✦ THE SHAKEDOWN ARCHIVES The Shelf Browse on Amazon →
The books behind every video

The Research
Shelf.

Forty-one titles, out in the open. People ask where the research comes from - so here it is, the whole shelf. Every date, every venue, every number on the channel traces back to a page on it. Read the way we read.

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Not memory - pages

Nothing here runs on "I think I read once." Every claim has a citation, and this is the shelf those citations come off of.

Primary sources first

Hunter's own journals. Lesh's memoir. The tapers' own compendiums. The people who were actually in the room, in their own words.

So you can check the work

A head who's read everything and seen five hundred shows should be able to check a claim and nod - not roll their eyes. That's the whole point of keeping receipts.

All 41, on the shelf

Every title is on Amazon · tap through to read
History

A Long Strange Trip

Dennis McNally

The Inside History of the Grateful Dead - the definitive account, by the band's own publicist and historian.

History

So Many Roads

David Browne

The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead, told through pivotal days across the whole thirty-year arc.

History

No Simple Highway

Peter Richardson

A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead - the band read against the America it moved through.

History

Why the Grateful Dead Matter

Michael Benson

The short, sharp case for the band's lasting cultural weight.

History

Aces Back to Back

Scott W. Allen

The History of the Grateful Dead, 1965-2013 - a brick of tour lore and one of the deepest references out there.

History

The Last Great Dream

Dennis McNally

How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties - the roots the band grew out of.

History

Heads

Jesse Jarnow

A Biography of Psychedelic America - the Deadhead world as a thread through the whole culture.

Oral history

This Is All a Dream We Dreamed

Blair Jackson & David Gans

An oral history of the Grateful Dead - the story in the voices of the people who lived it.

Interviews

Conversations with the Dead

David Gans

The Grateful Dead Interview Book - the band on the record, at length, in their own words.

Oral history

Dark Star

Robert Greenfield

An oral biography of Jerry Garcia, assembled from those who knew him.

Interviews

Reckoning

Alan Paul

Conversations With the Grateful Dead - interviews that became a lot of the quotes you hear here.

Interviews

Jerry on Jerry

Dennis McNally

The unpublished Jerry Garcia interviews - Garcia explaining Garcia.

Band memoir

Searching for the Sound

Phil Lesh

My Life with the Grateful Dead - how an avant-garde trumpet player came to hear the bass as a lead voice.

Band memoir

Deal

Bill Kreutzmann

My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead - from behind the kit.

Primary source

The Silver Snarling Trumpet

Robert Hunter

Hunter's own lost journal from the Palo Alto years - the closest thing to a diary of the band before the band.

Insider memoir

Living with the Dead

Rock Scully

Twenty years on the bus with Garcia and the Grateful Dead, by the manager who was there for the wildest of it.

Crew memoir

Home Before Daylight

Steve Parish

My Life on the Road with the Grateful Dead - the crew's-eye view from the man beside Garcia.

Insider memoir

Friend of the Devil

Len Dell'Amico

My Wild Ride with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, by Garcia's longtime film and video collaborator.

Photo memoir

Dancing with the Dead

Rosie McGee

A photographic memoir of the good old days, 1964-1974, from inside the San Francisco scene.

Memoir

Bohemian Ghosts

Dewey Paul Moffitt

A first-person memoir out of the same bohemian world the band came up in.

Memoir

Bird's Eye View

Blackbird & Beachcomber

A view from the crowd and the road - the fan's-eye archive of the Grateful Dead.

Biography

Garcia: An American Life

Blair Jackson

The landmark Garcia biography - the life told in full, with the music at its center.

Biography

Bear

Robert Greenfield

The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III - chemist, soundman, the man behind the Wall of Sound.

Biography

American Legends: The Life of Jerry Garcia

Charles River Editors

A compact life of Garcia - the quick-reference biography.

Tour lore

Songs to Fill the Air

Scott W. Allen

Tales of the Grateful Dead - road stories and lore, deep and affectionate.

Tour lore

Were They Ever Here at All?

Scott W. Allen

More epic tales - the companion volume, deeper into the road stories.

Tour lore

Grateful Dead Tour Tales, Vol. One

George Michaels

1984-1987, told from inside the touring years.

Tour lore

Grateful Dead Tour Tales, Vol. Two

George Michaels

1988-1989, the stadium era up close.

Scene history

Sharing in the Groove

Mike Ayers

The untold story of the '90s jam-band explosion and the scene the Dead seeded.

Jam lineage

One Way Out

Alan Paul

The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band - the jam-world cousin, from the same author as Reckoning.

Tape canon

The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Vol. 1

Getz & Dwork

1959-1974 on tape, show by show - how heads argued which night was THE night.

Tape canon

The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Vol. 2

Getz & Dwork

1975-1985, the in-depth guide through the band's densest touring stretch.

Tape canon

The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Vol. 3

Getz & Dwork

The final volume of the award-winning trilogy that mapped the live archive.

Tape canon

The Deadhead's Taping Addendum

Getz, Dyke & Dwork

The follow-up to the trilogy - the corrections and additions the tapers kept finding.

Reference

DeadBase 50

John W. Scott et al.

The statistical bible. Fifty years of setlists, every date and venue, cross-indexed. Where the numbers come from.

Lyrics

The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics

David G. Dodd

Every lyric, sourced and footnoted - where the songs' references actually come from.

Photography

The Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall

Jim Marshall

Photographs and stories from the formative years, 1966-1977, by one of rock's great lenses.

Deep cut

Dylan & the Grateful Dead

Howard F. Weiner

A Tale of Twisted Fate - the two-headed history of the Dylan collaborations.

Lyrics

Golden Wisdom from the Grateful Dead

Charles Beard

Life Lessons in their Songs - the lyrics read as philosophy.

Primer

The Golden Road and Beyond

Grateful Dead

A Grateful Dead primer - the on-ramp for the whole story.

Fun

The Unofficial Grateful Dead Trivia Book

Finbar Devine

235 questions on songs, venues and lyrics - the pub-quiz end of the shelf.

The whole shelf, in one place.

All forty-one - the histories, the memoirs, the oral histories, the taping compendiums, the setlist bibles. If you want the sources behind the stories, they're all here.

Open the Research Shelf on Amazon →
Past the histories, there's a shorter shelf too - the Shakedown Picks: the extras, not the syllabus.