Perspectives on the Grateful Dead: Critical Writings(Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance)

The Grateful Dead, one of the most meticulously documented rock bands, significantly influenced American music and popular culture. Its popularity has endured for three decades despite mixed critical reception. Jerry Garcia, thought of among many as a musical icon and spokesperson for more than one generation of fans, was often equally scorned by various critics. This collection of scholarly essays attests to the varied fields of interest the band and its followers, known as Deadheads, have affected, including psychology, law, and ethnomusicology. The contributions explore the diversity of the culture of fans, empirically analyze the music, apply literary criticism to the lyrics, and explore Dead-related philosophical and theological concepts — in other words, they are as eclectic as the myriad Grateful Dead fans themselves. Appealing to Grateful Dead scholars, fans, and collectors alike, these twenty-two essays are grouped by subject, and each essay includes a bibliography of resources for further research.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Rebecca G. Adams Introduction by Robert G. Weiner Precisely How and Why I Didn't Kill Jerry: Ethnography, Surrealism, and The Millennium Shows by Philip E. Baruth A Pilot Study in Dream Telepathy with the Grateful Dead by Stanley Krippner Legally Dead: The Grateful Dead and American Legal Culture by David Fraser and Vaughan Black The Grateful Dead Onstage in "World Music" by Thomas Vennum, Jr. "No, but I've Been to Shows": Accepting the Dead and Rejecting the Deadheads by David L. Pelovitz Why Are There So Many Jewish Deadheads? by Douglas M. Gertner Bakhtinian Carnival, Corporate Capital, and the Last Decade of the Dead by Brad Lucas Understanding "Show" as a Deadhead Speech Situation by Natalie Dollar Is There a Day of the Month Effect in "Beat It On Down the Line?" by Robert K. Toutkoushian The Grateful Dead Experience: A Factor Analytic Study of the Personalities of People Who Identify with the Grateful Dead by William McCown and Wendy L. Dulaney "High Time" and Ambiguous Harmonic Function by Walter Everett Space, Motion, and Other Musical Metaphors by Shaugn O'Donnell The Grateful Dead Legendstock: Based on Alan Trist's Water of Life -- A Tale of the Grateful Dead by Marjorie C. Luesebrink The Grateful Dead vs. the American Dream? by Jason Palm The Annotated "Ramble on Rose": An installment in The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics (a work in progress) by David Dodd "Laid my proposition down/Laid it on the line": Gambling and the Storyteller in Robert Hunter's Lyrics by Anissa Craghead Grateful Dead: Manifestations from the Collective Unconscious by Mary Goodenough Clinging to the Edge of Magic: Shamanic Aspects of the Grateful Dead by Nancy Reist The Grateful Dead as Community by Rachel Wilgoren Deadhead Tales of the Supernatural: A Folkloristic Analysis by Revell Carr The Piping of Heaven: Reckless Musings on Philosophical Taoism and the Grateful Dead Phenomenon by Joseph P. Noonan III The Ripple Effect by Joseph Holt Afterword The Curriculum of Joy by Steve Silberman

About the Author :
ROBERT G. WEINER is a Reference Librarian at the Mahon Library in Lubbock, Texas. He is the co-author, along with David G. Dodd, of an annotated bibliography of literature on the Grateful Dead entitled, The Grateful Dead and the Deadheads (Greenwood, 1997).