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Grateful Dead Concerts
Bill Graham once quipped, "There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert." The lengthy improvisational escapades with setlists never repeating drew legions of followers who were afraid to miss a single performance.


Grateful Dead Scrapbook by Ben Fong-Torres
Ben Fong-Torres pairs a written history of the band with removeable ephemera: replicas of bumper stickers, backstage passes, concert flyers and typed correspondence from the band. An accompanying CD adds another layer, featuring interviews with Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Steve Parish, along with excerpts from press conferences. By having readers handle the history, and not simply read it, mirrors the Grateful Dead concert experience, which was never intended for passive liste
Stuart Ake
2 days ago3 min read


Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead by Bill Kreutzmann
Bill Kreutzmann’s Deal is not a historian’s chronicle of the Grateful Dead. It reads like a field recording from the drummer’s stool told by the man who held the beat. Co-written with journalist Benjy Eisen, the book is exceptionally candid, percussive and sometimes messy in a way that feels honest rather than careless.
Stuart Ake
Jan 184 min read


DeadBase by John Scott, Mike Dolgushkin and Stu Nixon
DeadBase contains the most complete and accurate listing of Grateful Dead concerts and song lists known.
Stuart Ake
Jan 183 min read


Deadhead Forever by Scott Meyer
You buy an old VW microbus. While cleaning it out, you discover a Deadhead’s scrapbook—part tour diary, part time capsule, part reliquary. That’s the setup for Deadhead Forever: Property of Haze, a fictional journal presented as “found” ephemera: musings, newspaper clippings, setlists, Ticketron stubs, photos, “Dupree’s Diamond News”–style odds & ends and a hundred little scraps that stitch together a surprisingly cohesive narrative. The story is invented, but the details are
Stuart Ake
Dec 31, 20253 min read


Dead Letters: Grateful Dead Fan Mail by Paul Grushkin
Paul Grushkin’s "Dead Letters: Grateful Dead Fan Mail" frames the relationship between band and fans through the handcrafted art adorning the envelopes mailed to Grateful Dead Ticket Sales (GDTS), turning the humble #10 envelope into a canvas, a calling card and for some, a competitive edge.
Stuart Ake
Dec 28, 20254 min read


Barton Hall 5/8/77 by Larry Reichman
Barton Hall 5/8/77 gathers Reichman’s photographs from the night of the most widely circulated, adored, debated and second-guessed Grateful Dead concert of all time—most of these images published for the first time.
Stuart Ake
Dec 27, 20253 min read


Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead by Phil Lesh
Phil Lesh approaches memory like he approached music—with precision, curiosity and the occasional dissonant note. Searching for the Sound isn’t a tell-all or a nostalgia trip. It’s the bassist’s attempt to trace the arc from Palo Alto jam sessions to the strange, mythic machinery the Grateful Dead became.
Stuart Ake
Dec 26, 20252 min read


Grateful Dead: The Music Never Stopped by Blair Jackson
Published in 1983, Jackson’s chronicle of the Grateful Dead begins where myth meets music. What could have been a dry chronicle of dates, albums, and line-ups instead pulses with narrative, memories and voices. He interviews, he observes; he leans into the messy, humming heart of what it meant to be part of the phenomenon, not just witness it.
Stuart Ake
Dec 26, 20253 min read


Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection by Brian Anderson
In Loud and Clear, Brian Anderson explores the band’s search for sonic purity. The Wall of Sound wasn’t just a PA—it was a skyline three stories high containing some 600 speakers powered by McIntosh amps stacked like steel towers.
Stuart Ake
Dec 18, 20253 min read
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