Ladies and Gentelmen: The Grateful Dead

Searching for the sound, Living with the dead, and The Illustrated Dead are probably the most well known Grateful Dead books out there. I have two copies of Searching for the Sound (one I bought and one was a gift).  But to get through those books you pretty much need to be a Deadhead. No one who isn’t really into the band and loves the music would sit through hundreds of pages of rambling about a band they don’t like.

Even as a deadhead it takes me time to get through a book like The Illustrated Trip or as I like to call the book “a PhD in GD”.

 

Along comes Michelle Hollow and she writes a book called “Grateful Dead, What a Long, Strange Trip Its Been”, intended to introduce young people and teens to the music and the people of the Dead. In 88 pages Michelle give newcomers a full history lesson, including references to all the members in all the different years of the dead, things as obvious in a Dead Biography as Hunter, Dylan, Gans, Kesey, and Kerouac; to obscure things like New Riders of the Purple Sage, Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, and influence of Miles Davis and John Coltrane on the band.


I am glad that my job is not editing Michelle’s book. Her ability to condense over forty years of music into this book is incredible. With everything I know about the Dead I didn’t feel like it was missing anything. When I asked a friend to read, she read it in one night, and had a good understanding of the dead. This is a great gift for the person you have been telling for years that they need the Dead in their lives, but have never understood what you were talking about. Or for the teenager who wants to understand what Mom and Dad have ranting about for all these years. This book is a perfect intro to a band that will suck you in and make you want to get the PhD.