About the Author:
Dean Budnick is the editor-in-chief of Relix magazine and the coauthor of John Popper's autobiography Suck and Blow: And other Stories I'm Not Supposed to Tell. Budnick is the founder of jambands.com, cocreator of the Jammy Awards, and director of the documentary Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Rock Club, which earned film festival laurels, opened nationally via First Run Features, and then aired on the Sundance Channel. His previous books include Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped, Jambands, and The Phishing Manual. He has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard and for many years cohosted Jam Nation, a radio show that aired weekly on SiriusXM. Budnick, who holds a PhD from Harvard's History of American Civilization program and a JD from Columbia Law School, also teaches in the history department at the University of Rhode Island.
Review:
Praise for Might As Well
David Browne, author, So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead
"Dean Budnick's Might as Well may be a novel, but this kaleidoscopic tale--which follows a handful of fictional yet archetypal Deadheads at one show--delightfully captures the sights, sounds, smells, highs, lows, tape trading, merch bargains, and set-list surprises that were part of every Dead experience. A truly unique addition to the ongoing Dead canon."
Nicholas Meriwether, Founding Grateful Dead Archivist, UC Santa Cruz, and Series Editor, Studies in the Grateful Dead, University of California Press
"A superb literary evocation of a seminal band and scene. Budnick brings a scholar's insight and an artist's touch to this colorful, compelling, and largely misunderstood wellspring of American culture."
Derek Trucks,Tedeschi Trucks Band
"With an adventurous mind and a keen ear, Budnick has established himself as a top chronicler of improvisatory rock and 'jambands.'"
Donick Cary, Writer/producer The Simpsons, Parks and Recreation, Silicon Valley
"I want to say this was a long, strange book but it's such a fun, quick read it doesn't feel long at all. But it is strange. Good strange."
Peter Shapiro,producer Fare Thee Well Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead, owner Brooklyn Bowl franchise, The Capitol Theatre
"If anyone is qualified to teleport back in time to bring a reader to a Grateful Dead show in the 1980s, it's Dean Budnick. Dean grew up going to those shows and has been a fixture in the music scene that the Dead birthed for the past 30 years. Dean has the creativity and experience to capture the scene the way it actually was, the way it looked, the way it sounded."
Dennis McNally, Grateful Dead publicist and author of A Long Strange Trip
"Dean Budnick really and truly listened at Grateful Dead concerts, not only to the band but also to the audience. Here his ear records the dialogues/internal monologues of a clutch of Dead Heads and it's all so recognizable, so true: the language, the Dead Trivia games, the prep school rituals, the obsessions with and from being high. It all adds up to a brilliantly articulated, beautifully delineated portrait. Read Might As Well and you'll have been there."
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