Grateful to the Dead

‘You’re not going to write about them, are you?’ said my wife contemptuously, when I announced that I was going to devote this month’s column to the Grateful Dead. ‘They’re one of the worst.’

As regular readers will know, my wife hates all pop music with a passion, but she especially dislikes the Dead because she has so often been woken by the sounds of their psychedelic classic ‘Dark Star’ playing at maximum volume at three o’clock in the morning.