Woodstock Day 1: "What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been"

The lyrics are from The Grateful Dead's "Truckin'" off American Beauty, which was actually recorded in 1970 so it probably didn't show up at Woodstock. But The Dead were there and I think they're a great band to start off with. At Woodstock, The Dead played on Saturday August 16th at 10pm, but their set was cut short when an amp overloaded during "Turn Your Love Light On."

Fronted by lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, the line-up in 1969 consisted of Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann on drums, Bob Weir on rhythm guitar, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan on keyboard and harmonica, and Phil Lesh on bass guitar. Both Lesh and McKernan shared vocalist duties.

The Grateful Dead Bears - inspired by their manager Owsley Stanley whose nickname was, oddly enough, "Bear."

The Dead is known for their mix of blues, psychedelic (clearly a band influenced by LSD), folk, and long instrumental improvisation which earned them the label of "jam band." The Grateful Dead and Deadheads (those who followed The Dead from concert to concert) prefer their live albums to their studio albums since so much of the performance and improv was lost in studio. Their first show was at Ken Kesey's Acid Tests (with a tagline of "Can You Pass The Acid Test?"), which were parties that Kesey threw to promote the use of LSD (that's the abridged version at least). The phrase became famous after the publication of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in 1968. Anyway, the Dead soon became a mainstay of the Acid Tests which helped them earn their popularity.

1976's Steal Your Face art is practically a logo for The Dead.

The Dead had some great songs like "Shade of Grey," "St. Stephen" (from the highly acclaimed Aoxomoxoa), "Dark Star," and "Sugar Magnolia." One of my personal favourites is "Alligator." It's a great 12 minute song about a sleepy alligator and it's best to listen to a live version since the jam is just so awesome.

There's just so much to The Grateful Dead it just cannot be covered in one post - I wrote a fairly long term paper in high school solely on the influence of LSD and drug culture on their music. They helped shape music and continued to popularize jam bands and the psychedelic genre. They're a household name when it comes to Classic Rock - you literally have to have lived under a rock to have never heard the words "Grateful Dead."

In 1994, The Grateful Dead was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. They are ranked #57 in Rolling Stone Magazine's Greatest Artist of All Time.

For everything Dead related: www.dead.net
Bob Weir's Twitter: @BobWeir
Mickey Hart's Twitter: @mickeyhart