As one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll bands of all time, Grateful Dead, who gained popularity in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s, quickly became synonymous with the hippie movement and demonstrated how the counterculture of the civil rights era drew inspiration from Black art, and challenged the segregationist norms of the era. … Read More
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) appointed legendary musician and founding member of the Grateful Dead and Dead & Company Bob Weir as its newest Goodwill Ambassador. I was there for the ceremony which took place during the eighth annual Social Good Summit at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, … Read More
When the long awaited, highly anticipated Grateful Dead documentary, Long Strange Trip, had its premiere at Sundance a few months ago, I was lucky enough to attend and sit in on a post-film talkback with the director, Amir Bar-Lev. I’ve thought about the film a lot since then, and I shared those thoughts with Jambands. … Read More
You’ve probably heard about what it is to struggle to be an artist. Some have struggled pretty hard, including a music composer named Charles Edward Ives (left), who was largely ignored during his lifetime (1874 – 1954). This had a major impact on the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh. “Phil was going to college of San … Read More
The book Harrington Street was not completed before Jerry Garcia’s death, but is billed as an autobiography of the musician and author until age 10. The Grateful Dead’s current exhibition on the literary history of the band at the Archive at UC Santa Cruz features one particularly out of place primary source – a photocopy … Read More
Did you ever want to turn into a fly on the wall, so long as it was in a room where your favorite legend was being interviewed by a great journalist? That’s what it feels like listening to Michael Lydon interview Jerry Garcia in an hour long audio clip available on Amazon. Journalists did the … Read More
“Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley always claimed that they photocopied that book, they didn’t, they cut it out with a pen knife. So this is not that copy,” Grateful Dead Archivist Nicholas G. Meriwether told us, looking over a medieval era art book (right) on view at UC Santa Cruz, “but that’s the way they got … Read More
“Cats’s Cradle is basically nothing more than a kind of whimsical but dark vision of Pandora’s box and technology run amok,” said Grateful Dead Archivist Nicholas G. Meriwether at UC Santa Cruz. “[It] gave [the Grateful Dead] the metaphor for what they wanted to do with their ideas.” Not the string game, of course but the Kurt … Read More
The science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon’s novel More Than Human was a fascinating connection of perspectives in the literary tradition and timeline on exhibit at the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz. According to Wikipedia, “the novel concerns the coming together of six extraordinary people with strange powers who are able to “blesh” (a portmanteau … Read More