Grateful Dead Reuniting
Grateful Dead to reunite for Obama concert
The Grateful Dead, the San Francisco cult rock band that has played at political events since the 1960s, will reunite on Monday for the first time in four years to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a spokesman said on Friday.
Band leader Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Surviving members have played together occasionally since then, most recently in 2004. On Monday, original members Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir will play at a San Francisco theater a day before California’s primary.
“They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in order to lend support to Senator Obama leading into the crucial ‘Super-Tuesday’ series of primaries held on Tuesday, February 5th,” the band said in a statement.
The band gained fame with its free-form psychedelic music when the counterculture movement flourished in San Francisco in the 1960s, and they attracted many loyal fans who came to be known as “Deadheads.”
by Adam Tanner
Reference: Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco, California. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, jazz, psychedelia, space music and gospel—and for live performances of long musical improvisation. “Their music,” Lenny Kaye wrote, “touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists.”
The Grateful Dead’s fans, some of whom followed the band from concert to concert for years, were known as Deadheads and were renowned for their dedication to the band’s music. Many fans referred to the band simply as “the Dead”. As of 2003, the remaining band members who had been touring under the name “The Other Ones” changed their official group name to “The Dead”. Deadheads continue to use the nickname to refer to both versions of the band.
Their musical influences varied widely, and in concert or on record album one can hear psychedelic rock (in the late sixties), the blues, rock nuggets, country-western, bluegrass, country-rock, and although they rarely played jazz music, the band certainly borrowed for their music the kind of long improvisatory sequences that jazz artists such as Charles Mingus and John Coltrane perfected in the 1950s. These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead “the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world.”
1 Comment »
Adam Tanner got the Dead’s political activities so dead wrong.
The Grateful Dead have not been playing political events since the 60’s Adam, they’ve NOT PLAYED a political event since the 60’s! Jeeze man, you got your lead wrong! Jerry was dead set against using the band’s name to promote anything other than the music and happenings themselves.
Comment by Sam Small — February 3, 2008 @ 20:20