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The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics

Annotations: David Dodd

Foreword: Robert Hunter

Publication date: 2005

Free Press

An encyclopedic book that annotates the lyrics of songs written by the main Grateful Dead lyricists Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow. The annotation includes background information, cross references, and "resonances, and refractions". The book is based on the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics web site.
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This book was reissued in 2015 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. There is no indication that the book was updated for this reissue.



The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics

50th Anniversary Edition

Annotations: David Dodd

Foreword: Robert Hunter

Publication date: 2015

Simon & Schuster

The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics is an authoritative text, providing standard versions of all the original songs you thought you knew forwards and backwards. These are some of the best-loved songs in the modern American songbook. They are hummed and spoken among thousands as counterculture code and recorded by musicians of all stripes for their inimitable singability and obscure accessibility. How do they do all this?

To provide a context for this formidable body of work, of which his part is primary, Robert Hunter has written a foreword that goes to the heart of the matter. And the annotations on sources provide a gloss on the lyrics, which goes to the roots of Western culture as they are incorporated into them.

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