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Table of Contents
Grateful Dead
Peninsula Pride
Although the band is most commonly associated with San Francisco, it actually began in Palo Alto, performing its first gig on May 5, 1965, at a pizza shop in Menlo Park.1)
Previous Name
The band, which included Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Bill Kreutzmann, and finally Phil Lesh, was initially known as The Warlocks.2)
The Warlocks
Lou Reed and his band were once known as The Warlocks before becoming the Velvet Underground. 3)
Mother McCree
Weir and Pigpen had previously been teammates in Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. Grateful Dead Records released a 1964 recording of the Palo Alto jug band in 1999. 4)
The Name
While thumbing through a folklore dictionary, Garcia came across the right band name: Grateful Dead. 5)
Debut Show
The newly christened Grateful Dead played their debut show on December 4, 1965, at a house near the San Jose Civic Auditorium, where the Rolling Stones were performing that evening.6)
The Test
That first outing occurred during one of author Ken Kesey's earliest “Acid Tests.” The Grateful Dead essentially became the house band for Kesey's LSD-inspired get-togethers, as chronicled in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”. 7)
LSD
One of the most significant outcomes of the Grateful Dead's Acid Tests was a collaboration with legendary LSD manufacturer Owsley Stanley, who went on to finance, produce, record, and do pioneering sound work for the band. 8)
Summer Of Love
The Dead, who lived just a few doors up from the intersection, were the most famous residents of Haight-Ashbury. 9)
Busted
The band's Haight-Ashbury home was the site of a high-profile drug bust in late 1967, prompting the San Francisco Chronicle to print the above-the-masthead, front-page, all-caps title, “ROCK BAND BUSTED”.10)