How did you get into the Grateful Dead?

tell your stories about how you came to love the grateful dead here.

personally i had heard some of their songs from friends a few times but never thought anything special of them. it was just alright music. then one time when i was at a moe. concert bob weir came out and played the race is on with moe. backing him -- my first ever live GD song. my face melted off even though i wasn't even tripping. something about the energy from bobby combined with moe. was just sick. then shortly after that i acquired a full tracklist of every dead album and all the dick's picks. i fell in love with anthem of the sun, aoxomoxoa, live/dead, and workingman's dead. some fun trips with friends strengened my love for the music. then i got to see furthur when they came through my town, and well... that was just fantastic.

 

A buddy of mine played me the song Friend of The Devil and said it reminded him of a friend of ours. Ever since then I've been digging them

 

To be totally honest I saw the Steal Your Face logo and looked into where it came from. This was coincidently during the time I'd first started experimenting with LSD. As I'm sure you can imagine, it was certainly a marvelous time to discover them. lol eace::sifone:

 

I as well was not a fan of their music in its nakedness, outside its context. I mean musically they are nothing to speak of much. However, the combination of their artwork (which I only understood after LSD) and actually giving them a chance and listening to a whole album while tripping sold me. Aoxomoxoa was the first album I listened to and enjoyed St. Stephen very much, and Fire On The Mountain hugely. Then I checked out some compilations made on shroomery.org and fell in love with a few more tracks. pr0ne's recommendation of Anthem Of The Sun was the last kick I think, that album is pure lucy. And then I checked out other jam bands like Phish, Moe, SCI, etc, and found they all had similar gems of lucyness and that's that.

 

Ex girlfriend in 1985 kept playing tapes for me, did'nt care much for them though. The tapes were not that great of quality so I thought they pretty much sucked. We broke up about a year later, a few months after that The Dead played my local stadium so I figured I'd see what its all about. One of the best things I ever did, been on the bus ever since :deadxmas:

 

spent a little time on the mountain




Oh and fuck studio albums... they suck. Live dead is best dead.

 

Episoad 18 of "freaks and geeks". Always brings me back!

 

I found an 8 track when i was 11..

skull fuck was the best of the live dead imo b4 I had the wisdom to get boots..

 

haha wat??
the music is the artwork, and they are one band i do speak of much

HF agrees :deadxmas:

 

I have to think though.. that 8track was created in 1971, I was only "one" and the Dead were there prior to my creation, makes tripping weird, to think i followed them and then Jerry died.. what a long strange trip it has been..

 

Shit, well, I was raised on the grateful dead- being that my dad is a deadhead-
but I never actually listened to them on my own until I was a junior in high-school.
One day I was about to walk to school, but I couldn't decide which CD to put into my walkman, so I thumbed through some of my dad's CDs to see if he had anything good. At the time I was reading the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and that piqued my interest in the dead. I saw a grateful dead album in my dad's stack, and said to myself... why not? It turned out to be their first album.

At first it just sounded like straight ahead electric rural blues, wasn't bad, but not exactly my thing. Then cream-puff war came on and BLEW my mind.
It sounded like this surfy, garage rock/psychedelic visceral masterpiece. After that, I came home from school and told my dad what had happened, and he proceeded to play me dark star from Live/Dead, and shortly after I was totally hooked. I got really into the history of the dead there after; picked up McNally's A Long Strange Trip and devoured it in a couple of days- next came Rock Scully's book.
That was eight years ago, and I'm a complete head now, of course.

 

They are ok, I've never gotten that into them. I've never listened to their live stuff trippin but have listened to it plenty. I listened to their greatest hits on my first 2ce trip out camping in the woods. My friend was tripping on a mix of LSD and mushrooms and he wasnt really into them prior to that day either but when I played them for him after like the 3rd song he said "Now I understand why people like this shit" it was pretty funny.

 

i never would of really gotten into the grateful dead if it wasnt for my friend holsapple, this was later on though and he asked me if I wanted to see the GD concert, and I said cool.. I took some acid and lost my shoes.. this lit off an explosion of me catching near 150 shows between the GD, Bob and Rob, Ratdog, Further, The Other Ones, Phil and Friends, Vinny and Bruce..

 

The first time I heard them that I can remeber was with my grnadma when I was looking thru her cd collection in the car and asked if there was any thing i might like she said yes and put in skeletons from the closet and ive lked em ever since i was 11 or 12 then im almost 15 now. major bummer though that im not able to see them because of the era i was born in

 

I was introduced to the Grateful Dead via Bonnaroo 2004. I met up with a few friends that were into the dead and when they played we squeezed our way right up front about 20 feet from the stage. The band came on late due to a HUGE storm that had just came through. We had to walk in the pouring rain to get our positions in the crowd and I stepped into a mudpit on the way that was knee deep and lost my shoes. I had heard of the Grateful Dead and had heard a few tunes before but other than that I didnt know much at all about their music so I really had no idea what I was in for. Right before the show I ate a couple grams of mushies and was feeling nice by the time the show started. They totally blew me away!!!!! From then on I was hooked!!!!! There was something "magical" at that show that I had never felt before. Even without Jerry there, I could still feel some kind of wonderful energy coming from the band. I felt pure love and knew from then on that the Grateful Dead was something special. It makes me smile just to know that something such as the Grateful Dead existed. They knew what they were doing, they knew that their shows were used as an avenue to pursue psychedelic exploration and they were proud to do what they did best cuz they knew that the world needed it.

And not much to speak of musically???? Really???? You guys need to stop listening to the studio albums and check out some live dead. Thats where the magic is. The band can sound pretty bad at times and make mistakes, but we forgive them for that cuz when they are "on" its truly beautiful and really makes me wonder how something could sound this beautiful and put an instant smile on my face. On a good night the band could take it to another level that imho no other band could even come close too. But plz stop wasting your time with the albums and check out some live shows. Go to archive.org they have 1000's of live shows to stream for free. For some long super far out psychedlic jams check out 71'-73'. But for a good introduction to live Dead I would prolly start you off with just about any show in the May 77' run and you will find some Good ole' Grateful Dead.

 

Listened to Cream Puff War 1967 just then inspired by reverend greens post and really enjoyed it.

First time i've like a dead song so far. Will keep mind open

 

I am lucky enough to have a friend who would play The Grateful Dead all the time. This was a few years after high school and I had already brushed off the Dead as a band that I wasn't really into. Then everything changed.

 

I wrote a lot about how I got into the Dead in
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=356551&f=117

especially posts #9, 11, 12, and 16.

 

I used to listen to some Dead on vinyl, almost always on Saturday mornings... my kids were just babies or toddlers then. That was '86-'88 or so... It was perfect with coffee and one good bong hit. I ALMOST went to see them when they played last in Cincinnati around maybe 1989 or so, and really regretted missing it afterwards.

A few years later I won free tickets to a show (radio call-in contest), and me and my wife went, and had a blast. The music blew my mind, and we felt like we'd found our people. Our first show was outdoors at Buckeye Lake in Ohio in 1992. We took our kids the next year, and went to a few more, the last being Deer Creek '95 (the show that became infamous for the riot).

My kids are now 20-somethings and they still occasionally thank me for taking them to some shows. The older one remembers the vibe in the lot very distinctly (we had the little guy swingin' beads, he was such a cute little kid everyone bought from him!). The younger one just barely remembers it at all, but likes to be able to say that she saw the Grateful Dead with Jerry Garcia and that she at least remembers being there.

 

When I was about 7 or so, hanging around a local hippie town by the creek, there were campers I got to hang out with that were playing GD. I grew up listening to them, Floyd, Morrison..