Customer Reviews

Garcia: A Signpost To New Space

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Wow! Someone finally reissued this excellent book. First published by Straight Arrow Publishers, I bought my copy new back in '72 and read it often. It is a great interview with Garcia at a time when the Dead were just taking off. Garcia reveals he "has just made the commitment" to see where the music takes him, and as we all know, the band really went places. Hopefully, the current publishers have reissued it in its original form.

The second part of the book, "A Stoned Sunday Rap," is a great piece that really gets to the heart and soul of the Dead experience, beyond the music. I've always admired the philosophy behind the music for its zen-like approach to life and living; Garcia and Reich tease out the details.

A must-read for anyone who enjoys the Dead. Much better than any of the tell-alls that have been published recently.

I've just finished reading this book for the first time, and as I was nearing the end I started thinking I'd like to come back to this again and again to be reminded of the spirit of those times, and the way to live into the future, and so this truely is a signpost to new space. The Rolling Stone interview is good, real good, but the stoned sunday rap is magic. Charles Reich (visiting Yale law professor and early new age intellectual) opens up, exploring his own journey, like a large innocent child, and Garcia and Mountain Girl stay right with him providing just the right balance, a remarkable and true mix of wisdom and compassion. Many times I laughed out loud, a few times I repeated lines out loud (to help to put myself there?), many times I felt like the two stoned guys, shaking my head and murmuring "right, right, yeah right" to the deep insights. I guess it got me stoned.

In the RS interview I learned alot of the Dead's evolution and trip to that point ('71). In the rap I was right in there and intimate with Jerry's life. Like Reich says this is a book to change and guide one's life (you can see it happening to him during the visit). It is fun and tender and silly and profound, really and truely profound. And timeless.

If you're already a fan of Jerry Garcia, this book is
quite rewarding, entertaining & even enlightening.
The interview really helps you "get to know" Jerry,
where many of his motivations root & bloom--- The
"stoned Sunday rap" should bring a smile to many faces...
you can CLEARLY read that these people are STONED...
and some of the subjects they talk about are indeed
enlightening. The interview took place around 1972,
when all of Jerry's powers were extremely strong and
energetic...before any "touch of grey" kicked in.
This book is no fluff entertainment piece of crap,
but really has substance.

I've read a lot of interviews done with Jerry by many different types of people, but this book contains the one that left me feeling like I'd actually had a conversation with him. We catch Garcia in 1972 here. Pigpen is still alive, Mickey Hart has just left the band, and Jerry's addiction to smoking heroin is still five years away. The adventure of his life is still unfolding, and he seems happy, content, at rest. Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams is his companion, and they have a beautiful house bought with the fruits of his musical skills. They are living legends.

So it's easy to see why Charles Reich tweaks out during the longer part of the book, the "Stoned Sunday Rap." Staying true to the title, it's a conversation between three stoned members of the counterculture, discussing a wide variety of spiritual, psychological and intellectual concepts. It's not the focused discussion centering on Jerry and the Dead you get at the beginning of the book. It's the conversation that every Deadhead wishes they'd had the chance to have with Jerry.

At times Reich's questions, lines of thought and quest for validation from Garcia and Adams become extremely painful and embarrassing to read, but it's fair to assume that most Deadheads would fare little better stoned in the presence of '72 Jerry and Mountain Girl than Reich does. Of course this really doesn't excuse the periods of the conversation where he doesn't let Jerry or Mountain Girl get a word in edgewise. But maybe this is why you get a sense of Jerry's character, depth and compassion that you don't get in other interviews. In the parlance of the times, it's a far out conversation that every Deadhead should experience.

Entertaining and enlightning book.
The first part is mainly straitforward question and answer. The "stoned Sunday rap" is the heart and soul of the book. You feel as if your hanging out with Jerry, Mt. Girl and Charles Reich. Not really an interview but rather a group of people having a "stoned conversation". Some really interesting stuffCharles seems to have dropped all his inhibitions since the first interview and really opens up to Jerry it sometimes seems as though Jerry's interviewing Reich.

The first interview has been Published in the book "Garcia by the editors of Rolling Stone", but the "stoned Sunday rap" makes this a must buy for any fan.

I have the 1st printing so,what can I say I love it!its funny itimate,casual laidback,and definitly magical,thats what Jerry was,if you ask a true Deadhead what it was about him he or she will either say he transended a musician or he was a man beyond description,but he had that special something that in my mind was tied with a alchembic syncronicity,that for some reason he know how to tap into it,like pouring light into a cup,another description would be he did to music what Willy Wonka did for Chocolate,puns,humor included,this book reads itself be well Smitty Deadhead/Taper/bookworm :}

My book has been received in fine condition. Garcia is one of the most accurate and fair participants in an admittedly renaissance culture. Good luck with contextual understandings (have you ever seen an old political joke funny if you didn't know that history?). My history library is smiling-thanxs!

I also recommend Mr. Garcia's film and book on the "Deadheads." The film is set at Winterland Auditorium in the 70's (not the 90's film; altho that work is fair to standard reflections of power and society). The deadhead book is a grand presentation of illustrations and paragraphical delight reflecting a cultural introduction to the fairness of our hippydum that has "saved the world."

This book really gives you insight into Jerry and the band. What they were really up to and how they looked at it. If you are a real fan of the band, then you will find confirmation of your deepest insights. Buy it and let Jerry blow your mind again.

I boght this book a total of three times- first, in its original magazine interview format, over two issues of RS, then in a first edition paperback
when the book was formally published, and agin, some ten years later, when I was sold a copy by a guy outside the Oakland Auditorium for one of the GD's
"year end" runs there.
In its present edition, it is nice to have all the material (text0- of the interviews, but it completely lacks all the pictures included in Rolling Stone's original edition of the book. This may be a small potatoes beef, but
in fact, without the pictures, there's even less a context for people to reference the subject in the era the participants discuss.
If you want a nice insight on the Garcia household on a sunny afternoon, this is an excellent read- before Jerry's smack addiction, and at the height of his influence in the music world just prior to their 1972 tour of Europe. Mountain Girl and Jerry make a hill of beans from Reich's shy pre-outing homosexuality and the California Car Culture, as well as
conversational digressions off the subject of music that are insightful and pithy.
Reich comes off looking like the chela in need of a guru and is dissapointed by Garcia's ineefable denials of the same, but this book will help anyone who has difficulty putting it in perspective a decent
(and from the horse's mouth) oral history of the longest-running, hardest working band outside of showbusiness...

Wonderful! What a legend. Jerry Garcia is one of those people who can make a bad day good, just by reading his quotes, looking at his art or listing to his music. Thank you for the memories.