Description
Book SynopsisOf all the musical developments of rock in the 1960s, one in particular fundamentally changed the music’s structure and listening experience: the incorporation of extended improvisation into live performances. While many bands—including Cream, Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground—stretched out their songs with improvisations, no band was more identified with the practice than the Grateful Dead. In
Get Shown the Light Michael Kaler examines how the Dead’s dedication to improvisation stemmed from their belief that playing in this manner enabled them to touch upon transcendence. Drawing on band testimonials and analyses of early recordings, Kaler traces how the Dead developed an approach to playing music that they believed would facilitate their spiritual goals. He focuses on the band’s early years, the significance of their playing Ken Kesey’s Acid Test parties, and their evolving exploration of the myriad musical and spiritual possibilities t
Trade Review“Michael Kaler demonstrates that the pursuit of something esoteric, essential, and religious in nature drove the Grateful Dead’s artistic path. Persuasively arguing that the Dead believed that improvisational music has the power to evoke transcendence and foster collective consciousness,
Get Shown the Light makes an important contribution to the growing body of work that interrogates the relationship between music, religiosity, and American culture.” -- Ariella Werden-Greenfield, coeditor of * This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity *
“Ever since the 1960s, critics, fans, and band members understood that something powerful and unusual was at work when the Grateful Dead took the stage. ‘Every place we play is church’ became the common refrain to explain that elusive ethos, but tracing what that unorthodox spirituality consisted of and how it came to characterize the band’s concerts has challenged observers and inveigled scholars for decades. Michael Kaler brings a musician’s perspective to a religious studies exploration of this seminal topic, showing how Dead shows achieved what both band and fans recognized as something more than the typical concert experience, one that had a distinct and distinctive spiritual quality.” -- Nicholas G. Meriwether, Haight Street Art Center, San Francisco
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
An Autobiographical Introduction 1
1. The Grateful Dead: A Spiritually Motivated, Improvising Rock Band 5
2. Setting the Scene: Where They Came From 22
3. How the Grateful Dead Learned to Jam: Building a Framework for Improvisation 45
4. Improvisational Tactics, 1965–1974: Roads Taken, and Some That Were Not Taken 73
5. Writing About Improvisation: Approaches to Understanding Spontaneous Playing 125
6. Other Improvising Rock Bands: Similar Directions, Different Motivations 139
7. Music, Transcendent Spiritual Experience, and the Grateful Dead: How They Came Together 161
8. The Grateful Dead’s Spiritual Context: The Acid Tests and Afterwards 185
9. What They Did: How the Grateful Dead Joined Their Musical and Spiritual Imperatives 201
Appendix. Grateful Dead Personnel and Performances 237
Notes 241
Bibliography 265
Index 281
