Grateful Dean and Music Festivals
The Grateful Dead spread their message of peace love and mind expansion around the world for the best part of three decades. Few believe that there has ever been a more influential band in recent history. But all this didn’t come without great struggle. From the start there were a couple of highs and lows with the band and its varied members, from personal Problems, to lable issues, to the issues they have always had with being on tour for such a long time. Few bands can keep the same sound to their Music without changing with the times like the Grateful Dead has. You can pop in an early record from the 70′s and it sound just the same as a recording of them in the late 90′s. The Grateful Dead has experienced everything from death to drug obsession, and the Keep Truckin ‘! The band was formed in 1965 in Sans Francisco with a mix of sounds from several different categories of music such as Folks, Bluegrass, Jazz, Country, Blues, and Physicadellic Rock. Always present at the Top Music Festivals the Grateful Dead built their legend playing these events. The original members were like the following : Jerry Garcia doing lead guitar and vocals, Bob Weir was the youngest member of the band playing rhythm guitar and vocals. Ron “Pigpin” McKernan played keyboards, Phill Lesh has often been the basist. Bill Kreutzmann played drums at first but was followed by Micky Heart in 1967 as a seccond drummer. When Pigpin expired at the tender age of 27 of liver failure, Keith Godchaux joined on as the new keyboardist, with him he brought his other half Donna Jean to help with backup vocals. When the couple left the band in 1979 they were replaced by Brent Mayland. Mayland played with the band till His death in 1990, making him the 3rd Keyboardist to die while in the Grateful Dead. He was quickly replaced by Bruce Hornsbey. Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow were in control of lryics for the most part. Owen Stanely was for years their beloved executive. The Grateful Dead wasn’t only renowned for their sound, but also several visible teqinies were used as well . Everything from tiny dancing bears and skelitons to the renound “Steal Your Face”. Here are a few words from Owsley Stanley about the Steal Your Face : In 1969 the Dead were hiring a warehouse in Novato, California. I was sound man for the band at the time, and lived in Oakland. Bob Thomas, an old friend of mine had just moved from LA to the Bay area and needed a place to stay, and we needed somebody to look after the warehouse, which had had an issue with break-ins. Bob was a wonderful graphic artist whose work is now familiar to most Deadheads in the shape of the Live Dead album cover and the Bear’s Choice cover, that the popular Dancing Bears appeared. The Dead in those days had to play in lots of festival style shows where the hardware would all wind up at the rear of the stage in a muddle. Since each band used pretty much the same sort of gear it all looked alike. We’d spend a fair period of time moving the pieces around so we could read the name on the boxes. I made a decision that we needed some type of marking that we could identify from a distance. www.top-music-festivals.com