More than fifteen years since the death of lead
guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead
stand as a symbol of the unresolved cultural clashes of
the 1960s. The band's thirty-year odyssey is a testament
to the American imagination, with thousands of live
concert recordings by fans and the band itself,
preserved alongside an impressive array of images,
artwork, and paraphernalia. Most recently, the Grateful
Dead have released from their vault their entire 1972
European tour, one of the largest boxed sets of live
music-seventy-three compact discs-ever released. This
publicly available archive of recorded music lays the
groundwork for David Malvinni's exploration of the
band's musical signature as the ultimate jam band in
Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock Improvisation.
Malvinni considers a select group of songs from the
Dead's early repertoire, from its unique covers of
"Viola Lee Blues," "Midnight Hour," and "Love Light" to
original masterpieces like "Dark Star." Marrying basic
music analysis to philosophical frames offered by
improvisatory musings of Heidegger, Derrida, and
Deleuze, Malvinni presents the core aesthetic underlying
the Dead's musical styling. In tracing the evolution of
the band's unique jam style, Malvinni outlines the
Dead's gift as gatherers and inventors of old and new
soundscapes in their multifaceted improvisations. Like
no other band, the Dead brought together a variety of
styles from roots and folk to country and modal jazz to
postmodern European art music. Devoted Deadheads reveled
in the band's polyglot, risk-filled approach to playing
live and the joint band-audience quest to reach a type
of sonic cosmic ecstasy, commonly described as the "X
factor." Although fans and scholars alike recognize the
Grateful Dead as icons of psychedelic music, the band's
improvisatory approach still remains an enigma to the
uninitiated. In Grateful Dead and the Art of Rock
Improvisation, Malvinni unravels this mystery, walking
readers through the band's musical decision-making
process. Written for rock music fans with little to no
background in music theory, as well as scholars and
students of popular music culture, the book reveals the
method behind the seeming chaos of America's greatest
jam band.
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