A Critical Survey
In addition to the remarkable variety of contents and approaches represented in the main articles, the collection is framed by a handful of poems, anecdotes, and addenda to enhance the whole package. But it would underestimate this collection’s importance to think of it as a feast for Deadheads.
This offering does more than show the intrinsic interest of the Dead as a musical phenomenon; these essays establish their significance as a watershed in the development of American counterculture, not as a mega-influence (in the manner of the Beatles), but as a microcosm of the many cultural threads that came together in the sixties and continue to weave their way through the very different decades that followed.
