I’m Uncle Sam that’s who I am / Been hidin’ out in a rock and roll band — ‘U.S. Blues’ by Robert Hunter
What’s your favourite Dead song? Do you have a fair idea of what the lyrics for that song mean? Do I have a deal for you. In one very well-crafted package, you can have both the lyrics and David Dodd’s explanation of what they mean. The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, which is based upon the Web site of the same name, is without doubt the coolest look at a band’s lyrics which I’ve had the pleasure to peruse! Now I expected nothing less, having made ongoing use of the Web site for many years to settle questions I had about the Dead lyrics, but I was rather surprised how well the Web site adapted to the printed medium. The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics sets the ‘gold standard’ for how to do an annotated lyrics reference guide.
On the Web site, Dodd says the purpose of his project was ‘This site provides footnotes for Grateful Dead lyrics. The standard procedure will be to provide links for words or phrases which might benefit from some elucidation, without attempting to give definitive “interpretations,” since that’s a very personal endeavor.
The standard text for Robert Hunter’s lyrics will be his A Box of Rain (2nd ed., 1993). He has kindly agreed to allow me to use full text for all lyrics as of April 24, 1996! Hunter has also posted his lyrics on the Web! For John Perry Barlow’s lyrics, the standard text will be his own library of lyrics, on the World Wide Web. Lyrics by others, such as Robert Petersen, Robert Weir, and Jerry Garcia, will be from legitimate song books, whenever possible.’
He’s being too modest. I’ve looked at hundreds of sites dedicated to lyrics for bands and none even come close to what he has done there. Oh for a Jethro Tull Web site which is even half as decent at explaining what the lyrics to such songs as ‘Aqualung’ or ‘Cross-Eyed Mary’ mean, or a really good Richard Thompson site to explain some of his more obscure lyrics! Want to know what Hunter meant by the lyrics of ‘Shake the hand that shook the hand Of P.T. Barnum/and Charlie Chan’? Go here on the site and you’ll get an exhaustive look at the song. . . . Really. Truly. But the printed version goes one better and includes the variant Garcia sang on several occasions in 1979 and the 1980s, which was ‘Shake the hand that shook the hand of P.T. Barnum/and Charlie Chan’ became ‘Shake the hand that shook the hand Of P. T. Barnum and the Shah of Iran’!
(Short aside: Deadheads are everywhere, as I discovered when I was writing this up in the Green Man Pub on a rainy afternoon. I was mentioning to Reynard, the afternoon publican, that I fondly remembered Robert Hunter’s A Box of Rain when a patron joined in our conversation. He was so excited by the publication of the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics that he ordered one from Amazon on the spot. To my knowledge, this is the first time a review not yet published resulted in a book purchase! Reynard was so impressed that he made him ‘nother Irish coffee on the house!)
In an e-mail, I asked Dodd how one of the coolest Web sites in existence became an even cooler book. His reply was ‘Thanks for the kind words. It took a lot of work to turn a very rambling, pretty informal Web site into something that might be considered worthy of publication. A lot of material was edited out or rewritten over the course of about nine months of work, beginning in August 2004, through June of 2005. I worked very closely with the Grateful Dead’s publisher, Ice Nine, via the person of Alan Trist, without whom the whole project would’ve been impossible. He connected us up with his friend Jim Carpenter, the book’s illustrator, who added a dimension not to be found in the web version: great illustrations.’
You get every word of every original song from the band’s vast recorded and live repertoire, complete with Dodd’s annotations, which provide the literary, historical, and cultural background for these lyrics. All in all one of the coolest editions I’ve ever seen. Just consider the wrap-around cover by Jim Carpenter. Carpenter also provided nearly two hundred illustrations, covering every aspect of Dead culture that one can imagine. Dodd has both the heart of a Dead fan and the carefulness of a true scholar: this will be the definitive annotated look of Dead lyrics for generations to come. Incredibly obsessive — in a good way — explanations of the places, phrases, names, and odd slang that make the Dead lyrics so memorable. (What we need now is a companion volume that covers both the recorded efforts of the Dead and those who covered their lyrics, i.e., where was ‘U.S. Blues’ covered by The Harshed Mellows?) Dodd drew on the expertise of both the band members and the the fans who help make his Web site the exemplar of what a site devoted to a bands lyrics should be.
Oh, let’s not forget the foreword by Hunter who, as the press release notes, defines the Dead’s work as ‘a natural and inevitable blend of rock and roll, jazz, and traditional folk culture.’ Hunter and Dodd both believe that the lyrics are, in a perfectly post-modern sense, always open to interpretation, so Dodd offers annotations but not interpretations. John Barlow wraps up this delightful trip by offering a blessing to both the book and all that the Dead mean. It has indeed been a long, strange trip, but certainly one that so many remember with fondness. And the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics will add to all of our memories of the Dead.
(Free Press, 2005)
