Dead Songs in Depth

    
This might be seen as an ingrate's ungrayefully uncool nitpicking but
I am compelled to query...

I was thrilled to have one of my offerings to David's project included
online and later in the book (never knowing but maybe should have
guessed that a book wa in progress) and also to have my name included
in the list of acknowledgements in the book, but I was puzzled by the
fact that my words were used verbatim in the text of a book written by
someone else.  Not many words, granted, but a sentence or two of my
invention and composition, well written, which no one will know that I
wrote and will probably think ever more what an eloquent writer is
David Dodd.  A minor irritation and maybe just the typical stuff of
publishing but I thought to bring it up.

Peace,

Brendan Riley
  

    
Brendan,

You may be a victim of logistics.

I got a T shirt with the cover illustration from

horizonscreenprint.com

and liked it so much I bought a few more as gifts for my correctly
aligned friends and relatives. The back of the shirt features some of
the small black and white illustrations from the text. Best T I have
seen in a fair while. Thoroughly recommended.
  

    
Brendan,
I did try my best to indicate, without doing so at every phrase, that
the work was not just my writing, but included comments from many many
participants over the years. I apologize if it feels like you were not
acknowledged correctly--it was a quandary, and I often simply felt that
the way you all wrote your comments was, as you say, eloquent and
well-written! The huge group acknowledgement at the end of the book was
my "solution" to this, along with my description of the project as a
whole in my introduction. And, of course, your words stand as ever
online...
Should I try to go back and put in footnotes for subsequent editions?
  

    <scribbled by ddodd Tue 30 May 06 20:35>
  

    
Just checked up on Brendan's contribution, and it's true, I did use
his words in introducing the "bullets made of glass" footnote in "When
Push Comes to Shove," which he discovered. I was obliged, however, to
use a different actual quote from Jules Verne than the version Brendan
had sent me, however, for reasons of copyright! Amazing. The version I
used was one available from the Gutenberg Project, which is in the
public domain. A bit of irony there...

Brendan--let's get together, and I'll buy you a pint of something ...
you still in Petaluma?
  

    
You are a gentleman AND a scholar!
  

    
David.  

 

I hope this e-mail finds you well and prospering from your recently
published Annotated Lyrics of our beloved band.  It’s a work that you
should be very proud of.    The lyric that I am writing to you about is
from one of my all time favorites, ”Scarlet Begonias”.  When I was
growing up in London several years before my first Dead show in the
70’s stateside, I remember a satirical magazine called Private Eye
which had a penchant for hilarious inappropriateness….the kind of
biting humor the Brits are known for. 

 

This is how I remember it.  In late 1971 Emperor Hirohito of Japan was
on his way to London for the first time in 50 years.  It was also the
first time since the end of World War II.  Many in England and around
the world viewed the Emperor himself as a war criminal on whose watch,
China was ravaged, British colonies and prisoners brutalized and
murdered, millions of Japanese citizens were killed.  Needless to say,
Private Eye could not let the visit pass without comment.  It was a
cold November day in England and the Emperor was on a plane on his way
to England and the headlines read “There’s a nasty Nip in the air”. 
Needless to say it seems more than likely that Robert Hunter took
notice either at the time or several months later at the start of the
legendary Europe 72 tour.  I have made the connection in my mind every
time Jerry sang those words:

 

“As I was walkin’ round Grosvenor Square 

Not a chill to the winter but a nip to the air”  

 

Stay well.  Charlie
  

    
David,

thanks for the kind reply.  I hope my comment was neither persnickety
nor lemony, just thoughts in the moment.  I am still in Petaluma. 
Without your efforts I never would have bothered to look up anything in
the first place.  Thanks for the acknowledgements.  I'm buying.  Free
in July?
  

    
Yep, free all except for the week of the 16th through 23rd. Send me email,
and let's set it up! I appreciate your comments and thoughtfulness.
--David
  

    
David.  

 

I hope this e-mail finds you well and prospering from your recently
published Annotated Lyrics of our beloved band.  It’s a work that you
should be very proud of.    The lyric that I am writing to you about
is
from one of my all time favorites, ”Scarlet Begonias”.  When I was
growing up in London several years before my first Dead show in the
70’s stateside, I remember a satirical magazine called Private Eye
which had a penchant for hilarious inappropriateness….the kind of
biting humor the Brits are known for. 

 

This is how I remember it.  In late 1971 Emperor Hirohito of Japan was
on his way to London for the first time in 50 years.  It was also the
first time since the end of World War II.  Many in England and around
the world viewed the Emperor himself as a war criminal on whose watch,
China was ravaged, British colonies and prisoners brutalized and
murdered, millions of Japanese citizens were killed.  Needless to say,
Private Eye could not let the visit pass without comment.  It was a
cold November day in England and the Emperor was on a plane on his way
to England and the headlines read “There’s a nasty Nip in the air”. 
Needless to say it seems more than likely that Robert Hunter took
notice either at the time or several months later at the start of the
legendary Europe 72 tour.  I have made the connection in my mind every
time Jerry sang those words:

 

“As I was walkin’ round Grosvenor Square 

Not a chill to the winter but a nip to the air”  

 

Stay well.  Charlie
  

    
!!
  

    
Ooops.  Didn't mean to post twice.  
  

    
It's been awhile! In case anyone is still monitoring this
conversation, well, I am still here, still active on the WELL in
general. And I wanted to let the readers know that the paperback
edition of The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics will be
appearing in May 2007. 

Concurrent with that, I have a number of new events at area bookstores
(Book Passage, Copperfield's, Cody's, and the Capitola Book Cafe) and
a big one at the San Francisco Public Library. You can read all about
it at http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/cagdl.html

Hope to see some of you at one of the four bookstore events, or at
SFPL, if you want to really support the San Francisco Public Library
and celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love.
  

    
How exciting, David!  Congrats!
  

    
Excellent!
  

    
Paperback -- that's great!
  

    
Thanks. Yes, it's good and all, but...I think I can be forthright here
and say that the paperback will not contain, at least for the time
being, any of the myriad corrections I have collected and submitted to
the publisher from the first volume. Misspelled names, slightly
incorrect factoids, and a few other slips will be cheerfully bound up
in paper covers instead of hardcover and distributed. No claim is being
made that this will be a revised edition, but I had dearly hoped that
it might. Instead, the publisher will take the excess pages printed
first time round and bind them in paper covers. 

The hardback sold pretty well--I expect that the number is right
around 55,000 copies. But apparently they printed enough for 75,000
copies, leaving 20,000 sets of printed-up, unbound pages that they
could either pulp or bind as softcover. So, in the sense that it is
more environmentally sound to use up all the printed pages, that's a
good thing. 

I hope that the paperback sells in high enough quantities that a
reprint will happen, at which time, I've been told, my revisions will
be incorporated. 

Interesting, eh?
  

    
Make that first "edition," not "volume." Sheesh. And I call myself a
librarian...
  

    
My son got me an autographed copy for Christmas year before last.
Proudly displayed on my living room bookshelf.
  

    

Congratulations on going to paperback, (ddodd), that's great news!
  

    
that's too bad, both in general (since i remember the days in
publishing when you made reprint corrections without calling it a new
edition) and personally (because the wrong version of the revolutionary
hamstrung lyrics transcription is credited to nick meriwether and
myself).
  

    
Right, Christian, that was one of the principal corrections I wanted
to make. And perhaps it wouldn't be called a new edition, but the fact
of the large initial print run precluded making any corrections thus
far. Plus I misspelled Nick's name. Argh.
  

    
It's hard to argue with 55,000 books. 

Maybe Nick should start spelling his name that way. 
  

    
Great news, David, and well deserved!
  

    
it's nick's misfortune to be best known in a deadhead world that also
contains merriweather post pavilion...