Books

2015, being the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Grateful Dead and the 20th anniversary of the death of Jerry Garcia, is an absolute frenzy of the written word, part of a broader orgy of production and consumption, Mr. Supply and Ms. Demand doing the cha-cha.

This post is mostly about the deluge of essential reading hitting the streets, and a little about other pulp and glue crossing my screen. It's about books as it relates to JGMF.

I expect 2015 to be the front of a wave of Dead and hippie consumerism that I expect to last through at least 2019 (Woodstock) and, for the Garciaverse, 2020 (25th anniversary of Jerry's passing).

The good news is that we are experiencing a huge bulge of amazing looking written word. The bad news is that we are experiencing a huge bulge of amazing looking written word - an embarrassment of riches. I'll just list 'em in bibliographic order as I have them, which is surely non-canonical.

Please feel free to leave comments, and good reading!

Barnes, Barry. 2011. Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead: The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long, Strange Trip. New York: Business Plus.

• This ought to be on every B-School syllabus, IMO. Maybe our corporate overlords wouldn't be such schmucks if it were.

Bernstein, Andrew J. 2013. California Slim: The Music, the Magic, and the Madness. Xlibris LLC.

• This is really nicely done - I learned a lot about a very particular scene, things flow really nicely and it's an interesting set of stories. Some excellent Garcia color (playing an early arcade game, for example, and lots of black coffee). I gathered up various setlist and other data. 

Browne, David. 2015. So Many Roads: The Life And Times Of The Grateful Dead. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press [a member of the Perseus Books Group].

• I have commented on this somewhere - on a few furtive glances, it looks canonical.
• Pretty good notice by Ryan Little in the Washington Post, sounds reasonable enough. What will have been a stream of names to him will be a stream of beautiful sociometric data, to me, more a feature than a bug. And then it sounds like the stories are good, the writing is nice. I also don't mind his critique, that "these books" (if I can put it that way) don't really reckon on more scales, or tilt them, ignoring the bad stuff. It's a legitimate position to take, as, I am sure, will be the balance that Browne necessarily had to strike as a writer. The review makes me even more eager to tear through this book.
• Reading Notes.

Davis, Tom. 2009. 39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss. New York: Grove Press.

• A great read into some of the many ways in which genius and mania and all kinds of other factors can produce and reflect human amazingness and frailty. Wonderful stuff, lots of craziness. He deals mostly straightforwardly with the drugs, though one key question goes unanswered. The chapter on Hepburn Heights is essential reading for understanding Garcia in the early 80s. I gathered up various little Garciaverse crossings, and a few biggies (like Hepburn Heights, the drugs, but also Sirens of Titan). It's a rather charming read.

Gissen Stanley, Rhoney, with Tom Davis. 2013. Owsley and Me: My LSD Family. Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish Book Publishing Company.

• Amazing insider's perspective on some wild times. For me, some of the key material centered on the Carousel Ballroom, the Tuesday Night Jams at the Carousel, a few other Garcia nuggets and lots of all-around color. Rhoney is a smart, tough cookie and went through some wild stuff with Bear and the whole scene. Rhoney and Tom Davis seem to have become very close during this collaboration as Davis was dying, I gather. And on p. 271, she quotes Bear saying that Davis turned Garcia onto Persian.

Jackson, Blair and Gans, David. 2015. This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead. Flatiron Books.

• Fantastic.
• Reading Notes.

Jarnow, Jesse. 2016. Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press.

• Read as of Thanksgiving, need to annotate.

Kramer, Michael J. 2013. The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• I have not gone through this one and pulled quotes and all the rest of that, but I have finished it. With one major exception, I absolutely loved his discussion of The Common in 1969 - a topic on which I have been gathering materials, reflecting, writing for a good long while. Kramer even scooped me with the picture of Garcia in the Bluto shirt and leather hat, speaking out at the first meeting of The Common, which I had been wanting to use).

• And I agree that The Common represents an attempt to define a civic space -- in part. But, two things: first, he's telling half the story - I think you have to tell the complementary stories of public and private spaces and the ebbs and flows between and across them. My "Jerry and the Jeffersons" material, in which The Common figures quite prominently, tries to do that. Second, the whole argument that these contexts within which rock music did its thing involved the construction of the civic seems inarguable. Kramer's research is glorious (including some killer sounding archives), his citations look great and the book is well-edited; it is super-smart and wonderfully written. The cases are interesting, the Viet Nam stuff was very informative, and I enjoyed it - but the argument per se has its limits.

Kreutzmann, Bill. 2015. Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press.

• First eye I put on the text went to index listing for "Horses, cocaine and" (p. 231 if you're curious).
• Reading notes are now up.

Loren, Richard, with Stephen Abney. 2014. High Notes: A Rock Memoir. Demariscotta, ME: East Pond Publishing.

• This was also a charming read, easy on the eyes and some great, straightforward narration of Richard Loren's tenure with Garcia and the Dead, among other things. The Rowans and the Stinson Beach scene come through reasonably clearly for the first time, totally idyllic sounding, "until it wasn't" as Peter Rowan has been known to say.  I'll have notes on this at some point.
• Reading notes

McGee, Rosie. 2013. Dancing with the Dead: A Photographic Memoir. Rohnert Park, CA: Tioli Press & Bytes.

• Incredible insider-with-camera images and stories from the Dead's very earliest days through 1974. Rosie writes beautifully, the stories flow better than they often do in this genre; perhaps there's less putative verbatim dialogue. Anyway, highly recommended - I gathered up lots of neat color and data. Essential for Garciaverse/JGMF/GOTS/Fate Music.

McNally, Dennis, ed. 2015. Jerry on Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers.

• I made a fair number of marginal notes, but somehow left my read of this feeling like I didn't get that much out of it. But when I went back to transcribe, I had ten pages of notes. I came away thinking it was a quite beautiful work, helping Jerry along with an ex post self portrait. The book lays out a bunch of Jerry's personal, intellectual, creative, musical architecture, but at a nice manageable pace. The whole work lilts and breathes and it reads delightfully.
• Reading Notes.

Minkin, Bob. 2014. Live Dead: The Grateful Dead Photographed by Bob Minkin. Insight Editions.
--haven't even unwrapped this yet.

Nash, Graham. 2013. Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life. New York: Crown Archetype.

--to read

Richardson, Peter. 2014. No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead. New York: St. Martin's Press.

• Essential, canonical source. Loved this book, a great, rich read, a beautiful set of three long narratives through the themes of ecstasy, mobility and community - exceptionally well conceived and executed. I learned a lot about the San Francisco avant-garde scene, and Wally Hedrick in particular, that I did not know - this is bedrock cultural material for Garcia. I learned a few new things about the Dead, in part via Richardson's work at the amazing GD Archives at UC Santa Cruz, but also just by novelly composing materials that I thought I already should have known. I am woefully unschooled in cultural history - Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence is a frequent companion, but otherwise I just don't take in much of that. It struck me in Richardson's hands as a fresh angle that cast some very interesting light, beautifully rendered, well-written stories. I hope this book gets read by more than Deadheads, but by anyone who is interested in digging a little more deeply into postwar American culture.

Selvin, Joel. ?2014? The Haight: Love, Rock and Revolution: The Photography of Jim Marshall. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions.

-- Haven't gotten to this, may not for awhile. Looks amazing.
 
Weathern, George, and Vincent Colnett. 2004 [1978]. A Wayward Angel: The Full Story of the Hells Angels by the Former Vice President of the Oakland Chapter. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press. (Originally Richard Marek Publishers.)

• Very interesting for understanding the Hells Angels, of course, and therefore of indirect but considerable interest to one contemplating the Garciaverse.
• Why is this here? It's a long story.

Weiner, Howard F. 2014. Positively Garcia: Reflections of the JGB volume 1: 1972-1984. New York: Pencil Hill Publishing.

• Great read, well put together, rich with material. I have not yet "processed" this, meaning I go through and pull quotes and date stuff and do all of that. It will be quite a project. This is the first book about the JGB (scooped again!) and it's a great entry in the touring-fan-memoir genre - Weiner is funny and interesting, he writes well, and he is a very perceptive listener. This is print version, albeit well-written and autobiographical, of the kinds of things I try to do in listening notes here.
• I have commented on and engaged Weiner's approach to JGB 11/4/81 in Albany, interesting to follow his path.