The Dead

[Drunk Monk]

I forgot to mention that a friend had a stroke on Saturday. She is Mickey’s runner but I knew her back in the Warfield days. Babs visited her on Sunday and she & Reya were very concerned. I imagine I’ll get an update this weekend.

[thatguy]

I wonder if the Grateful Dead were time travelers...

https://www.openculture.com/2025/07/arch...osaic.html

Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live Your Life”

in Food & Drink, History, Life | July 28th, 2025

Image by Dosse­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2012, archae­ol­o­gists dis­cov­ered in South­ern Turkey a well-pre­served mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a skele­ton savor­ing a loaf of bread and a pitch­er of wine, sur­round­ed by the Greek words “Be cheer­ful and live your life.” Dat­ing back to the 3rd cen­tu­ry BCE, the mosa­ic like­ly adorned the din­ing room of a wealthy vil­la in the ancient Gre­co-Roman city of Anti­och. It’s a kind of memen­to mori, a reminder that life is short and you should enjoy it while you can. Or so that’s how many have inter­pret­ed the mes­sage of the mosa­ic.

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

[Drunk Monk]

We're proud to announce a new partnership with the Pantone™, to reveal the creation of “Grateful Red” and “Stealie Blue”: two colors that have been synonymous with the band for the past 60 years, and now immortalized as part of their ever-growing legacy. From the quintessential Steal Your Face logo, to the epochal swirls of tie-dye that have brightened the crowds at a record-setting 2,318 concerts, to the world of iconography and hundreds of collaborations that have defined the last six decades, these two distinct hues are woven into the fabric of the Grateful Dead’s flourishing fandom, community and catalog. Through the band's work with Pantone™, “Grateful Red” and “Stealie Blue” have been officially inked into culture, bringing the lexicon of Dead Heads into the universal language of color.

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Jerry is rolling in his grave on this one...

[url=https://click.email.dead.net/?qs=f4d8cdd316f13c09d35801ca56e1d30e1cf71db4e731cf09fa7569bfdcf80137d52a2dda60fb2f2731c13f00adddfbcb0c0c4e52bba3127d]

[Drunk Monk]

GFD x Oregon x Nike Air Max 90
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[url=https://click.email.dead.net/?qs=593f277a7f34069ae08c472435a48e282a0f0477174f264684d6d73007770365504cad1e38c4ac73d2b7f5eb177ddbbe98d3f19a2e9e9b2d]

Ducks, Dead Heads and sneakerheads unite. The Air Max 90 x University of Oregon x Grateful Dead packs the mystique of three legendary entities into one psychedelic package. Vibrant colors, tie-dye accents and premium materials mix to create one trippy rendition of the all-time classic. Leaning into the playful counter-culture, the iconic shoe comes complete with Dancing Ducks, Grateful Dead and University of Oregon branding. A plush foam midsole, padded collar and Max Air cushioning let you enjoy the long, strange trip in comfort.
Sneaker Goes Live 2:00pm pst

Jerry is spinnin in his grave on this one too...

[Drunk Monk]

Nov 11, 2024 4:50pm PT
Jerry Garcia’s AI-Created Voice Can Now Narrate Audiobooks, Articles and More
By Emiliana Betancourt

Bob Minkin/Mediapunch/MediaPunch
The late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s estate has recreated his voice using AI in partnership with Eleven Labs. The singer-songwriter’s voice can now read to ElevenReader app users their choice of audiobooks, articles, poetry, PDFs, and more through what Eleven calls the Iconic Listening Experience, Billboard reported. Garcia’s voice is available in 32 different languages.
This is not the first voice added to the list of personalities available to use through the AI company’s app, as its repertoire also includes Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier. Garcia’s recent vocal replication was possible through a collaboration between Garcia’s estate and ElevenLabs. The Jerry Garcia Foundation, co-founded by his daughter Keelin Garcia, is also considering Garcia’s voice model for narrated documentaries or audio art exhibits. 
Dustin Blank, Head of Partnerships at ElevenLabs, told Billboard, “By bringing voices like Jerry Garcia to our platform, we’re not just enhancing our app – we’re creating new ways for people to experience content. This project has been a labor of love, and we couldn’t be happier with how Jerry’s voice has been recreated. It’s a beautiful thing to bring his sound to life again for both longtime fans and a new generation of listeners.”
Bringing late artists’ voices back for new projects has become a trend recently. Paul McCartney used AI to extract and perfect John Lennon’s vocals for the “Last Beatles Record,” released earlier this year. Edith Piaf’s estate partnered with Warner Music to bring her voice back so it could be used in an upcoming biopic about the famous “La Vie En Rose” singer. 
Keelin Garcia said the voice replication and production was done with the goal of continuing her late father’s legacy. “My father was a pioneering artist who embraced innovative audio and visual technologies,” said Garcia. She recounted stories about her father’s appreciation for digital art and video games and keeping up with new technologies. Garcia continued, “Now, as technological landscapes expand, ElevenLabs AI Audio technology will offer fans the first opportunity to hear and stream a replica of my father’s voice reading their favorite books and other written content.”

More spinnin from Jer, but I confess that I'd replace Siri's voice with this, given the chance.

[Drunk Monk]

Mountains of the Moon, a Chris Benchetler Film Experience

[thatguy]

https://www.metrosiliconvalley.com/grate...test-1965/

Zero to 60: San Jose Marks Grateful Dead Birthplace
ByGary Singh

Nov 26, 2025

LIVING HISTORY Representatives of Impact Signs show off the new plaque that will be installed Dec. 4. PHOTO: Courtesy Impact Signs

[url=https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Zero+to+60%3A+San+Jose+Marks+Grateful+Dead+Birthplace&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metrosiliconvalley.com%2Fgrateful-dead-birthplace-san-jose-first-acid-test-1965%2F&via=metronewspaper][/url]
On Dec. 4, 1965, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Phil Lesh played their first official gig as the Grateful Dead at one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests in downtown San Jose.

If one defines “official” as loading equipment, plugging in and playing music at a public event for a few hundred people, then it was official, even though it was at a house on South Fifth Street, right where San Jose City Hall plaza now sits.

Next week, on Thursday, Dec. 4—the 60th anniversary of the event—a plaque will be unveiled at the back of City Hall, stumbling distance from where the house originally stood. A free public gathering will begin at 4pm, with the official ceremony starting at 4:45pm.
Dan Orloff of San Jose Rocks and former San Jose Mercury-News sports columnist Mark Purdy will illuminate the long strange trip of tracking down the house, where it was relocated, and how they took the plaque concept from idea to execution. An array of characters will speak at the podium, including Jerry Garcia’s daughter Trixie and at least one person who attended the gig 60 years ago.

The event in 1965 was not the first Acid Test but it was the first public one. After the inaugural edition at Ken Babbs’ spread in Soquel—mostly a private party with friends and band members when they were still called the Warlocks—Kesey felt the next one should be a public spectacle, so the band decided to play. Kesey then chose a night that the Rolling Stones were performing at the San Jose Civic. After a house was secured, the Merry Pranksters handwrote flyers with a street address and the words, “Can you pass the acid test?” They pinned the flyers to telephone poles around downtown San Jose and issued them to people who spilled out of the Stones gig. LSD was still legal at the time.
Many accounts of that night exist. Tom Wolfe documented the chaotic party for several pages in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Over the decades, various attendees have emerged with their own fuzzy reports.
In my view, the best place to start is with the band members themselves. In Bill Kreutzmann’s book, Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead, he confirmed the first Dead show and that the event was indeed the first public Acid Test. Efforts were made to get Jagger and Richards to the party, but they never showed.

“But inside the Acid Test, something more important happened,” Kreutzmann wrote. “We had already played all those shows as the Warlocks, but this was the start of something new, something different. It was bigger than itself for the first time.”

The Acid Tests were the physical manifestation of what goes on in your mind during an acid trip, wrote Kreutzmann. Sounds. Noises. Color and light. Snippets of conversations recorded earlier.

“It was a psychedelic circus and everyone was the sideshow and everyone was the main event,” he wrote. 
Lesh detailed even more in his book, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead. The band set up on the opposite side of the room from the Pranksters because Kesey’s goal was to “diffuse the pyramid of attention” so people would receive multiple stimuli from every direction. The band played with speaker columns that were so large, one could crawl into the subwoofers and lie there. Across the room, the Pranksters supplied the supplemental sounds and the strobe lights.

“Unfortunately, the room was very small, so all the attendees were crammed into the same space as the band, and the crush of bodies together with the wind-tunnel sound and flashing projections turned the Test into a mind-numbing blur of noise, light, and heat,” Lesh wrote.

“The tapeloop master control was in Prankster hands; this ran a series of very long delays through a Mobius-strip speaker setup, with speakers in all corners of the room, receiving input from microphones and other mixers scattered everywhere.”

In 1965, no one believed the Grateful Dead would turn into a global phenomenon, or that San Jose would ever become anything. Thankfully, a lot can happen in 60 years.

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

These guys have been spamming me incessantly, trying to get me to buy the commemorative poster. 

I got so many posters. I get a free one for every sold out Mo show and have a stack of Warfield posters from back in the day. No place to hang them...

Thought about going but that's the night my co-workers math rock band is in SF.

[King Bob]

That turned up on my Instagram feed. Since the house is not there, I felt like it didn't really matter.

I remember meeting a guy years ago who said that not many people were at that Acid Test because the Rolling Stones were playing in SF that night. No idea if that's true or not.

[Drunk Monk]

Grateful Dead Set Guinness World Record Title for Most Top 40 Albums Charted on Billboard 200
Hana Gustafson on December 4, 2025 


Photo: Herb Greene

The Relix Channel

 

The Grateful Dead have claimed a new title.

Today, 60 years after the band performed their first gig, a San Jose Acid Test, under the dictionary-plucked moniker, the psychedelic tripsters have received the Guinness World Records title for the most Top 40 albums charted on the US Billboard 200. 
The prestigious achievement dovetails with February 2024’s crowning achievement: a record-breaking 59th Top 40 entry, surpassing previous record holders Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. San Francisco’s finest has since extended their own record to 66 Top 40 albums with the inclusion of #25 debut of Dave’s Picks Vol. 56: Rainbow Theatre, London, England – 3/20/81 & 3/21/81 this past November. 
“This Guinness World Records title is something that no one could have anticipated 60 years ago when the Grateful Dead began, but the record demonstrates the dedication, passion, and loyalty of the massive legion of Dead Heads, as well as the consistent quality of the Grateful Dead’s recorded output and archival activities over the past six decades,” says David Lemieux, Grateful Dead legacy manager and archivist, and producer/ curator of the Dave’s Picks series.
“We’re excited to see the Grateful Dead reach another milestone with this Guinness World Records title. Rhino has been committed to preserving and honoring the Grateful Dead’s legacy through quality archival releases. What a wonderful way to close out their 60th anniversary celebrations,” adds Mark Pinkus, President of Rhino Records.
The Dead’s newly certified Guinness World Record status arrives amid a triumphant and historic year for the ensemble and its enduring legacy, which included recognition in the 47th class of the Kennedy Center Honorees and 2025 MusiCares Persons of the Year rank, and resulting concert. 
Rhino also released the Grateful Dead’s first official greatest hits compilation, Gratest Hits, as well as a sprawling 60-CD collection, dubbed Enjoying the Ride, in addition to The Music Never Stops box set.

[King Bob]

Back to the Acid test house in San Jose, I heard that one of the Art professors lives in that house. They moved it to build city hall. Have not been able to verify.

[thatguy]

Did they move it to History San Jose (by Kelley Park)? That's where they seem to be moving all the historic buildings in the valley. 

sidenote: There's a pretty good exhibit of posters and other artifacts from 60's-70's San Jose music scene there. There's a room dedicated to Paramount Imports' blacklight poster room. 

Apparently it's less than 1/4 on one individual's collection. It's in the building across from the blacksmith shop at the south end of History Park. the Gallery is open Sat/Sun (unless there's a special event going on), and they will be showing the exhibit for the next year. 

Tip: If you park on the side street at the far south side of the park, you don't have to pay to park...

--tg

[thatguy]

https://www.metrosiliconvalley.com/silic...flashback/

History San Jose Opens Doors on ‘South Bay Flashback’
By Gary Singh

---

Bill Guardino’s collection of San Jose rock posters from the ’60s just might be the best exhibit ever at History San Jose. If not for the music and the artwork, then for the old newspapers.

For almost six decades, Guardino has amassed more than a quarter-million items, including concert posters, handbills, flyers, underground newspapers and other artifacts, all of which illuminate San Jose’s underappreciated role in the ’60s counterculture. Only a few hundred can fit inside the Pasetta House at History Park, where a Hall-of-Fame-quality show, “South Bay Flashback: Riffs, Rhythms, and Revolution,” opens this weekend. It runs for a year.

When Guardino spilled the origin story of how it all started, he rattled off Blackford High School and Rogers Junior High. He still remembered when he first started collecting.

“At that time, I just loved the art, and just learning the bands,” Guardino said. “And once a week, my brother and I would ride our Stingray bikes down to the record store at Valley Fair and pick up the flyers every week for years.”

Guardino and his friends visited every Tuesday to meet the Fillmore rep from San Francisco, who dropped off stacks of handbills.
“It just snowballed,” he said. “And it’s been a big passion ever since.”

These days, one often sees old rock flyers floating around social media in various states of pixelated glory. To see hundreds of original posters covering the walls, all in the same place, is another experience altogether. The whole show needs to travel. It’s that important.

Aside from the groovy posters, one of the best rooms in the whole exhibit is the one with a few dozen newspapers on the wall. Not only was the South Bay home to a thriving ’60s rock scene, it was also a hotbed for the underground press.

We see the first issue of the San Jose Maverick, with cops brutalizing protestors. Another issue captured the scene when people threw rocks, bottles and eggs at Richard Nixon’s limousine as it rolled up to the San Jose Civic for a 1970 appearance.

Other zine-like periodicals include the San Jose Red Eye, which featured The Dope Column, listing drug prices and the various effects. Another paper, simply called Sedition, was absolutely free. All of them attacked the right-wing political establishments of the day.

Guardino even included multiple copies of the Berkeley Barb, the East Village Other and the Oracle from San Francisco, even though they technically weren’t part of the South Bay. Context is key, of course.

“I collected underground papers from ’65 through about 1970 from all over the country because every major city had their own underground newspapers,” Guardino said. “They were talking about all the social issues of the day—the political scene, the Black Panther scene, the communist scene, the hippie scene big time. The artwork and the concert posters inside the newspapers were just absolutely amazing.”

One extremely rare announcement appeared in a February 1966 issue of the Open City Newspaper in Los Angeles: a hand-drawn ad for the Grateful Dead’s performance at one of Ken Kesey’s acid tests at the Cinema Theatre in LA. This was just two months after the band played its first official gig as the Grateful Dead at an acid test in downtown San Jose.

The content wasn’t just political. The underground press was the primary source for all things San Jose that the daily papers rarely touched.

“It was a major part of the scene and it tied everything together, all different genres of music, all different genres of collecting concert poster and handbill artwork,” Guardino said, of the underground press. “Any major band that was happening at the time would’ve been in these papers, front cover, back cover.”
Guardino says he has over 1,200 of these newspapers.

“I would love to display this underground newspaper scene as a whole separate museum,” he said. “I think people would be shocked to see it. And I wouldn’t just show the front covers. I’d open ’em up to certain pages that really detailed the times. I think it’d be something that people would really love to see.”
Does that mean a sequel? If anyone can plan a South Bay Flashback Part Deux, it’s Bill Guardino.

South Bay Flashback: Riffs, Rhythms and Revolution opens Nov 22 at the Leonard and David McKay Gallery in the Pasetta House, History Park, 635 Phelan Ave, San Jose. Open select weekends noon–4pm. 408.287.2290. historysanjose.org