Grateful Dead Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead, the most popular so called underground band of all time. This band has underwent many changes, some good and others bad throughout their thirty or so years of performing. I plan to prove that a band that has remained together for thirty plus years isnt as easy as many would assume. In fact I would have to say the down times in the band almost equal the outrageously great time they had. Despite all the down times the amazing music of the Grateful Dead always made it possible to bring smiles to empty faces anytime anywhere. Even now that the bands figure head (Jerry Garcia) has passed on, the family that he created (Deadheads) and left behind will never forget him or his music. Jerry Garcias life was filled with wonderful things, many of which he never expected in the first place.
After an almost fatal heroin overdose in 1986, Garcia philosophically stated, Im 45 years old, Im ready for anything, I didnt even plan on living this long so all this shit is just add-on stuff. (Garcia) This attitude shows why Garcia did all of the things he did and even how some of them came about. Garcia, who functioned as the preeminent pied piper of the rock era, led a life of great artistic ability which he used in many ways(Grateful Dead_ Rockhall).The very underground San Francisco based band didnt always go by the name Grateful Dead. When they first came about they went by the name, Mothers McCrees Uptown Jug Champions who consisted of band members, Jerry Garcia, Ron Pigpen McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann. Keep in mind them and their followers were for the most part war protesters. All, very young and some not even out of high school. Soon after they had established the band they started playing at many house parties, small bars, and roadhouses. Their music was loved by so many because it was said, you can sing the lyrics without ever making a sound., and you could sing the lyrics with dance and drugs.
The Term Paper on Jerry Garcia Grateful Dead
... seminal 60 s rock & roll band the Grateful Dead for which Garcia is most known (Jerry Garcia). Grateful Dead is a name that was randomly chosen ... U. S. Army for a very short period of time (Garcia /Erlewine). J. J. Garcia, also known as Captain Trips, was a diabetic ... an extraordinary life full of great achievements in his 53 years. As he himself said, he had no idea what a ...
A little while later they had a name change to the Warlocks when they grasped more unsuspecting followers that soon became life long Deadheads. Before nineteen-sixty-five the band had in a way dropped out of society and the straight music scene, playing at houses and roadhouses and only performed for a good friend as a private house band. For the next six months only performed at the Acid Tests, immersing themselves in a sensosiorm of sound, light, and mind altering drugs that transformed their audiences, forever. I know that if the Acid Tests had never happened we would have been just another band, stated Phil Lesh in a nineteen eighties interview. This is now where the Grateful Dead were born as we know them today. The name, Grateful Dead as every deadhead knows, choose itself when Garcia flipped open an old dictionary at Phils house, and there it wasIt was one of those moments, he told Rolling Stone, like everything else on the page went blank, diffuse, just sorta oozed away, and there it was grateful dead.
Big black letters edged all around in gold, man, blasting out at me, such a stunning combination. A veritable fat trip. So I said, How about Grateful Dead, and that was it. The band was smoking a superpsychedelic DMT. In another, later account, Garcia didnt like the name at first but thought is was just to powerful to ignore. Weir and Kreutzmann didnt like it either but people started calling us that and it just started, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead Here is the definition of the word Grateful Dead in the 1955 Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary.
GRATEFUL DEAD- The motif of a cycle of folk tales which begins with the heros coming upon a group of people ill-treating or refusing to bury the corpse of a man who had died without paying his debts. He gives his last penny, either to pay the mans debts or to give him a decent burial. Within a few hours he meets with a traveling companion who aids him in some impossible task The story ends with the companions disclosing himself as the man whose corpse the other had befriended LSD, of course was the genie behind the birth of the Dead. It surprised me to learn that the Grateful Dead used LSD every time they played until the 1970s. By then, the larger crowds demanded more control from the musicians than LSD allowed. LSD, introduced the Dead to what percussionist Mickey Hart calls a road map, to which they could return again and again to bring back the sights and sounds and sensations of the early trips.
The Essay on Drug Trafficking in Mexico
Drug Trafficking in Mexico: Social, Ethical and Political Problem. Around 20 years ago in Mexico, reading about someone getting his or her head cut-off was something from a horror movie, but times have changed now. Now it is not uncommon to hear about shootings, massacres, or people getting dissolved in acid. Nowadays, reporters have to cut back on whatever news they have for the media. Almost ...
However it wasnt the kind of map that told you what to do, like if you go from here to there, youre going to find Eureka. It only showed you that youre on the road that you found this rhythm and this zone, which is what made musical invention possible. The Acid Tests of the early sixties had a tremendous influence on the Grateful Dead. The initial experiments had been launched by the Central Intelligence Agency, which began to investigate mind-altering drugs and parapsychology in 1953 under the program called MK-ULTRA. MK-ULTRA had its roots in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) wartime fascination with so-called truth telling drugs like mescaline, Scopolamine, and liquid marijuana. The first governments Acid Tests were carried out on workers in the Manhattan Project new mind control program.
Later, MK-ULTRA was mainly conducted at prisons and mental hospitals. By 1959-1960, the CIA had started farming its research out to VA hospitals and Army Chemical Corps. In university cities such as Palo Alto and Boston, volunteering for an LSD trip became the hip thing to do. These explorations took place weekly sensations where they were paid between twenty and seventy-five dollars a day more each time to keep you coming back, says band member Robert Hunter, who signed up to test drive a batch of what the government called psychotomimetic [madness-mimicking] drugs. During one session, tears had poured out of his eyes, and the clinician asked why he was crying. Im not crying, Hunter said.
Im in another dimension. Im inhabiting the body of a great green Buddha and theres a pool that is flowing out of my eyes. The constant abuse of drugs led to some high tension between band members in the late sixties and early seventies. Weirs, whose tuning and timing were off, was doing too much acid in Jerrys view. Pigpen was also falling behind. He was drinking more and rehearsing less, and visibly struggling with the huge Hammond organ that had replaced the carry on keyboard that he used to play. Neither musician was keeping up with the new direction the band was headed.
The Essay on Bands And Record Napster Download Files
A major news item lately has been what is called The MP 3 Controversy. It is based on the free trade of music files known as MP 3 s, which are small enough to be easily downloaded but have the same quality as a compact disc. Computer users are able to download these files from the internet and then burn them onto CDs that can be played in any regular CD player. Bands and record labels claim that ...
One afternoon after Weir and Pigpen had left a recording session, Jerry ordered the band manager, Rock aside and ordered him to fire them both. That idea was ridiculous, and Rock knew it. You dont fire your lifetime friends and your partner, and if you do you do it yourself, and Garcia refused. Pigpen, whose legend grew as he himself began to dwindle away with liver disease, was a tougher case. He rarely came to band meetings, but he still did know how to work the crowd. As late as 1970-1971, when the Grateful Dead took the college circuit by storm, he was often the star, rapping the blues in a way that drew his student audiences into a magic circle of warmth that left them hungry for more.
We can calling ourselves the Grateful Dead but after Pigpens death, Garcia said at Ron McKernans funeral in 1973, we all knew this was the end of the original Grateful Dead. Mickey Hart once stated If you only know a band by its records, you wouldnt like the Grateful Dead very much. The Dead made many records throughout the years but the prize possessions are the bootleg albums and tapes from many shows, personally the only albums I really enjoy from them are their live ones or bootlegs of course. The Grateful Dead was and band who played for you and not to you like most bands do. The only reason they were out there was for the audiences. It was a short step for the Grateful Dead to envision recruiting a lager community of heads and freaks, a Deadland of airwaves and albums and concerts, which would help the band steer clear of obstacles in its path. These included internal problems of uneven talent and colliding music styles, and more importantly, record prices that the Dead wanted to lower the level that Waner had set.
The step that soon sent the Dead off the track from all other bands of their time was taken in1971, when a brief notice was slipped in the jacket of the live album Skull and Roses. Signed by Garcia, it read: DEAD FREAKS UNITE: Who are you? Where are you? How are you? Send us your name and address and well keep you informed. It was simply an invitation to write the Dead and let them know who there fans were. With this small gesture it showed a big turn out. By 1972, 25,000 letters had rolled in, many drawn up with dense calligraphy that became an icon of the Deadhead correspondence. This action provoked an on going movement with recruiting.
The Term Paper on The Grateful Dead Band Music Garcia
... to an end for the Grateful Dead on August, 1995, due to the death of Jerry Garcia. That day, deadheads danced in Haight-Ashbury, ... down" in the Grateful Dead's music. This came with the shift in all the band members, but especially Jerry Garcia's drug use.Cocaine was ... best selling records. But their fans continued to grow in numbers in appreciation for the Dead. Even after the band's dismembering in ...
We went out and recruited these guys head for head, their fathers and their sisters, and their mothers. We went on a head- hunting mission for twenty-five years, Hart says; we went out and got the army in tow. And said, Okay, you guys are something you are a thing. And they themselves recognized their own identity and grew bigger than we could ever even imagine. The Grateful Dead was tired of having to live up to the expectations of record labels. The labels were just in it for the money, the Dead enjoyed playing for people who couldnt afford to see the constantly raising price to see them, they were not allowed to put on any free shows which they liked to do in such places as the Golden Gate park in San-Francisco.
So in 1973 a letter from Grateful Dead records read This adventure is a jumping off point to get us in a position of greater contact with our people, to put us in command of our own ship, and for unspoken potentials for the far out. It was the first time any rock group attempted to control all aspects of its record business, recording, cutting, and pressing, distribution and promotion. But by1976, financial problems had set in and poor record sales resulted in failure. Needing help United Artists decided to take on the task. The band had its largest publicity in the later 1980s. In 1987, the album In the Dark was released which included the hit song Touch of Grey.
This song soon made it to the top ten it made the radio, and yes the Grateful Dead made a MTV video. The popularity of this song brought in tremendous revenues like the band had never experienced before from any of their other albums and never saw again. Not to say the Grateful Dead was in any kind of financial trouble but drew in a lot of money from it. In fact the Grateful Dead made more money from concerts than any other band ever has, partly because the Grateful Dead played tremendous amounts of shows all over the country and even toured in Europe. The Grateful Dead in 1970 played one-hundred and forty-five shows more than anyone else ever has and probably ever will. In my opinion the Grateful Dead had a lot of talent and a great ear for truly good music.
The Research paper on Case Analysis The Grateful Dead Creating Deadheads By Providing Drop dead Customer Service
... The Grateful Dead Creating Deadheads by Providing Drop-Dead Customer Service List of Facts The career of popular rock-band, The Grateful Dead, started ... -time customer surveys and feedbacks will help the music band to learn what are the customer expectations and ... in 1965. The band enjoyed popularity until 1995, when the lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died. The band ...
In writing this research paper I have learned many things about the Grateful Dead. Within Garcias Rock & Roll, Folk-Rock, and Country Rock history, his music could be described as reflective, gentle, trippy, organic, or intimate; the same was basically true for his artwork as well(Jerry Garcia).
Through the Grateful Deads sound the psychedelic revolution and the spirit of the Sixties have been kept for decades. Deadheads and critics alike contended that the best way to experience the group was in concert, where the band-fan bonding ritual drove the music to its zenith, causing the best styles of the Dead to rise higher, and higher. Anthem of the Sun, Workingmans Dead, American Beauty and Grateful Dead (a.k.a. Skull & Roses) served as record highlights.
Dark Star was their signature song (Jerry Garcia_).
Some of Garcias pieces of art were: Blue Iceberg, Butterfly Study, Cherry 57 Nash, Down at the Ritz, Draculas Heart, Feeding in the Fight, Flaming Meadow, and Garcia/Grisman. Between Garcias music, artwork and trippy personality he had many styles to work with (Fine Art_).
Jerome John Garcia lived an extraordinary life full of great achievements in his 53 years. As he himself said, he had no idea what a life he would live or how long of one. His outgoing hippy style let him do whatever he wanted to which probably started his career and eventually ended it. Garcias life wasnt anything to complain about. He had great abilities and knew how to use them correctly. Life in his hands was like trying to make a wild African Ass do whatever you tell it to do, it is always going to do whatever it wants to no matter what.
Garcia lived on the wild side and that let him be free to roam around through all sorts of things, which helped him discover many of his gifts in life, that many others might not have been able to do or find.One being, the idea of how drug related and based the band actually was. I cant go around promoting the use of drugs but, they really can open your mind up to many different lifestyles and open your ears, eyes and soul to become one with the music. After all the drugs and alcohol had created this band and ultimately destroyed it. Alcohol having killed Ron Pigpen McKernan with liver disease and the one whom brought the band together and forced them to stay together through all the bad times the infamous Jerry Garcia. Jerry died in early August of 1995 of a heart attack, which was a direct result of his terrible cocaine problem. Jerry enlightened this world with his music and will never be forgotten among the family he has left behind.
The Essay on The Grateful Dead Group Garcia Jerry
... attended that last show. Jerry Garcia was fifty-three years of age when he died. Jerry was the Grateful Dead's singer, song writer, gutaitariest ... known as the "deadheads." According to the Dead heads "there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert." The Grateful Dead have many fans that ... vocalist. Pig Pen was the janitor at the music shop where Jerry gave banjo lessons. During the concert of that ...
The Grateful Dead officially was ended when Jerry passed away, however the remaining members still tour and play under the name The Other Ones and the family of the Grateful Dead the deadheads still follow them around the country. In my mind the Grateful Dead has never died and never will, they will never be gone if you wont let them. This message encouraged many Deadheads to undertake the task of improving their mini-society. The old encouraged the new not to gatecrash, advised them on concert etiquette, and aided in the calming down of the occasional bad acid trip. Groups such as Greenpeace and others that supported various political ideas began distributing information at shows, and it wasnt before long that the Grateful Dead experience regained its true form. Another contributing factor to the experiences salvation was the tapers, who helped out through their desire to spread the music to as many people as possible. The tapers are perhaps the most unique of all Deadheads; they are a sub cult within a sub cult. From the early beginnings the Grateful Dead not only permitted their shows to be audience recorded, but encouraged it.
As a result, the Dead are probably the most recorded act of all time (Trager 86).
Tapes exist from nearly every performance since 1967. They are subjects of a trade and bartering network among Deadheads. Folktales exists of legendary and rare performances that a taper had way back when. Many a Deadhead has a particular sought after recording of a show they were at that was of special importance. The Dead realized that audience recording and the circulation of good-quality live tapes would only help to enhance their reputation and spur record sales. Today Deadheads hold responsible positions in law, medicine, computer science, education, business, writing, art, and any in other profession out there.
Most of them were able to pursue their professional goals and careers while looking forward to their next Dead show for rejuvenation and inspiration in a fan-friendly, low testosterone rock & roll environment (Trager 86).
Jerry Garcia died in 1995, and with his death came the end of the Grateful Dead as a touring and recording band. Deadheads have however remained, and in them so has the immortal spirit of the Dead. Deadheads have dauntlessly kept the faith alive. Being a Deadhead was truly an American adventure. Its hard to determine what will become of Deadheads in the future, certainly a large number of them joined the tours of other bands, such as Phish and Dead offspring like Ratdog, The Other Ones, Phil and Friends, and the Further tour, for that spiritual fulfillment that had manifested itself in the Grateful Dead for so many years. Also hard to determine is the impact that the more assimilated Deadheads will have on society.
One certainty is that Deadheads are everywhere, and through their everlasting devotion, the spirit and music of the Grateful dead will not fade away. Words: 2930
Bibliography:
de Curtis, Anthony, and James Henke, eds. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. New York: Random House, 1992. Jackson, Blair. Goin Down the Road: A Grateful Dead traveling companion.
New York: Harmony Books, 1992. Hofmann, Albert. LSD: My Problem Child. Translated by Jonathan Ott. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. Gans, David. Conversations with the Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book.
New York: Citadel Press, 1991..
