Tag Archives: Grateful Dead

Book Review:  A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead by Dennis McNally – Part Four: Music and Dead Heads

As I mentioned before, offstage (and sometimes on) the Grateful Dead were often not exemplary in their behavior. In fact, with few exceptions, their personal lives seemed to stagger from one dysfunctional situation to the next. Although everyone regarded Jerry … Continue reading

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Book Review:  A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead by Dennis McNally – Part Three: Psychedelics and the Gestalt Mind

As I read on in A Long Strange Trip, I realize that it is important to remember that the idiosyncratic behavior of the Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, especially concerning drugs and alcohol but also the tendency to … Continue reading

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Book Review:  A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead by Dennis McNally – Part Two: Locale

Although the Grateful Dead eventually toured all over the United States and around the world, their origin story is inexorably linked with the San Francisco Bay Area. The late sixties, when the Dead came to prominence, was a heady time … Continue reading

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Book Review:  A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead by Dennis McNally – Part One: Background

I don’t think I ever heard of the Grateful Dead until in 1970 at the age of seventeen I headed down to Santa Clara University from Seattle for my first and only year of college. I was immature, naive, and … Continue reading

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Book Review: A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History by Dominick Cavallo

I came into the sixties indirectly – that is, in the backwash of the early seventies. Gone were the Diggers, the SDS, Woodstock, the Summer of Love, the whole Flower Power scene, and other manifestations that made the era so … Continue reading

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Book Review: Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America by Jesse Jarnow

I find it difficult to criticize this book because I can appreciate the good intentions of the author, but criticize it I must.  It could have been so much more than it is.  It purports to be a history of … Continue reading

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