Dead Freaks Unite

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The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, the official podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarnow, exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead For The Committed And The Curious.

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Hello, friends.

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Welcome back to The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. Today's episode is not only for you, it's about you and by you. Today, we dive into some of the stories you all have been leaving for us on dead.net, and, man, do we have some good ones to share with you. In fact, we got so many good stories from Dead Freaks, such as yourself, that we are reigniting the call for you, yes, you, to go to dead.net and record your story as well. Have multiple stories? Record them all. We want to hear from you. Special shoutout to any heads who went on the Europe 72 Tour. We want your stories as well for next year's 50th anniversary. Tell your friends. And also, don't forget to tell your friends that through Season 4, you can get new episodes of The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast right here every other week.

Visit us at our website, dead.net/deadcast, where you can leave your story and check out the extra materials we have for you to explore for this episode. Also at dead.net/deadcast are all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons 1, 2, and 3 And you can link from there to any and all of the podcasting platforms available so you can listen where you like to listen.

Please help us out by subscribing, hit that like button, tell a friend, and if you're up to the task, leave us a review. It helps more than you realize. Thank you very much.

The new Grateful Dead live archival release is out now. Listen to the River St. Louis 71, 72, 73 has seven previously unreleased concerts from St. Louis, Missouri recorded on December 9th and 10th, 71 at the Fox Theatre, October 17th, 18th, and 19th, 72 at the Fox, and October 29th and 30th, 1973 at the Keele Auditorium. dead.net will also exclusively release Light into Ashes, which is a double LP on 180 gram custom vinyl, limited to 7200 copies. It's an hour plus jam plucked from the Dead's October 18th, 72 show at the Fox. The breakout show from this set is Fox Theatre St. Louis, 12-10-71, and is available as a 3 CD set and a limited edition 5 LP set. Got some vintage pig pen on there, folks, and the band is cooking. Check it out. All of these configurations of Listen To The River St. Louis 71-7273 are available now. Get your info and your copies at dead.net.

Well, what happens when a bunch of heads get together and start chatting it up?

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Tour stories.

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And thanks to everyone who left a story on dead.net, we have the first episode in what we envision to be an ongoing series featuring you in your own words, sharing all the wonderful stories that make up the Grateful Dead experience. Now, let's get these stories started with our very own storyteller, Jesse Jarnow.

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When the Grateful Dead came to town in the 80s and 90s, the news cameras often turned to the deadheads that arrived along with them.

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Tonight, I was out at the Worcester Centrum to see the Grateful Dead and discovered that the story there is as much about the fans as it is about the group.

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From the time you walked in the Rubber Bowls parking lot, you saw cars that looked like they'd driven in from the 60s. There was a sea of tie-dyed t-shirts, walking rainbows, dancing skirts, peace sign earrings, the peace sign, and, well, people just getting their head together.

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I'm told the big draw to a Grateful Dead concert is not only the music, but the environment.

It's a big festival here, a chance for many of these people to live the lifestyles of the 60s. And that means experiencing hippies, love, and LSD.

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I saw groups of 18-year-olds in moccasins, ponchos, and tie-dyed shirts keeping vigil, following the group from city to city. It's been like this for 22 years, ever since this group first emerged from Haight-Ashbury.

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It was more or less required by law for interviewers to ask members of the dead about the deadheads. Here's Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir facing down Good Morning America in October 1980

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Your fans are unbelievable.

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The deadheads, they call them.

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What do you think about them? It's almost like a worship thing.

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They're actually real good people. They're game.

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It was often suggested that the dead's endlessly growing fanbase had to do with nostalgia for the 1960s. That's what former Warner Brothers president Joe Smith implied when he spoke with Garcia in 1988, a recording now in the Library of Congress.