All the Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows

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.

Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, five collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. He contributed the liner notes to two Grateful Dead archival releases: Dave's Picks #45 and the Here Comes Sunshine 1973 box set. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto.