nA Grateful Dead concert, Ray Robertson argues, is life. n nLike life, it can be alternately compelling and lackluster; familiar and foreign; occasionally sublime and sometimes insipid. Although the Grateful Dead stopped the day Jerry Garcias heart did, what the band left behind is the next best thing to being there in the third row, courtesy of the groups unorthodox decision to record all of their concerts. Meaning that its possible to follow the bands evolution (and devolution) through their shows, from the R&B-based garage band at the beginning, to the jazz-rock conjurers at their creative peak, to the lumbering monolith of their decline.n nIn All the Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows, Robertson listens to and writes ecstatically about fifty of the bands most important and memorable concerts in order to better understand who the Grateful Dead were, what they became, and what they meant--and what they continue to mean.n nn nn nn nn