Composer: Dan Edmondson.

Audio Mixer: David Bean.

This 54-minute talk between self-proclaimed "music industry veteran" David Bean and the former manager of Grateful Dead, Rock Scully, is an interesting journey through the past by people who were there. The psychedelic cover and six-page booklet make it look like a tribute album though "oral archive" is slapped on the front inside the quite lengthy title: 40th Anniversary Summer of Love Oral Archive 2 Decades on the Bus with Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Designed somewhat like the Nature's Way '91 spoken word/narrative project from Spirit and disc jockey Harvey Wharfield, the difference here is that Dane Edmondson's guitar work on four instrumental titles playing in the background becomes a bit of a distraction to the wonderful and relentless stories coming from Rock Scully's lips. On the Spirit disc some music comes up under the interview, but it stays in the background and the content is front and center, undisturbed by the musical audio support. The over-represented guitar is similar from composition to composition and detracts from Scully's reminisces about the Dead jamming on new music, the recordings of those practices, and how the band so used to live performing made the transition to craft their studio albums. The content is great for Deadheads as well as the casual Grateful Dead fan. Recorded in Carmel, CA by engineer Kim Edmundson, it features a laid-back Bean directing the flow while Scully's unique and appealing voice tells the story without skipping a beat. It's an amazing feat for 54-plus minutes as the former manager offers his perspective on the history of the group as well as the culture that surrounded that history. Another criticism, though, is that these episodes should have been given chapters, treating this like an audio DVD, instead of the one long track which has so many escapades packed into the lengthy conversation. The tracking would be much more preferable as the guitar really does intrude on the storytelling, but these are great stories fans may have not have heard before and that makes this a solid addition to any serious Grateful Dead follower's library. ~ Joe Viglione