Archive for the ‘Grateful Dead’ Category
Grateful Dead Live at Kezar Stadium – 1975
August 24th, 2010 | 
Author: Their live shows, fed by their improvisational approach to music, made the Grateful Dead different from most other touring bands.
While most rock and roll bands rehearse a standard show for their tours that is replayed night after night, city after city, the Grateful Dead never did.
As Garcia stated in an 1966 interview, “We don’t make up our sets beforehand.
We’d rather work off the tops of our heads than off a piece of paper.”
They maintained this operating ethic throughout their existence. For each performance, the band drew material from an active list of a hundred or so songs.
Due to the band’s varied song selection and the improvisational nature of their playing, no two Grateful Dead concerts were exactly the same.
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Grateful Dead Live at Springfield Civic Center – 1974
The Grateful Dead’s early music (in the mid 1960s) was part of the process of establishing what “psychedelic music” was, but theirs was essentially a “street party” form of it.
They developed their “psychedelic” playing as a result of meeting Ken Kesey in Palo Alto, CA and subsequently becoming the house band for the Acid Tests he staged.
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Grateful Dead Live at Seattle Center Arena on 1973
The Grateful Dead formed during the era when bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were dominating the airwaves. “The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock ‘n’ roll band,” said Bob Weir. “What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn’t think of anything else more worth doing” Former folk-scene star Bob Dylan had recently put out a couple of records featuring electric instrumentation.
Grateful Dead Live at Roosevelt Stadium – 1972
Grateful Dead members have said that it was after attending a concert by the touring New York City band The Lovin’ Spoonful that they decided to “go electric” and look for a dirtier sound. Gradually, many of the East-Coast American folk musicians, formerly luminaries of the coffee-house scene, were moving in the electric direction.
Grateful Dead Live at Fillmore East – 1971
The name Grateful Dead was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, in his biography “…Jer[ry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary…[and]…In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, ‘Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?’” The definition there was “the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial.” According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead’s music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of “dictionary”. In the Garcia biography, Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time.
Grateful Dead Live at Merramec Community College – 1970
The charter members of the Grateful Dead were: banjo and guitar player Jerry Garcia, guitarist Bob Weir, bluesman organist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the classically trained bassist Phil Lesh and drummer Bill Kreutzmann (who then used the stage name Bill Sommers.) Lesh was the last member to join the Warlocks before they became the Grateful Dead: he replaced Dana Morgan Jr. who had played bass for a few gigs. With the exception of McKernan, the core of the band stayed together for 30 years, until Garcia’s death in 1995.
Grateful Dead Live at Springer’s Inn – 1969
The Grateful Dead began their career as The Warlocks, a group formed in early 1964 from the remnants of a Palo Alto jug band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions.
Grateful Dead Live at Eagles Auditorium – 1968
The Grateful Dead’s musical influences varied widely; in concert recordings or on record albums one can hear psychedelic rock, blues, rock and roll, country-western, bluegrass, country-rock, and improvisational jazz. These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead “the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world.” They were ranked 55th in the issue The Greatest Artists of all Time by Rolling Stone magazine.
Grateful Dead Live at Avalon Ballroom – 1967
The fans of the Grateful Dead, some of whom followed the band from concert to concert for years, are known as “Deadheads” and are known for their dedication to the band’s music.[1][4] Many referred to the band simply as “the Dead”. As of 2003, the remaining band members have toured under the name “The Dead.” Remaining band members Bob Weir and Phil Lesh formed “Furthur” in 2009. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann formed 7 Walkers with Malcolm “Papa Mali” Welbourne in 2009.
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Grateful Dead Live at Various venues – 1966
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area.The band is known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, jazz, psychedelia, and space rock and for live performances of long musical improvisation. “Their music,” writes Lenny Kaye, “touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists.”
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