![]() The Dead's response to the situation was to bow to the demands of fans and record their first live album, 1969's Live/Dead highlighted by a rendition of Garcia's "Dark Star" clocking in at over 23 minutes, the LP succeeded where its studio predecessors failed in capturing the true essence of the group in all of their improvisational, psychedelicized glory. Their follow-up, 1968's Anthem of the Sun, fared better in documenting the free-form jam aesthetic of their concerts, but after completing 1969's Aoxomoxoa, their penchant for time-consuming studio experimentation left them over 100,000 dollars in debt to the label. debut LP, a disappointing effort which failed to recapture the cosmic sprawl of their live appearances after performing at the Monterey Pop Festival, the group expanded to a six-piece with the addition of second drummer Mickey Hart. In March of 1967 the Dead issued their self-titled Warner Bros. ![]() Signing to MGM, in 1966 the Dead also recorded their first demos the sessions proved disastrous, and the label dropped the group a short time later.Īs 1967 mutated into the Summer of Love, the Dead emerged as one of the top draws on the Bay Area music scene, honing an eclectic repertoire influenced by folk, country, and the blues while regularly appearing at top local venues including the Fillmore Auditorium, the Avalon Ballroom, and the Carousel. As 1965 drew to its close, the Warlocks rechristened themselves the Grateful Dead, the name taken from a folk tale discovered in a dictionary by Garcia bankrolled by chemist/LSD manufacturer Owsley Stanley, the bandmembers soon moved into a communal house situated at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco, becoming a fixture on the local music scene and building a large fan base on the strength of their many free concerts. The Warlocks made their electric debut that July Ken Kesey soon tapped them to become the house band at his notorious Acid Tests, a series of now-legendary public LSD parties and multimedia "happenings" mounted prior to the drug's criminalization. By 1962, Garcia was playing banjo in a variety of local folk and bluegrass outfits, two years later forming Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions with guitarist Bob Weir and keyboardist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan in 1965, the group was renamed the Warlocks, their lineup by then including Lesh on bass as well as Bill Kreutzmann on drums. Upon relocating to Palo Alto, California, in 1960, he befriended Robert Hunter, whose lyrics later graced many of Garcia's most famous melodies in time, he also came into contact with aspiring electronic music composer Phil Lesh. The roots of the Grateful Dead lie with singer/songwriter Jerry Garcia, a longtime bluegrass enthusiast who began playing the guitar at age 15. ![]() Spin-off projects continued decades later, and regularly released archival recordings of the group's more than 2,000 concerts help new generations of Deadheads discover the band's sound, spectacle, and community perennially. The Grateful Dead effectively ended with bandleader Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, but their presence never faded. Though the band recorded only 13 studio albums between 19, an entire counterculture formed around their endless touring, and they even broke through to the mainstream with an unlikely radio hit in the MTV era. Their live shows were completely separate from their studio output, based on freeform improvisation borrowed from jazz and made up of extended performances and set list variations that ensured no two shows were exactly like. While the band initially came out of a psychedelic revolution in the Bay Area's musically and chemically exploratory mid-'60s, they quickly evolved from their acid rock beginnings, incorporating elements of Americana and Bakersfield country into gently majestic albums like 1970's American Beauty. ![]() ![]() So much more than just the archetypal jam band, the Grateful Dead grew to become an artistic and cultural institution that existed entirely on their own terms. ![]()
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