Sweet Chaos : The Grateful Dead's American Adventure

Rating:
Summary: Not very good
Review: As a European Dead Head who never did get to see the Dead, I found it very informative as opposed to other books on the dead. Much broader in its historical context, one has to be interested in more than just the Dead to enjoy this book. One must be looking for more than just the fact, that Garcia always wore a black t-shirt. Sometimes Brightman talks too much about her side of the youth-rebellion, the political one, (especially since the title of the book indicates that this is about the Dead's adventure), but I still feel it gave me more useful insight to the Band and the times, than most other books on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: A Unique Angle on an American Phenomenon
Review: Carol Brightman, sister of GD lighting designer Candace Brightman and veteran activist, has an interesting take on the Grateful Dead. Her book is an outsider's look in, particularly from the point of view of a antiwar activist who cut sugarcane for Castro and travelled to Vietnamese hamlets. Now she asks: how come this freakin' band is the only thing left from the 1960s?

Dennis McNally's biography of the Dead is still the first book anybody interested should read (well, after Wolfe, Kerouac, Kesey, and David Gans' Conversations with the Dead), but Brightman has an interesting angle. Her take on the reasons for the Dead's staying power is evenhanded and convincing, and her criticism of the Dead has haven for people disillusioned with politics is only fair. It almost doesn't matter that she could have used some help with structure--the organization is a mess, jumping from the 60s to the 90s, from Berkeley to Europe 72, from history lessons in the Weatherman to sharp-eyed analysis of Hunter lyrics. You never know what you'll find when you turn the page.

Or maybe with a book called Sweet Chaos, that's intentional.

Rating:
Summary: What is this?
Review: I am actually only halfway through this work, and am debating whether or not I will finish it. Carol, what ARE you writing about? Do we really need yet one more rehash of the Acid Tests? Do we care at ALL about your acitivies in Cuba and North Vietnam (I might suggest that in the case of the latter country your youthful idealism was particularly misguided, and is shameful to the 50,000+ Americans who died in Vietnam, even though I agree it was an unjust war)?

Including the Dead in the title of this book is disgraceful. This story was better left spoken to friends in your living room. For those who really want to read about 60s radicalism, the Dead and other related matters, there are a number of better options out there.

This book reads like an unfocused, first-year graduate student research paper. Perhaps a rewrite might elicit a better grade from Professor Jane Fonda, or whomever the intended audience of this book may be.

Rating:
Summary: A Unique Angle on an American Phenomenon
Review: Looking for a history of the Dead? Go elsewhere! As other reviewers have commented, this book is self-indulgent, and spends too much time on the politics of the Sixties (as if that was the only decade during which the Dead were performing and recording!), despite tha author's repeated statements that the band was apolitical.

Aside from the above, this book is also a poor choice because it leaves out so much. There is no mention on the deaths of Pigpen and other deceased members of the group. TC gets very little coverage, as did the albums on which he played. "Europe 72" is ignored, as are many of the post-Sixties albums. I could go on and on...

Save your money, friends.

Rating:
Summary: What a long, strange read it was
Review: Looking for a history of the Dead? Go elsewhere! As other reviewers have commented, this book is self-indulgent, and spends too much time on the politics of the Sixties (as if that was the only decade during which the Dead were performing and recording!), despite tha author's repeated statements that the band was apolitical.

Aside from the above, this book is also a poor choice because it leaves out so much. There is no mention on the deaths of Pigpen and other deceased members of the group. TC gets very little coverage, as did the albums on which he played. "Europe 72" is ignored, as are many of the post-Sixties albums. I could go on and on...

Save your money, friends.

Rating:
Summary: An ambiguous read
Review: Ms. Brightman is clearly intelligent and well organized. However, the goal of the book often appears to steer the writer to make this very observation. There is quite a whiff of ego in this work. While I did read the political sections out of a vague guilt or distant interest, I found them to be particularly self-indulgent. I knew I was in trouble when she quotes Robert Hunter leading her to examine "Ship of Fools," and she has to check sources for the words. Not a good sign, although perhaps this distance allows a decent critical eye instead of the heavy syrup often attributed to Dead books. Still, every few pages I get a vision of the author jumping from the page, saying "Look at me!" This book is worth reading, chiefly because Mr. Garcia is an endlessly fascinating character, but you will not read it twice. Go for the paperback...

Rating:
Summary: This book is only peripherally about the Dead....
Review: The combination seems appealing: the sister of the Dead's lighting coordinator and an award winning author -- one and the same -- and out of it should come some insight into the long strange trip. It is clear that the author is "not on the bus" and misses the target by a few feet. Her insistence on connecting the Grateful Dead to the politics of the 60s and 70s is a far stretch and most of the focus of the book is not on the long strange trip, but the politics of the 70s. One leaves the book with little understanding of the "culture". That notwithstanding, the book is stimulating and thoughtful and well done and recommended for anyone serious about the GD phenomena. However, for the non-deadhead I suggest reading David Gans' books as he is about as dialed in as it gets. I think the definitive book on the Grateful Dead has yet to be written; maybe Rebecca Adams will pull it off.

Rating:
Summary: A better book than shown by reviews here
Review: This book has gotten hammered because it has a lot of autobiography and a lot of political and sociological content.

Listen to most people talk about the Dead, and it's autobiographical, it's about the experience and less about the music. I'm not faulting Brightman for writing about it in that context.

Also, if you are a boomer deadhead, then marches on Washington or the draft as political happenings during the time you began listening, or the Dead's playing on your college campus and your conscious effort to adopt hedonism instead of politics may be describing your trip. This book touches on your life and how the Dead fit into it.

It's NOT a biography of dead members, either.

It's for deadheads, for sure. Ones who had or have other interests outside the minutiae of each song in each performance.

But if your only interest is classifying that really awesome bass line from Philly, or what the best Scarlet Begonias was in 1977, then look elsewhere, the Compediums or Wybenga's book. (I like the latter as well, for different reasons.) If you really want to know all the gory details behind the trip, then Scully or McNally are your guys.

Rating:
Summary: Heart's in the right place, but the mind's a bit muddled
Review: This book is a bit of a hopeless mishmash. The author tries valiantly to put the Dead in the context of the times in which they lived, but she fails in a big way by spending an enormous time describing what they were not -- part of the radical political movements of the 60s and early 70s. And to make matters worst, she drones on endlessly about her own participation in the politics of the day. By the time I reached the end of the book, the whole thing had become a meaningless drone.