All the Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows -- Ray Robertson, Paperback

A Grateful Dead concert, Ray Robertson argues, is life.

Like life, it can be alternately compelling and lackluster; familiar and foreign; occasionally sublime and sometimes insipid. Although the Grateful Dead stopped the day Jerry Garcia's heart did, what the band left behind is the next best thing to being there in the third row, courtesy of the group's unorthodox decision to record all of their concerts. Meaning that it's possible to follow the band's evolution (and devolution) through their shows, from the R&B-based garage band at the beginning, to the jazz-rock conjurers at their creative peak, to the lumbering monolith of their decline.

In All the Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows, Robertson listens to and writes ecstatically about fifty of the band's most important and memorable concerts in order to better understand who the Grateful Dead were, what they became, and what they meant--and what they continue to mean.

Author: Ray Robertson
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 11/07/2023
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.19h x 5.20w x 1.02d
ISBN: 9781771965705

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/06/2023 pg. 1
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2023

About the Author

Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, five collections of nonfiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. He contributed the liner notes to Dave's Picks #45, a four-CD compilation of the Grateful Dead's 10/1/77 and 10/1/77 shows in Portland, Oregon. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives Toronto.