6/7/2023 0 Comments China cat sunflower cow palace![]() This later period was a time of ups and downs, as the band was playing bigger shows than ever, but the influx of new fans led to some unfortunate incidents at shows. ![]() That is until 1987, when the band scored the sole US Top 40 hit in their long career, “ Touch of Grey”, a catchy pop tune that had the odd side effect of turning their erstwhile cult into a stadium-filling circus for the rest of their career. New fans came into the fold largely through word of mouth and the spread of those tapes. In spite of this cult popularity, the Grateful Dead were never quite as famous or mainstream as many of their peers of the period, which is exactly how the Deadheads preferred it. The Dead toured every year of their existence except 1975, drawing millions of fans, both hardcore touring “heads” and casual listeners across the country. Compounding this is that many consider the recordings of their songs from the original albums often pale to live versions of the same song, though some albums (notably, Anthem of the Sun, Workingman’s Dead, and American Beauty) are still considered classics. Since the Dead never worked from a show-to-show setlist (they had a gigantic concert repertoire and are documented to have played more than five hundred different songs in their thirty-year existence, with around a hundred songs in rotation at any given time), trading tapes became to the Deadheads the ideal way to experience the music short of attending a concert live. This latter practice was encouraged by the group. The Deadheads, as they’re known, were so dedicated that many of them would follow the band on tour for extended stretches of time, and trade tapes of past concerts. The Dead are probably as famous for their fanbase as they are for their music. They also had an enormous library of covers, especially traditional Americana and blues, plus more modern country and rock pieces. Hunter is considered to be an official member of the Dead, to the point where he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the band, while Barlow's official status is less clear. Most of the band’s songs were collaborations between Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter, though Weir contributed many as well, particularly with the help of lyricist John Perry Barlow. Lesh, McKernan, Donna Jean Godchaux and Mydland all acted as additional backing and lead vocalists where needed. Garcia and Weir were the primary vocalists in the group and were as different as night and day while Garcia had a wispy, almost fragile sounding voice, Weir was best known for some of the group’s most raucous rock and roll “shouters” and his fondness for “cowboy songs”. Aside from the keyboardists, whose tenures sometimes overlapped into a dual-keyboards lineup, the band's membership was largely stable between 1967 and its split in 1995. Godchaux's wife Donna Jean also joined the Dead as a backing vocalist shortly after he did, and they both left the group together to be replaced by Mydland. The core line-up was Jerry Garcia (lead guitar), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar), Phil Lesh (bass), Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (drums - yes, two drummers, folks!) and a succession of keyboardists starting with Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and continuing, in order with Tom Constanten, Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick and - on occasion - Bruce Hornsby. The Dead appeared at the now-famous Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and the even more famous original Woodstock festival in 1969 (however, band members admit they weren’t at top form at either one), and have a reputation for long tours and musically exploratory shows where one song often blends into another. ![]() Essentially, they were the godfathers of the Jam Band genre. The Grateful Dead were a six-piece note Well, most of the time there were brief periods where they were a quintet, and one 5-year-long stretch when they were a septet group formed in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, best known for their improvisatory style of rock music, taking elements of Psychedelic Rock, Country Music, Folk Music, Blues, and whatever else they thought would fit.
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