Full Description
This book offers a spirited analysis of the unique improvisational character of Grateful Dead music and its impact on appreciative fans. The 20 essays capture distinct facets of the Grateful Dead phenomenon from a broad range of scholarly angles. The band's trademark synergizing focus is discussed as a function of complex musical improvisation interlaced with the band members' collective assimilation of an impressive range of marginal musical forms and lyrical traditions. These facets are shown to produce a vibrant Deadhead experience, resulting in community influences still morphing in new directions 45 years after the band's initial impact.
Contents
Table of Contents
Tuning Up
Foreword: The Grateful Dead Phenomenon
STANLEY KRIPPNER
Preface: Kaleidoscopic Entry to the Show
Introduction: "Shall We Go?"
First Set: Musical and Lyrical Elements of Grateful Dead Improvisation
Non-Systematic Thoughts About Improvisation
CRISTIAN AMIGO
Mandalas and the Dead
GRAEME M. BOONE
The Eccentric Revolutions of Phil Lesh
BRENT WOOD
American Chaos: Charles Ives and the Grateful Dead
SHAUGN O'DONNELL
"Mr. Charlie Told Me So": Heidegger and the Dead's Early Assimilation to the Technology of the Blues
DAVID MALVINNI
Dark Star Mandala
GRAEME M. BOONE
"Where All the Pages Are My Days": Metacantric Moments in Deadhead Lyrical Experience
REVELL CARR
"Not Just a Change of Style": Reading Workingman's Dead as an American Commentary with Americana Roots
ERIN MCCOY
Second Set: Some Philosophical Contours of Grateful Dead Improvisation
Improvised Philosophy
ALAN TRIST
"Pouring Its Light Into Ashes": Exploring the Multiplicity of Becoming in Grateful Dead Improvisation
JIM TUEDIO
"Searching for the Sound": Grateful Dead Music and Interpretive Transformation
JASON KEMP WINFREE
Plato's Pharmakon: Grateful Dead Concerts and the Politics of Getting High
ELIZABETH CARROLL
When "Reason Tatters": Nietzsche and the Grateful Dead on Living a Healthy Life
STAN SPECTOR
The Other One and the Other: Moral Lessons from a Reluctant Teacher
STEVEN GIMBEL
Innocence and Experience in the Grateful Dead: A Reading of Stuart Hampshire
NICHOLAS MERIWETHER
Third Set: Experiencing Community Through Grateful Dead Improvisation
Modeling Improvisation
MARY GOODENOUGH
"Mysteries Dark and Vast": Grateful Dead Concerts and Initiation into the Sublime
ERIC K. SILVERMAN
Bears and Flags: The Grateful Dead's America and Bohemian Nationalism
JAY WILLIAMS
Improvising Community: A Hermeneutic Analysis of Deadheads and Virtual Communities
GARY BURNETT
Strategic Improvisation: Management Lessons from the Dead
BARRY BARNES
Cultural Communication Codes Among Deadheads: A Chronological Account of Communicative Improvisation
NATALIE J. DOLLAR
Examining Grateful Dead Improvisation as a Catalyst for Creating Sustained Communitas
AMANDA DIEDERICH-HIRSH
"I Can't Do Anything but Lie": Studying Deadheads While Wearing Simmelian Lenses
REBECCA G. ADAMS
Encore
The Thing Is the Thing Is the Thing Is the Thing Is There Is No Thing
CHRISTIAN CRUMLISH
All His Children Grew and Grew (Who Killed Uncle John?)
DAVID GANS
Greensleeves
The Grateful Dead Came to Our House One Day (with 20 People and a Bottle of LSD): A Story About Discovering the Power of Channeling Healing Energy
JEAN MILLAY
Contributors
Index
