Did Merl Saunders Shape the Grateful Dead’s Sound with Jazz?

November 17, 2023By Marjorie Rogers

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

Bob Weir Honored as Goodwill Ambassador at Social Good Summit

September 18, 2017By Taylor Swope

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

Thoughts on Long Strange Trip

June 15, 2017By Taylor Swope

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

Jerry Garcia’s Harrington Street Outtake

May 6, 2015By LITTLE HIPPIE

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

Journalists and Primary Sources on the Grateful Dead

May 5, 2015By LITTLE HIPPIE

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

Posters of Haight Ashbury are ‘Leaves in a Disbound Book’

May 4, 2015By LITTLE HIPPIE

“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

The Grateful Dead’s Ice Nine is a Vonnegut Reference

May 1, 2015By LITTLE HIPPIE

“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

Reading Theodore Sturgeon, the Grateful Dead are More Than Human

April 30, 2015By LITTLE HIPPIE

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