[Random synchronicity revelation 1/7th of the way through the interview: I had no idea that Alembic was once at 9th and Judah in SF, my old stomping grounds. In the '80s it was mostly a UC Med neighborhood, but it doesn't suprise me that it had some of alchemistry still dripping off of it. We were definitely attracted there when looking to move out of a house on Turquoise on Glen Canyon. A brief ride (or walk, for me in those days) to the Haight, access to downtown and BART (and hence Oakland and Berkeley) via the N-Judah. Good used book and record stores. Many days that peeked out from the edge of the fog belt. Good times... --ed.]

Myself, I just started reading McNally's book. It's funny to see him doing the Dead Head think of slipping quotes (from songs and tapes) into the narrative. So far I've found "dominate the rap," "more or less in line," and "horribly smashed" in the first 40 or so pages.

Of Tiger in a Trance, Gans writes

Over the weekend I read a terrific novel that is set on Dead tour in the '80s: "Tiger in a Trance" by Max Ludington.

This is a fine work of fiction, and not just "Deadhead fiction" (whatever the fuck that might be). Sharp, well-controlled writing, no annoying plot contrivances, entirely believable characters - and he knows his setting very well. Specific Grateful Dead shows are referred to - the story takes place in 1985, 1987 and 1991 - and even specific songs (he seemed to have a hard time with "Iko Iko").

David also sent along a review from the August 22-29 issue of Entertainment Weekly:

TIGER IN A TRANCE
Max Ludington
Debut novel (Doubleday, $21.95)

Deadheads will form the initial queue for this startingly good debut, a road book that follows a boarding school dropout-turned-Ecstasy dealer who intermittently joins the movable feast that trailed Jerry Garcia & Co. in the late '80s. Ludington earns knowing laughs from critical quirks among the faithful ("Taking a piss during 'CC Rider' had become almost automatic for me ... I would usually be standing at a urinal when Bobby's lugubrious, off-key attempt at a slide solo reached me muffled by a cinder-block wall"). And few writers have managed more clearheaded descriptions of getting high - or coming down. But it'd be a shame if the words "Dead" and "drugs" scared off serious-lit types, who might otherwise marvel at Ludington's ferocious command of character and Americana.

A

Chris Willman

Here are a few excerpts from the novel:

With the city of vehicles laid out around it, the Hampton Coliseum became the spot, the place where it was happening. The country was full of these hollow cathedrals, kept useful by hockey and basketball games, Promise Keeper rallies, golf equipment expositions. Then we came and filled them up for a night or three, made them shine. I was reading Whitman, and thinking of the whole country as holy: every unfurled prairie and oil-stained filling station and filthy city, every mountain range and strip-malled nowhere had its eidolon; but when we gathered for shows it seemed to focus this quality, and the stadiums shimmered like mirages in the rising excitement. Any show might be one of those nights when the crowd and the band got together and hammered out something powerful, joyous, and deeply, if fleetingly, important. The parking lots teemed with old-timers, fledglings, saints, schoolkids, ccrazies, metalheads, jagged-eyed prophets, punks, junkies, ascetics. Why did so many people congregate around a rock band? Put their lives on hold, or make their lives on tour? To have fun, yes. To party and get high and associate with all manner of freaks, sure. But that couldn't be the crux of the biscuit, as Zappa put it. There was something the music drew from us, and from the ether, and on those nights we became distilled, purified, drunk on it. The drugs and love and sex and craziness were crucial, but it was the lenslike qualiy of the music that gathered and focused the inner numen of the land, drew us back again and again, and created among us a vortex of expec- tancy, obsession, and ritual.

Harry Waldron was my father's oldest friend and the most consummate cynic I have known. His cynicism stemmed not from insecurity or nihilism or depravity, though he possessed dashes of each, but from a fine distillation of bitterness and intelligence and a strong measure of basic decency which, because he coouldn't account for it intellectually (he was too proud of his cynicism) or live up to it, caused him mostly pain. That decency also had the side effect of making him lovable. Cynicism was an art form to Harry, and he wielded it with such grace and acumen that even those who were the brunt of it were usually charmed. Every so often, though, his bitterness would poke through, like a broken bone through the skin.

There are two times of day on heroin: dusk and night. Night feels more com- fortable, because it is what it is, there's no real change in it. The daylight hours become an eerie protracted dusk, and for the strung out, true daylight ceases to exist. A thin, smoky filter has been drawn across the sky (or across the eyes - does it matter which?), and even the brightest light seems attenuated. I became aware of this only because when night did fall, halfway back to Carmel, I realized it had seemed to be about to fall for hours. This had the dual effect of an expected and unexpected arrival: ex- pected because it followed dusk, surprising because after so long a dusk it might not have been coming at all.

David is working on setting up a radio interview with the author, and possibly an online interview as well.

"I liked Phish because I liked the Dead," he added. "They do have the improvisational jamming in common, but I think the Dead had so much more soul. They had roots in Americana - blues, country and bluegrass."