Ive started to listen to the dead rescently and started to wonder, whats the deal with the bears, the skelletons and the turtles? And why the name grateful dead? Maybe im just slow or something but please give me an answer...
The boyz were, at the time, calling themselves The Warlocks. IIRC there was another band by that name, so they were looking for a new name. Jerry opened a dictionary and the page that was displayed had 'grateful dead' on it. That hit home with them and they named themselves The Grateful Dead. A quote: In Blair Jackson's book on the Dead, Garcia is quoted as saying: "One day we were over at Phil's house...He had a big dictionary. I opened it and there was 'Grateful Dead', those words juxtaposed. It was one of those moments, you know, like everything else went blank, diffuse, just sort of oozed away, and there was GRATEFUL DEAD in big, black letters edged all around in gold, man, blasting out at me, such a stunning combination. So I said, 'How about Grateful Dead?' And that was it." The dictionary entry reads along these lines: GRATEFUL DEAD: The motif of a cycle of folk tales which begin with the hero coming upon a group of people ill-treating or refusing to bury the corpse of a man who had died without paying his debts. He gives his last penny, either to pay the man's debts or to give him a decent burial. Within a few hours he meets with a travelling companion who aids him in some impossible task, gets him a fortune or saves his life. The story ends with the companion disclosing himself as the man whose corpse the hero had befriended.(Funk & Wagnall's Dictionary). link The skeletons? Think dead, death. The bears? A friend of the band, Owsley Stanley, is a big guy. At the time he had hair all over (don't know what he looks like now). He mixed sound for them, came up with some new ideas for recording and sound reproduction. Most of the time, he danced - alot - whenever the boyz played. So, since he was big and hairy, he got the nickname Bear. Some enterprising deadhead thought up the dancing bear icon. The turtles? They were on the cover of the album Terrapin Station. From that point on, they have been part of the scene.
but what do they mean when they say: "steal your face", and theres a skull with a bolt on the forehead?
"He's Gone" like i told ya..... what i said..... steal your face right off your head...... Steal your face This line was lifted out as the title of the ill-fated album issued under duress. Since the cover of the album featured the logo designed by Stanely Owsley with the grinning skull and lightning bolt inside the circle, that logo has since been identified primarily as the "steal your face" logo, perhaps incorrectly.
ok...another question, whats with grateful dead and rastafari? i mean, i have seen some grateful dead t shirts with rasta bears and rasta skeletons, whats with that?
Steal your face was to be Skull Fuck...oh that would have hit shelves... rastis: bootleg merchandisers (unless LB is doing them now..they were a lot thing, like Air Garcia) The jam community is eclectic and listens to lots of styles.
I think the Steal Your Face logo was originally used to keep their equipment organized with other bands, and then it just became a logo. The bears, I'm not sure where they originated, but their official title is "Deaddy Bears"... The dancing skeletons I'm not certain of either, but I know the skeleton & roses was on a CD cover, orgininally to be titled Skullfuck, but then just changed to Grateful Dead. The turtles I believe have reference to the Terrapin Station cover and have recently had the same design as the bears. Enjoy gettin into the Dead man!
I've seen that too, and I think it's just people being creative and just fucking around. The GD really wasn't into rastafarianism, that would have been interesting though.
you came pretty close with the connection between owsley stanley and the bears, but its not because he was hairy. the dead lived with stanley for awhile and he was big into acid production and his big thing was to put the acid on pieces of paper with the daddy bear image on it.
the steal your face logo came from one of the members (I don't remember the name this early) on an acid trip. they wanted a logo that had to do with the flag. Note the red, white and blue, and there are 13 points on the lightening bolt. hte rest of the design came from the skull (the death idea). it all came together with the acid and it was drawn later from his memory. I don't know if he drew it or he just described it, but that's how it came into their history.
I think Owsely was one of two people involved with the steal your face logo too. I want to read more about his influence on sound. Personally, I can't stand GD art. It never comes close to the picture they paint with their instruments and crazed circuitry. I think the most important alchemical symbol of the GD was the rose, and as a motif, it appears time and time again in their songs.
The rasta bears and such are just creativity over the years..... its not a true dead logo.... its just someone who decided.. hey... i like rasta and the dead.... lets make rasta dead bears
Yeah, it started out easy to do. You'd go down to the ice cream kitchen, stand in line, get your cone, then go stand in line, get your ice cream, and then go out to the park and join the other "slammers". Then the man got hip to what was going down, so they kicked us out of the park. Well, we started hanging out at the parking lot behind the ice cream kitchen, but they got wind of that and kicked us out of the parking lot. Then they started thinking (smelled the bacon burning for days)! They wrote a law that prevented cones from being distributed at the ice cream kitchen. That was a drag until some dude started the cone factory. So then it was go down to the cone factory, stand in line, get your cone. Then walk up to the ice cream kitchen, stand in line, get your ice cream. Then go out to the park again (they thought they had stopped it - but they were wrong) and join the other "slammers". Now a pretty sad thing started happening. There were some "slammers" who just couldn't hold their cone long enough to get the ice cream and they'd eat them. Then they'd show up at the kitchen hands held out. Well the good people at the kitchen just couldn't turn them away so they plopped the ice cream right into their hands. Then these poor souls would run out into the park before the ice cream melted though their fingers so they could get at least a "sloppy-slam". It was pathetic! Especially in the summer. BTW they're where the term "conehead" comes from.
