Customer Reviews

Grateful Dead: The Music Never Stopped

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Back when Blair Jackson's first book was released in mid '83, there wasn't exactly a flood of Dead books on the market. The commercial success of In The Dark was still several years off and the Dead could still play medium size places. In fact, the first chapter of the book is about the band's weekend run on the beach in Ventura July '82. Happily, I attended those shows and it was quite cool seeing an a review of those shows turning up in an actual book! The second chapter starts with the band's origins and the final chapter ends with a review of the band's New Year's Eve show in '82. Along the way, Blair gives us good insight into the band's history and uses many interviews from various sources which fill out the book. While the band's history has been the topics of many books since, this one still holds a special place for me. In the Fall of '82, the Dead were introducing new songs and we were sure a new album would be out soon. The band was playing weekend runs at places like The Greek, Ventura which was right on the beach and places like The Frost. It was a wonderful time to be a fan. The book also contains a fold out family tree, a discography with reviews and ratings (some of which I agree with, others not so much). There's even a very, very short list of tapes to look for to which various tape collectors contributed. As I said earlier, there's not much info here that you won't find in other places in sometimes greater detail but if you can find it cheap, why not.