The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics

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Book Reviews of The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics

Book Review: How It Should Be Done
Summary: 5 Stars

In addition to the lyrics written by The Dead's poet-in-residence, Robert Hunter, there are also those to all the other Grateful Dead songs, including a handful of songs that they often recorded but didn't write, such as "Not Fade Away". Each song appears in chronological order with details of first recording & performance, making this a useful reference tome from the get-go.

Next up: you get copious B&W illustrations (effectively cartoons) by Jim Carpenter, set sympathetically into the page, plus a handful of full-page colour illustrations by various hands. To be honest, the Carpenter illustrations don't do much for me, but they do add browsing interest.

Finally, the annotations. Not every song is annotated, but some (e.g. "Stagger Lee") get several pages of notes. Some songs get a full essay of explanation (e.g. John Barlow's note on "Cassidy") while others make do with curious or irrelevant details. For example, we are told the population of Mexicali in 2005 and in 1993, but not in the year that "Mexicali Blues" was written.

Picking on these details only reminds us, though, that this work is the result of a long process involving many contributors bound together solely by a shared love of the subject. It isn't an academic treatise, and doesn't pretend to be.

In production terms, the volume has been expertly typeset in order to keep all the information clear and distinct. The square page means that lyrics and annotation can be closely interrelated, and the binding and paper used are of coffee-table quality.

This is a book that fans will find frequent reasons to revisit, and casual listeners will admire for its clarity and completeness. Lyrics books are a fairly nerdy thing, and this one is more so than many, but its outstanding quality and lack of pretentiousness make this one a model that others would do well to emulate.

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