The Grateful Dead FAQ by Tony Sclafani

(Backbeat) Because their fiercest fans were both obsessively loyal and demographically well-endowed (college kids, college grads, weekend warrior professionals, and middle-class/rich kids dropping out), there's not a lot left to document about a band whose fans basically knew how to do Wikipedia, archive.org, Craig's List, eBay,and discogs.com before anyone had a home computer. That said, Sclafan does an obsessively nice job of filling in the basics for newcomers while delving deep enough into biographies, discographies, and theoretical discographies (an excellent overview of an unreleased album's virtual tracklist) to make get into Deadheads' heads. He also explains why every Dead album you, and most Deadheads, hate, is actually pretty good, so that's fresh ground. My fave chapter covers rare Dead film, TV, and video. Is this excessive? I don't know, is following a jam band around on tour and taping every show and trading them and then collecting multiple tapes of the same show and having a favorite taper and etc etc etc etc etc etc excessive? Well there!