Get Shown the Light

“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

"Though it may not reach the level of epiphany, this rationally engineered clarity on supra-rational musically powered transcendence will reward readers diligent enough to follow the book from beginning to end, and the underlying paradox may well produce delight in its own right as a complement to the intellectual satisfaction at which the book aims." - Brent Wood, University of Toronto Quarterly