The Grateful Dead: This Is All a Dream We Dreamed

“This Is All a Dream We Dreamed is an epic jam.”—Vanity Fair The Grateful Dead are without question one of the most iconic and mythical bands in America. Even today, twenty years after the group’s final concert and the death of leader Jerry Garcia, the former band members and legions of fans continue to celebrate their unique musical and cultural legacy. In "This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead", Blair Jackson and David Gans have tapped into their four decades of Grateful Dead journalism to create a wholly unique oral history of this remarkable band that contributed so much to three generations. "This Is All a Dream" traces the band’s evolution from its folk/bluegrass beginnings through the jug band craze, an early incarnation as Rolling Stones wannabes, feral psychedelic warriors, the American jam band that blazed through the ‘70s, to the shockingly popular yet icono-clastic stadium-filling band of later years. They broke every rule of the music business along the way, taking risks, venturing into new territory, fusing inspired ideas and techniques with intuition and utter fearlessness to create the sound unlike anything heard or seen before. Blair Jackson and David Gans, two of the very most respected chroniclers of the Dead, here reveal the band’s deep story through the words of its members and their creative collabor-ators plus diverse fans. “You could hardly ask for a more ideal configuration for a retelling of the Grateful Dead’s story...” — San Francisco Chronicle Blair Jackson wrote Grateful Dead: The Music Never Stopped and Garcia: An American Life, as well as 27 issues of the legendary fanzine, The Golden Road. David Gans has published three books on the Dead. He is host and producer of the nationally syndicated Grateful Dead Hour, cohost of SiriusXM’s Tales from the Golden Road. In addition, he is a working musician and until recently was an exceptionally popular host on KPFA Radio. Derk Richardson is a veteran freelance music and travel journalist who has also reviewed restaurants for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Oakland Magazine. For the past 21 years he has hosted a free-form music show – Hear and Now - on KPFA-FM.