Barry Barnes - The Grateful Deads 100 Essential Songs: The Music Never Stops

The Grateful Deads 100 Essential Songs

Bill Grahams Quote at Cal-Expo, May 1992

The Grateful Deads 100 Essential Songs

The Music Never Stops

Barry Barnes

Bob Trudeau

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All images are courtesy of Barry Barnes.

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Trudeau, Bob, 1940 author. | Barnes, Barry, 1944 author.

Title: The Grateful Deads 100 essential songs : the music never stops / Bob Trudeau, Barry Barnes.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018012686 (print) | LCCN 2018013483 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538110584 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538110577 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Grateful Dead (Musical group) | Grateful Dead (Musical group)Discography.

Classification: LCC ML421.G72 (ebook) | LCC ML421.G72 T78 2018 (print) | DDC 782.42166092/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012686

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Bob Trudeau deadicates this book to his granddaughter, Cleo, in the hopes that she will enjoy this music as she grows into adulthood, and to his wife, Pat: what a long, great trip its been.

Barry Barnes deadicates this book to Bart Biechele, who insisted Barry attend his first Grateful Dead performance in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 16, 1974, and to his wife, Chris, who was adventurous enough to see 150 shows with him.

Preface

This book project began informally in February 2017, at the twentieth annual meeting of the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus, a section of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association conference in Albuquerque. At a preconference workshop led by Stephen Ryan of Rowman & Littlefield publishers, Bob Trudeau on the spur of the moment decided to pursue a project documenting 100 essential Grateful Dead songs. Soon after, Barry Barnes joined the project, and together weve been engaged in a labor of love, focusing on songs we think are the most essential for a serious appreciation of the music of the Grateful Dead.

It takes a village to write a book, and this project has been nurtured by the spirit of the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus, most of whom are academics studying the Dead from various disciplinary perspectives. Barry has been involved with the Caucus since 1999, almost from its beginning in 1998. Bob discovered the Caucus while attending the Unbroken Chain conference at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in November 2007, which was his introduction to scholarly analysis of the Deads music and its impact on society. We have enjoyed the support of many of our colleagues in the Caucus. They are also part of the genesis of this project.

Both of us have been fans of the Grateful Deadthat is, Deadheadssince the early 1970s, and we both feel our lives literally were changed by our involvement with this music. The major goal of this project is to share the significance of this special music with our readersthose who might be familiar with the Dead, those who might not be as involved as we have been, and hopefully even with newbies to the Grateful Dead. We want this music never to stop.

Our Stories

Barrys Story

In grade school I took piano lessons for a while and played the trumpet in junior high, but Im certainly not a musician. What I am, however, is a passionate music listener and have been as far back as I can remember. That passion for listening to music increased as I got older and led me to open a record store from 1973 to 1976 and to become a DJ on the first progressive FM rock station in Kansas City during that time. It was during this period that I first began to appreciate the Grateful Dead. Although I bought their first album in 1968, I didnt care for it and still find it the least enjoyable of all their subsequent releases. I saw the Dead for the first time in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 16, 1974.

I continued to see the Dead about once a year when they played in Kansas City. There were a few years when they didnt come to town, but my appreciation of their music continued to grow as I began to listen to bootleg LPs and a few cassettes. In 1985, after having seen them twelve times, I scored tickets to their twentieth anniversary shows in Berkeley, and that was when I really got it. I understood that their music was all about danceperhaps even the cosmic dance of the universe! And the combination of the delightful community of Deadhead listeners dancing to the unique improvisation of the Deads music made it clear to me that I needed to see moremuch, much more of the Grateful Dead.

I had completed my MBA in 1984, and at the Berkeley shows in 1985, it became clear to me that not only was the Deads music improvisational, but their behind-the-scenes business organization must also be improvisational in order to have successfully navigated the challenges of the music industry for twenty years. So I knew then that there were business lessons from the Grateful Dead that needed to be studied and shared, and I was the one to do that. I realized I needed to see more Dead performances, not only to feed my passion, but also to gain a better understanding of the lessons I intuitively knew were there. This was really the beginning of my own long strange trip, during which I taped 189 of the 194 Grateful Dead shows I saw.

My epiphany at the Berkeley shows led me to quit my job, go back to school, and earn a PhD in business so I could gain a deeper understanding of business theory and terminology, all to be able to explain what was unique about the Deads business. And of course, I increased the frequency of seeing the Dead to about fifteen shows a year... as part of my research! I also began to connect with Dead insiders and knowledgeable outsiders, and I started interviewing them. When I finished my PhD, I began teaching and continued seeing the Dead. I also began to incorporate what I had seen in the Dead into my teaching and scholarly writing, and all of this was aimed at writing a business book about the Dead, which ultimately became Everything I Know about Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead: The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long Strange Trip , published in November 2011. Since then Ive continued to expand my thoughts and beliefs about the Deads business side. Ive written more articles, and since 1999, Ive met annually in Albuquerque with the multidisciplinary Caucus group.

Bobs Story

Like Barry, I took piano lessons as a child but focused much more on listening to music than on playing it. I grew up in a household that continually had music in the background, either classical music or standards from the American songbook. In college I followed fellow students and now-famous musicians Buffy Sainte-Marie and Taj Mahal when they were starting out, not to mention a capella singing groups, square dancing music, and so on.