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Best of
Counter-Culture

2002

A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead

music

biography

non-fiction

history

Dennis McNally - 2002

The complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist–a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture.From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture.

The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes.Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco–an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation.Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.

How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records

Frank Broughton - 2002

From the authors of "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, " comes a readable, fun, and illuminating guide to spinning records, perfect for neophytes as well as the established DJ.

Illustrations.

Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader

Brion Gysin - 2002

First anthology of writings of a brilliant avant-garde figureBrion Gysin (1916 - 1986) was a visual artist, historian, novelist, and an experimental poet credited with the discovery of the 'cut-up' technique -- a collage of texts, not pictures -- which his longtime collaborator William S.

Burroughs put to more extensive use. He is also considered one of the early innovators of sound poetry, which he defines as 'getting poetry back off the page and into performance.' Back in No Time gathers materials from the entire Gysin oeuvre: scholarly historical study, baroque fiction, permutated and cut-up poetry, unsettling memoir, selections from The Process and The Last Museum, and his unproduced screenplay of Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch. In addition, the Reader contains complete texts of several Gysin pieces that are difficult to find, including "Poem of Poems," "The Pipes of Pan," and "A Quick Trip to Alamut."

Echoes: The Best Of Pink Floyd

David Gilmour - 2002

(Music Sales America).