Deadhead Social Science: 'You Ain't Gonna Learn What You Don't Want to Know'
Coeditor Adams (sociology, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro) has compiled a dozen essays by undergraduate and graduate students who studied the Grateful Dead subculture of the 1980s and early 1990s with her. After outlining the Dead's history and subculture and the cooperative learning of her Deadhead social-science class, Adams offers a quantitative analysis of the songs the Dead played and the evolution of a Dead cover band. In an engaging section on spirituality, one student examines the Dead subculture as a secular religion, and another focuses on a communal, dervish-like group that incorporated Dead lyrics into their beliefs. Four essays describe the characteristics of the Dead subculture and examine various motivations for joining the Deadhead community. Though usually professing to be Deadheads, the authors over-intellectualize a band and fans who pride themselves on spontaneity and serendipity. They tend to shackle the free-minded Deadhead spirit with sociological theories that add little to an understanding of the Deadhead phenomenon. Not recommended.-Dave Szatmary, Univ. of WashingtonCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.