Grateful Dead

**relentless** · May 5, 2015

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Today, 5-5-2015, marks the 50th Anniversary of the Grateful Dead. Because of this, I felt it would be appropriate to do a write-up on them:

Wiki

The Grateful Dead is an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational 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." These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead "the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world".

The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area amid the rise of counterculture of the 1960s. The founding members were Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (guitar, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals) and Bill Kreutzmann (drums).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grateful_Dead

The significance of the Grateful Dead doesn't reside on their studio albums, because though it's true they released excellent music with the albums Workingman's Dead, American Beauty, Wake of the Flood, Blues for Allah, and Terrapin Station, the band's focus was on live performance, and using albums as a means to get new material out to fans. Instead of relying on studio albums to push their music, the Grateful Dead would go through the process of testing new material on the road, waiting a period of time to perfect each song and to gain fan support before committing them to a record.

Because of this method, and because the Grateful Dead rarely (if ever) constructed set lists for their shows, their music was allowed to expand in an improvisatory setting, making every performance unique. Being a band that preferred touring over sitting in the sterile environments of the studio, it's no surprise the Grateful Dead performed over 2,300 shows across their 30 year active history, with the surviving members going on the road to play since their last show in 1995.

In many ways, the Grateful Dead revolutionized live performance to a degree no other band has done since. Their set lists were often broken into several parts with each show nearly reaching 3 hours, with a level of freedom in the material they wanted to play to the point on several bootlegs and recordings you can hear band members say to each other "what's next?", as they preferred setlists that fit the mood of the shows they were playing on a given night. In the Summer of 1974, they built the largest speaker system ever constructed up to that point called the "Wall of Sound", which was used for the band to tweak their own sound on stage without delay, and without relying on an engineer to make changes at the soundboard. This gave them complete control over their sound and allowed them to best replicate the sound they were hearing to the audience. At a time when the Grateful Dead were at an all-time high, it's no surprise their Summer '74 run of shows are so highly regarded (see the Weather Report Suite below).

The Wall of Sound:

Perhaps the most notable aspect of their live shows (aside from their origins as a band that were heavily involved in the California Acid Tests of the mid 1960s where they got their start), is their encouragement of fans taping their shows. Even with the new age of technology, fans taping shows is heavily frowned upon in many musical circles; but not for the Grateful Dead. In fact by the time their following grew (fans that referred to themselves as "Deadheads"), and more people came to tape their shows, the band began setting designated taping areas behind the soundboard for the best possible sound. Because of this, the Grateful Dead's live history, being one of the most valuable assets in rock music history, is free to the public. As lead guitarist Jerry Garcia once said of fans taping shows "once we're done with it [the show], they can have it".

The Music

Grateful Dead's music, as demonstrated below, went through multiple influences that touched on traditional and popular music of the time. Folk, blues, rock n roll, country, bluegrass, and even aspects of Prog Rock all feature or were featured in the Grateful Dead's music at some point. From quick rhythm and blues covers of Chuck Berry, to complex progressive arrangements with the Weather Report Suite, one may not be able to point towards a "progression" in their music other than at the start of their career; but can instead recognize their style and presentation as entirely their own.

Early Material: Psychedelic

St. Stephen