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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 9h

Thanks @samleecole.bsky.social and the @404media.co gang for the shoutout in today’s newsletter.

I am reading it for the articles. Former Motherboarder (IYKYK) turned instant New York Times Bestselling Author Brian Anderson has a wild story in Playboy about drug smuggler Ken “Goldfinger” Connell and the world of the Grateful Dead. I am not personally a Deadhead but I am a fan of Brian’s writing!

Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 11h

Love to see LOUD AND CLEAR shouted out in the latest newsletter from Phil Elverum (Microphones, Mount Eerie). Thanks, Phil. I’ve said this all along, but I didn’t want to write a book that just pandered to Deadheads. That someone like him, decidedly not a head, is spending time with it means a lot.

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BLCKDGRD @blckdgrd.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Goldfinger doesn't expect you to talk, he expects you to die Been bugging me since last night. I didn't do this for you as much as I did it for me

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Christian Lane is my name not a preachy road @chrstianlane.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Incredible story and storytelling

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Death Cab for Tootie @deathcabfortootie.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I need more of this story. What a ride!

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Not the Guy @notnotnuanced.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

incredible story

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jesse jarnow @bourgwick.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

impressive work by @thebanderson.bsky.social, putting together the story of the elusive & notorious goldfinger, the one-armed drug-smuggling sketchball who was part of the dead's scene through the early '70s, finally answering the question of what happened to him (spoiler: it's grim af)

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

For my weekenders: I profiled Ken “Goldfinger” Connell, an acid courier, hash smuggler, escape artist, folk hero in the Dead’s orbit—and a catastrophe to his own family. Decades later, his son and niece went looking for who he truly was. Read on @playboy.com: www.playboy.com/read/celebri...

playboy.com

The Rise and Fall of Goldfinger, the One-Handed Acid Outlaw

Kenneth Connell moved through the Grateful Dead’s world like a character out of one of their songs. His relative are just now piecing together the life he kept hidden.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Researching LOUD AND CLEAR, I encountered Ken “Goldfinger” Connell—and filed him away. What I found on returning is a story about the death of an old America and how descendants of an infamous drug smuggler are reconciling with the past. Read now on @playboy.com: www.playboy.com/read/celebri...

playboy.com

The Rise and Fall of Goldfinger, the One-Handed Acid Outlaw

Kenneth Connell moved through the Grateful Dead’s world like a character out of one of their songs. His relative are just now piecing together the life he kept hidden.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I’m just now realizing the closing line of this 4200-word profile—a quote—contains a Dead lyric. Of course, it couldn’t be any other way.

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Christian Lane is my name not a preachy road @chrstianlane.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Incredible story telling by Brian here. Captivating. So quick story. Very smol. In the spring Brian, myself and our better halves were having coffee. Brian and I were chatting about 60’s counterculture and I mentioned how much I loved the characters surrounding the dead; the pirates and whatnot.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

playboy.com

The Rise and Fall of Goldfinger, the One-Handed Acid Outlaw

Kenneth Connell moved through the Grateful Dead’s world like a character out of one of their songs. His relative are just now piecing together the life he kept hidden.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

As Dan Healy once told me about the Uptown, “some of the most kickass Grateful Dead gigs ever were in that place.” Hallowed Dead ground (many other amazing bands played there, too.) Looking forward to to finally getting a peek inside. www.openhousechicago.org/sites/recVzr...

openhousechicago.org

Uptown Theatre

The Uptown Theatre is the crown jewel of theater developers Balaban and Katz and renowned movie house architects Rapp and Rapp. Built in 1925, the Uptown is the largest freestanding theater in North A...

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Grateful Dead music—because it’s a Monday.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’ve got a big ol’ magazine story dropping next week in the fall issue of @playboy.com. (Charli XCX on the cover.) Yes, it involves the Dead. Do stay tuned.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“Hey man, I’m not the boss here” -Garcia

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The push-pull of the Dead on full display here. Garcia *really* wants the Dew coming out of this DS (@20:45ish) but ultimately El Paso wins out, just as it would, famously, days later at Veneta. Classic Weir moves.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Grateful Dead music—because we all need a force field around our lives when it feels like AI is closing in on all sides.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This reminds me, I wrote up some thoughts on the Dead and Halloween that’ll run next month in a zine. Trip or freak.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I always welcome Fall Dead, even if Summer Dead runs into October these days.

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Plate Stealer @platestealer.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Hardcover library copy read, paperback purchased. Loud and Clear is not only a great, in-depth look at the Grateful Dead sound systems 1967-1974, but also of sound technology of the time at large. Great little anecdotes about fashioning splitters because they didn't exist yet, things like that

Loud and Clear by Brian Anderson in paperback

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Grateful Dead music—because grief isn’t linear and some days you just really miss an old friend.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Cameron Winter of acclaimed American rock band Geese, hit me up bro, I’ve got a book for ya

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Doing my annual rewatch of Steve Brown’s home movies from the Dead’s ‘74 Euro Wall of Sound tour. Wild BTS footage ft. death-defying stage setups, buzzing daytime city scenes, & a lot of staring out the window, watching the world & landscapes pass by on long drives. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab5I...

m.youtube.com

Grateful Dead Europe 1974 - Wall of Sound 8mmHomeMovies

YouTube video by GT Wilson

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

I could live inside the moment, two or two-and-a-half minutes into most any “Playin in the Band,” when Garcia hits the wah and the Dead drift from the straight lane and onto the “scenic route.”

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Grateful Dead music—because seasons change. Even if it’s the hottest start to a September in Chicago in decades.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

For my Word Jazz heads/freaks. Digipak from the estate of Ken Nordine.

Digipak of Ken Nordine’s Devour Catalyst, ft. Jerry Garcia and David Grisman

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

It happened: My 21-month-old nephew just said “Grateful Dead bus.”

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The Dead and the Fireside Bowl. That’s pretty much all you need to know about me. So recently my mind was pretty blown, catching up with and presenting a softcover copy of LOUD AND CLEAR to the Fireside’s architect, to learn he’s a head. And we were at the same late 80s Alpine shows. Of course.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Godspeed Dolly. From Garcia’s 1972 interview in @playboy.com: www.playboy.com/read/playboy...

Who’da thought it? Who’d ever have supposed that the favorite girl singer of the spiritual leader of the Heaviest Rock-‘n’-Roll Band in the Known World would turn out to be my favorite girl singer…. Dolly Parton, the fairest wildflower that ever bloomed in Tennessee, the best female country vocalist since the prime of Kitty Wells? Far—how you say?—flung! Far fuckin’ flung! Jerry’s at the turntable now, flipping switches and adjusting dials, blowing invisible dust off the record with French-maid fastidiousness, delicately plucking up the tonearm, catching it the way one might pick up a small but outraged serpent, with two fingers just at the base of the skull, gingerly almost to the point of reverence, and a moment later the room is filled with the exquisitely melancholic strains of Dolly Parton’s mourning-dove- with-a-broken-wing voice, keening,

In this mental insti-too-shun, Looking out through these arn bars….

It’s her beautiful Daddy, Come and Get Me, about a girl whose husband has had her committed (“to get me out of his way”), and when Dolly comes to the lines “It’s not my mind that’s broken / It’s my heart.” Jerry Garcia, standing limned in soft morning sunlight before the arched front window, turns to me and… remember now, this is the Jerry Garcia, Captain Trips himself, the same Jerry Garcia who only 12 hours earlier utterly blew out 3000 of the most jaded, dope-devastated heads ever assembled even at the Fillmore (Dead fans are notorious in that regard)… that Jerry Garcia turns to me and clasps his hands to his breast and rolls his eyes after the goofy, ga-ga fashion of a lovesick swain and utters an ecstatic little moan and swoons into the nearest chair… and for the next half hour, while our break- fast turns cold in the kitchen, he and Hunter and I sit there in the living taste of Captain Trips’s morning pipe and groovin’ on Sweet Dolly’s bucolic threnodies about lost loves and dying lovers and stillborn babes, and by the time her last words (“O Robert! O Robert!”) fade into silence, I swear to God there’s not a dry eye in the room….

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

“You know how it is. Can’t do the same stuff forever.” -Garcia

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Very good merch from a bud’s band

A black Self Defense Family t-shirt with other band logos on it, including the Dead Stealie, the Minor Threat sheep, and the Void/Faith crosses

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Jerry Garcia was wearing Adidas when the Gallagher brothers were still in diapers.

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Trill Walton🌹💀🌹 @terrence.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

If you still haven’t read this, seek it out. Loud and Clear provides a ton of technical info on the Wall of Sound without reading as inaccessible or too “inside baseball.” Especially seek it out if you think you’ve heard all the Dead lore there is to hear. I found something new every few pages. 💀🌹

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Neil Pajamas @agrippanothing.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Great book for audio heads fascinated by just one of the ways a band of rag tag psychedelic freaks and their devoted roadies and extended fam blew up the convention of a band's finances and changed how live sound was done building the plane as they flew it and also how it came apart while flying it.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Out today in paperback! LOUD AND CLEAR achieves its final form. Pick up a copy: us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

Brian Anderson holds a paperback copy of LOUD AND CLEAR: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection in front of a piece of the Wall of Sound

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Saw Matt’s band PRISON at a DIY spot here in town last night. They played basically one extended free-ish-form 45 minute song. Heady!

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

And another. Had no idea BI guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky has Dead ink. m.youtube.com/watch?v=9KNi...

Blood Incantation’s Morris Kolontyrsky at a beach, Stealie rib cage tattoo visible

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Mr. Completely @brokensymmetry.art · 09/08/2026

This book is real good and if you don't already have one, get you the paperback when it's out Of interest to anyone who's into the history of live music performance & the tech that supports it, or the shenanigans of a bunch of very brilliant people on a whole lot of strong ass drugs with a budget

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I love the feel of a paperback. Maybe you do, too. LOUD AND CLEAR: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection, is coming very soon to softcover via @stmartinspress.bsky.social. August 18.

Brian Anderson standing on a back porch holding a paperback copy of LOUD AND CLEAR

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Fantastic shot of the finicky “Lead Sled,” or “Owsleystein” rig, just before Bear temporarily left his Dead soundman role & “bought us some regular single-minded equipment so we could go out and play,” as Garcia later explained. Clear glimmers of the Wall stretching back to the earliest Dead days.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Grateful Dead music—because the only way forward is through.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Got to see Bob’s final bow a year ago today. Forever grateful for that. What a gift.

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Brian A. Anderson @thebanderson.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

You know these are the Days Between when you go out to dinner in your hometown and clock someone who at first seems like a stranger, but then looks incredibly familiar.

Two Deadheads posing for a photograph in front of the Chicago Diner

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