with some of the best writing on music, onpopular culture, and on a band that helped define a generation.

Author Biography

David G. Dodd and Diana Spaulding are a husband-and-wife editorial team. David is a branch manager with the Marin County Free Library in San Rafael, California. He co-edited (with Robert Weiner) the definitive Grateful Dead bibliography, The Grateful Dead and Deadheads. He also maintains the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site on the Internet. Diana is a reference librarian for Fireman's Fund Insurance. They live in Petaluma, California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Editors' Prefaces	xiii
David Dodd
Diana Spaulding
Introduction: Gathering the Sparks	xix
Steve Silberman
I. ``GET PREPARED, THERE'S GONNA BE A PARTY TONIGHT!'': CARVING OUT A TERRITORY, 1967-1974
Excerpt from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test	5	(3)
Tom Wolfe
Excerpt from Morgan's Acid Test	8	(9)
William J. Craddock
Dead Like Live Thunder	17	(3)
Ralph J. Gleason
Jerry Garcia, the Guru	20	(19)
Ralph J. Gleason
The Day They Busted the Grateful Dead	39	(1)
Richard Brautigan
Primal Dead at the Fillmore East: February 1970	40	(10)
Steve Silberman
Purple Lights: Grateful Dead Dance Marathon at the Manhattan Center	50	(3)
George W. S. Trow
Grateful Dead I Have Known	53	(33)
Ed McClanahan
Linear Notes to Europe 72	86	(2)
Willy Legate
Full Circle with the Dead	88	(4)
Ralph J. Gleason
Now That We've Got a Moment to Stand...	92	(2)
Robert Hunter
Some Pretty Basic Tenets of Hypnocracy	94	(1)
Robert Hunter
State of the Changes: How the Dragon Urobouros (Giga Exponentia) Makes Us Go Round and Round	95	(5)
Alan Trist
Dead Heads Pay Their Dues	100	(2)
Robert Christgau
He Was a Friend of Mine	102	(3)
Robert Petersen
Robert Hunter, Dark Star	105	(12)
Robert Hunter
II. ``IF YOU GET CONFUSED, LISTEN TO THE MUSIC PLAY'': BACK FROM THE HIATUS, INTO THE EIGHTIES, 1976-1986
St. Stephen Revisited and Beyond	117	(3)
Richard Meltzer
Still Grateful After All These Years: In Which the Grateful Dead, Pinup Uglies of the Haight-Ashbury, Become the House Band of the Age of Certain Doom	120	(19)
Charlie Haas
Dead Reckoning and Hamburger Metaphysics	139	(11)
Lee Abbott
Dead Heads: A Strange Tale of Love, Devotion and Surrender	150	(15)
Blair Jackson
Meditations on the Grateful Dead	165	(10)
Dennis McNally
An Aged Deadhead	175	(4)
Milton Mayer
Robert Hunter: Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience	179	(17)
Mary Eisenhart
Jerry Garcia and the Call of the Weird	196	(13)
Alice Kahn
III. ``WE WILL SURVIVE'': A TOP-TEN HIT AND ALL THAT FOLLOWS, 1987-1994
The Swirl According to Carp: A Meditation on the Grateful Dead	209	(5)
Jack Britton
Transformative Mysteries: A Primer on the Grateful Dead for Aficionados, Initiates and the Wholly Uninformed	214	(6)
Steve Silberman
A Tale of Two Tribes: A Gay Man's Adventure in the World of Deadheads	220	(5)
Edward Guthmann
Reporting Live from Deadland	225	(4)
David Gans
Good Use	229	(4)
Al Alvarez
This Darkness Got to Give: Some Thoughts on Problems in the Dead Scene	233	(6)
Blair Jackson
You Don't Seem to Hear Me When I Call	239	(9)
Paddy Ladd
Introduction to We Want Phil! An Interview, and In Phil We Trust: A Conversation	248	(17)
Blair Jackson
Excerpt from The Millennium Shows	265	(18)
Philip E. Baruth
IV. ``SEE HERE HOW EVERYTHING LEAD UP TO THIS DAY'': JERRY GARCIA'S DEATH AND THE END OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD, 1995-1996
American Beauty: The Grateful Dead's Burly, Beatific Alchemist	283	(3)
Hal Espen
Obituary: Jerry Garcia, 1942-1995	286	(2)
Mary Eisenhart
An Elegy for Jerry	288	(2)
Robert Hunter
American Beauty	290	(10)
Blair Jackson
The Grateful Dead: A Meditation on Music, Meaning, and Memory	300	(6)
Gary Burnett
The Only Song of God	306	(9)
Steve Silberman
Credits	315	(4)
Index of Song and Album Titles	319	(4)
Index	323