Why the Grateful Dead were so popular

[Matt Flynn]

In response to the Dead suck thread:

The Grateful Dead originally served as occasional house band for the Merry Pranksters, Timothy Leary's group that spearheaded LSD. The Dead were extra well received because they played long sessions. Acid lasts for several hours. Were you to drop acid just before a typical concert, the concert would be over with hours of peaking left to go. With the Dead one just kept on listening. Apparently the Grateful Dead's music matches the acid experience well. I've never done drugs so someone else will have to corroborate that.

LSD was mostly made in Marin, CA just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The Grateful Dead tour became the primary distribution network for LSD in the United States. They were popular in significant part due to the drug network around them.


"What did the Grateful Dead fan say when he ran out of drugs?"

"This band sucks!"


The heir to the Grateful Dead is Phish. If you want acid, go to a Phish concert.

Matt

[Slow Play Ray]

Okay, I like the Dead and all, but how many freakin Dead posts do we need?

Also, Phish doesn't tour anymore, so we can't go to a Phish concert for acid...any other thoughts?

[Victor]

ive never took acid and listend to the dead yet i still like their music

[trying2learn]

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ive never took acid and listend to the dead yet i still like their music

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you are one of the very, very few.

[Slow Play Ray]

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ive never took acid and listend to the dead yet i still like their music

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you are one of the very, very few.

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i never did either. (honest)

[Los Feliz Slim]

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ive never took acid and listend to the dead yet i still like their music

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you are one of the very, very few.

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There's an entire group of people dedicated to NOT doing drugs etc at Dead shows.

Linky (http://www.wharfrat.org/)

[moondogg]

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ive never took acid and listend to the dead yet i still like their music

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you are one of the very, very few.

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i never did either. (honest)

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Me three.

The OP is asinine. It's dumbass premise may explain their initial popularity, but that was 40 years ago. It does not explain the following 30 years of being the most consistently popular musical acts of all time.

Some may not like their music, but get over it already.

[NutzyClutz]

The Grateful Dead aren't Just the best at what they do, they are the only ones who do what they do.

Tape trading, recording section. Every concert had a special section, where "bootleggers" were encouraged to record the show, as well as jack into the audio.

The "Wall of sound"

[Slow Play Ray]

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The "Wall of sound"

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Was there more coming here...?

[man]

the Dead were also one of the first bands to have commercial success with their touring while having so-so record sales (or so the new yorker tells me). maybe it was the acid thing. which means that any band that wants to succeed today should study what they did (again, an idea stolen from the new yorker.. I would try to get a link but I think you have to have a paid online subscription to read noncurrent issues... I'll look if anyone cares to read it)

[Matt Flynn]

moondog it is not hard to instead say "i disagree," or better just present your points and let the disagreement speak for itself.

extrapolate. acid attracts a certain group of people, very in within the counterculture movement. Timothy Leary was ultracool. acid was cool. the Dead became cool. the culture around the Dead builds. it is fun and interesting. it becomes something independent of the Dead. following the Dead becomes a life experience. nostalgia later sets in.

how does any trend start? i'm merely offering that acid was the catalyst for huge success for a mid-level band.

[Matt Flynn]

i would appreciate a post of the article here. i have not seen it.

[jasonHoldEm]

[ QUOTE ]
extrapolate. acid attracts a certain group of people, very in within the counterculture movement. Timothy Leary was ultracool. acid was cool. the Dead became cool. the culture around the Dead builds. it is fun and interesting. it becomes something independent of the Dead. following the Dead becomes a life experience. nostalgia later sets in.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was never really into the dead, but was a hardcore phishhead (I was the guy selling the "wilson sucks" stickers, among others) anyways, like the others said the musical roots of the groups are different, but their cult followings are very similar and I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head here...a lot of us were there to be involved in the scene/community that surrounded the band, the music was only part of the expereince.

J

[cbfair]

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The "Wall of sound"

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Was there more coming here...?

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Without going into the OP's arguement, which I think is accurate but very incomplete, the wall of sound is one of the band's many innovations.

A gigantic wall of speakers and amps which filled two semi-trailers, I understand this particular stage setup was so complicated to construct that the band had two complete sets so that they could leapfrog each other from venue to venue. The band toured with the wall of sound thoughout 1974 and the monstrosity is largely credited with the band's near-bancruptcy which lead to them playing only 5 shows in 1975 and nearly breaking up for good.

Slow Play Ray and others interested in the band may enjoy watching "the Grateful Dead Movie" recorded during a run of shows at the Winterland Arena in Oct. 1974; among other highlights, there is a segment where Phil Lesh describes the level of control and audio seperation built into the WOS. Phil said that each of the six strings on his bass corresponded to a stack of speakers within the WOS and by switching between diferrent pickups he could make sound oscillate between diferrent speaker stacks thus creating very interesting effects. Apparently, each of the band members had their own section within the WOS.

I love the Grateful Dead but I understand that many don't and likely never will. It's not my role to try to win converts but I'm glad to talk about the band whenever it comes up. This topic is at least as interesting to me as many others here in OOTville.

[moondogg]

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moondog it is not hard to instead say "i disagree," or better just present your points and let the disagreement speak for itself.


[/ QUOTE ]

Lighten up, Otis. I could have said it a lot of ways, what I said was one of the nicer ones.

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extrapolate. acid attracts a certain group of people, very in within the counterculture movement. Timothy Leary was ultracool. acid was cool. the Dead became cool. the culture around the Dead builds. it is fun and interesting. it becomes something independent of the Dead. following the Dead becomes a life experience. nostalgia later sets in.

how does any trend start? i'm merely offering that acid was the catalyst for huge success for a mid-level band.

[/ QUOTE ]

30 years of nostalgia spanning several generations and musical evolutions?

The Dead did not survive on acid heads and nostolgia. None of this crap could support their enormous extended popularity for so long.

You overly simplistic cookie-cutter generalization of the Dead "culture" sure makes it sound like you have had little, if any, direct interaction with said culture.

What magazine or newspaper did you read this crap in?

[Matt Flynn]

throughout most of this thread i have been wearing a very bright tie-die with Jerry Garcia's face on it that i bought in 1986 at Sacramento. it had been 254 days since they had played Dark Star. doses were $2 and could be bought by the guy holding up the blotter page yelling "Doses, $2" at the top of his lungs in the parking lot. you were not yet born. thumbdick.

[cbfair]

[ QUOTE ]
throughout most of this thread i have been wearing a very bright tie-die with Jerry Garcia's face on it that i bought in 1986 at Sacramento. it had been 254 days since they had played Dark Star. doses were $2 and could be bought by the guy holding up the blotter page yelling "Doses, $2" at the top of his lungs in the parking lot. you were not yet born.

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Without looking it up, I'm pretty sure that Dark Star was last played on 7-13-84 at the Greek Theatre (before being resurrected on 10-9-89 at the Hampton Coliseum during a show billed as the warlocks).

254 days after the Greek show would have put you in Springfield, MA on 3-24-85... You musta really been dosed, man.

Following up the OP, I say its ridiculous minutiea like this that make the band worth following, drugs were just a sideline.

Edited obvious spelling error. There are probably more

[Matt Flynn]

hey that was the sign two guys were holding up. i am pissed. that really irritates me. why would they lie? i can see that sign like it was this morning.

come to think of it it was wiggling a bit.

there were two Cadillacs parked near the front gate. one license plate said DeadArt and the other was Mo' Dead or very close. Cindy Yarrington and i laughed for half a song over those. good times.