Pre-Searching the Grateful Dead
My approach to learning a little in order to develop a research plan
Hello hello, readers!
In my last post, I unpacked (perhaps more or less thoroughly than need be) my reason and vision for this project, so now it’s time for me to get to work reading, listening, and writing.
Whenever I undertake any kind of research (personal, professional, creative… all of it), I begin with preliminary research; that is, I try to cast a wide net to get a good overall understanding of a topic. The purpose of this is to give me some idea of the contexts in which the topic sits, a good enough understanding of the issues and significant voices, and to start to craft some questions to guide my research deeper.
Podcasts and popular media (like magazines or general nonfiction books) are great for this! Even before I know I’m “doing research,” I usually find myself searching for a topic in the app where I listen to podcasts.
For my Grateful Dead project, I’d been eyeing this podcast by Andrew Hickey called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, which does exactly what the title suggests. The podcast episode that features the Grateful Dead uses the song “Dark Star” as a frame for the Grateful Dead’s contributions to rock music. 1 Admittedly, this podcast is not necessarily a “general interest” publication like… say, The New York Times publication “The Daily” or even an NPR institution like “Fresh Air.” A popular or general interest source is one that often covers a variety of topics and approaches its reporting with the assumption that many readers/viewers/listeners have no prior knowledge of the topic. The beauty of going to such a source first is to quickly understand the basic run-down of a topic or situation. So, if you’re really encountering a topic with no prior experience, don’t feel bad about first reading a Wikipedia page or listening to a podcast that isn’t intended for insiders, super-fans, or experts.2
I had some prior knowledge (even if I frequently discounted that knowledge in a kind of weird way, lol) of the Grateful Dead, and because the topic itself (a rock band) isn’t that complicated, I felt completely comfortable skipping straight to a more in-depth source. I will do a complete annotation of this episode, but for now I’ll say that it was incredibly well-researched (a variety of sources, cited appropriately) and did an excellent job of providing context, history, and space for critical thinking. Reader, after I listened to the 5 hour episode(!!!) on the Grateful Dead, I felt like I had maybe flown past pre-search. In fact, I asked my husband (long-time Grateful Dead fan) a few questions based on what I had learned in that episode, and he told me that I was “way into the weeds” already. Which tracks my own reflections, since I had developed a few questions for further study that were quite a bit more nuanced than those that usually follow a basic pre-search sesh. That being said, I am really happy I dove right into the dandelions, as no one says. And… I think I just might just be a “way into the weeds” kind of person, folks!
The points of curiosity that arose for me (these are things that could lead to a researchable question eventually) are as follows:
The episode touches on how the Grateful Dead strove to be apolitical, noting that Jerry Garcia only voted in one presidential election— and that he regretted even that—, but the Dead are frequently associated with political movements of the late 1960s in particular. I’m curious about where those associations come from.
Jerry Garcia is perceived as the leader of the Grateful Dead, but throughout the podcast there were numerous examples of Garcia not wanting to take responsibility for decision-making or execution. How, if at all, does this relate to the apolitical stuff? What were the results of that passivity?
The Grateful Dead had a number of keyboardists, both official and unofficial. Four of those keyboardists died tragically. The History of Rock cites to an interview
What’s my favorite Grateful Dead era? Show? Song? And why? What qualities contribute to my own enjoyment of a GD-listening experience? (Okay, obviously this last question is unrelated to what I learned about the band’s history, fandom, and context, but I’m also interested in being more invested in my own GD listening, so I’ll be listening to a lot of their music as I learn.)
As I mentioned in my first post on this project, I am surrounded by Grateful Dead fans. I’m married to one! One of the first songs my youngest kid ever sang was “Row Jimmy”! As part of my pre-search, I created a group text thread with six such friends and asked them to share their favorite song or show. I was overwhelmed with joy that everyone but my husband (hahaha!) responded to this inquiry immediately.3 One of my friends mentioned that they had taken a class on the Grateful Dead in college and alerted me to the existence of the Grateful Dead Archive.
Another part of my pre-search was to do a search for magazine articles about the Grateful Dead. I did this three ways: 1) on the basic internet using a search engine; 2) on my local public library’s website; and 3) on my academic institution’s library website.
Internet
Since many search engines use algorithms that prioritize certain sites for financial reasons, I don’t love using the internet for research. For my search, I used DuckDuckGo (though eventually I used Google on the Safari browser), which claims not to do that.
Search terms: Grateful Dead history, Grateful Dead musicology, Grateful Dead magazine article
A few sources I’m adding to my list based on this search:
Rothman, Lily. “7 Pictures that Show the Evolution of the Grateful Dead over the Years.” Time. June 12, 2015. https://time.com/3915009/grateful-dead-pictures/
Paumgarten, Nick. “Reckoning with the Dead at the Sphere.” The New Yorker. July 22, 2024. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/29/reckoning-with-the-dead-at-the-sphere
There are some cool sources cited on the Dead’s Wikipedia page, so I’m bookmarking it here to remember that. Wikipedia is a great place to get basic information and an overall feel for a topic. Obviously, it’s not where I’m doing my deep work, but don’t discount it for finding timelines, major players, and big issues.
Grateful Dead Studies: An Interdisciplinary Academic Journal about the Grateful Dead.
One of the things I’m curious about is how the Grateful Dead contributed to the political landscapes, I’m bookmarking this opinion piece for later:
Newton, Jim. Opinion: “The Political Legacy of Jerry Garcia.” The New York Times. July 20, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/jerry-garcia-politics.html
Rabbit Holes/ Unexpected Leads:
When I searched “Grateful Dead musicology,” I discovered a continuing studies course on the dead’s music at Stanford. The course had already completed, but they named faculty, which gave me another cool trail of bread-crumbs to follow.
Public Library
I LOVE a library. Even when I think I have no ideas, wandering around a library will re-ignite my curiosity and wonder like nothing else. I think being inside a physical library is magical, though the convenience of searching the stacks digitally cannot be overstated.
I used both my library’s regular web page and the Libby app to search for sources on the Grateful Dead. There are many! For this stage of my research, I wanted to focus on magazine articles or podcast episodes, and I found something EXCELLENT:
Grateful Dead: Then. Now. Forever. Sixty Years: The Long, Strange Astounding Trip. Time: Special Issue. July 19, 2024.
College Library
If you’re a college student, don’t sleep on the library! Even if you do the same kind of search you would on the wild internet, a search conducted on your library’s website already sifts out a lot (but not all) of noncredible and potentially irrelevant sources. Because I’m still in the pre-search phase, I limited my search to non-scholarly articles, and I wanted to take advantage of the online video and audio sources my school had to offer.
Search terms: Grateful Dead, 1960s culture
Sources I’m going to watch/ listen to:
Amazon Studios, production company, et al. Long Strange Trip : The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead. Directed by Amir Bar-Lev, Rhino, 2018.
Grateful Dead, et al. The Acid Test. Ken Kesey L.L.C., 1999.
I found a bunch of books I’m interested in reading, too, but I’ll save my coverage of that process for another day.
Keeping Track of My Work
Current and past students know that I have a habit of “managing” my research simply by leaving tabs open. Although I have started to close my own tabs, I think leaving tabs open is a fine way to loosely track your interests. It is not, however, a useful way to manage research efficient way to keep track of the usefulness of sources or to annotate them
To track my research, I created a very simple database in Notion to note source citations, whether I have read the source, its usefulness, and any notes or questions based on my initial reading.
Next Steps
Read popular sources and take notes/ annotate.
Enter existing sources into my database: everything I’ve found so far.
Slowly listen to various shows and albums— ohhhhh I need to keep track of this too, so I’ll make another database.
Think about what (if anything) I want to do with my research.
Thanks for reading! I’m curious about what research rabbit holes any readers are falling down this summer. Let me know in the comments. :)
Kindly,
Kelly
SIDE note: in addition to learning a LOT— and I mean A TON— of cool things about the history of the Grateful Dead, with fascinating cross-references to other moments or musical movements within the history of rock, I was particularly impressed with how the podcast host framed his discussion of the Grateful Dead: through ongoing references to a Kurt Vonnegut novel (Jerry Garcia was a huge fan) and a theory called The Californian Ideology that places the Dead into a wider context of libertarianism and technophilia. I’m pinning the episode as something to revisit in terms of its structure; that is, aside from the content, I’m also listening to that episode “like a writer.”
Here’s a quick guide to evaluating the credibility of an online source if you’re just doing a wild and free internet search. Here’s a longer article about fact-checking and lateral reading that I like. I also love running a news source through Media Bias/ Fact Check.
He told me in-person later: the Egypt shows of 1978…. these are some of my favorite shows so far, too. ;)