"Trying to show a link between rock stars and drugs is like trying to make a link between mouths and tooth decay," writes R.U. Sirius—the nom de fume of 10 Zen Monkeys' Ken Goffman. This is but one of the many mangy comparisons that frontload Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs*, and when you skim the book's list-heavy 200+ pages, tooth decay starts to sound like an attractive alternative. OK, maybe that's not entirely fair—there's some funny writing amid the run-on analogies, and a few of the anecdotes are worth their weight in angel dust. Hell, it'd probably make a nice coffee table book, if you're David Crosby.

To save you the buyer's remorse, here are our favorite factoids, trivia, apocrypha, or whatever:

• Pro-bullet goblin/chemical puritan Ted Nugent claims that his strategy for avoiding Vietnam service involved shooting meth and relieving himself in his pants. "[At the] army physical, Nugent was so sick that he passed out during his blood test.... And when it came time to give them some excrement, he got it all over his hands and arm." The most interesting part here is that the army requested a stool sample.
• Courtney Love on motherhood: "If there ever was a time when people should do drugs, it's when they're pregnant. Because it sucks." Ugh.
• Robert Hunter, in his 1984 "10 Commandments of Rock & Roll": "Destroy yourself physically and mentally and insist that all true brothers do likewise as an expression of unity."
• Some story about Grace Slick bringing Abbie Hoffman as a date to Nixon's White House with, like, many micrograms of LSD hidden under her fingernail (that's where they lose me, honestly) in the hopes of spiking Nixon's sweet tea. Mission Not Accomplished.
• John Lennon wrote "Come Together" for Timothy Leary's unsuccessful run against Ronald Reagan in California's 1968 gubernatorial race.
• Steely Dan took its name from a dildo in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

And that's about it. Save your $12.95 ($15.45 in Canada!) and spend it on one of the small baggies from your guy across the street.

*The worst example, as Mike Riggs has rightly observed, comes two paragraphs to the south: "And so, like the proverbial girl with her finger in the dike while ripped to the tits on X, Vitamin K, and a couple of Vicodin while trying to play guitar during a guest appearance on Ellen, I have attempted to take a vast ocean of rock-and-roll drug data and reduce it down to a book form that you can be amused, upset, offended, and/or informed by."

I surveyed the gift shop. A large woman with a hairnet and a dancing-bear muumuu was browsing. This was the world premiere performance of Lee Johnson's Dead Symphony No. 6, "An Orchestral Tribute to the Music of the Grateful Dead"—not to mention Jerry Garcia's 66th birthday—and the store's silly musical trinkets and pretentious classical recordings seemed ill-suited to the evening’s proceedings. That is, except for one small novelty book, an edition of the "Wisdom from our Elders" series entitled Age Doesn't Matter Unless You're a Cheese.

Steve Harq–a short, smiling, gray-bearded man in purple tie-dye who was a beacon of ebullience as he bounced around the lobby–proudly embodied that philosophy. "Jerry's what brought me here," he said. "That was the best chapter of my life, 25 years on Dead tour. I think it's great that someone took that spirit–the spirit of Jerry and Robert Hunter—and is using it, which is what Jerry would've liked. He was so diverse in his music. He—I'm sure he's smiling and saying, 'That's fucking cool!'"

More on the concert, plus audio tracks, after the jump.

Steve paused, and his friend tried to show him a copy of the program. Steve refused to look. Under no circumstances did he want to know the set list before the show.

"You ever see them in concert?" he asked me.

"No, unfortunately," I said. "Too young."

"Well then, you have an especially good time tonight, my friend," he said. "Because, you know, it doesn't live too many places like this anymore."

I did have an especially good time, although I have to say that the performance was surprising. I expected a certain amount of stilted interpretation, and I was prepared to feel estranged from some otherwise familiar musical moments. But many of the movements had a remarkably darksome tenor to them, taking on some serious emotional heft in an orchestral context. Part of this is attributable to a largely misguided visual presentation behind the orchestra, which alternated between screen-saver visuals straight out of Windows Media Player and old photos of the Dead. These tribute elements imbued the music with an overwhelming nostalgia, and at points distracted the symphony from standing as its own creation. As one audience member noted after the show, "It was like a eulogy rather than a birthday."

Some pieces, however, really had the house spellbound–in particular "If I Had the World To Give," which was masterfully done in string quartet, and a heartbreaking rendition of "China Doll," the song that first inspired Johnson to compose the symphony. In the best moments, the levels of elegy were tempered by the music's unbending relevance–not to mention the fact that it's just so darn pretty. During "Blues for Allah," when a single hand, in the formation of a single peace sign, emerged slowly from the sea of silent heads in the front half of the hall, its silhouette falling against the conductor's white tuxedo jacket, I found myself awestruck by the peculiarity of the cultural moment: here I was listening to these songs now, this way, so many years later, after all these things had happened

Steve was right—it doesn't live too many places like that anymore. I don't go to the symphony often, but I can't say I've ever seen a packed house, never mind one hooting and hollering the way this did. Nor had I heard someone shout drunkenly in the middle of an orchestral piece, until a woman yelled "Sugar Magnolia!" in the middle of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story Symphonic Dances, which comprised the first half of the program. (She did it during "Maria," and I have to admit, she was on to something. After all, wasn't Maria Tony's sugar magnolia?)

Other than a few unseemly outbursts, most people were enthusiastic but well-behaved. Behind me, a woman apologized to a man who had to stand up so she could get to her seat. "Don't be sorry," he said. "Be joyful! You're here!" The man, I discovered later, had gotten tickets to the show from his children for father's day. He was wearing a Dead T-shirt they bought him for Christmas. By the end of the evening it had hit me: like its creators, like its listeners, like its country, for better or for worse—music too grows up

LISTEN: "If I Had the World to Give"

LISTEN: "Blues for Allah"

LISTEN: "St. Stephen"

Photo by Valerie Steinberg