For Deadheads, sure, but also rock fans who may wonder where the road led after Jerry died.
What happened after the long, strange trip ended—and then continued.
When Jerry Garcia, the legendary guitarist and de facto frontman of the Grateful Dead, died in 1995, the surviving band members chose to dissolve the band that had toured since 1965. Deadheads the world over were despondent, but it didn’t take long for the “Core Four”—bassist Phil Lesh, rhythm guitar player Bob Weir, and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart—to resume playing in various configurations. In his latest book, San Francisco Chronicle pop music journalist Selvin (Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day, 2016, etc.) digs into the ups and downs of the 20 years following Garcia’s death. Die-hard fans will know most of the stories, but the author does a credible job navigating the countless permutations (RatDog, Further, the Other Ones, Phil and Friends, The Dead) and the revolving door of musicians (Warren Haynes, Bruce Hornsby, Steve Kimock, Trey Anastasio, among others) who played with the remaining members from 1995 through the momentous Fare Thee Well 50th anniversary shows in 2015. Those shows set a record for a concert by a single band, bringing in more than $50 million, demonstrating the remarkable staying power of the Grateful Dead. Though Selvin is “no Deadhead,” he has seen his fair share of shows, and his job at the Chronicle brought him into contact with the members numerous times across the decades. He has also done his homework, interviewing all of the major—and many minor—players involved in the band’s history. Much of the narrative is a litany of endless bickering among the surviving members, rocky terrain that the author handles capably, albeit in workmanlike prose. The book lacks the grace of a Greil Marcus, but the pages turn quickly enough to engage readers intrigued by the Dead’s mystique.
For Deadheads, sure, but also rock fans who may wonder where the road led after Jerry died.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-306-90305-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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