Tiger in a Trance - Grateful Dead Book Review

Tiger in a Trance

I did a lot of reading during the 3 years hiatus from this blog and one of the books that I enjoyed was Tiger in a Trance by Max Ludington.

This is an autobiographical account of a head on tour during the 1980s in his teens and twenties.  It is really great to read his account of life on tour including:

• making ends meet on tour
• drug use on tour 
• life in the GD parking lot
• romantic encounters and relationships on tour 
• travelling throughout America on tour

It delivers the kind of stories you would hope for and definitely made my pulse quicken a little as I read his account of events like going to shows and taking psychedelics.

You get to read a little about some family type relationships that the protagonist manages, as well as romantic ones.  But if you are like me, you are reading for the extensive accounts of tour life - going to shows, getting to the next show, getting a hotel room, dodging the police.  This book does deliver on this account.

One quote that really got me from this book was Max describing a night of tripping after a show (at this point he's back in the hotel):

"... I was hit with the change-of-atmosphere bug, a mild case of it since the acid had mostly worn off, but there it was. Fresh air, new places.I ppushed myself into a standing position against the wall and felt for the room key in my pocket.  I pulled it out and looked at the blue plastic Sheraton diamond.  I would need it to get past security in the lobby."

Suffice to say little moments like these are what triggered great memories for me as a reader.

The protagonist ends up leaving the tour scene and experiencing a whole different kind of life experience (and probably this other part of his life would make a great novel as well). He checks back in on tour after and things have changed or he has changed so the road seems to end.

This book is a thoroughly enjoyable for fans of the Grateful Dead, drug culture, or coming of age stories.  If you are a fan of all then it is a must read.

Tiger in a Trance Book Rating: N/A(not going to do any more numerical ratings of books like this because they are not perfect yet I am too appreciative of their existence to give anything but a 10.0).

DeadBase X Book Review

This is the granddaddy of all Grateful Dead books and a must have for any tape trader or Dead fanatic. It's subtitle is The Complete Guide to Grateful Dead Song Lists. The key words in the title are that it is a complete guide to the song lists - much more than just the song lists themselves.

This reference book contains such an interesting and thorough breakdown of Grateful Dead set list information that I don't even know where to begin describing it.

While I have never read DeadBase from one page to the next (that's not the idea), I have referenced the book frequently during the writing of this blog for information such as the following:

• when a song started being played
• when a song stopped being played
• how often the song was played
• what set was the song played in usually (and all exceptions)
  
• what songs frequently came before and after

All of that type of information is available at a glance for any song the Grateful Dead played. And that is just the beginning. You can see breakdowns of the timings for tapes after tape that shows how long each song is (and transcribes every spoken word between songs). What is the longest known version of Eyes of the World on tape, you ask? Well it was June 1th, 1963 clocking in at 21:05 (took me less than a minute to get that info).

There are also counts of how many times each song was played year in year out and a ton of Deadhead demographic information that the Deadbase X team collected through surveys of Dead tapers and fans.

The most enjoyable part of Deadbase is the show reviews in which a variety of reviewers gives a summary of the concert. I've read reviews of mainly later Dead shows and I think that every review is fromm someone who attended the show. There are over 400 concert reviews in Deadbase.

When I bought Deadbase X a few years ago, I had to buy it directly from the authors as it is now out of print. I was able to get included several of the annual "DeadBase Yearbooks" from 1989 through 1992. These yearbooks have pictures from many shows, show reviews from every show in the given year, ticket stubs and venue seating charts from every show.

The guys from Deadbase really know how to capture the Grateful Dead experience because they chronicle things like "what people were talking about in the parking lot" for each show too. If you have great memories of Dead shows, I guarantee you the DeadBase books will unearth memories you have long forgotten and this can be a very sweet (and bittersweet) proposition.

As an aside, I had the pleasure of a brief e-mail exchange with one of the authors of DeadBase when I purchased the books and I mentioned off handedly how surpised I was that it had already been 10 years since the Grateful Dead ceased to be (due to Garcia's death). He wrote back a note and we briefly discussed how it had been too painful to even listen to the music for a long time after Jerry's death.

At the time when I ordered DeadBase X, (it must have been 2005) I had just started listening again and it was very emotional for me - but also very positive. My renewed interest in the Grateful Dead experience and music led to me re-collecting all the music, buying all of the books again, and ultimately the creation of this blog. It was nice to hear from the author himself about his experience, and I've enjoyed DeadBase X ever since.

DeadBase X Book Rating on a Scale of 1-10: X.0 (10.0)