Lawyer’s Book Investigates the Influence of the Dead

Most of the hundreds of books that have been written about rock ‘n’ roll follow one of two trajectories: either they offer encyclopedic chronologies and concise, historical overviews of the artists responsible for the music’s development, or they feature subjective, quasi-scholarly essays on The Meaning of It All by such well-known, verbose critics as Greil Marcus and Dave Marsh.

Few of these tomes, however, explore the contextual material that provides background color to the rock time-line, and that omission leaves a number of significant gaps in the rock bibliography. Local author Sandy Troy hopes he’s filled one of those voids with his new book, “One More Saturday Night: Reflections With the Grateful Dead, Dead Family and Dead Heads.”

Troy, 39, is a criminal defense and personal injury attorney who, along with Ric Kaestner, also co-manages the North County band, Bordertown. He has contributed articles about the Dead to the magazines Relix and High Times, and one of his articles was excerpted in “The Grateful Dead Family Album,” an authorized 1988 book done somewhat in the style of a high school annual.

“One More Saturday Night,” published by St. Martin’s Press on May 31, represents Troy’s first venture into the world of book-writing.

Not surprisingly, Troy’s 288-page tribute features interviews with Grateful Dead guitarist and papa-figure Jerry Garcia, whose thoughtful commentaries on music and society have made him a favorite chat subject of rock scribes for more than two decades. But the author wanted “One More Saturday Night” to be more than an anthology of Dead ruminations.

“With this book, I was trying to chronicle the impact of the Dead on people’s lives, and how the band’s history reflects the changes in American society over that time,” Troy said in a phone interview last week. “So I wrote a 60-page introduction, called ‘The Bus Came By,’ that’s about the ‘60s in general and the San Francisco psychedelic scene in particular.”

With regard to the latter, Troy plumbed many of the right sources. Among those lending their insights to the treatise is Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and leader of a bus-equipped, proto-hippie troupe of tongue-in-cheek miscreants in the mid-’60s known as the Merry Pranksters. A Prankster known as “Mountain Girl” (Garcia’s former wife, Carolyn) is interviewed, as is Chet Helms, whose Family Dog Productions produced weekly rock concerts in San Francisco in the days before the Fillmore.

Other notable quotables include Gabe Harris (son of Joan Baez and anti-war activist David Harris); Tony Serra, the iconoclastic Bay Area attorney on whose life the film “True Believers,” starring James Woods, was loosely based; and artist Stanley Mouse, creator of the famous concert posters of the Fillmore era. Mouse did the cover art and various illustrations for Troy’s book, which also contains about 200 photographs.

Troy speaks from the perspective of one whose own life has been greatly impacted by the Dead. Although he spent a week in San Francisco during 1967’s infamous “Summer of Love,” he wasn’t “baptized” a Dead Head until two years later, when he saw the band perform at the epochal Woodstock festival.

“At the time, I was a fledgling flower child who had just graduated from high school in New York,” he said. “A friend and I decided to attend this rock festival, having no idea how huge an event it was going to be. We got to the site early and I was able to land a job as a security guard. I stood in front of the stage, which was at my eye level, throughout the whole thing. I was mesmerized by the Dead, and I’ve been ‘on the bus’ ever since.”

Since that fateful day in 1969, Troy estimates that he’s seen the Dead perform “about 200 times,” in concerts as far away as Europe and Alaska. He moved to San Diego in 1974. Having followed the Dead for more than 20 years, Troy has a perspective on the band that, if not unique, is uniquely articulated.

“Being a Dead Head is like running away and joining the circus,” he said. “There’s an endless supply of fun, good times, and adventures.”

GRACE NOTES: Saigon Kick performs a 9 p.m. show tonight at the Spirit. . . . Big Drill Car and Liquid Sunshine have been added to the Buzzcocks show, Friday at Iguanas. . . . Tickets go on sale Friday for an August 17 double bill bringing Suicidal Tendencies and Armored Saint to SDSU’s Open Air Theatre. . . . Marshall Crenshaw has been added to the August 6 bill at the OAT featuring George Thorogood and the Destroyers. . . .

“The Club MTV Tour,” featuring Bell Biv Devoe, C & C Music Factory, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Gerardo and Terra Kemp, has undergone some changes. The group Color Me Badd has been added to the lineup, and the Sports Arena show, originally scheduled for Aug. 19, has been moved up, to Aug. 15. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m.

CRITIC’S CHOICE: DALE BOZZIO RETURNS FROM MISSING PERSONS

It’s not surprising that the early-’80s band, Missing Persons, never achieved the success they deserved--the inverse relationship between talent and rewards being a given in the music biz. What’s surprising is that the band was deserving, considering its blatant sex-ploitation of blonde-bombshell vocalist Dale Bozzio and its vigorous engagement in every sort of show-biz hype.

For all her stagy crowd-pandering, the Medusa-maned, Barbarella-outfitted Bozzio turned out to be a quite alluring focal point, musically as well as physically. Ironically, her bright chirp of a voice and its trademark, hiccuping catch would outlast the band for which, originally, she was little more than a figurehead. In spite of a high-octane mix of melodic pop, future-tech conceptualism, and rock-candy rhythmic crunch, the group of veteran musicians (then-hubby Terry Bozzio had played in Frank Zappa’s band) never overcame the tremendous odds against drawing fans from both the traditional rock and new-wave markets.

Since the 1986 breakup of Missing Persons, Dale Bozzio has pursued a solo career that brings her to the Bacchanal Sunday night. She’ll be fronting a new band and performing new material, but advance notice has it that she’ll also perform such Missing Persons staples as “Walking in L.A.,” “Destination Unknown” and “Words.”