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from: jiffylube
24.16.194.177
11/5/00
12:48:30 PM
Maybe that's how the "greatful dead" met, but the Grateful Dead formed like so...
Jerry Garcia's first guitar was electric and his idol was Chuck Berry. He met Robert Hunter, their non-performing songwriter, at San Mateo Junior College, forming a blue-grass group with him called The Wildwood Boys. Earlier, Garcia had met Bob Weir and Ron McKernan (nicknamed Pigpen) while playing on the coffee house circuit in the Bay Area. Pigpen and Bill Kreutzmann, who Garcia had also met when working in a music shop, were forming a rock group called The Zodiacs, The Wildwood Boys changed their name to The Hart Valley Drifters and starred at the 1963 Monterey folk festival. Garcia's next group, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions included Pigpen, Dawson and Bob Weir, they later changed their name first to The Asphalt Jungle Boys and then to The Warlocks. Kreutzmann replaced Dawson as the group's drummer and Phil Lesh was invited to play bass. This format played in Bill Graham's benefit concert for the Mime Troupe at the Fillmore.
The Wariocks had thus come from diverse musical backgrounds. Phil Lesh had a classical background, (violin and trumpet), Pigpen's father had been an R & B player and Bill Kreutzmann had been a jazz drummer. Garcia, himself, had played mainly bluegrass. The Warlock's early music was rooted in the blues, but under the influence of acid (legal in California until 1966) their music became less conventional. They became the house band for Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and the Acid Freaks associated with them. This period is well-documented in Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test". A bootleg does exist of The Warlocks' music, which was apparently recorded in Los Angeles in May 1965. The strange times in which The Warlock's operated suggested the need for a 'trippier' name and, after browsing through a dictionary one day, the band came up with The Grateful Dead. Their association with the Merry Pranksters soon diminished following Kesey's drug bust trial, conviction and his flight to Mexico. They soon became an important force in the new exciting San Francisco music scene.
