The Grateful Dead Reader

by David G. Dodd (Editor), Diana Spaulding (Editor)

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 than a full-scale history of the group--from Tom Wolfe's account of the Dead's first performance (at an Acid Test in 1965), to Ralph Gleason's 1967 interview with the 24-year-old Jerry Garcia, to Mary Eisenhart's obituary of the great guitarist. Powerful, incisive, and always imaginative, these selections include not only outstanding writing on the Grateful Dead, but also superb pieces on music and pop culture generally. And alongside the words of Tom Wolfe, George W.S. Trow, and Robert Christgau, readers will find poetry, fiction, drawings, and an offering of rare and revealing photographs. Fans will be fascinated by this anthology's many interviews and profiles, interpretations of lyrics, and concert and record reviews. Yet The Grateful Dead was more than a band--it was a cultural phenomenon. For three decades it remained on one unending tour, followed everywhere by a small army of nomadic fans who constituted
a virtual cult. The writers in The Grateful Dead Reader both celebrate and analyze this phenomenon, in such pieces as Ed McClanahan's groundbreaking article in Playboy in 1972, fan-magazine editor Blair Jackson's 1990 essay on the seriousness of the drug situation at Dead concerts, and Steve Silberman's insightful essays on the music and its fans.
The Grateful Dead Reader brims with some of the best writing on music, on popular culture, and on a band that helped define a generation.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

David G. Dodd is the City Librarian for San Rafael, California, with prior experience at several libraries including San Francisco Public Library and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Born in Livermore, California, he studied German Literature at UC Davis and spent a year in Bremen, Germany. An experienced reference librarian and researcher, he co-edited The Grateful Dead Reader with his wife Diana Spaulding. Dodd is active in his Unitarian Universalist congregation, plays piano, and lives in Petaluma with his family, maintaining a lifelong passion for writing and community engagement.

Reviews

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Grateful Dead Reader by David G. Dodd and Diana Spaulding (Oxford University Press 2000)(780.92). This is the collected works of a number of writers about the Dead and their music as previously published in various magazines. The following passage comes closest to capturing the magic of the first Grateful Dead concert experience I’ve ever read: "If anyone had told me three years ago that I was about to turn on to the Grateful Dead, I'd have told him he was nuts. Me, a "Deadhead"? Grooving to warmed-over acid rock with a bunch of scruffy, unreconstructed hippies? Hailing about in tie-dyes, bare feet, and nose rings? Get real.
Well, it happened. In February 1986, after sharing office space for two years with a friendly Deadhead and listening to her rhapsodize about life among the Dead, I got curious. My initiation was the band's annual Chinese New Year's concert at Oakland's Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, an occasion I approached with bemused if not jaundiced detachment-like a weekend ethnographer probing uncharted land.
Well, I got zapped. The music, the lights, and the midshow procession with gongs, cymbals, polychromatic dancers, and a human-powered dragon with steaming nostrils were wonderful. But what really startled me was how nice everybody was - there was none of the snarling and pushing you get in most large-scale rock concert - and how avidly involved they were in the music. At the highest moments, the crowd's intensity was reflected in the playing: performers and audience seemed to coalesce, to spark each other and erupt, creating the kind of spontaneous magic that vinyl never delivers." - Edward Guthmann, p. 220.
I like this book. My rating: 7/10, finished 10/1/2010.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like the Grateful Dead and reading, you'll like this book. Aptly titled!

David Dodd is a blessed servant to contemporary and future Dead fans, those of us who never could have seen the band play live. His compendium of lyrics, myth, and stories about the band will forever give later arrivals like me the ability to learn about the late 20th century fire that was the Grateful Dead scene. Thanks David!

It amazes me to learn about all the 'zines produced by people to share their love of the Dead. The band and their musical experience meant so much to so many, and that feeling inspired entire genres of new art. More than anything, I appreciate Dodd's "The Grateful Dead Reader" for that: giving these small-time writers the platform to speak to future generations. I just can't see myself ever reading through old magazines, but I'm so glad that some of their best writing is preserved.

Also anything Robert Hunter writes/says is worth my attention, and he gets some good cover in here.