Get Shown the Light

Michael Kaler is Associate Professor, teaching stream, at the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy at the University of Toronto Mississauga and author of Flora Tells a Story: The Apocalypse of Paul and Its Contexts.

“Michael Kaler demonstrates that the pursuit of something esoteric, essential, and religious in nature drove the Grateful Dead’s artistic path. Persuasively arguing that the Dead believed that improvisational music has the power to evoke transcendence and foster collective consciousness, Get Shown the Light makes an important contribution to the growing body of work that interrogates the relationship between music, religiosity, and American culture.” - Ariella Werden-Greenfield, coeditor of (This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity) “Ever since the 1960s, critics, fans, and band members understood that something powerful and unusual was at work when the Grateful Dead took the stage. ‘Every place we play is church’ became the common refrain to explain that elusive ethos, but tracing what that unorthodox spirituality consisted of and how it came to characterize the band’s concerts has challenged observers and inveigled scholars for decades. Michael Kaler brings a musician’s perspective to a religious studies exploration of this seminal topic, showing how Dead shows achieved what both band and fans recognized as something more than the typical concert experience, one that had a distinct and distinctive spiritual quality.” - Nicholas G. Meriwether, Haight Street Art Center, San Francisco "This volume should interest musicologists, theologians, and academics of all sorts, as well as fans who want a better understanding of the Grateful Dead experience and its religious dimensions."  - Robert G. Weiner (Reading Religion)

• Acknowledgments  ixAn Autobiographical Introduction  11. The Grateful Dead: A Spiritually Motivated, Improvising Rock Band  52. Setting the Scene: Where They Came From  223. How the Grateful Dead Learned to Jam: Building a Framework for Improvisation  454. Improvisational Tactics, 1965–1974: Roads Taken, and Some That Were Not Taken  735. Writing About Improvisation: Approaches to Understanding Spontaneous Playing  1256. Other Improvising Rock Bands: Similar Directions, Different Motivations  1397. Music, Transcendent Spiritual Experience, and the Grateful Dead: How They Came Together  1618. The Grateful Dead’s Spiritual Context: The Acid Tests and Afterwards  1859. What They Did: How the Grateful Dead Joined Their Musical and Spiritual Imperatives  201Appendix. Grateful Dead Personnel and Performances  237Notes  241Bibliography  265Index  281