Live Dead: The Grateful Dead, Live Recordings, and the Ideology of Liveness

by John Brackett

The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful live acts of the rock era. Performing more than 2,300 shows between 1965 and 1995, the Grateful Dead’s reputation as a “live band” was—and continues to be—sustained by thousands of live concert recordings from every era of the group’s long and colorful career. In Live Dead , musicologist John Brackett examines how live recordings—from the group’s official releases to fan-produced tapes, bootlegs to “Betty Boards,” and Dick’s Picks to From the Vault —have shaped the general history and popular mythology of the Grateful Dead for more than fifty years. Drawing on a diverse array of materials and documents contained in the Grateful Dead Archive, Live Dead details how live recordings became meaningful among the band and their fans not only as sonic souvenirs of past musical performances but also as expressions of assorted ideals, including notions of “liveness,” authenticity, and the power of recorded sound.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

Published December 5, 2023

Reviews

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I know a lot about the Dead’s music, this book shed a lot of light behind the scenes of the whole Grateful Dead organization in terms of business practices and their huge tape archive, “the vault”. It was very interesting to read about. It was also very easy for me to understand the whole argument about how tapes of live concerts are so special to music fans as they recreate the memory and spiritual experience of that special show that you remember from years ago. Thoroughly enjoyed.

[Emory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know why it took me almost 4 months to read a 175 page book about the Grateful Dead, but I’ve finally finished it!

Highly recommended for all Deadheads and anyone interested in what makes the Dead so special in regards to their live shows.

[Evan Kurtz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earlier chapters more interesting than the later ones, but still I learned quite a bit.

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Live Dead: The Grateful Dead, Live Recordings, and the Ideology of Liveness by John Brackett (Duke University 2023) (782.42166092) (3910).

This is not your typical Grateful Dead book. It’s not from the “Me and Jerry played music and got stoned” genre of personal recollections and reminiscences like almost every book about the Grateful Dead, though I love those stories too.

This account instead considers the elusive quality of the “live” sound of the Grateful Dead’s recorded music. Much of this volume is about one of the Grateful Dead’s most celebrated subcultures: the “tapers”, live audience recordings, and the tradition of tape trading. (A disclaimer: I confess that this old Deadhead has a handful of well-worn Grateful Dead concert tapes from the seventies and eighties stashed in a box in the basement.)

It was universally understood that no two performances by the Grateful Dead were identical. The band played over 2,300 shows, and each performance featured extended improvisational playing (“jamming”) by the members. Rather than featuring a specific set list of current hit songs to promote, each nightly Dead show set list could include any of the several hundred songs included in the Dead’s performance catalog, so every show - and thus every concert tape - was a one-of-a-kind happening.

The Grateful Dead held a long-standing (and radical) policy that permitted concert audience members the freedom to tape record the band’s nightly shows. To paraphrase lead guitarist Jerry Garcia on the matter, “Once the music is in the air, we’re (the band) done with it, and they (the audience) can have it.” The band’s position was that those who taped the shows were free to distribute the tapes, with one condition: the tapers were not allowed to sell the tapes. They could only give them away or trade them for tapes of other Dead shows. (Compare this with the policies of other recording groups, which deemed audience members who surreptitiously tried to record concerts to be thieves and “bootleggers” who were unceremoniously tossed from the venue and were often prosecuted under intellectual property laws to boot.)

In the world of the Grateful Dead, by contrast, the tapes from any given Grateful Dead show were freely traded and circulated among the band’s legion of fans. Many if not most of the Dead shows were recorded by multiple audience members; there were many shows where several different tapes still circulate from a single concert; these tapes vary in sound quality from pristine to practically unlistenable, depending on the equipment, location, and expertise of the original taper.

Each Grateful Dead concert I ever attended featured a towering forest of taper’s microphone boom stands centered around the soundboard in the middle of the hall. The location of the soundboard was guaranteed to have the best acoustics and the best audio return in every venue and was thus the spot where tapers congregated to set up their personal audio capture devices.

And what a sound those tapers captured! The best description of the Grateful Dead’s live sound quality was coined by journalist Richard Goldstein in a May 1967 issue of the periodical the Village Voice. Goldstein observed that the Grateful Dead in performance “sounds like live thunder.”

That, in a nutshell, is the heart of John Brackett’s new book. There is also a detailed account of the history of The Grateful Dead “vault” of concert recordings. Additionally, the recounting of the band’s recovery of the legendary-but-lost live recordings known as “Betty Boards” which had been taped by the band’s longtime producer and band employee Betty Cantor-Jackson is a not-to-be-missed chapter of the band’s legend and lore, but I’ll leave that story for future readers of the book to discover.

The final and best word on the impact of the Grateful Dead was the famous quote from Jerry’s pal Willie Legate from the liner notes of the Grateful Dead album “Europe ‘72”: “THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A GRATEFUL DEAD CONCERT.” (p. 56).

I received a new PB copy of this volume as a gift on 12/25/1923.

My rating: 7.25/10, finished 1/16/24 (3910).

PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

[Josh Blinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

The music never stopped

John Brackett’s academic tome on the live recording legacy of the Grateful Dead is both academic AND accessible to the reader, including Deadheads, who could care less about the academics of rock music. The author makes a strong case for the “liveness” in live recordings being as much tied to the shared or received historical context of the concerts as with the music recorded at same. Certainly that includes nostalgia, particularly for a time some listeners might not have been able experience firsthand to begin with. Additionally, Brackett is thorough about the history of the Dead’s voluminous live catalog without being exhausting in the telling. A good, solid study for the insatiable Deadhead, the casual fan, and the neophyte who may be wondering what all the fuss was about.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and illuminating investigation as to why, in layman's terms, listening to Cornell '77 is an emotional, exhilarating experience for people like myself who weren't there? So much that we're compelled to buy physical copies of the show when it's widely available online.

Brackett writes authoritatively but accessibly. He reviews key events and figures, but also assumes you know who Jerry Garcia is. A perfect balance. Furthermore, he details the origin of music being marketed as "live."

Essential reading for those who enjoy listening to the Dead's music and thinking about the Dead's music.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. As a late blooming deadhead it was beneficial to be taken through each live release, from the early live records to the massive live box sets (Pacific Northwest 73-74 is my prized possession). A thought provoking study of live music and recorded live music. Great book, especially as this band one by one dances off into in the stars.

[Brian Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read for any Deadhead, or perhaps even a gateway for them Dead-curious out there. The book aims to take a long look at “live” music and the role that bootlegged tapes played in creating our understanding and expectations of live Dead. It gave me a little more history of the band, and I love that.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a surprisingly enjoyable read for a more academic focused work. I learned a few new insights into the Dead’s history of tapes and archival live releases. I wouldn’t have minded a deeper dive into more specific tapes and live eras, but that really wasn’t the focus of this book.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting history of live recording and specifically the tradition of recording and preserving live Dead shows.

[Emmet Bloomer · Rating 4 out of 5]

“­music is more au­then­tic if it is untainted by music industry interests.”