Podcast appearances and mentions of dennis mcnally

Dennis McNally was the Grateful Dead's publicist in the mid-‘80s, one of many reasons why he's supremely qualified to write his new book about the birth of the counterculture in America's West and East Coast and Britain. ‘The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies And Created the Sixties', a celebration of music, beat poetry, radical thinking, free speech and artistic liberty, seems even more precious now in the light of recent events. All sorts are discussed here, these being some of the highlights …  … how the Summer of Love of ‘67 actually happened in the Fall of ‘66 in Haight-Ashbury. … “rigid, stagnant, terrifying”: early ‘60s America before the revolution.  … the three key cities that “experimented with freedom”. ... how San Francisco “cherished strangeness” and had a self-proclaimed ruler, Emperor Norton, who created his own currency. … how the Grateful Dead - “the ultimate example of the bohemian pulse writ large in music” – spent $1m building a sound system when they were earning $125 a week. … the influence of Private Eye, Beyond The Fringe and That Was The Week That Was on British culture. And of Lenny Bruce, the Hungry I club, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and Mort Sahl in America. … how Rebel Without A Cause and the Wild One helped establish the West Coast as rebellious. … “there are two flags of freedom – one to make as much money as possible, the other to be as open-minded and thoughtful about everything”. … Eisenhower said “in God we trust!” But which God? … the entire security for the 25,000 crowd at the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park was two mounted policemen. … “nothing is more fun than researching”. ... how the counter-culture was created with very little money or technology. Order the Last Great Dream here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Great-Dream-Bohemians-Hippies/dp/0306835665Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dennis McNally was the Grateful Dead's publicist in the mid-‘80s, one of many reasons why he's supremely qualified to write his new book about the birth of the counterculture in America's West and East Coast and Britain. ‘The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies And Created the Sixties', a celebration of music, beat poetry, radical thinking, free speech and artistic liberty, seems even more precious now in the light of recent events. All sorts are discussed here, these being some of the highlights …  … how the Summer of Love of ‘67 actually happened in the Fall of ‘66 in Haight-Ashbury. … “rigid, stagnant, terrifying”: early ‘60s America before the revolution.  … the three key cities that “experimented with freedom”. ... how San Francisco “cherished strangeness” and had a self-proclaimed ruler, Emperor Norton, who created his own currency. … how the Grateful Dead - “the ultimate example of the bohemian pulse writ large in music” – spent $1m building a sound system when they were earning $125 a week. … the influence of Private Eye, Beyond The Fringe and That Was The Week That Was on British culture. And of Lenny Bruce, the Hungry I club, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and Mort Sahl in America. … how Rebel Without A Cause and the Wild One helped establish the West Coast as rebellious. … “there are two flags of freedom – one to make as much money as possible, the other to be as open-minded and thoughtful about everything”. … Eisenhower said “in God we trust!” But which God? … the entire security for the 25,000 crowd at the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park was two mounted policemen. … “nothing is more fun than researching”. ... how the counter-culture was created with very little money or technology. Order the Last Great Dream here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Great-Dream-Bohemians-Hippies/dp/0306835665Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us on a captivating journey through the storied history of the counterculture movement with none other than Dennis McNally, the celebrated publicist for the Grateful Dead. Dennis brings his unique perspective to our discussion about the hippie movement's lasting impact on modern society, including the rise of organic food, yoga, and Human rights. With anecdotes from his personal experiences and upcoming book entitled "The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties," Dennis provides fascinating insights into the evolution of cultural narratives. Our conversation wanders through the vibrant cultural renaissance of San Francisco, beginning with the poetry explosion of the 1940s. Dennis paints vivid pictures of pivotal moments, like the debut reading of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" at the Sixth Gallery and the transformative Monterey Pop Festival. Along the way, we uncover how artistic and spiritual connections have shaped icons like Jerry Garcia and influenced movements like the Deadheads, all while reflecting on the delicate balance between personal stories and historical accounts in McNally's work. Dennis also offers a thoughtful exploration of psychedelic substances, from the transformative effects of LSD to the modern implications of ketamine in mental health treatment. As we discuss the commodification of counterculture, we highlight the importance of storytelling in preserving these influential movements for future generations. To pre-order Dennis' new book head to www.dennismcnally.com -FREE SHIPPING from Shop Tour Bus Use The PROMO CODE: nosimpleroad -20% OFF & FREE SHIPPING IN THE US from The Grateful Mountain with the PROMO CODE: NSR20 INTRO MUSIC PROVIDED BY - Young & Sick MUSIC IN THE COMMERCIALS BY AND USED WITH PERMISSION OF: CIRCLES AROUND THE SUN OUTRO MUSIC BY AND USED WITH PERMISSION OF: CHILLDREN OF INDIGO No Simple Road is part of OSIRIS MEDIA. Osiris Media is the leading storyteller in music, combining the intimacy of podcasts with the power of music

As the news from America becomes more and more worrying it's good to look back to the last century when everything was different and some American rock musicians brought joy to the world.  Peace and Love meant something back then. The Grateful Dead were very successful despite having no chart hits and they had a huge dedicated fanbase. They were formed in California in 1965 and performed regularly for 30 years. The anniversaries have spawned renewed interest in the band. Dennis McNally was their official archivist. This conversation was recorded in 2015.

Link to Tales From The Green Room Episode 27 Photography Gallery In this episode of Tales From The Green Room, Mount Tam Media takes listeners backstage at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during the Grateful Guitars Foundation Second Annual Benefit. Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally shares some of his experiences with Jerry Garcia and his storied history with the band; David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) also reflects on his personal relationship and poignant moments with Garcia; Samson Grisman (Sam Grisman Project) and Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), interviewed together, engage in an entertaining conversation between two artists a generation apart, expressing their mutual respect for the other's era; Jill Simmons (Brown Eyed Women) tells of her journey from the East Coast leading to an appearance on this bill; and rising superstar, 17-year-old Bella Rayne delves into her ascent to notoriety in the jam band scene. Artist manager and music industry vet, Jack Barton also shares his insights; and singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and multi-talented Alex Jordan makes a cameo while serving as music director for the show.The conversations in this “jam”-packed episode, recorded in the heart of the Great American Music Hall Green Room during the all-star benefit, revolve around the guests' experiences with Andy Logan's Grateful Guitars Foundation, sharing personal stories, musical journeys, and the magic of playing iconic instruments like Jerry Garcia's Alligator guitar. Tune in to hear spontaneous stories and deep reflections on their musical paths and the vibrant music scene.Quotes From The EpisodeHe looked like he had just fired down six fat ones…and he doesn't smoke…and his eyes were spinning. - Dennis McNally describing David Hidalgo after playing Jerry Garcia's Alligator guitar.The instrument's a living thing. It has a life of its own. It shouldn't be kept behind glass. It should be out in front of people. With that emotion passing through.- Jack Barton The biggest bummer about it these days is just how everybody's got a super computer in their pocket, and everybody's addicted to the shit, and unless you engage with social media, people don't know that you're active. - Sam Grisman I never imagined myself becoming a guitarist ever. I never had big aspirations to be a musician or play guitar at all. But I started playing during the pandemic. - Bella Rayne Honestly,  I was thrilled to play with all of these musicians, but I have a special place in my heart for the guys from Los Lobos. Yeah. I mean, holy cow. What a thrill. - Jill Simmons From the beginning, I'm grateful. That we've been able to do what we've wanted to do all these years. And for it to come around to where it's at now.  And the friends that we've made along the way. That's why we're here today. - David HidalgoMusic LinksBertha * Deadicated * Los LobosDavid Hidalgo with Los Lobos Playing Jerry Garcia's Alligator at the Fillmore 11/16/23Brown Eyed Women - Thunderbird Music Hall - 9/25/22 - Set 2Catfish JohnJerry Garcia Band - "Mission In The Rain" - Electric On The Eel (June 10th, 1989)Teach Your Children by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - 1970 (with lyrics) Links to Websiteshttps://www.dennismcnally.com/https://www.loslobos.org/site/https://www.samgrismanproject.net/https://browneyedwomen.com/https://www.bellaraynerocks.com/https://www.jackbartonentertainment.com/https://www.alexjordanjams.com/

The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead - The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter

For decades, passionate fans of the Grateful Dead have speculated about the contents of a "lost manuscript"-a sort of holy grail to the origin story of a band that is practically a religion for many.Indeed, THE SILVER SNARLING TRUMPET: The Birth of the Grateful Dead-The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter, has been pulled from the attic after more than 50 years. It will be published with a foreword by John Mayer (Dead & Co), an introduction by Dennis McNally (renowned historian of the Dead) and an afterword by Brigid Meier (a close confidant of Jerry Garcia's and core member of the early scene described in the book).As McNally writes in the foreword: "The subculture that became known as the Grateful Dead began as a cluster of relationships long before there as a band; Trumpet is the story of that earliest community."Essential reading for Dead Heads and anyone with an interest in early 60s counterculture, THE SILVER SNARLING TRUMPET is as Mayer puts it in the foreword, "a lost box of film that, when developed, reveals some of the most striking images you've ever seen, the kind that make you go slack jawed and your heart race." In these pages, readers are privy to the early days of Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and their cohorts, who sit at the coffee shop passing around a single cup of bottomless coffee because they lacked the funds for more than one. "We created our own culture simply by being friends and allowing that circle of friendship to expand organically," writes Hunter's friend Brigid Meier in a heartfelt Afterword. "If you thought you were one of us, you were welcome to join in."With the publication of this long awaited manuscript, we get to follow Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and the rest of the band into the stacks at Kepler's Books, to rent instruments at Swain's House of Music, and through the countryside on road trips. We witness impromptu jams, inspired intellectual pranks, and a dialogue that is, by turns, amusing and brilliant and outrageous. Hunter shares his impressions of his first gig with Garcia for a college audience, along with descriptions of his most intense dreams and psychedelic explorations. All of it is enlivened by Hunter's visionary spirit and profound ideas about creativity and collaboration.This is an exciting season for fans of the Dead: Robert Hunter's career-spanning archival series recently launched through Rhino; Dead & Co. just finished an engagement at The Sphere, and the band will be honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in December.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

Welcome back to the studio.  This is My Day of Play, where you're taken into the real events and actions of how it happens long before the process of editing or cleaning up.  This is how it really went.  We begin things with John Garrison who vividly remembers the iconic Red Hot and Blue album that not only got the world to start talking about aids but it united music with a major cause. Speaking of music historians… It's always a great time when Dennis McNally is invited to the microphone to bring his enormous amount of love for the Grateful Dead to every generation still in love with their rhythms and beats.  This is My Day of Play.  Completely unedited in the way of meeting the wizard behind the curtain.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

For decades, passionate fans of the Grateful Dead have speculated about the contents of a "lost manuscript"-a sort of holy grail to the origin story of a band that is practically a religion for many.Indeed, THE SILVER SNARLING TRUMPET: The Birth of the Grateful Dead-The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter, has been pulled from the attic after more than 50 years. It will be published with a foreword by John Mayer (Dead & Co), an introduction by Dennis McNally (renowned historian of the Dead) and an afterword by Brigid Meier (a close confidant of Jerry Garcia's and core member of the early scene described in the book).As McNally writes in the foreword: "The subculture that became known as the Grateful Dead began as a cluster of relationships long before there as a band; Trumpet is the story of that earliest community."Essential reading for Dead Heads and anyone with an interest in early 60s counterculture, THE SILVER SNARLING TRUMPET is as Mayer puts it in the foreword, "a lost box of film that, when developed, reveals some of the most striking images you've ever seen, the kind that make you go slack jawed and your heart race." In these pages, readers are privy to the early days of Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and their cohorts, who sit at the coffee shop passing around a single cup of bottomless coffee because they lacked the funds for more than one. "We created our own culture simply by being friends and allowing that circle of friendship to expand organically," writes Hunter's friend Brigid Meier in a heartfelt Afterword. "If you thought you were one of us, you were welcome to join in."With the publication of this long awaited manuscript, we get to follow Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and the rest of the band into the stacks at Kepler's Books, to rent instruments at Swain's House of Music, and through the countryside on road trips. We witness impromptu jams, inspired intellectual pranks, and a dialogue that is, by turns, amusing and brilliant and outrageous. Hunter shares his impressions of his first gig with Garcia for a college audience, along with descriptions of his most intense dreams and psychedelic explorations. All of it is enlivened by Hunter's visionary spirit and profound ideas about creativity and collaboration.This is an exciting season for fans of the Dead: Robert Hunter's career-spanning archival series recently launched through Rhino; Dead & Co. just finished an engagement at The Sphere, and the band will be honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in December.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.

Labor Day Vibes: Grateful Dead, George Thorogood, and MoreA special Labor Day edition featuring a recap of significant events in the music world, particularly focusing on the Grateful Dead's September 2, 1988, concert at the Capitol Center in Landover, Maryland. Larry Mishkin reminisces about the band's history, including the song "Hell in a Bucket," its significance, and its evolution in the Grateful Dead's lineup. There's a detailed discussion about the song "Dire Wolf," including its origins, inspirations, and its role in the band's performances.The episode also features a tribute to Steve Silverman, a renowned science writer and Grateful Dead enthusiast who recently passed away. Silverman was celebrated for his contributions to the understanding of autism and his deep connection to the Grateful Dead community. The tribute highlights his life, his work, and his impact on both the music and science communities.Larry shares reviews of the recent George Thorogood and Journeyman Tribute the Eric Clapton  https://www.georgethorogood.com/https://vilarpac.org/https://journeymantribute.com/ Grateful DeadSeptember 2, 1988 (36 years ago)Capital CenterLandover, MDGrateful Dead Live at Capital Centre on 1988-09-02 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive I hope everyone is having a great Labor Day weekend. Night one of a four night run at the Cap Center to kick off 1988 East Coast Fall Tour (played Friday and Saturday, 2 and 3 and Monday and Tuesday 5 and 6).  Took a night off for my wedding on Sunday 4th.  Saturday night show was my rehearsal dinner and they played second encore, final electric Ripple and final Grateful Dead Ripple.  Memorable weekend for all (except for my east coast deadhead buddies at the wedding who were bummed to have missed the Ripple. INTRO:                                 Hell in a Bucket                                                Track #2                                                0:00 – 1:34 David Dodd:  The Bob Weir / John Barlow / Brent Mydland song “Hell in a Bucket” directly references the biker scene, and I'm sure that somehow Barlow just wanted to put that element into the band's repertoire somehow. After all, there are plenty of outlaw elements sprinkled through the band's songs. In the case of this song, though, the singer/narrator seems to be wishing a sorry fate on his erstwhile main squeeze, with the argument being that once she has a biker charging up and down her halls on his chopper, she'll realize that the narrator was really pretty good, at least by contrast. “Hell in a Bucket” appeared on In the Dark, released in July 1987.  The song frequently featured as the show opener over the course of the next two-plus decades, although it wasn't used in that role until about a year after its first performance.  Played:  217 timesFirst:  May 13, 1983 at William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, USALast:  June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA   SHOW No. 1:                    Dire Wolf                                                Track #5                                                2:00 – 3:24 "Dire Wolf" is a ballad by the Grateful Dead, released as the third track on their 1970 album Workingman's Dead. The lyrics were written by Robert Hunter after watching a film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The music, containing elements of country and folk music, was composed by Jerry Garcia on the same day. The song tells the story of a man who plays cards with a "dire wolf" on a cold winter's night in "Fennario"; the lyrics have been variously interpreted. The piece became a staple of the Grateful Dead's performances, and was played more than two hundred times between 1969 and 1995. A few months before the release of their album Aoxomoxoa in 1969, Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and his then-partner Christie Bourne began sharing a house with the band's guitarist Jerry Garcia, his wife, and his step-daughter. Living in close proximity gave an impetus to their collaborative song-writing: Hunter and Garcia wrote every song on Aoxomoxoa.[2] Some time later, Hunter and Carolyn Garcia spent an evening watching a film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. According to Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally, Carolyn later remarked that the hound was a "dire wolf".[3] However, according to Hunter himself, as quoted in the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, he and Garcia were speculating about the identity of the hound in the story, and came up with the idea that it may have been a dire wolf.[4] Hunter wrote the lyrics the next morning, based on images that the phrase conjured for him, and Garcia wrote the music to them later that day.[3][4] The location named "Fennario" appears in the folk song "The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie", including in the Grateful Dead's version of that song. It refers to a fictional location; a friend of the band members commented in an interview that it was the perfect name for a generic place, because it was evocative, and had four syllables.[4] In contrast, music writer Buzz Poole speculated that the name may be derived from Fenrir, a mythical Nordic wolf who was chained up by the gods.[6] The phrase "don't murder me", repeated in the chorus, was a reference by Garcia to his experiences driving around the San Francisco Bay Area at the time that the Zodiac Killer was active.[4] The song became a staple of the Grateful Dead's live performances; the electric version of the song was typically featured on the band's first set.[4][7] According to The Grateful Dead's 100 Essential Songs, "Dire Wolf" was played 226 times between 1969 and 1995, and was played every year, except for 1975. Sixty-three of these performances were in the first two years after the song was written. In later years, the acoustic version of the piece became more common.[7] The structure and pace of the song did not change much over the years. It was sung most often by Garcia, although an early version featured Bob Weir on vocals, with Garcia playing the pedal steel guitar instead.[7] An AllMusic review of this version praised Garcia's "sweet" guitar playing as a "great feature" of the song.[5] Its lyrics have led to it being described as an essential Grateful Dead song by commentators.[7] Played:  229 timesFirst:  June 7, 1969 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  June 7, 1969 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USA  MUSIC NEWS: Steve Silberman passesPhish – Dick'sNeil Young explanation for canceled showsMiracle in MundeleinMiracle in Mundelein 2024 is an unprecedented cannabis and outdoor concert experience taking place at RISE Recreational Dispensary in Mundelein, IL on September 7-8, 202412. Presented by RYTHM Premium Cannabis, RISE Dispensaries, Dayglo, and Deep Cut, this second annual outdoor festival allows legal on-site cannabis consumption2.    SHOW No. 2:                    Althea                                                Track #7                                                3:10 – 4:53 When the Grateful Dead released “Althea” on their 1980 album Go to Heaven, it quickly became a favorite among fans. Robert Hunter, the Dead's legendary lyricist, was known for embedding multiple layers of meaning in his lyrics. “Althea” is no exception. Jerry Garcia's soulful voice brings Hunter's words to life, but it's the lyrics that leave listeners pondering. The name “Althea” itself is rooted in Greek mythology. Althea was the Queen of Calydon, whose actions led to her son's death, reflecting themes of fate and consequence. While the song doesn't explicitly connect to this myth, the allusion to “your fire” might be a subtle nod to Althea's tragic tale. “Althea” was performed live by the Grateful Dead 273 times, making it a staple in their repertoire. Despite McNally's belief that the band overplayed it in the early '80s, fans cherished its live renditions. The song's adaptability and depth allowed it to grow with the listeners, much like a trusted pair of pants with a sturdy elastic waistband. Played:  273 timesFirst:  August 4, 1979 at Oakland Civic Auditorium, Oakland, CA, USALast:  July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago  SHOW No. 3:                    Scarlet Begonias                                                Track #10                                                0:00 – 2:02 Garcia/HunterFrom The Mars Hotel (July 24, 1974) The group first performed the song live on March 23, 1974, at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California.[1] When "Fire on the Mountain" was incorporated into the band's repertoire in 1977, "Scarlet Begonias" would often be paired with it when played live, resulting in what would be nicknamed "Scarlet > Fire" with the first iteration of this iconic pairing on Friday, March 18th, 1977 at Winterland in S.F.   Interestingly, they played the combo to close the first set.  Almost always a second set opener, once saw them open a show with it. Had to play this because the opening is so special – sends a message to the Deadheads that good things lay ahead, best second set opener in their arsenal.  Nothing like the reaction when you hear the first few notes.  “Scarlet, into Fire, a great 25 minutes of grooving music and wonderful for “mind exercises” you may be experiencing at that time. Played:  317  (Fire played 254 times)First:  March 23, 1974 at Cow Palace, Daly City, CA, USALast: June 2, 1995 at Deer Creek, Noblesville, IN MJ NEWS: Trump Supports Florida adult use measure on fall ballot, but no public smokingDeSantis says “NO” adult use in Florida, opposes TrumpState ballots this fall for MMJ in Nebraska and ArkansasIllinois awards $35 million from MJ taxes to support community reinvestmentCalifornia allows sales of MJ at Farmer's Markets SHOW No. 4:                    All Along The Watchtower                                                Track #17                                                1:50 – 3:53 Bob DylanJohn Wesley Harding "All Along the Watchtower" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan from his eighth studio album, John Wesley Harding (1967). The song was written by Dylan and produced by Bob Johnston. The song's lyrics, which in its original version contain twelve lines, feature a conversation between a joker and a thief. The song has been subject to various interpretations; some reviewers have noted that it echoes lines in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5–9. Dylan has released several different live performances, and versions of the song are included on some of his subsequent greatest hits compilations. Covered by numerous artists, "All Along the Watchtower" is strongly identified with the interpretation Jimi Hendrix recorded with the Jimi Hendrix Experience for their third studio album, Electric Ladyland (1968). The Hendrix version, released six months after Dylan's original recording, became a Top 20 single in 1968, received a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001, and was ranked 48th in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 (40th in the 2021 version). Dylan first played the song live in concert on the Bob Dylan and the Band 1974 Tour, his first tour since 1966. His live performances have been influenced by Hendrix's cover, to the extent that they have been called covers of a cover. Dylan has performed the song live more than any of his other ones, with over 2,250 recitals. Hendrix was a known Dylan fan. He even once cleared a dance floor by demanding that "Blowin in the Wind" be played in a New York club. In a 1967 interview, Hendrix described Dylan's influence on his own songwriting. "I could never write the kind of words he does," Hendrix said. "But he's helped me out in trying to write two or three words 'cause I've got a thousand songs that will never be finished. I just lie around and write about two or three words, but now I have a little more confidence in trying to finish one."Hendrix acquired a copy of John Wesley Harding before the album's official release and instantly knew he had to cover one of the tracks. Initially, he was planning to record "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," but after further consideration he chose "All Along the Watchtower." Hendrix claimed he had a natural gravitation toward the track. "The songs Dylan usually gave me are so close to me that I feel like I wrote them myself," he added. "With 'Along the Watchtower' I had that feeling." Less than two months after Dylan recorded the original, Hendrix was in the studio laying down his version. John Wesley Harding was Dylan's return to his acoustic roots after his motorcycle accident. But rather than bring back the topical lyrics about civil rights and the Vietnam War, he continued the evocative, surreal images that made his previous three records -- Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde -- so groundbreaking, adding biblical imagery that foreshadowed his born-again phase more than a decade later. Dead started playing it while touring with Dylan in the summer of 1987.  Not necessarily their greatest tour, and Dylan was not sharp on a night by night basis, but when they got to this tune, the crowd really responded.  So after the tour ended, the Dead just kept it in their repertoire and played it until their end. Played:  118First:  June 20, 1987 at William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, USALast:  June 22, 1995 at Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, NY, USA  OUTRO:                               Black Muddy River                                                Track #20                                                4:15 – 6:34 Garcia/HunterFrom:  In The Dark (1987) Black Muddy River was a song that was a pretty decent “new” song for a while.  Almost always played as an encore, it was a fan favorite in the Twin Cities, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, all situated on or near the Mississippi River.  Sometimes they would play it in those cities and sometimes they would wait to play it until they were in the middle of nowhere with no river around for miles and miles.  Towards the end, Jerry seemed to lose his enthusiasm for it so, for example, when he rose to the occasion at the last show on July 9, 1995 and belted out a So Many Roads for the ages, his Black Muddy River encore left a lot to be desired.  So much so that, as the story goes, Phil decided they could not end the summer tour on such a low note so he pushed in a Box of Rain making that song the last one ever played in concert by the band and a much nicer farewell than that not very good Black Muddy River would have been. This one is “young” and strong, Jerry's voice rings true and you can hear the energy build up inside him as he belts out the final lines of the song.  A song that sent all those at the Cap Center out into the night longing for more without even knowing what awaited them the very next night.  Some were there, some weren't.  That's the story of the Dead and touring (like Phish waiting to Dick's to play Fee!). Played:  66 timesFirst:  December 15, 1986 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, USALast:  July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago, IL, USA Shout outs:                         Wed – my anniversary, and H and Robbin                        Thurs. – JW's anniversary with the lovely Allie                        Bella – birthday on Monday                        Jackie G. in St. Louis on Sunday                        .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl sat rolling joints and cleaning the stems and seeds from a brick of weed when a fateful knock came at the door of 710 Ashbury Street. Having your communal crash pad raided by the police isn't typically the start of a great moment, but for the Grateful Dead, the October 1967 undercover police sting operation that targeted their home and headquarters turned into a pivotal inflection point in the band's trajectory. One that would change cannabis history and spread weed consciousness around the world.  That's because rather than pleading out or turning informant, they held a press conference right in the same room where they'd been busted, calling out the local police and the national War on Drugs as a racist, hypocritical, counter productive, unconstitutional failure. This episode also examines the huge role the band and their many Deadhead followers played in spreading high quality marijuana and seeds across the country, including classic strains like Sour Diesel and Chemdog. Very special thanks to the legend Harry Shearer (The Simpsons, Spinal Tap) for guesting on this episode, as he actually wrote the 1967 pro-legalization statement the Dead presented at their press conference. Read more first person accounts of this incident in Rock Skully's book Living with the Dead and in Rosie McGee's memoir Dancing with the Dead. Hear the Grateful Dead's October 22, 1967 Marijuana Defense Benefit concert in its entirety at archive.org. Check out Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally's book A Long Strange Trip. PATREON Please support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus cool rewards like a signed book. And it truly helps us make the best show possible  EPISODE ARCHIVE Visit our podcast feed for 120+ episodes of Great Moments in Weed History, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday.

"Reflecting on the Grateful Dead's Capitol Theatre Shows and Toby Keith smoking with Willie Nelson"Larry Michigan discusses the Grateful Dead's historic show at the Capitol Theatre on February 19, 1971. Larry reminisces about the atmosphere of the venue and the significance of the performance, highlighting the debut of several iconic Dead songs. The discussion delves into the band's evolving musical style, particularly the transition from psychedelic blues to Americana influences. He explores the historical context surrounding the show, including Mickey Hart's departure from the band and the impact of manager Lenny Hart's embezzlement. He also touches upon the significance of the show's release in the "From the Vault" series and discuss other notable releases in the Dead's catalog. Additionally, Larry provides updates on Bob Weir and Wolf Brothers' postponed performances with the National Symphony Orchestra and share news about upcoming music releases.  Grateful DeadFebruary 19, 1971 (53 years ago)Capitol TheatrePort Chester, NYGrateful Dead Live at Capitol Theatre on 1971-02-19 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive The second of the legendary six night run at the Capitol Theatre in late February, 1971:Feb. 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, and 24 INTRO:                  Loser                                Track #3                                2:55 – 4:24 Hunter/Garcia tune that was released on “Garcia”, Jerry's first solo album, in January, 1972, the last song on side one of the album.  It was a standard first set tune, part of a rotating number of Jerry first set ballads including Candyman, It Must Have Been The Roses, High Time, Row Jimmy, To Lay Me Down and others. A very sweet melodic tune that tells a great story by way of a beautiful piece of music.  SECOND time playedPlayed a total of 353 timesFirst time:  “Last”night 2.18.71Last:  June 28, 1995, The Palace of Auburn Hills, outside Detroit                               THIS SHOW: Last year we covered the Feb. 18th show famous as the debut for Bertha, Greatest Story, Loser, Wharf Rat and Playin In The Band and the Beautiful Jam out of Wharf Rat and back into Dark Star.  It was also Mickey's last show before his almost three year hiatus before he returned for the final 1974 show before the band's 1975 year off February 19th show is just as historical:  The band's first show without Mickey since he joined the band in 1967.  Many people theorize that this was Mickey's response to his father, Lenny Hart who was the band's manager stealing almost $155,000 of the band's assets before disappearing.  Although he was eventually located by a private detective hired by the band and arrested in San Diego on July 26, 1971, convicted and spent six months in jail, the money was never returned.  The song, “He's Gone” is based on Lenny Hart's embezzlement and disappearance.  Ashamed by his father's actions, Mickey left the band after the 2.18.71 Capitol Theater show returning full time in 1975.  Lenny died of natural causes on Feb. 2, 1975.  According to Dennis McNally, "Mickey went to the funeral home, cleared the room, took out the snakewood sticks that had been his inheritance, played a traditional rudimental drum piece, "The Downfall of Paris" on Lenny's coffin, and split." Starting with this show, the band became a very lean mean fighting machine with just five members (Jerry, Bobby, Phil, Bill and Pig) until Keith jointed the band seven months later in September.  On this night, the band played the five songs debuted the night before and debuted Deal and Birdsong.  Pig also has a strong showing this night leading the band through four standouts:             Hurts Me Too            Smokestack Lightning:  the third to last time it would be played with Pig in the band            Easy Wind:  the second to last time it would be played without Pig in the band            Good Lovin  This really marked the beginning of the band's hard shift away from psychedelic blues (Primal Dead) to the more Americana style music that began with Workingman's and American Beauty.  Within a year, Pig would be very ill with just enough energy left for the Europe '72 tour.  But this night, he was rocking the house like only he could do.  Here is the first of his four featured songs:  SHOW No. 1:      Hurts Me Too                                Track # 5                                2:08 – 3:42 Great showcase number for Pig featuring his singing and harp playing.  We got just a bit of Jerry's lead but all this great music is too long to fit into one clip – don't want Dan getting mad at me! "It Hurts Me Too" is a blues standard that is "one of the most interpreted blues [songs]".[1] First recorded in 1940 by Tampa Red in Chicago, the song is a mid-tempo eight-bar blues that features slide guitar. It borrows from earlier blues songs and has been recorded by many artists.  Release on May 10th with Tired of Your Reckless Ways on the B-side. In 1949, Tampa Red recorded a variation of "It Hurts Me Too", titled "When Things Go Wrong with You".[9] It was recast in the style of a Chicago blues, with electric guitar and a more up to date backing arrangement. The song was a hit and reached number nine on Billboard'sRhythm & Blues Records chart in 1949.[10] (The original "It Hurts Me Too" was released before Billboard or a similar reliable service began tracking such releases, so it is difficult to gauge which version was more popular, although the former's title won out over the latter's.) Although the song retained the refrain "When things go wrong, so wrong with you, it hurts me too", Tampa Red varied the rest of the lyrics somewhat. This would become the pattern for future versions, in which succeeding artists would interpret the song with some of their own lyrics. Noted covers:            Elmore James            Junior Wells            Grateful Dead – with Pig singing the vocals.  Was first released by the Dead on Europe '72 album.  After Pig left the band, the song was retired.             The Dead played the song a total of 59 times            First:    May 19, 1966 at the Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco            Last:     May 24, 1972 at the Lyceum Ballroom in London (last show of Europe '72 tour             “FROM THE VAULT”: This entire show was released by the Dead as “Three From The Vault” in 2007.  The “From The Vault” series, launched by the Band in 1991 with One From The Vault – August 13, 1975 at The Great American Music Hall, with first live performance of the songs from Blues For Allah.  In 1992 the Dead released “Two From The Vault” – August 23 and 24, 1968 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.  Then, along came Dick Latvala and his Dead scene changing Dick's Picks series which was wildly popular, so much so that the In The Vault Series was put on hold.  For 15 years.  Until 2007 when they circled back to the original series of live releasees with Three From The Vault which features the same show we are talking about today from the Capitol Theatre.  That was it for In The Vault releases.  The Dead did have several other “Vault” like releases – multi-track recordings including Hundred Year Haul, Dozin' At The Knick, Fallout From the Phil Zone, Terrapin Station, Live At the Fillmore East 2.11.69, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Grateful Dead, Nightfall of Diamonds, Trucking Up To Buffalo and so many more. They just stopped calling them “From The Vault”.  Dick's Picks, of course would go on to have a total of 36 releases, the last few releases coming after Dick's death in 1999.  Which led into the still wildly popular Dave's Picks from David Lemieux who took over for Dick and now has 49 releases and still going strong.  And “short” lived, but generally popular  “Roadtrips” series.  And all of the box sets that are all amazing but too numerous to name except for the Complete Recordings, the four-night run at the Fillmore West from Feb. 27 to March 2, 1969 – four shows with the band at the peak of Primal Dead, and Europe '72 which consists of the live recordings for all of the shows on that tour.  Another milestone for the Dead in terms of their ever expanding reputation for Jam Band, psychedelic, and amazing song catalogue, even at that “early” stage of the band's existence.  SHOW No. 2:      Playin In The Band                                Track # 7                                2:23 – 4:05                                            By:  Weir and Hunter "Playing in the Band" is a song by the Grateful Dead. The lyrics were written by Robert Hunter and rhythm guitaristBob Weir composed the music, with some assistance from percussionist Mickey Hart.[1] The song first emerged in embryonic form on the self-titled 1971 live albumGrateful Dead. It then appeared in a more polished form on Ace, Bob Weir's first solo album (which included every Grateful Dead member except Ron "Pigpen" McKernan).The instrumental break of "Playing in the Band" was introduced as early as the February 19, 1969 "Celestial Synapse" show at the Fillmore West, in which it appears somewhat indistinct from the preceding and following jams.[5] The completed song was also included on Mickey Hart's 1972 solo album Rolling Thunder within "The Main Ten", making reference to the song's time signature of 10/4.  "The Main Ten" appears on Dick's Picks Volume 16, from their performance at the Fillmore West on November 8, 1969. On that set, it appears in the middle of "Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)".During a Bob Weir and Wolf Bros concert livestream on February 12, 2021, Weir credited David Crosby with the composition of the main riff. Weir stated, "David Crosby came up with the seminal lick... and then he left. We were out at Mickey's barn. So Mickey said, 'Make a song out of that'. Next day, I had it" It has since become one of the best-known Grateful Dead numbers and a standard part of their repertoire, usually as a second set pre-drums jumping off point for jams to who knows where. According to Deadbase X, it ranks fourth on the list of songs played most often in concert by the band with over 600 performances. If you download this show from Archive.org, and play this track, at the 3:20 mark during the mid-song jam, they get to the point where they would normally dive back in but instead, Bobby plays on for an almost additional 30 seconds and then just dives back in to the song.  He is clearly still working it out.  Over the course of the Europe '72 tour, it was played almost every night as Bobby finally worked it outThis is all really good stuff. SECOND time ever played 661 times (No. 1)                First – “last: night's show, Feb. 18, 1971 Capitol Theatre                Last:       July 5, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheater, Maryland Heights, MO outside of St. Louis.                SHOW No. 3:      Greatest Story Ever Told (The Pump Song)                              Track #13                           Start – 1:41               By Weir, Hart and Robert Hunter (some give credit to Rev. Gary Davis)               Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (born Gary D. Davis, April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972),[1] was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and blind since infancy, Davis first performed professionally in the Piedmont blues scene of Durham, North Carolina in the 1930s, then converted to Christianity and became a minister. After moving to New York in the 1940s, Davis experienced a career rebirth as part of the American folk music revival that peaked during the 1960s. Davis' most notable recordings include "Samson and Delilah"[2] and "Death Don't Have No Mercy" Released on:AceRolling Thunder, as "The Pump Song"Dead SetDick's Pick's, vol. 6Europe '72 box setLots of other releases              Per Hunter:  "Also known as "Pumpman" and "Moses"--I wrote this to the rhythm of the pump in Mickey Hart's well."                Released on Ace on May 1, 1972              First song on the album with Bobby setting a rocking tone              Another tune that was played almost every night of and refined during the Europe '72 tour                             283 times              First:  “last night” 2.18.71              Last:  June 27, 1995 at the Palace at Auburn Hills outside Detroit               SHOW No. 4:      Bird Song                                Track #15                           :42 – 2:15               By Garcia and Hunter              Second song on Garcia              Robert Hunter originally wrote the song as a tribute for Janis Joplin. Phil Lesh now sings "All I know is something like a bird within him sang", transfering it Jerry Garcia instead A regular for the Dead, and still played by Dead and Co., Bobby and Phil and Friends. Beautiful song, even for the fist time you know it's going to be special. Played 301 tines              First:  This is it!              Last:   June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA   OUTRO:                Deal                                Track #17                                Start – 1:33  May 16, 2023 by Chris Huber of Chill One of the Grateful Dead's live staples, and many gambling songs is the Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia collaboration, “Deal”. First performed on February 19th, 1971, the song was in regular rotation until the end, both for the Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band.“Deal” saw studio release as the opening track to Jerry Garcia's 1972 debut solo album, Garcia, which also contained several other classic Grateful Dead live songs including “Sugaree”, “Bird Song”, “Loser”, and “The Wheel. Although it would move around a bit in the set list early on, this debut version is consistent with the ultimate tradition of the song closing out the first set.  Even in JGB sets it was a first set closer.  And would always leave you waiting through the break to see how they were going to kick off the second set and keep the show moving along.  For a first time played, this version stays true to the version we all know and love from a few years later.                            Played 428 times              First:  This is IT              Last:  June 18, 1995, Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ Thank you. .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

Episode 165 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Dark Stat” and the career of the Grateful Dead. This is a long one, even longer than the previous episode, but don't worry, that won't be the norm. There's a reason these two were much longer than average. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Codine" by the Charlatans. Errata I mispronounce Brent Mydland's name as Myland a couple of times, and in the introduction I say "Touch of Grey" came out in 1988 -- I later, correctly, say 1987. (I seem to have had a real problem with dates in the intro -- I also originally talked about "Blue Suede Shoes" being in 1954 before fixing it in the edit to be 1956) Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Grateful Dead, and Grayfolded runs to two hours. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, partly because almost everything about the Grateful Dead is written from a fannish perspective that already assumes background knowledge, rather than to provide that background knowledge. Of the various books I used, Dennis McNally's biography of the band and This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead by Blair Jackson and David Gans are probably most useful for the casually interested. Other books on the Dead I used included McNally's Jerry on Jerry, a collection of interviews with Garcia; Deal, Bill Kreutzmann's autobiography; The Grateful Dead FAQ by Tony Sclafani; So Many Roads by David Browne; Deadology by Howard F. Weiner; Fare Thee Well by Joel Selvin and Pamela Turley; and Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads by David Shenk and Steve Silberman. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the classic account of the Pranksters, though not always reliable. I reference Slaughterhouse Five a lot. As well as the novel itself, which everyone should read, I also read this rather excellent graphic novel adaptation, and The Writer's Crusade, a book about the writing of the novel. I also reference Ted Sturgeon's More Than Human. For background on the scene around Astounding Science Fiction which included Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, L. Ron Hubbard, and many other science fiction writers, I recommend Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding. 1,000 True Fans can be read online, as can the essay on the Californian ideology, and John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". The best collection of Grateful Dead material is the box set The Golden Road, which contains all the albums released in Pigpen's lifetime along with a lot of bonus material, but which appears currently out of print. Live/Dead contains both the live version of "Dark Star" which made it well known and, as a CD bonus track, the original single version. And archive.org has more live recordings of the group than you can possibly ever listen to. Grayfolded can be bought from John Oswald's Bandcamp Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Excerpt: Tuning from "Grayfolded", under the warnings Before we begin -- as we're tuning up, as it were, I should mention that this episode contains discussions of alcoholism, drug addiction, racism, nonconsensual drugging of other people, and deaths from drug abuse, suicide, and car accidents. As always, I try to deal with these subjects as carefully as possible, but if you find any of those things upsetting you may wish to read the transcript rather than listen to this episode, or skip it altogether. Also, I should note that the members of the Grateful Dead were much freer with their use of swearing in interviews than any other band we've covered so far, and that makes using quotes from them rather more difficult than with other bands, given the limitations of the rules imposed to stop the podcast being marked as adult. If I quote anything with a word I can't use here, I'll give a brief pause in the audio, and in the transcript I'll have the word in square brackets. [tuning ends] All this happened, more or less. In 1910, T. S. Eliot started work on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which at the time was deemed barely poetry, with one reviewer imagining Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'" It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature. In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut wrote "Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death", a book in which the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, comes unstuck in time, and starts living a nonlinear life, hopping around between times reliving his experiences in the Second World War, and future experiences up to 1976 after being kidnapped by beings from the planet Tralfamadore. Or perhaps he has flashbacks and hallucinations after having a breakdown from PTSD. It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature or of science fiction, depending on how you look at it. In 1953, Theodore Sturgeon wrote More Than Human. It is now considered one of the great classics of science fiction. In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It is now considered either a bad piece of science fiction or one of the great revelatory works of religious history, depending on how you look at it. In 1994, 1995, and 1996 the composer John Oswald released, first as two individual CDs and then as a double-CD, an album called Grayfolded, which the composer says in the liner notes he thinks of as existing in Tralfamadorian time. The Tralfamadorians in Vonnegut's novels don't see time as a linear thing with a beginning and end, but as a continuum that they can move between at will. When someone dies, they just think that at this particular point in time they're not doing so good, but at other points in time they're fine, so why focus on the bad time? In the book, when told of someone dying, the Tralfamadorians just say "so it goes". In between the first CD's release and the release of the double-CD version, Jerry Garcia died. From August 1942 through August 1995, Jerry Garcia was alive. So it goes. Shall we go, you and I? [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Dark Star (Omni 3/30/94)"] "One principle has become clear. Since motives are so frequently found in combination, it is essential that the complex types be analyzed and arranged, with an eye kept single nevertheless to the master-theme under discussion. Collectors, both primary and subsidiary, have done such valiant service that the treasures at our command are amply sufficient for such studies, so extensive, indeed, that the task of going through them thoroughly has become too great for the unassisted student. It cannot be too strongly urged that a single theme in its various types and compounds must be made predominant in any useful comparative study. This is true when the sources and analogues of any literary work are treated; it is even truer when the bare motive is discussed. The Grateful Dead furnishes an apt illustration of the necessity of such handling. It appears in a variety of different combinations, almost never alone. Indeed, it is so widespread a tale, and its combinations are so various, that there is the utmost difficulty in determining just what may properly be regarded the original kernel of it, the simple theme to which other motives were joined. Various opinions, as we shall see, have been held with reference to this matter, most of them justified perhaps by the materials in the hands of the scholars holding them, but none quite adequate in view of later evidence." That's a quote from The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story, by Gordon Hall Gerould, published in 1908. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five opens with a chapter about the process of writing the novel itself, and how difficult it was. He says "I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big." This is an episode several of my listeners have been looking forward to, but it's one I've been dreading writing, because this is an episode -- I think the only one in the series -- where the format of the podcast simply *will not* work. Were the Grateful Dead not such an important band, I would skip this episode altogether, but they're a band that simply can't be ignored, and that's a real problem here. Because my intent, always, with this podcast, is to present the recordings of the artists in question, put them in context, and explain why they were important, what their music meant to its listeners. To put, as far as is possible, the positive case for why the music mattered *in the context of its time*. Not why it matters now, or why it matters to me, but why it matters *in its historical context*. Whether I like the music or not isn't the point. Whether it stands up now isn't the point. I play the music, explain what it was they were doing, why they were doing it, what people saw in it. If I do my job well, you come away listening to "Blue Suede Shoes" the way people heard it in 1956, or "Good Vibrations" the way people heard it in 1966, and understanding why people were so impressed by those records. That is simply *not possible* for the Grateful Dead. I can present a case for them as musicians, and hope to do so. I can explain the appeal as best I understand it, and talk about things I like in their music, and things I've noticed. But what I can't do is present their recordings the way they were received in the sixties and explain why they were popular. Because every other act I have covered or will cover in this podcast has been a *recording* act, and their success was based on records. They may also have been exceptional live performers, but James Brown or Ike and Tina Turner are remembered for great *records*, like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "River Deep, Mountain High". Their great moments were captured on vinyl, to be listened back to, and susceptible of analysis. That is not the case for the Grateful Dead, and what is worse *they explicitly said, publicly, on multiple occasions* that it is not possible for me to understand their art, and thus that it is not possible for me to explain it. The Grateful Dead did make studio records, some of them very good. But they always said, consistently, over a thirty year period, that their records didn't capture what they did, and that the only way -- the *only* way, they were very clear about this -- that one could actually understand and appreciate their music, was to see them live, and furthermore to see them live while on psychedelic drugs. [Excerpt: Grateful Dead crowd noise] I never saw the Grateful Dead live -- their last UK performance was a couple of years before I went to my first ever gig -- and I have never taken a psychedelic substance. So by the Grateful Dead's own criteria, it is literally impossible for me to understand or explain their music the way that it should be understood or explained. In a way I'm in a similar position to the one I was in with La Monte Young in the last episode, whose music it's mostly impossible to experience without being in his presence. This is one reason of several why I placed these two episodes back to back. Of course, there is a difference between Young and the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead allowed -- even encouraged -- the recording of their live performances. There are literally thousands of concert recordings in circulation, many of them of professional quality. I have listened to many of those, and I can hear what they were doing. I can tell you what *I* think is interesting about their music, and about their musicianship. And I think I can build up a good case for why they were important, and why they're interesting, and why those recordings are worth listening to. And I can certainly explain the cultural phenomenon that was the Grateful Dead. But just know that while I may have found *a* point, *an* explanation for why the Grateful Dead were important, by the band's own lights and those of their fans, no matter how good a job I do in this episode, I *cannot* get it right. And that is, in itself, enough of a reason for this episode to exist, and for me to try, even harder than I normally do, to get it right *anyway*. Because no matter how well I do my job this episode will stand as an example of why this series is called "*A* History", not *the* history. Because parts of the past are ephemeral. There are things about which it's true to say "You had to be there". I cannot know what it was like to have been an American the day Kennedy was shot, I cannot know what it was like to be alive when a man walked on the Moon. Those are things nobody my age or younger can ever experience. And since August the ninth, 1995, the experience of hearing the Grateful Dead's music the way they wanted it heard has been in that category. And that is by design. Jerry Garcia once said "if you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can't tear down, you know, after you're gone... What I want to do is I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime. I want what I enjoy to last as long as I do and not last any longer. You know, I don't want something that ends up being as much a nuisance as it is a work of art, you know?" And there's another difficulty. There are only two points in time where it makes sense to do a podcast episode on the Grateful Dead -- late 1967 and early 1968, when the San Francisco scene they were part of was at its most culturally relevant, and 1988 when they had their only top ten hit and gained their largest audience. I can't realistically leave them out of the story until 1988, so it has to be 1968. But the songs they are most remembered for are those they wrote between 1970 and 1972, and those songs are influenced by artists and events we haven't yet covered in the podcast, who will be getting their own episodes in the future. I can't explain those things in this episode, because they need whole episodes of their own. I can't not explain them without leaving out important context for the Grateful Dead. So the best I can do is treat the story I'm telling as if it were in Tralfamadorian time. All of it's happening all at once, and some of it is happening in different episodes that haven't been recorded yet. The podcast as a whole travels linearly from 1938 through to 1999, but this episode is happening in 1968 and 1972 and 1988 and 1995 and other times, all at once. Sometimes I'll talk about things as if you're already familiar with them, but they haven't happened yet in the story. Feel free to come unstuck in time and revisit this time after episode 167, and 172, and 176, and 192, and experience it again. So this has to be an experimental episode. It may well be an experiment that you think fails. If so, the next episode is likely to be far more to your taste, and much shorter than this or the last episode, two episodes that between them have to create a scaffolding on which will hang much of the rest of this podcast's narrative. I've finished my Grateful Dead script now. The next one I write is going to be fun: [Excerpt: Grateful Dead, "Dark Star"] Infrastructure means everything. How we get from place to place, how we transport goods, information, and ourselves, makes a big difference in how society is structured, and in the music we hear. For many centuries, the prime means of long-distance transport was by water -- sailing ships on the ocean, canal boats and steamboats for inland navigation -- and so folk songs talked about the ship as both means of escape, means of making a living, and in some senses as a trap. You'd go out to sea for adventure, or to escape your problems, but you'd find that the sea itself brought its own problems. Because of this we have a long, long tradition of sea shanties which are known throughout the world: [Excerpt: A. L. Lloyd, "Off to Sea Once More"] But in the nineteenth century, the railway was invented and, at least as far as travel within a landmass goes, it replaced the steamboat in the popular imaginary. Now the railway was how you got from place to place, and how you moved freight from one place to another. The railway brought freedom, and was an opportunity for outlaws, whether train robbers or a romanticised version of the hobo hopping onto a freight train and making his way to new lands and new opportunity. It was the train that brought soldiers home from wars, and the train that allowed the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the industrial North. There would still be songs about the riverboats, about how ol' man river keeps rolling along and about the big river Johnny Cash sang about, but increasingly they would be songs of the past, not the present. The train quickly replaced the steamboat in the iconography of what we now think of as roots music -- blues, country, folk, and early jazz music. Sometimes this was very literal. Furry Lewis' "Kassie Jones" -- about a legendary train driver who would break the rules to make sure his train made the station on time, but who ended up sacrificing his own life to save his passengers in a train crash -- is based on "Alabamy Bound", which as we heard in the episode on "Stagger Lee", was about steamboats: [Excerpt: Furry Lewis, "Kassie Jones"] In the early episodes of this podcast we heard many, many, songs about the railway. Louis Jordan saying "take me right back to the track, Jack", Rosetta Tharpe singing about how "this train don't carry no gamblers", the trickster freight train driver driving on the "Rock Island Line", the mystery train sixteen coaches long, the train that kept-a-rollin' all night long, the Midnight Special which the prisoners wished would shine its ever-loving light on them, and the train coming past Folsom Prison whose whistle makes Johnny Cash hang his head and cry. But by the 1960s, that kind of song had started to dry up. It would happen on occasion -- "People Get Ready" by the Impressions is the most obvious example of the train metaphor in an important sixties record -- but by the late sixties the train was no longer a symbol of freedom but of the past. In 1969 Harry Nilsson sang about how "Nobody Cares About the Railroads Any More", and in 1968 the Kinks sang about "The Last of the Steam-Powered Trains". When in 1968 Merle Haggard sang about a freight train, it was as a memory, of a child with hopes that ended up thwarted by reality and his own nature: [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried"] And the reason for this was that there had been another shift, a shift that had started in the forties and accelerated in the late fifties but had taken a little time to ripple through the culture. Now the train had been replaced in the popular imaginary by motorised transport. Instead of hopping on a train without paying, if you had no money in your pocket you'd have to hitch-hike all the way. Freedom now meant individuality. The ultimate in freedom was the biker -- the Hell's Angels who could go anywhere, unburdened by anything -- and instead of goods being moved by freight train, increasingly they were being moved by truck drivers. By the mid-seventies, truck drivers took a central place in American life, and the most romantic way to live life was to live it on the road. On The Road was also the title of a 1957 novel by Jack Kerouac, which was one of the first major signs of this cultural shift in America. Kerouac was writing about events in the late forties and early fifties, but his book was also a precursor of the sixties counterculture. He wrote the book on one continuous sheet of paper, as a stream of consciousness. Kerouac died in 1969 of an internal haemmorage brought on by too much alcohol consumption. So it goes. But the big key to this cultural shift was caused by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, a massive infrastructure spending bill that led to the construction of the modern American Interstate Highway system. This accelerated a program that had already started, of building much bigger, safer, faster roads. It also, as anyone who has read Robert Caro's The Power Broker knows, reinforced segregation and white flight. It did this both by making commuting into major cities from the suburbs easier -- thus allowing white people with more money to move further away from the cities and still work there -- and by bulldozing community spaces where Black people lived. More than a million people lost their homes and were forcibly moved, and orders of magnitude more lost their communities' parks and green spaces. And both as a result of deliberate actions and unconscious bigotry, the bulk of those affected were Black people -- who often found themselves, if they weren't forced to move, on one side of a ten-lane highway where the park used to be, with white people on the other side of the highway. The Federal-Aid Highway Act gave even more power to the unaccountable central planners like Robert Moses, the urban planner in New York who managed to become arguably the most powerful man in the city without ever getting elected, partly by slowly compromising away his early progressive ideals in the service of gaining more power. Of course, not every new highway was built through areas where poor Black people lived. Some were planned to go through richer areas for white people, just because you can't completely do away with geographical realities. For example one was planned to be built through part of San Francisco, a rich, white part. But the people who owned properties in that area had enough political power and clout to fight the development, and after nearly a decade of fighting it, the development was called off in late 1966. But over that time, many of the owners of the impressive buildings in the area had moved out, and they had no incentive to improve or maintain their properties while they were under threat of demolition, so many of them were rented out very cheaply. And when the beat community that Kerouac wrote about, many of whom had settled in San Francisco, grew too large and notorious for the area of the city they were in, North Beach, many of them moved to these cheap homes in a previously-exclusive area. The area known as Haight-Ashbury. [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Grayfolded"] Stories all have their starts, even stories told in Tralfamadorian time, although sometimes those starts are shrouded in legend. For example, the story of Scientology's start has been told many times, with different people claiming to have heard L. Ron Hubbard talk about how writing was a mug's game, and if you wanted to make real money, you needed to get followers, start a religion. Either he said this over and over and over again, to many different science fiction writers, or most science fiction writers of his generation were liars. Of course, the definition of a writer is someone who tells lies for money, so who knows? One of the more plausible accounts of him saying that is given by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon's account is more believable than most, because Sturgeon went on to be a supporter of Dianetics, the "new science" that Hubbard turned into his religion, for decades, even while telling the story. The story of the Grateful Dead probably starts as it ends, with Jerry Garcia. There are three things that everyone writing about the Dead says about Garcia's childhood, so we might as well say them here too. The first is that he was named by a music-loving father after Jerome Kern, the songwriter responsible for songs like "Ol' Man River" (though as Oscar Hammerstein's widow liked to point out, "Jerome Kern wrote dum-dum-dum-dum, *my husband* wrote 'Ol' Man River'" -- an important distinction we need to bear in mind when talking about songwriters who write music but not lyrics). The second is that when he was five years old that music-loving father drowned -- and Garcia would always say he had seen his father dying, though some sources claim this was a false memory. So it goes. And the third fact, which for some reason is always told after the second even though it comes before it chronologically, is that when he was four he lost two joints from his right middle finger. Garcia grew up a troubled teen, and in turn caused trouble for other people, but he also developed a few interests that would follow him through his life. He loved the fantastical, especially the fantastical macabre, and became an avid fan of horror and science fiction -- and through his love of old monster films he became enamoured with cinema more generally. Indeed, in 1983 he bought the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, the first story in which the Tralfamadorians appear, and wrote a script based on it. He wanted to produce the film himself, with Francis Ford Coppola directing and Bill Murray starring, but most importantly for him he wanted to prevent anyone who didn't care about it from doing it badly. And in that he succeeded. As of 2023 there is no film of The Sirens of Titan. He loved to paint, and would continue that for the rest of his life, with one of his favourite subjects being Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. And when he was eleven or twelve, he heard for the first time a record that was hugely influential to a whole generation of Californian musicians, even though it was a New York record -- "Gee" by the Crows: [Excerpt: The Crows, "Gee"] Garcia would say later "That was an important song. That was the first kind of, like where the voices had that kind of not-trained-singer voices, but tough-guy-on-the-street voice." That record introduced him to R&B, and soon he was listening to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, to Ray Charles, and to a record we've not talked about in the podcast but which was one of the great early doo-wop records, "WPLJ" by the Four Deuces: [Excerpt: The Four Deuces, "WPLJ"] Garcia said of that record "That was one of my anthem songs when I was in junior high school and high school and around there. That was one of those songs everybody knew. And that everybody sang. Everybody sang that street-corner favorite." Garcia moved around a lot as a child, and didn't have much time for school by his own account, but one of the few teachers he did respect was an art teacher when he was in North Beach, Walter Hedrick. Hedrick was also one of the earliest of the conceptual artists, and one of the most important figures in the San Francisco arts scene that would become known as the Beat Generation (or the Beatniks, which was originally a disparaging term). Hedrick was a painter and sculptor, but also organised happenings, and he had also been one of the prime movers in starting a series of poetry readings in San Francisco, the first one of which had involved Allen Ginsberg giving the first ever reading of "Howl" -- one of a small number of poems, along with Eliot's "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" and possibly Pound's Cantos, which can be said to have changed twentieth-century literature. Garcia was fifteen when he got to know Hedrick, in 1957, and by then the Beat scene had already become almost a parody of itself, having become known to the public because of the publication of works like On the Road, and the major artists in the scene were already rejecting the label. By this point tourists were flocking to North Beach to see these beatniks they'd heard about on TV, and Hedrick was actually employed by one cafe to sit in the window wearing a beret, turtleneck, sandals, and beard, and draw and paint, to attract the tourists who flocked by the busload because they could see that there was a "genuine beatnik" in the cafe. Hedrick was, as well as a visual artist, a guitarist and banjo player who played in traditional jazz bands, and he would bring records in to class for his students to listen to, and Garcia particularly remembered him bringing in records by Big Bill Broonzy: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too)"] Garcia was already an avid fan of rock and roll music, but it was being inspired by Hedrick that led him to get his first guitar. Like his contemporary Paul McCartney around the same time, he was initially given the wrong instrument as a birthday present -- in Garcia's case his mother gave him an accordion -- but he soon persuaded her to swap it for an electric guitar he saw in a pawn shop. And like his other contemporary, John Lennon, Garcia initially tuned his instrument incorrectly. He said later "When I started playing the guitar, believe me, I didn't know anybody that played. I mean, I didn't know anybody that played the guitar. Nobody. They weren't around. There were no guitar teachers. You couldn't take lessons. There was nothing like that, you know? When I was a kid and I had my first electric guitar, I had it tuned wrong and learned how to play on it with it tuned wrong for about a year. And I was getting somewhere on it, you know… Finally, I met a guy that knew how to tune it right and showed me three chords, and it was like a revelation. You know what I mean? It was like somebody gave me the key to heaven." He joined a band, the Chords, which mostly played big band music, and his friend Gary Foster taught him some of the rudiments of playing the guitar -- things like how to use a capo to change keys. But he was always a rebellious kid, and soon found himself faced with a choice between joining the military or going to prison. He chose the former, and it was during his time in the Army that a friend, Ron Stevenson, introduced him to the music of Merle Travis, and to Travis-style guitar picking: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Nine-Pound Hammer"] Garcia had never encountered playing like that before, but he instantly recognised that Travis, and Chet Atkins who Stevenson also played for him, had been an influence on Scotty Moore. He started to realise that the music he'd listened to as a teenager was influenced by music that went further back. But Stevenson, as well as teaching Garcia some of the rudiments of Travis-picking, also indirectly led to Garcia getting discharged from the Army. Stevenson was not a well man, and became suicidal. Garcia decided it was more important to keep his friend company and make sure he didn't kill himself than it was to turn up for roll call, and as a result he got discharged himself on psychiatric grounds -- according to Garcia he told the Army psychiatrist "I was involved in stuff that was more important to me in the moment than the army was and that was the reason I was late" and the psychiatrist thought it was neurotic of Garcia to have his own set of values separate from that of the Army. After discharge, Garcia did various jobs, including working as a transcriptionist for Lenny Bruce, the comedian who was a huge influence on the counterculture. In one of the various attacks over the years by authoritarians on language, Bruce was repeatedly arrested for obscenity, and in 1961 he was arrested at a jazz club in North Beach. Sixty years ago, the parts of speech that were being criminalised weren't pronouns, but prepositions and verbs: [Excerpt: Lenny Bruce, "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb"] That piece, indeed, was so controversial that when Frank Zappa quoted part of it in a song in 1968, the record label insisted on the relevant passage being played backwards so people couldn't hear such disgusting filth: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Harry You're a Beast"] (Anyone familiar with that song will understand that the censored portion is possibly the least offensive part of the whole thing). Bruce was facing trial, and he needed transcripts of what he had said in his recordings to present in court. Incidentally, there seems to be some confusion over exactly which of Bruce's many obscenity trials Garcia became a transcriptionist for. Dennis McNally says in his biography of the band, published in 2002, that it was the most famous of them, in autumn 1964, but in a later book, Jerry on Jerry, a book of interviews of Garcia edited by McNally, McNally talks about it being when Garcia was nineteen, which would mean it was Bruce's first trial, in 1961. We can put this down to the fact that many of the people involved, not least Garcia, lived in Tralfamadorian time, and were rather hazy on dates, but I'm placing the story here rather than in 1964 because it seems to make more sense that Garcia would be involved in a trial based on an incident in San Francisco than one in New York. Garcia got the job, even though he couldn't type, because by this point he'd spent so long listening to recordings of old folk and country music that he was used to transcribing indecipherable accents, and often, as Garcia would tell it, Bruce would mumble very fast and condense multiple syllables into one. Garcia was particularly impressed by Bruce's ability to improvise but talk in entire paragraphs, and he compared his use of language to bebop. Another thing that was starting to impress Garcia, and which he also compared to bebop, was bluegrass: [Excerpt: Bill Monroe, "Fire on the Mountain"] Bluegrass is a music that is often considered very traditional, because it's based on traditional songs and uses acoustic instruments, but in fact it was a terribly *modern* music, and largely a postwar creation of a single band -- Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. And Garcia was right when he said it was "white bebop" -- though he did say "The only thing it doesn't have is the harmonic richness of bebop. You know what I mean? That's what it's missing, but it has everything else." Both bebop and bluegrass evolved after the second world war, though they were informed by music from before it, and both prized the ability to improvise, and technical excellence. Both are musics that involved playing *fast*, in an ensemble, and being able to respond quickly to the other musicians. Both musics were also intensely rhythmic, a response to a faster paced, more stressful world. They were both part of the general change in the arts towards immediacy that we looked at in the last episode with the creation first of expressionism and then of pop art. Bluegrass didn't go into the harmonic explorations that modern jazz did, but it was absolutely as modern as anything Charlie Parker was doing, and came from the same impulses. It was tradition and innovation, the past and the future simultaneously. Bill Monroe, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce were all in their own ways responding to the same cultural moment, and it was that which Garcia was responding to. But he didn't become able to play bluegrass until after a tragedy which shaped his life even more than his father's death had. Garcia had been to a party and was in a car with his friends Lee Adams, Paul Speegle, and Alan Trist. Adams was driving at ninety miles an hour when they hit a tight curve and crashed. Garcia, Adams, and Trist were all severely injured but survived. Speegle died. So it goes. This tragedy changed Garcia's attitudes totally. Of all his friends, Speegle was the one who was most serious about his art, and who treated it as something to work on. Garcia had always been someone who fundamentally didn't want to work or take any responsibility for anything. And he remained that way -- except for his music. Speegle's death changed Garcia's attitude to that, totally. If his friend wasn't going to be able to practice his own art any more, Garcia would practice his, in tribute to him. He resolved to become a virtuoso on guitar and banjo. His girlfriend of the time later said “I don't know if you've spent time with someone rehearsing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown' on a banjo for eight hours, but Jerry practiced endlessly. He really wanted to excel and be the best. He had tremendous personal ambition in the musical arena, and he wanted to master whatever he set out to explore. Then he would set another sight for himself. And practice another eight hours a day of new licks.” But of course, you can't make ensemble music on your own: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter, "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" (including end)] "Evelyn said, “What is it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?” Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. “Love,” she said at length." That's from More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, a book I'll be quoting a few more times as the story goes on. Robert Hunter, like Garcia, was just out of the military -- in his case, the National Guard -- and he came into Garcia's life just after Paul Speegle had left it. Garcia and Alan Trist met Hunter ten days after the accident, and the three men started hanging out together, Trist and Hunter writing while Garcia played music. Garcia and Hunter both bonded over their shared love for the beats, and for traditional music, and the two formed a duo, Bob and Jerry, which performed together a handful of times. They started playing together, in fact, after Hunter picked up a guitar and started playing a song and halfway through Garcia took it off him and finished the song himself. The two of them learned songs from the Harry Smith Anthology -- Garcia was completely apolitical, and only once voted in his life, for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to keep Goldwater out, and regretted even doing that, and so he didn't learn any of the more political material people like Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan were doing at the time -- but their duo only lasted a short time because Hunter wasn't an especially good guitarist. Hunter would, though, continue to jam with Garcia and other friends, sometimes playing mandolin, while Garcia played solo gigs and with other musicians as well, playing and moving round the Bay Area and performing with whoever he could: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia, "Railroad Bill"] "Bleshing, that was Janie's word. She said Baby told it to her. She said it meant everyone all together being something, even if they all did different things. Two arms, two legs, one body, one head, all working together, although a head can't walk and arms can't think. Lone said maybe it was a mixture of “blending” and “meshing,” but I don't think he believed that himself. It was a lot more than that." That's from More Than Human In 1961, Garcia and Hunter met another young musician, but one who was interested in a very different type of music. Phil Lesh was a serious student of modern classical music, a classically-trained violinist and trumpeter whose interest was solidly in the experimental and whose attitude can be summed up by a story that's always told about him meeting his close friend Tom Constanten for the first time. Lesh had been talking with someone about serialism, and Constanten had interrupted, saying "Music stopped being created in 1750 but it started again in 1950". Lesh just stuck out his hand, recognising a kindred spirit. Lesh and Constanten were both students of Luciano Berio, the experimental composer who created compositions for magnetic tape: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti"] Berio had been one of the founders of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, a studio for producing contemporary electronic music where John Cage had worked for a time, and he had also worked with the electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lesh would later remember being very impressed when Berio brought a tape into the classroom -- the actual multitrack tape for Stockhausen's revolutionary piece Gesang Der Juenglinge: [Excerpt: Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Gesang Der Juenglinge"] Lesh at first had been distrustful of Garcia -- Garcia was charismatic and had followers, and Lesh never liked people like that. But he was impressed by Garcia's playing, and soon realised that the two men, despite their very different musical interests, had a lot in common. Lesh was interested in the technology of music as well as in performing and composing it, and so when he wasn't studying he helped out by engineering at the university's radio station. Lesh was impressed by Garcia's playing, and suggested to the presenter of the station's folk show, the Midnight Special, that Garcia be a guest. Garcia was so good that he ended up getting an entire solo show to himself, where normally the show would feature multiple acts. Lesh and Constanten soon moved away from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, but both would be back -- in Constanten's case he would form an experimental group in San Francisco with their fellow student Steve Reich, and that group (though not with Constanten performing) would later premiere Terry Riley's In C, a piece influenced by La Monte Young and often considered one of the great masterpieces of minimalist music. By early 1962 Garcia and Hunter had formed a bluegrass band, with Garcia on guitar and banjo and Hunter on mandolin, and a rotating cast of other musicians including Ken Frankel, who played banjo and fiddle. They performed under different names, including the Tub Thumpers, the Hart Valley Drifters, and the Sleepy Valley Hog Stompers, and played a mixture of bluegrass and old-time music -- and were very careful about the distinction: [Excerpt: The Hart Valley Drifters, "Cripple Creek"] In 1993, the Republican political activist John Perry Barlow was invited to talk to the CIA about the possibilities open to them with what was then called the Information Superhighway. He later wrote, in part "They told me they'd brought Steve Jobs in a few weeks before to indoctrinate them in modern information management. And they were delighted when I returned later, bringing with me a platoon of Internet gurus, including Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor, Tony Rutkowski, and Vint Cerf. They sealed us into an electronically impenetrable room to discuss the radical possibility that a good first step in lifting their blackout would be for the CIA to put up a Web site... We told them that information exchange was a barter system, and that to receive, one must also be willing to share. This was an alien notion to them. They weren't even willing to share information among themselves, much less the world." 1962 brought a new experience for Robert Hunter. Hunter had been recruited into taking part in psychological tests at Stanford University, which in the sixties and seventies was one of the preeminent universities for psychological experiments. As part of this, Hunter was given $140 to attend the VA hospital (where a janitor named Ken Kesey, who had himself taken part in a similar set of experiments a couple of years earlier, worked a day job while he was working on his first novel) for four weeks on the run, and take different psychedelic drugs each time, starting with LSD, so his reactions could be observed. (It was later revealed that these experiments were part of a CIA project called MKUltra, designed to investigate the possibility of using psychedelic drugs for mind control, blackmail, and torture. Hunter was quite lucky in that he was told what was going to happen to him and paid for his time. Other subjects included the unlucky customers of brothels the CIA set up as fronts -- they dosed the customers' drinks and observed them through two-way mirrors. Some of their experimental subjects died by suicide as a result of their experiences. So it goes. ) Hunter was interested in taking LSD after reading Aldous Huxley's writings about psychedelic substances, and he brought his typewriter along to the experiment. During the first test, he wrote a six-page text, a short excerpt from which is now widely quoted, reading in part "Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist ... and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells" Hunter's experience led to everyone in their social circle wanting to try LSD, and soon they'd all come to the same conclusion -- this was something special. But Garcia needed money -- he'd got his girlfriend pregnant, and they'd married (this would be the first of several marriages in Garcia's life, and I won't be covering them all -- at Garcia's funeral, his second wife, Carolyn, said Garcia always called her the love of his life, and his first wife and his early-sixties girlfriend who he proposed to again in the nineties both simultaneously said "He said that to me!"). So he started teaching guitar at a music shop in Palo Alto. Hunter had no time for Garcia's incipient domesticity and thought that his wife was trying to make him live a conventional life, and the two drifted apart somewhat, though they'd still play together occasionally. Through working at the music store, Garcia got to know the manager, Troy Weidenheimer, who had a rock and roll band called the Zodiacs. Garcia joined the band on bass, despite that not being his instrument. He later said "Troy was a lot of fun, but I wasn't good enough a musician then to have been able to deal with it. I was out of my idiom, really, 'cause when I played with Troy I was playing electric bass, you know. I never was a good bass player. Sometimes I was playing in the wrong key and didn't even [fuckin'] know it. I couldn't hear that low, after playing banjo, you know, and going to electric...But Troy taught me the principle of, hey, you know, just stomp your foot and get on it. He was great. A great one for the instant arrangement, you know. And he was also fearless for that thing of get your friends to do it." Garcia's tenure in the Zodiacs didn't last long, nor did this experiment with rock and roll, but two other members of the Zodiacs will be notable later in the story -- the harmonica player, an old friend of Garcia's named Ron McKernan, who would soon gain the nickname Pig Pen after the Peanuts character, and the drummer, Bill Kreutzmann: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Drums/Space (Skull & Bones version)"] Kreutzmann said of the Zodiacs "Jerry was the hired bass player and I was the hired drummer. I only remember playing that one gig with them, but I was in way over my head. I always did that. I always played things that were really hard and it didn't matter. I just went for it." Garcia and Kreutzmann didn't really get to know each other then, but Garcia did get to know someone else who would soon be very important in his life. Bob Weir was from a very different background than Garcia, though both had the shared experience of long bouts of chronic illness as children. He had grown up in a very wealthy family, and had always been well-liked, but he was what we would now call neurodivergent -- reading books about the band he talks about being dyslexic but clearly has other undiagnosed neurodivergences, which often go along with dyslexia -- and as a result he was deemed to have behavioural problems which led to him getting expelled from pre-school and kicked out of the cub scouts. He was never academically gifted, thanks to his dyslexia, but he was always enthusiastic about music -- to a fault. He learned to play boogie piano but played so loudly and so often his parents sold the piano. He had a trumpet, but the neighbours complained about him playing it outside. Finally he switched to the guitar, an instrument with which it is of course impossible to make too loud a noise. The first song he learned was the Kingston Trio's version of an old sea shanty, "The Wreck of the John B": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "The Wreck of the John B"] He was sent off to a private school in Colorado for teenagers with behavioural issues, and there he met the boy who would become his lifelong friend, John Perry Barlow. Unfortunately the two troublemakers got on with each other *so* well that after their first year they were told that it was too disruptive having both of them at the school, and only one could stay there the next year. Barlow stayed and Weir moved back to the Bay Area. By this point, Weir was getting more interested in folk music that went beyond the commercial folk of the Kingston Trio. As he said later "There was something in there that was ringing my bells. What I had grown up thinking of as hillbilly music, it started to have some depth for me, and I could start to hear the music in it. Suddenly, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant hillbillies playing what they could. There was some depth and expertise and stuff like that to aspire to.” He moved from school to school but one thing that stayed with him was his love of playing guitar, and he started taking lessons from Troy Weidenheimer, but he got most of his education going to folk clubs and hootenannies. He regularly went to the Tangent, a club where Garcia played, but Garcia's bluegrass banjo playing was far too rigorous for a free spirit like Weir to emulate, and instead he started trying to copy one of the guitarists who was a regular there, Jorma Kaukonnen. On New Year's Eve 1963 Weir was out walking with his friends Bob Matthews and Rich Macauley, and they passed the music shop where Garcia was a teacher, and heard him playing his banjo. They knocked and asked if they could come in -- they all knew Garcia a little, and Bob Matthews was one of his students, having become interested in playing banjo after hearing the theme tune to the Beverly Hillbillies, played by the bluegrass greats Flatt and Scruggs: [Excerpt: Flatt and Scruggs, "The Beverly Hillbillies"] Garcia at first told these kids, several years younger than him, that they couldn't come in -- he was waiting for his students to show up. But Weir said “Jerry, listen, it's seven-thirty on New Year's Eve, and I don't think you're going to be seeing your students tonight.” Garcia realised the wisdom of this, and invited the teenagers in to jam with him. At the time, there was a bit of a renaissance in jug bands, as we talked about back in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful. This was a form of music that had grown up in the 1920s, and was similar and related to skiffle and coffee-pot bands -- jug bands would tend to have a mixture of portable string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and people using improvised instruments, particularly blowing into a jug. The most popular of these bands had been Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, led by banjo player Gus Cannon and with harmonica player Noah Lewis: [Excerpt: Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, "Viola Lee Blues"] With the folk revival, Cannon's work had become well-known again. The Rooftop Singers, a Kingston Trio style folk group, had had a hit with his song "Walk Right In" in 1963, and as a result of that success Cannon had even signed a record contract with Stax -- Stax's first album ever, a month before Booker T and the MGs' first album, was in fact the eighty-year-old Cannon playing his banjo and singing his old songs. The rediscovery of Cannon had started a craze for jug bands, and the most popular of the new jug bands was Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, which did a mixture of old songs like "You're a Viper" and more recent material redone in the old style. Weir, Matthews, and Macauley had been to see the Kweskin band the night before, and had been very impressed, especially by their singer Maria D'Amato -- who would later marry her bandmate Geoff Muldaur and take his name -- and her performance of Leiber and Stoller's "I'm a Woman": [Excerpt: Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, "I'm a Woman"] Matthews suggested that they form their own jug band, and Garcia eagerly agreed -- though Matthews found himself rapidly moving from banjo to washboard to kazoo to second kazoo before realising he was surplus to requirements. Robert Hunter was similarly an early member but claimed he "didn't have the embouchure" to play the jug, and was soon also out. He moved to LA and started studying Scientology -- later claiming that he wanted science-fictional magic powers, which L. Ron Hubbard's new religion certainly offered. The group took the name Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions -- apparently they varied the spelling every time they played -- and had a rotating membership that at one time or another included about twenty different people, but tended always to have Garcia on banjo, Weir on jug and later guitar, and Garcia's friend Pig Pen on harmonica: [Excerpt: Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions, "On the Road Again"] The group played quite regularly in early 1964, but Garcia's first love was still bluegrass, and he was trying to build an audience with his bluegrass band, The Black Mountain Boys. But bluegrass was very unpopular in the Bay Area, where it was simultaneously thought of as unsophisticated -- as "hillbilly music" -- and as elitist, because it required actual instrumental ability, which wasn't in any great supply in the amateur folk scene. But instrumental ability was something Garcia definitely had, as at this point he was still practising eight hours a day, every day, and it shows on the recordings of the Black Mountain Boys: [Excerpt: The Black Mountain Boys, "Rosa Lee McFall"] By the summer, Bob Weir was also working at the music shop, and so Garcia let Weir take over his students while he and the Black Mountain Boys' guitarist Sandy Rothman went on a road trip to see as many bluegrass musicians as they could and to audition for Bill Monroe himself. As it happened, Garcia found himself too shy to audition for Monroe, but Rothman later ended up playing with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. On his return to the Bay Area, Garcia resumed playing with the Uptown Jug Champions, but Pig Pen started pestering him to do something different. While both men had overlapping tastes in music and a love for the blues, Garcia's tastes had always been towards the country end of the spectrum while Pig Pen's were towards R&B. And while the Uptown Jug Champions were all a bit disdainful of the Beatles at first -- apart from Bob Weir, the youngest of the group, who thought they were interesting -- Pig Pen had become enamoured of another British band who were just starting to make it big: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] 29) Garcia liked the first Rolling Stones album too, and he eventually took Pig Pen's point -- the stuff that the Rolling Stones were doing, covers of Slim Harpo and Buddy Holly, was not a million miles away from the material they were doing as Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions. Pig Pen could play a little electric organ, Bob had been fooling around with the electric guitars in the music shop. Why not give it a go? The stuff bands like the Rolling Stones were doing wasn't that different from the electric blues that Pig Pen liked, and they'd all seen A Hard Day's Night -- they could carry on playing with banjos, jugs, and kazoos and have the respect of a handful of folkies, or they could get electric instruments and potentially have screaming girls and millions of dollars, while playing the same songs. This was a convincing argument, especially when Dana Morgan Jr, the son of the owner of the music shop, told them they could have free electric instruments if they let him join on bass. Morgan wasn't that great on bass, but what the hell, free instruments. Pig Pen had the best voice and stage presence, so he became the frontman of the new group, singing most of the leads, though Jerry and Bob would both sing a few songs, and playing harmonica and organ. Weir was on rhythm guitar, and Garcia was the lead guitarist and obvious leader of the group. They just needed a drummer, and handily Bill Kreutzmann, who had played with Garcia and Pig Pen in the Zodiacs, was also now teaching music at the music shop. Not only that, but about three weeks before they decided to go electric, Kreutzmann had seen the Uptown Jug Champions performing and been astonished by Garcia's musicianship and charisma, and said to himself "Man, I'm gonna follow that guy forever!" The new group named themselves the Warlocks, and started rehearsing in earnest. Around this time, Garcia also finally managed to get some of the LSD that his friend Robert Hunter had been so enthusiastic about three years earlier, and it was a life-changing experience for him. In particular, he credited LSD with making him comfortable being a less disciplined player -- as a bluegrass player he'd had to be frighteningly precise, but now he was playing rock and needed to loosen up. A few days after taking LSD for the first time, Garcia also heard some of Bob Dylan's new material, and realised that the folk singer he'd had little time for with his preachy politics was now making electric music that owed a lot more to the Beat culture Garcia considered himself part of: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] Another person who was hugely affected by hearing that was Phil Lesh, who later said "I couldn't believe that was Bob Dylan on AM radio, with an electric band. It changed my whole consciousness: if something like that could happen, the sky was the limit." Up to that point, Lesh had been focused entirely on his avant-garde music, working with friends like Steve Reich to push music forward, inspired by people like John Cage and La Monte Young, but now he realised there was music of value in the rock world. He'd quickly started going to rock gigs, seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds, and then he took acid and went to see his friend Garcia's new electric band play their third ever gig. He was blown away, and very quickly it was decided that Lesh would be the group's new bass player -- though everyone involved tells a different story as to who made the decision and how it came about, and accounts also vary as to whether Dana Morgan took his sacking gracefully and let his erstwhile bandmates keep their instruments, or whether they had to scrounge up some new ones. Lesh had never played bass before, but he was a talented multi-instrumentalist with a deep understanding of music and an ability to compose and improvise, and the repertoire the Warlocks were playing in the early days was mostly three-chord material that doesn't take much rehearsal -- though it was apparently beyond the abilities of poor Dana Morgan, who apparently had to be told note-by-note what to play by Garcia, and learn it by rote. Garcia told Lesh what notes the strings of a bass were tuned to, told him to borrow a guitar and practice, and within two weeks he was on stage with the Warlocks: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, “Grayfolded"] In September 1995, just weeks after Jerry Garcia's death, an article was published in Mute magazine identifying a cultural trend that had shaped the nineties, and would as it turned out shape at least the next thirty years. It's titled "The Californian Ideology", though it may be better titled "The Bay Area Ideology", and it identifies a worldview that had grown up in Silicon Valley, based around the ideas of the hippie movement, of right-wing libertarianism, of science fiction authors, and of Marshall McLuhan. It starts "There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. We have called this orthodoxy `the Californian Ideology' in honour of the state where it originated. By naturalising and giving a technological proof to a libertarian political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian Ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless. The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as WIRED and MONDO 2000 and preached in the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and others. The new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 30-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of the Californian ideology appears to be complete." [Excerpt: Grayfolded] The Warlocks' first gig with Phil Lesh on bass was on June the 18th 1965, at a club called Frenchy's with a teenage clientele. Lesh thought his playing had been wooden and it wasn't a good gig, and apparently the management of Frenchy's agreed -- they were meant to play a second night there, but turned up to be told they'd been replaced by a band with an accordion and clarinet. But by September the group had managed to get themselves a residency at a small bar named the In Room, and playing there every night made them cohere. They were at this point playing the kind of sets that bar bands everywhere play to this day, though at the time the songs they were playing, like "Gloria" by Them and "In the Midnight Hour", were the most contemporary of hits. Another song that they introduced into their repertoire was "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful, another band which had grown up out of former jug band musicians. As well as playing their own sets, they were also the house band at The In Room and as such had to back various touring artists who were the headline acts. The first act they had to back up was Cornell Gunter's version of the Coasters. Gunter had brought his own guitarist along as musical director, and for the first show Weir sat in the audience watching the show and learning the parts, staring intently at this musical director's playing. After seeing that, Weir's playing was changed, because he also picked up how the guitarist was guiding the band while playing, the small cues that a musical director will use to steer the musicians in the right direction. Weir started doing these things himself when he was singing lead -- Pig Pen was the frontman but everyone except Bill sang sometimes -- and the group soon found that rather than Garcia being the sole leader, now whoever was the lead singer for the song was the de facto conductor as well. By this point, the Bay Area was getting almost overrun with people forming electric guitar bands, as every major urban area in America was. Some of the bands were even having hits already -- We Five had had a number three hit with "You Were On My Mind", a song which had originally been performed by the folk duo Ian and Sylvia: [Excerpt: We Five, "You Were On My Mind"] Although the band that was most highly regarded on the scene, the Charlatans, was having problems with the various record companies they tried to get signed to, and didn't end up making a record until 1969. If tracks like "Number One" had been released in 1965 when they were recorded, the history of the San Francisco music scene may have taken a very different turn: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "Number One"] Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were also forming, and Autumn Records was having a run of success with records by the Beau Brummels, whose records were produced by Autumn's in-house A&R man, Sly Stone: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Warlocks were somewhat cut off from this, playing in a dive bar whose clientele was mostly depressed alcoholics. But the fact that they were playing every night for an audience that didn't care much gave them freedom, and they used that freedom to improvise. Both Lesh and Garcia were big fans of John Coltrane, and they started to take lessons from his style of playing. When the group played "Gloria" or "Midnight Hour" or whatever, they started to extend the songs and give themselves long instrumental passages for soloing. Garcia's playing wasn't influenced *harmonically* by Coltrane -- in fact Garcia was always a rather harmonically simple player. He'd tend to play lead lines either in Mixolydian mode, which is one of the most standard modes in rock, pop, blues, and jazz, or he'd play the notes of the chord that was being played, so if the band were playing a G chord his lead would emphasise the notes G, B, and D. But what he was influenced by was Coltrane's tendency to improvise in long, complex, phrases that made up a single thought -- Coltrane was thinking musically in paragraphs, rather than sentences, and Garcia started to try the same kind of th

We've got a special two-fold episode for you today. First, Jonathan welcomes two touring groups fresh from their performance at The Marine Room: Michael Musica and Eric and Erica. Eric and Erica share songs from their recent release, “The Way to Turn”, while Michael Musica chats with Jonathan about his own, “You Can If You Want To”. Then, Deep Cuts keeps on truckin' into Deadtober with Caroline and David, featuring a cool interview with The Grateful Dead historian and publicist, Dennis McNally.Image: Edmund Shea

Caroline joins us again interviewing Susana Millman, Grateful Dead photographer and wife to the Dead publicist Dennis McNally. She recently published her photographic memoir, "Alive with the Dead: Or A Fly on the Wall with a Camera". Hear her stories with the band, and the unforgettable moment as Jerry Garcia gave her away at her wedding.

Sam Paddor and Dennis McNally discuss Dennis' experiences as the publicist for the Grateful Dead and his time getting to know Jerry Garcia. Dennis McNally's Website: https://www.dennismcnally.com My Back Pages Website: https://www.mybackpages.org

Rom. 8:14 2. 11 Peter 1:21 3. Gal. 3:2 4. Gal. 3:5 5. John 10:27 6. Acts 18:8

Dennis McNally shares about his recent trip to Africa. He also preaches passionately about experiencing the love of God.

Author and long time publicist for The Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally explaining the inner workings of this legendary outfit.

Author and long time publicist for The Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally explaining the inner workings of this legendary outfit.

Dennis has been a spiritual father to many people. Dennis and April McNally founded a mission organization and are planning a trip to Africa. https://globalvoiceministries.org/

Hollywood and Psychedelic history collide when comedian Hugh Romney, moves to LA where Lenny Bruce becomes his manager, improv icon Del Close becomes his roommate and writer-LSD-enthusiast Ken Kesey, becomes his fan! Wavy tells stories of Lenny's tragic demise plus theatrical psychedelic shows and shenanigans with Del introducing history's early laser light displays. Find out why The Byrds were involved in Hugh's courtship of his lifelong love, Bonnie Jean aka Jahanarah and how the infamous Acid Tests (accompanied by house band, The Grateful Dead) evolved when 40 Merry Pranksters appeared unannounced on Hugh and Bonnie Jean's doorstep, ushering in the memorable question, “Can You Pass the Acid Test?”. Guests include Sunshine Kesey, original Merry Pranksters Denise Kaufman and Laura Foster Corbin, historian, Dennis McNally and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hollywood and Psychedelic history collide when comedian Hugh Romney, moves to LA where Lenny Bruce becomes his manager, improv icon Del Close becomes his roommate and writer-LSD-enthusiast Ken Kesey, becomes his fan! Wavy tells stories of Lenny's tragic demise plus theatrical psychedelic shows and shenanigans with Del introducing history's early laser light displays. Find out why The Byrds were involved in Hugh's courtship of his lifelong love, Bonnie Jean aka Jahanarah and how the infamous Acid Tests (accompanied by house band, The Grateful Dead) evolved when 40 Merry Pranksters appeared unannounced on Hugh and Bonnie Jean's doorstep, ushering in the memorable question, “Can You Pass the Acid Test?”. Guests include Sunshine Kesey, original Merry Pranksters Denise Kaufman and Laura Foster Corbin, historian, Dennis McNally and more.

Hollywood and Psychedelic history collide when comedian Hugh Romney, moves to LA where Lenny Bruce becomes his manager, improv icon Del Close becomes his roommate and writer-LSD-enthusiast Ken Kesey, becomes his fan! Wavy tells stories of Lenny's tragic demise plus theatrical psychedelic shows and shenanigans with Del introducing history's early laser light displays. Find out why The Byrds were involved in Hugh's courtship of his lifelong love, Bonnie Jean aka Jahanarah and how the infamous Acid Tests (accompanied by house band, The Grateful Dead) evolved when 40 Merry Pranksters appeared unannounced on Hugh and Bonnie Jean's doorstep, ushering in the memorable question, “Can You Pass the Acid Test?”. Guests include Sunshine Kesey, original Merry Pranksters Denise Kaufman and Laura Foster Corbin, historian, Dennis McNally and more.Part of Pantheon Podcasts

Hollywood and Psychedelic history collide when comedian Hugh Romney, moves to LA where Lenny Bruce becomes his manager, improv icon Del Close becomes his roommate and writer-LSD-enthusiast Ken Kesey, becomes his fan! Wavy tells stories of Lenny's tragic demise plus theatrical psychedelic shows and shenanigans with Del introducing history's early laser light displays. Find out why The Byrds were involved in Hugh's courtship of his lifelong love, Bonnie Jean aka Jahanarah and how the infamous Acid Tests (accompanied by house band, The Grateful Dead) evolved when 40 Merry Pranksters appeared unannounced on Hugh and Bonnie Jean's doorstep, ushering in the memorable question, “Can You Pass the Acid Test?”. Guests include Sunshine Kesey, original Merry Pranksters Denise Kaufman and Laura Foster Corbin, historian, Dennis McNally and more. Part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following his blackballed university theater teachers, Hugh Romney moves to New York City in the early 1960's where he blossoms into a Beatnik poet comedian in Greenwich Village at the Gaslight Café when his career takes off beside chums like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tiny Tim and fans like Lenny Bruce and Marlene Dietrich. These formative years include truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories about the invention of snapping for applause, the Mafia, a wild kangaroo, Wavy's first marriage and leads to Hugh Romney's stand-up comedy-poet career opening for his jazz heroes and more. Special guest includes historian Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Following his blackballed university theater teachers, Hugh Romney moves to New York City in the early 1960's where he blossoms into a Beatnik poet comedian in Greenwich Village at the Gaslight Café when his career takes off beside chums like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tiny Tim and fans like Lenny Bruce and Marlene Dietrich. These formative years include truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories about the invention of snapping for applause, the Mafia, a wild kangaroo, Wavy's first marriage and leads to Hugh Romney's stand-up comedy-poet career opening for his jazz heroes and more. Special guest includes historian Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following his blackballed university theater teachers, Hugh Romney moves to New York City in the early 1960's where he blossoms into a Beatnik poet comedian in Greenwich Village at the Gaslight Café when his career takes off beside chums like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tiny Tim and fans like Lenny Bruce and Marlene Dietrich. These formative years include truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories about the invention of snapping for applause, the Mafia, a wild kangaroo, Wavy's first marriage and leads to Hugh Romney's stand-up comedy-poet career opening for his jazz heroes and more. Special guest includes historian Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following his blackballed university theater teachers, Hugh Romney moves to New York City in the early 1960's where he blossoms into a Beatnik poet comedian in Greenwich Village at the Gaslight Café when his career takes off beside chums like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Tiny Tim and fans like Lenny Bruce and Marlene Dietrich. These formative years include truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories about the invention of snapping for applause, the Mafia, a wild kangaroo, Wavy's first marriage and leads to Hugh Romney's stand-up comedy-poet career opening for his jazz heroes and more. Special guest includes historian Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Publicist Dennis McNally shares stories of his time with The Grateful Dead together with journalist and author Bill de Young who shares his moments spent with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Publicist Dennis McNally shares stories of his time with The Grateful Dead together with journalist and author Bill de Young who shares his moments spent with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.

Episode 2 dives into Wavy's childhood, youth and teen years with stories of his parents, brothers, childhood BFF & neighbor, Albert Einstein. Wavy tells us about his obsession with bebop, jazz, radio comedy and how they influenced his life. Plus, Wavy's Army stint, where his earliest outside-the-box-behavior, thinking and public pranksterism emerged and he gets into his college years, when he encountered marijuana, Martha Graham, improvisation and started beatnik jazz & poetry shows on the East Coast. Ep 2: Baby Wavy the Bebop Boy, includes Dr. Larry Brilliant & historian, Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 2 dives into Wavy's childhood, youth and teen years with stories of his parents, brothers, childhood BFF & neighbor, Albert Einstein. Wavy tells us about his obsession with bebop, jazz, radio comedy and how they influenced his life. Plus, Wavy's Army stint, where his earliest outside-the-box-behavior, thinking and public pranksterism emerged and he gets into his college years, when he encountered marijuana, Martha Graham, improvisation and started beatnik jazz & poetry shows on the East Coast. Ep 2: Baby Wavy the Bebop Boy, includes Dr. Larry Brilliant & historian, Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Publicist Dennis McNally shares stories of his time with The Grateful Dead together with journalist and author Bill de Young who shares his moments spent with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Publicist Dennis McNally shares stories of his time with The Grateful Dead together with journalist and author Bill de Young who shares his moments spent with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.

Episode 2 dives into Wavy's childhood, youth and teen years with stories of his parents, brothers, childhood BFF & neighbor, Albert Einstein. Wavy tells us about his obsession with bebop, jazz, radio comedy and how they influenced his life. Plus, Wavy's Army stint, where his earliest outside-the-box-behavior, thinking and public pranksterism emerged and he gets into his college years, when he encountered marijuana, Martha Graham, improvisation and started beatnik jazz & poetry shows on the East Coast. Ep 2: Baby Wavy the Bebop Boy, includes Dr. Larry Brilliant & historian, Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 2 dives into Wavy's childhood, youth and teen years with stories of his parents, brothers, childhood BFF & neighbor, Albert Einstein. Wavy tells us about his obsession with bebop, jazz, radio comedy and how they influenced his life. Plus, Wavy's Army stint, where his earliest outside-the-box-behavior, thinking and public pranksterism emerged and he gets into his college years, when he encountered marijuana, Martha Graham, improvisation and started beatnik jazz & poetry shows on the East Coast. Ep 2: Baby Wavy the Bebop Boy, includes Dr. Larry Brilliant & historian, Dennis McNally. Part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Dennis shares his personal testimony and examples of different ways on how the gospel is preached to the lost. Scriptures: 1Peter 2:9 MSG Romans 10:14 MSG 1Cor. 1:17 KJ

The Gathering Place Church

On the show today I get another chance to speak with someone who has been a part of the story of my favorite band, the Grateful Dead. Dennis McNally tells us about his first Dead show in 1972, gives us some truly amazing Songfacts (you'll want to hear the story of Terrapin Station), and recounts his time with the band as their biographer and publicist.If you love the Dead like I do, stick around for this one as we hear some great stories from someone who lived within the wonderful world that is the Grateful Dead. Please join me in welcoming Dennis McNally.https://www.dennismcnally.com/https://www.songfacts.com/https://www.facebook.com/songfactshttps://twitter.com/Songfactshttp://pantheonpodcasts.com/https://twitter.com/pantheonpodsHosted and Edited by Corey O'Flanaganhttps://twitter.com/ofe1818https://www.instagram.com/coreyofe/corey@songfacts.comSongfacts Podcast Spotify Playlisthttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/3IThMW5yB8XnFh5cS2gTxR?si=KAhiqWRcSIy5uxb2sZPFTAThis show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

On the show today I get another chance to speak with someone who has been a part of the story of my favorite band, the Grateful Dead. Dennis McNally tells us about his first Dead show in 1972, gives us some truly amazing Songfacts (you'll want to hear the story of Terrapin Station), and recounts his time with the band as their biographer and publicist. If you love the Dead like I do, stick around for this one as we hear some great stories from someone who lived within the wonderful world that is the Grateful Dead. Please join me in welcoming Dennis McNally. https://www.dennismcnally.com/ https://www.songfacts.com/ https://www.facebook.com/songfacts https://twitter.com/Songfacts http://pantheonpodcasts.com/ https://twitter.com/pantheonpods Hosted and Edited by Corey O'Flanagan https://twitter.com/ofe1818 https://www.instagram.com/coreyofe/ corey@songfacts.com Songfacts Podcast Spotify Playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3IThMW5yB8XnFh5cS2gTxR?si=KAhiqWRcSIy5uxb2sZPFTA This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the show today I get another chance to speak with someone who has been a part of the story of my favorite band, the Grateful Dead. Dennis McNally tells us about his first Dead show in 1972, gives us some truly amazing Songfacts (you'll want to hear the story of Terrapin Station), and recounts his time with the band as their biographer and publicist.If you love the Dead like I do, stick around for this one as we hear some great stories from someone who lived within the wonderful world that is the Grateful Dead. Please join me in welcoming Dennis McNally.https://www.dennismcnally.com/https://www.songfacts.com/https://www.facebook.com/songfactshttps://twitter.com/Songfactshttp://pantheonpodcasts.com/https://twitter.com/pantheonpodsHosted and Edited by Corey O'Flanaganhttps://twitter.com/ofe1818https://www.instagram.com/coreyofe/corey@songfacts.comSongfacts Podcast Spotify Playlisthttps://open.spotify.com/playlist/3IThMW5yB8XnFh5cS2gTxR?si=KAhiqWRcSIy5uxb2sZPFTAThis show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

On the show today I get another chance to speak with someone who has been a part of the story of my favorite band, the Grateful Dead. Dennis McNally tells us about his first Dead show in 1972, gives us some truly amazing Songfacts (you'll want to hear the story of Terrapin Station), and recounts his time with the band as their biographer and publicist. If you love the Dead like I do, stick around for this one as we hear some great stories from someone who lived within the wonderful world that is the Grateful Dead. Please join me in welcoming Dennis McNally. https://www.dennismcnally.com/ https://www.songfacts.com/ https://www.facebook.com/songfacts https://twitter.com/Songfacts http://pantheonpodcasts.com/ https://twitter.com/pantheonpods Hosted and Edited by Corey O'Flanagan https://twitter.com/ofe1818 https://www.instagram.com/coreyofe/ corey@songfacts.com Songfacts Podcast Spotify Playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3IThMW5yB8XnFh5cS2gTxR?si=KAhiqWRcSIy5uxb2sZPFTA This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special edition, Rob talks with the Dead's former publicist and official biographer, Dennis McNally.Hear Dennis talk about how he got turned on to the Dead and his evolution from fan to employee to trusted confidant. Dennis shares great stories about the joys and perils of the job, how he and the band handled their increasing popularity and dealing with the death of Jerry Garcia, both personally and from a business standpoint.Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net)Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays)https://paypal.me/themusicplaysGrateful SweatsSubtle and Unique Dead Inspired GearSarno Music SolutionsProducing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, MissouriBlue Jade Audio MasteringSt louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999The Authenticity AcademyGet in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching.CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needshttps://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/Part of Pantheon Podcasts

In this special edition, Rob talks with the Dead's former publicist and official biographer, Dennis McNally. Hear Dennis talk about how he got turned on to the Dead and his evolution from fan to employee to trusted confidant. Dennis shares great stories about the joys and perils of the job, how he and the band handled their increasing popularity and dealing with the death of Jerry Garcia, both personally and from a business standpoint. Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net) Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays) https://paypal.me/themusicplays Grateful Sweats Subtle and Unique Dead Inspired Gear Sarno Music Solutions Producing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, Missouri Blue Jade Audio Mastering St louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999 The Authenticity Academy Get in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching. CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needs https://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/ Part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special edition, Rob talks with the Dead's former publicist and official biographer, Dennis McNally.Hear Dennis talk about how he got turned on to the Dead and his evolution from fan to employee to trusted confidant. Dennis shares great stories about the joys and perils of the job, how he and the band handled their increasing popularity and dealing with the death of Jerry Garcia, both personally and from a business standpoint.Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net)Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays)https://paypal.me/themusicplaysGrateful SweatsSubtle and Unique Dead Inspired GearSarno Music SolutionsProducing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, MissouriBlue Jade Audio MasteringSt louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999The Authenticity AcademyGet in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching.CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needshttps://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/Part of Pantheon Podcasts

In this special edition, Rob talks with the Dead's former publicist and official biographer, Dennis McNally. Hear Dennis talk about how he got turned on to the Dead and his evolution from fan to employee to trusted confidant. Dennis shares great stories about the joys and perils of the job, how he and the band handled their increasing popularity and dealing with the death of Jerry Garcia, both personally and from a business standpoint. Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net) Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays) https://paypal.me/themusicplays Grateful Sweats Subtle and Unique Dead Inspired Gear Sarno Music Solutions Producing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, Missouri Blue Jade Audio Mastering St louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999 The Authenticity Academy Get in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching. CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needs https://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/ Part of Pantheon Podcasts

The Bible is clear, we need to receive from the Lord. Listen to this great message as Dennis explains the Scriptures and gives examples from his own life for how to receive from the Lord.

The Deadcast examines how the Grateful Dead became a genre and school of music unto themselves, tracing the history of Dead covers to New Jersey in 1969, Calcutta in 1975, & beyond, featuring special appearances by Phish's Trey Anastasio & Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan.Guests: Trey Anastasio, Ira Kaplan, Henry Kaiser, John Zias, Sanjay Mishra, Rebecca Adams, Jeff Mattson, David Gans, Gary Lambert, Dennis McNally

Guest Speaker Dennis McNally shares an encouraging message for fathers.

We are extremely honored this week on No Simple Road to welcome Susana Millman as our guest! Around 25 years ago, Susana Millman became a Bay Area photographer. In the spirit of her love for bad puns, she dubbed herself “mamarazi,” although she's certainly more benign than the paparazzi. Best known for her photography of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead from the mid-1980s on through later incarnations, she's also spent a significant proportion of her professional life shooting dance (the Mark Morris Dance Group), travel (especially Asian religious architecture), events (the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge) and interiors, as sampled in this site's galleries. She and her husband Dennis McNally live in San Francisco, where they enjoy time spent with their daughter, Season Korchin, her husband Jono, and their grandsons, Julian and Elias. She is involved with a variety of progressive causes and works with two international programs that support literacy , Caravan to Class in Mali, and 100 schools in Myanmar.We talk to Susana about the magic and mystery of the Grateful Dead, what makes the Grateful Dead so special, why she loves seeing life through the eye of a camera, what it was like being a fly on the wall with the band beyond description, and a whole lot more!Head over to mamarazi.com to check out he book and more!Become a Patron of No Simple Road On Patreon.com20% off at Grady's Cold Brew PROMO CODE: NSR20% off at MANSCAPED.COM use the PROMO CODE: NSR20FREE SHIPPING FROM Shop Tour Bus Use The PROMO CODE: nosimpleroadFor 20% off Sunset Lake CBD PROMO CODE: NSR20 For 10% off Electric Fish Lights PROMO CODE: NSR INTRO MUSIC and SETBREAK MUSIC BY AND USED WITH OUR GRATITUDE AND THE PERMISSION OF:CIRCLES AROUND THE SUNINTRO MUSIC BY AND USED WITH OUR GRATITUDE AND THE PERMISSION OF:CHILLDREN OF INDIGOLeave us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts!No Simple Road is part of OSIRIS MEDIA. Osiris is creating a community that connects people like you with podcasts and live experiences about artists and topics you love. To stay up to date on what we're up to, visit our site and sign up for our newsletter. Osiris works in partnership with JamBase, which connects music fans with the music they love and empowers them to go see live music!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/nosimpleroad. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On today's episode, Oteil and Mike talk with Dennis McNally, Author, Historian and longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead. Dennis is also known as the biographer for Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Dennis talks about bonding with Jerry over their love for Beat writers, shares stories about Jerry Garcia's time in the army, and how he wound up writing the band's biography. He also talks about the Bay Area in the 50's and 60's, choosing to write his PhD dissertation on Kerouac and the philosophy of the Beat Generation. The three discuss politics and civil rights then and now, the notion of fame and whether anyone can really be prepared to handle it, and much more.  This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating or review on iTunes! Comes A Time is brought to you by Osiris Media. Hosted and Produced by Oteil Burbridge and Mike Finoia. Executive Producers are Christina Collins and RJ Bee. Production, Editing and Mixing by Eric Limarenko and Matt Dwyer. Theme music by Oteil Burbridge. To discover more podcasts that connect you more deeply to the music you love, check out osirispod.com ------- Visit SunsetlakeCBD.com and use the promo code TIME for 20% off premium CBD products Start your path toward investments that align with your values. Visit www.greenfuturewealth.com and mention "Osiris" when scheduling your free virtual consultation to receive your free investment report. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, Oteil and Mike talk with Dennis McNally, Author, Historian and longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead. Dennis is also known as the biographer for Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Dennis talks about bonding with Jerry over their love for Beat writers, shares stories about Jerry Garcia’s time in the army, and how he wound up writing the band’s biography. He also talks about the Bay Area in the 50’s and 60’s, choosing to write his PhD dissertation on Kerouac and the philosophy of the Beat Generation. The three discuss politics and civil rights then and now, the notion of fame and whether anyone can really be prepared to handle it, and much more. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating or review on iTunes!Comes A Time is brought to you by Osiris Media. Hosted and Produced by Oteil Burbridge and Mike Finoia. Executive Producers are Christina Collins and RJ Bee. Production, Editing and Mixing by Eric Limarenko and Matt Dwyer. Theme music by Oteil Burbridge. To discover more podcasts that connect you more deeply to the music you love, check out osirispod.com-------Visit SunsetlakeCBD.com and use the promo code TIME for 20% off premium CBD productsStart your path toward investments that align with your values. Visit www.greenfuturewealth.com and mention "Osiris" when scheduling your free virtual consultation to receive your free investment report. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On today’s episode, Oteil and Mike talk with Dennis McNally, Author, Historian and longtime publicist for the Grateful Dead. Dennis is also known as the biographer for Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Dennis talks about bonding with Jerry over their love for Beat writers, shares stories about Jerry Garcia’s time in the army, and how he wound up writing the band’s biography. He also talks about the Bay Area in the 50’s and 60’s, choosing to write his PhD dissertation on Kerouac and the philosophy of the Beat Generation. The three discuss politics and civil rights then and now, the notion of fame and whether anyone can really be prepared to handle it, and much more. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating or review on iTunes!Comes A Time is brought to you by Osiris Media. Hosted and Produced by Oteil Burbridge and Mike Finoia. Executive Producers are Christina Collins and RJ Bee. Production, Editing and Mixing by Eric Limarenko and Matt Dwyer. Theme music by Oteil Burbridge. To discover more podcasts that connect you more deeply to the music you love, check out osirispod.com-------Visit SunsetlakeCBD.com and use the promo code TIME for 20% off premium CBD productsStart your path toward investments that align with your values. Visit www.greenfuturewealth.com and mention "Osiris" when scheduling your free virtual consultation to receive your free investment report. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dennis and April McNally – Dennis is an apostolic father and has been leading churches and ministries for almost 50 years. He has a strong vision for missions and a passion to establish prophetic ministry Dennis travels and helps lead networks of ministries and churches in different nations of the world and is currently the apostolic leader and director of Global Voice Ministries, traveling with his wife April and bringing teams into nations carrying a strong preaching and prophetic ministry.

INTERVIEW BEGINS AT 21:00 (The slight audio issues do clear up 17 min into the interview...Please forgive us, and try and enjoy) Back in 1965 in Palo Alto California a group of guys started playing music together, soon they would become The Grateful Dead and would go on to provide the soundtrack for a generation and beyond. Quite possibly the American Rock band, the Dead have endured long beyond anyone's wildest dreams and millions of Dead Head's to this day stay loyal and passionate. Dennis McNally was brought into the inner circle of Jerry and Company and became the official biographer of American music's most iconic band. His book Long Strange Trip gives us an insiders view of the music, the band, the fans and the phenomenon. And tonight, he joins us, with special guest co-host historian and Dead Head Robert Anderson to talk about the Dead, their legacy and whatever else we thought about rambling about So kick back, enjoy and please rate and share the show..let's keep the audience growing. Thank you all And hey, check out our Merch Store for Shirts. Hoodies, Coffee Mugs, Stickers, Magnets and a whole host of other items https://www.teepublic.com/user/tahistory All of our episodes are listed as explicit due to language and some topics, such as historical crime, that may not be suitable for all listeners-Opening and closing theme is Random Sanity by British composer DeeZee

Dennis McNally was born in 1949 at Ft. Meade, Maryland, the son of a U.S. Army counter-intelligence operative. He attended 21 schools across many states and several countries, eventually graduating from high school in Maine and undergraduate school at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY in 1971. He received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1977 for a biography of Jack Kerouac which was published by Random House in 1979 under the title Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America.   He settled in San Francisco, and after a period of freelance journalism (for the San Francisco Chronicle’s California Living and the Berkeley Monthly, among others) and odd jobs, he became archivist for Bill Graham Presents in 1983. In the year he worked there he established the BGP Archives. Having been selected as the Grateful Dead’s authorized biographer in 1980, he became the band’s publicist in 1984, and continued in those duties for Grateful Dead Productions until its dissolution in 2004. From 1984 to 1995, he toured with the band, in the process working on its behalf at the United Nations, the White House, and Congress. In 2002 he published his long-awaited history of the band, A Long Strange Trip/The Inside History of the Grateful Dead with Broadway Books, a division of Random House. It achieved the New York Times best-seller list.   Since the closure of Grateful Dead Productions, he has worked as a freelance music publicist with clients that have included Bob Weir & RatDog, the Jerry Garcia Estate LLC, David Lindley, Little Feat, the Subdudes, and a wide variety of other music business clients, including the Sonoma Jazz Festival, Rhino Records (for whose “Golden Road” package he received a Grammy nomination for liner notes), and many others.   He recently completed his third book, On Highway 61/Black Music, Freedom, and America, a study of what white people have learned from black music in America from the minstrel era to Bob Dylan. It was published by Counterpoint Press in October, 2014. If you feel moved, please support the show

A short story about a crazy plane ride. Dennis McNally is the former publicist for the Grateful Dead and author of their biography A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead. Today Dennis shares one of his infamous stories from the 1987 summer tour. It involves the Grateful Dead, a boa constrictor, and Monument Valley. Enjoy.

Allan Toussaint, Taj Mahal, Kenny Gradney, Lowell George, Chico Hamilton, Jimi Hendrix, Mothers of Invention, Dennis McNally, The Jake Feinberg Show --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

Not Fade Away (Replay)  Jerry Garcia 1942-1995 Hey there! Hi There! Ho there! The Not Fade Away podcast is back and have we got a hell of a subject today--Jerry Garcia. The eternal hippie/hipster believed in seeking truth and enlightenment above all else. When Jerry passed on August 9, 1995, just a week after his 53rd birthday, he left behind a 30+ year legacy of music, poetry, art, groovy ties, and ice cream that are still talked about to this day. This show is very bittersweet for me as my younger brother John was a HUGE Dead Head for over 25 years and we lost him last year to a serious illness. When I hear Jerry’s music now I have a wave of emotions come over me and I was not sure if I could dig into the life of such an interesting and complicated person. But ultimately, I wanted to give him a proper farewell that would have made my brother proud. I just hope it makes you smile and brightens your day. In this episode, I am breaking up into two parts. Part 1. I talk about the life and death of Jerry Garcia Part 2. I spoke with the band’s publicist and historian Dennis McNally to talk about his years with the group and he patiently answers my plethora of questions about Jerry and band. Clips used in this episode: Jerry Garcia in Copenhagen (1972) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU30HpQlV94 CBS News Harry Reasoner talking about “hippies” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H26uOh1xYGI What’s Happening (1978) The Doobie Brothers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQbbuuWuQZ0 ABC TV “20 Years Rolling Stone Magazine Celebration” 1987 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzxKGS1avgA Late Show with David Letterman 1982 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ss-i2VgcPw Grateful Dead at Brendan Byrne Arena June 17, 1991 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlEb2CPPs-E&t=78s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/grateful-dead#1994-induction-acceptance-speech Jerry Garcia died CBS News (1995) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRo3j5XS-A Be sure to check out Dennis McNally’s book  A Long Strange Trip: The History of the Grateful Dead and audiobook Jerry on Jerry. Also, subscribe to the show so you won’t miss my next episode! If you like what you hear--please subscribe and leave a review. Also--send me a note via social media (@NotFadeAway) if you want to reach out. Thanks for checking out this podcast! If you have any suggestions for future eps--please reach out! In the meantime--follow me on social media! Like us on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/notfadeawaypodcast/ Twitter @NotFadeAwayPod  https://twitter.com/NotFadeAwayPod  Email us at notfadeawaypodcast@gmail.com Margo D. @BrooklynFitChik www.brooklynfitchick.com  

DESCRIPTION: A very Jerry bonus episode explores Jerry Garcia’s early ‘60s years in the Palo Alto folk scene and his progression from guitar strummer to banjo picker during a prodigious half-decade before going electric with the Grateful Dead, including interviews with David Nelson and Bob Matthews, both one-time members of Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions.GUESTS: David Nelson, Bob Matthews, Nicholas Meriwether, Dennis McNally

Aaron and Camille are back after some time away from the podcast. Life has been difficult for so many around the world recently. We recognize our struggles are not unique or special, but we share how we've been coping with loss and changes: through Gratitude. W're beginning our Audio Journal again and sincerely wish you can find some gold amidst the rubble of this conversation. Show Notes: Kung Fu Tea What is Boba? Koda's Instagram Writing a Book (Aaron's Blog) Fr. Dennis McNally, SJ Akimbo Workshops Writing in Community Discourse Writing and Thinking (Aaron's Blog) Brain Dump The Art of Journalling Morning Pages Forrest through the Trees Black Lives Matter Being an Empath Dr. Dufresne! Learning (Aaron's Blog) What is Self Care? COVID-19 Sodoku Sigourney Weaver Finding Dory Adventure Aquarium Dora the Explorer Connect with Us: Follow us on social @itsallmahalo. Check out our website https://itsallmahalo.com

Jack Kerouac and America A conversation with Dennis McNally In my third conversation with Dennis McNally we discuss his biography of Jack Kerouac, Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation and America. We discuss:-Kerouac’s legacy for a generation of young people.-The difficulty Jack had with being famous.-Whether you should read Keroauc after the age of 37.-Judging art by contemporary standards. -We take a listener question about Jerry Garcia and scuba diving. Desolate Angel is available where all fine books are sold. This interview is part of a larger project I am working on about Jack Kerouac’s later life. Music : The Bird by Charlie Parker

Dennis McNally. Photo courtesy of Getty Images Dennis McNally is former publicist of for the Grateful Dead, a dream job if there ever was one. He has written several books inluding On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, Jerry on Jerry: the Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews and A Long Strange Trip: the Inside History of the Grateful Dead. Today we discussed life in quarantine, Jerry’s healthy relationship with Bluegrass and his unhealthy relationship with the gym. Dennis even tells a great Donna Jean story. Enjoy!This is the second time Dennis has appeared on the show. The song you heard at the during the interview was “Trouble in Mind” by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garica. It comes off the collection Before the Dead.

Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl sat rolling joints and cleaning the stems and seeds from a brick of weed when a fateful knock came at the door of 710 Ashbury Street. Having your communal crash pad raided by the police isn’t typically the start of a great moment, but for the Grateful Dead, the October 1967 undercover police sting operation that targeted their home and headquarters turned into a pivotal inflection point in the band’s trajectory. One that would change cannabis history and spread weed consciousness around the world.  That's because rather than pleading out or turning informant, they held a press conference right in the same room where they’d been busted, calling out the local police and the national War on Drugs as a racist, hypocritical, counter productive, unconstitutional failure. Abdullah and Bean also discuss the huge role the band and their many Deadhead followers played in spreading high quality marijuana and seeds across the country, including classic strains like Sour Diesel and Chemdog. Very special thanks to the legend Harry Shearer (The Simpsons, Spinal Tap) for guesting on this episode, as he actually wrote the 1967 pro-legalization statement the Dead presented at their press conference. Read more first person accounts of this incident in Rock Skully's book Living with the Dead and in Rosie McGee's memoir Dancing with the Dead. Hear the Grateful Dead's October 22, 1967 Marijuana Defense Benefit concert in its entirety at archive.org Check out Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally's book A Long Strange Trip. Support us by supporting our good friends and sponsors, Tweedlefarms.com - use promo code greatmoments for a discount!

As recent events have prevented Aaron & Camille from recording together, this episode is a reflection by Aaron on what's been happening recently. He discusses their recent graduation, the death of their beloved friend, Fr. Dennis McNally, S.J., and his deep love for Camille. This episode is a change of pace, but the two recent graduates plan on recording together again soon! Show Notes: Saint Joseph’s University Ozark The Office It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Fr. Dennis McNally ART 180 - Encountering Mystery Al Dar Bistro Aaron’s Paper on Resurrection John Wick Keanu Reeve’s Interview Koda’s Instagram @lilkodaguy Brick Nova (Paul’s Band) Akimbo Check Out Our Website! https://itsallmahalo.com Follow Us On Social Media: @itsallmahalo @aaronlemma @camillevasco

Host Marla Davies tackles the difficult discussion of the Coronavirus COVID-19 and how it's turning the Festival World upside down and inside out. The words postpone, reschedule and cancel have suddenly become commonplace as SXSW, Coachella, Stagecoach, Skull & Roses, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage, Bonnaroo and Glastonbury as all accept the pandemic and the need to make schedule changes. These are strange days indeed! Today on 'Festival Nation' we hear from Christian Swain, CEO of the Pantheon Podcast Network and Host of the Rock and Roll Archeology Podcast and Long-Time Publicist of the Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally.@pantheonpods @festivalnationpodcast @SXSW @Coachella @StageCoach @Skull&Roses @ jazzfest @bonnaroo @glastonbury @nationfestivalSince publishing this episode Bottle Rock has also postponed it's Memorial Day Festival to the weekend of October 2-4 @bottlerocknapa along with the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and more to come.Thanks for your support - please reach out and share your favorite Festival memories at festivalnationpodcast@gmail.com or on social @festivalnationpodcast or @nationfestival. In the time being, let's remember the good times together. #weareeverywherePeace and stay well, Marla

Host Marla Davies tackles the difficult discussion of the Coronavirus COVID-19 and how it's turning the Festival World upside down and inside out. The words postpone, reschedule and cancel have suddenly become commonplace as SXSW, Coachella, Stagecoach, Skull & Roses, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage, Bonnaroo and Glastonbury as all accept the pandemic and the need to make schedule changes. These are strange days indeed! Today on 'Festival Nation' we hear from Christian Swain, CEO of the Pantheon Podcast Network and Host of the Rock and Roll Archeology Podcast and Long-Time Publicist of the Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally. @pantheonpods @festivalnationpodcast @SXSW @Coachella @StageCoach @Skull&Roses @ jazzfest @bonnaroo @glastonbury @nationfestival Since publishing this episode Bottle Rock has also postponed it's Memorial Day Festival to the weekend of October 2-4 @bottlerocknapa along with the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and more to come. Thanks for your support - please reach out and share your favorite Festival memories at festivalnationpodcast@gmail.com or on social @festivalnationpodcast or @nationfestival. In the time being, let's remember the good times together. #weareeverywhere Peace and stay well, Marla

Host Marla Davies tackles the difficult discussion of the Coronavirus COVID-19 and how it's turning the Festival World upside down and inside out. The words postpone, reschedule and cancel have suddenly become commonplace as SXSW, Coachella, Stagecoach, Skull & Roses, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage, Bonnaroo and Glastonbury as all accept the pandemic and the need to make schedule changes. These are strange days indeed! Today on 'Festival Nation' we hear from Christian Swain, CEO of the Pantheon Podcast Network and Host of the Rock and Roll Archeology Podcast and Long-Time Publicist of the Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally.@pantheonpods @festivalnationpodcast @SXSW @Coachella @StageCoach @Skull&Roses @ jazzfest @bonnaroo @glastonbury @nationfestivalSince publishing this episode Bottle Rock has also postponed it's Memorial Day Festival to the weekend of October 2-4 @bottlerocknapaThanks for your support - please reach out and share your favorite Festival memories at festivalnationpodcast@gmail.com or on social @festivalnationpodcast or @nationfestival. In the time being, let's remember the good times together. #weareeverywherePeace and stay well, Marla

Host Marla Davies tackles the difficult discussion of the Coronavirus COVID-19 and how it's turning the Festival World upside down and inside out. The words postpone, reschedule and cancel have suddenly become commonplace as SXSW, Coachella, Stagecoach, Skull & Roses, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage, Bonnaroo and Glastonbury as all accept the pandemic and the need to make schedule changes. These are strange days indeed! Today on 'Festival Nation' we hear from Christian Swain, CEO of the Pantheon Podcast Network and Host of the Rock and Roll Archeology Podcast and Long-Time Publicist of the Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally. @pantheonpods @festivalnationpodcast @SXSW @Coachella @StageCoach @Skull&Roses @ jazzfest @bonnaroo @glastonbury @nationfestival Since publishing this episode Bottle Rock has also postponed it's Memorial Day Festival to the weekend of October 2-4 @bottlerocknapa Thanks for your support - please reach out and share your favorite Festival memories at festivalnationpodcast@gmail.com or on social @festivalnationpodcast or @nationfestival. In the time being, let's remember the good times together. #weareeverywhere Peace and stay well, Marla

Host Marla Davies talks with Dennis McNally - Author, Historian and Long-Time Publicist for the Grateful Dead and Promoter for the Upcoming Skull & Roses Festival at the Ventura County Fairgrounds April 2-5, 2020. The 4th Annual Festival will celebrate the music and community of the Grateful Dead.McNally was the publicist for the Grateful Dead for 11 years and attended some 1,100 shows. During the interview, you'll hear stories about how Jerry Garcia gave him the job, where the band went during sightseeing adventures, Phils love for PB&J's and the Hells Angeles advice on not getting arrested.Grateful Dead - 'Touch of Grey' - 11/3/2019 - Golden Gate ParkFestival Nation is on the Pantheon Podcast NetworkPlease stay connected - FestivalNationPodcast@gmail.com

Host Marla Davies talks with Dennis McNally - Author, Historian and Long-Time Publicist for the Grateful Dead and Promoter for the Upcoming Skull & Roses Festival at the Ventura County Fairgrounds April 2-5, 2020. The 4th Annual Festival will celebrate the music and community of the Grateful Dead.McNally was the publicist for the Grateful Dead for 11 years and attended some 1,100 shows. During the interview, you'll hear stories about how Jerry Garcia gave him the job, where the band went during sightseeing adventures, Phils love for PB&J's and the Hells Angeles advice on not getting arrested.Grateful Dead - 'Touch of Grey' - 11/3/2019 - Golden Gate ParkFestival Nation is on the Pantheon Podcast NetworkPlease stay connected - FestivalNationPodcast@gmail.com

Host Marla Davies talks with Dennis McNally - Author, Historian and Long-Time Publicist for the Grateful Dead and Promoter for the Upcoming Skull & Roses Festival at the Ventura County Fairgrounds April 2-5, 2020. The 4th Annual Festival will celebrate the music and community of the Grateful Dead. McNally was the publicist for the Grateful Dead for 11 years and attended some 1,100 shows. During the interview, you'll hear stories about how Jerry Garcia gave him the job, where the band went during sightseeing adventures, Phils love for PB&J's and the Hells Angeles advice on not getting arrested. Grateful Dead - 'Touch of Grey' - 11/3/2019 - Golden Gate Park Festival Nation is on the Pantheon Podcast Network Please stay connected - FestivalNationPodcast@gmail.com

Host Marla Davies talks with Dennis McNally - Author, Historian and Long-Time Publicist for the Grateful Dead and Promoter for the Upcoming Skull & Roses Festival at the Ventura County Fairgrounds April 2-5, 2020. The 4th Annual Festival will celebrate the music and community of the Grateful Dead. McNally was the publicist for the Grateful Dead for 11 years and attended some 1,100 shows. During the interview, you'll hear stories about how Jerry Garcia gave him the job, where the band went during sightseeing adventures, Phils love for PB&J's and the Hells Angeles advice on not getting arrested. Grateful Dead - 'Touch of Grey' - 11/3/2019 - Golden Gate Park Festival Nation is on the Pantheon Podcast Network Please stay connected - FestivalNationPodcast@gmail.com

The Grateful Dead is one of the most influential groups in American music history. More than 20 years after the death of band leader Jerry Garcia, the Deadhead culture which grew up around musicians is still very viable. Dr. Alan Campbell will explore this unique phenomenon with fans and experts who have followed this phenomenon through the ages. Special guests: Dennis McNally, author of Jerry on Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews and Rebecca Adams, editor of Deadhead Social Science: You Ain't Gonna Learn What You Don't Want to Know