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Grateful Dead: The Music May Never Stop
by Doug Collette
The keepers of the Grateful Dead vault, overseen by chief archivist David Lemieux, must have been hard pressed to adequately commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the iconic band's formation. After all, the recognition of the half-century milestone a decade ago found the curators homing right in on the most distinctive aspects of the group's thirty-year history with 30 Trips Around the Sun (Rhino, 2015). In a reflection of the psychedelic warriors' own often inscrutable sense of logic, Lemieux ...
Continue ReadingThe Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties
by Doug Collette
The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties Dennis McNally 432 Pages ISBN: #978-0306835667 Da Capo 2025 Dennis McNally knows whereof and whenof he speaks. On The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties, the author of books about beat icon Jack Kerouac (Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation And America (McGraw-Hill, 1980)) and those psychedelic warriors known as Grateful Dead (A Long ...
Continue ReadingGrateful Dead: Idiosyncratic Improvisationalists
by Doug Collette
As the Grateful Dead morphed from an eccentric folk-blues group into an eclectic jam juggernaut, the band adopted an idiosyncratic approach to improvisation they would then hone over three decades. Regular shifts of personnel nurtured an ongoing alteration of the Dead's musicianship, as did the growing wealth of original material the group interspersed with a wide range of cover songs. The following selections taken from the arc of the iconic unit's history illustrate how their distinctive means of playing together ...
Continue ReadingThe Silver Snarling Trumpet - The Birth of the Grateful Dead: The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter
by Doug Collette
The Silver Snarling Trumpet -The Birth of the Grateful Dead: The Lost Manuscript of Robert HunterRobert Hunter256 Pages ISBN: #978-0306835155 Hachette Book Group2024 Notwithstanding occasional recordings under his own name and his even more rare live performances, the late Robert Hunter maintained a decidedly low public profile during his extended tenure as lyricist for the Grateful Dead. Accordingly, he kept to himself the extended writing that would become The Silver Snarling Trumpet. ...
Continue ReadingGrateful Dead: Multiple Metamorphoses
by Doug Collette
The ongoing Grateful Dead archival series, Dave's Picks, is becoming more fascinating as it evolves. Together and apart, Volumes 46 and 47 are cases in point: the former comes from that early flashpoint of inspired material and musicianship epitomized (but not wholly encapsulated) by Europe 72 (Warner Bros., 1972), while the latter takes place in the first year of keyboardist/vocalist/songwriter Brent Myland's decade-long tenure with the group. The irony of all this, however, is that to compare and contrast the ...
Continue ReadingRFK Stadium, Washington, D.C. 6/10/73
by Doug Collette
As much or more so than any previously released new release or archive package, the cover art of Grateful Dead's RFK Stadium, Washington, D.C. 6/10/73 accurately (and vividly) reflects the nuances of the music behind the enticing graphics. In a pastel green and pink/orange color scheme of both matt and glossy finish, Masaki Koike's intricate designs hint at the dense subtleties the iconic band infuses into its chosen range of material during this approximately four-hour cull from the larger seventeen-CD ...
Continue ReadingA Night At The Family Dog/Go Ride The Music/West Pole 2-DVD
by Doug Collette
A Night At The Family Dog/Go Ride The Music/West Pole Mercury Studios2023 Close to three hours of footage taken from television programs curated by the late Ralph J. Gleason, esteemed journalist, co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine and passionate advocate of music from the mid-to-late Sixties, A Night At The Family Dog/Go Ride The Music/West Pole offers more than just a glance at the culture of the times, but insightful perspectives on the artistic movement(s) as ...
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