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This episode of Tales from the Lot is sponsored by ShakeDownT shirts.com with unique lot style T shirts, license plate frames, coffee mugs and all sorts of things for Grateful Dead, Fish Zappa, Panic and more. ShakeDownT shirts.com where all US orders over $35 ship free. And just for Tales from the Lot listeners use the code Lot20 for 20% off of any order. That's Lot 2 0. Tales from the Lot Trucking Through Time Part 1 hey there friends. Welcome back to Tales from the Lot. I'm. Hi, I'm Will and I'm so glad you decided to pull up a chair and hang out for a bit. If you've heard the show, you know we usually spend our time talking to folks who make the scene what it is, but today I'm doing something a little different. I'm kicking off a six part series I'm calling Trucking Through Time. The goal? To trace this long, strange trip in five year chunks. I'm not a historian. I'm just a guy who spent the better part of 91 through 95 chasing the bus and seeing as many shows as I could afford before the lights went out on that era. This won't be a lecture. This is us sitting around a campfire, passing around a dusty bottle and talking about how the hell this whole thing actually happened. Today, I'm diving into the foundation. The years 65 through 69. This is the era of the primal dead. It's messy, it's loud, it's frequently out of tune, and it's arguably the most important five years in the history of American counterculture. Before the stadiums, before the mega walls of sound, and before the Lot became a traveling circus, there were just a few guys in the Bay Area trying to turn a blues riff into a religious experience. To understand the dead in 65, you have to realize these guys weren't exactly born as psychedelic warriors. They were basically a bunch of folkies and blues nerds. Garcia was a banjo obsessed bluegrass player who probably would have been perfectly happy living in a shack in the woods, just picking on strings all day. You had Bob Weir, who was basically a teenage runaway with a guitar and a lot of nerve. Pigpen, of course, was the soul of the operation. The guy who actually knew the blues inside and out. And then you had Phil, a classically trained avant garde trumpet player who didn't even play the bass until Jerry told him he was the new bass player. Which seems like a very dead way to start a career. Hey, you never touched this instrument. Perfect. You're Hired. They started out as Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Band, which is exactly as nerdy as it sounds. They were playing kazoos and washboards. But then the Beatles hit, and suddenly everyone wanted to plug in. They became the Warlocks. Now, if you listen to the very early tapes from 65, they sound like a garage band that's had way too much coffee. It's fast, it's frantic, and it sounds nothing like the dark star we all know and love. But then. Then came the X Factor. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the Acid Tests. This is where the band really found its DNA. Imagine being in a room where the walls are melting, everyone is wearing neon paint, and you're tasked with being the house band for a trip that has no roadmap. They stopped playing songs in the traditional sense and started just playing the room. They learned how to listen to each other in a way that most bands never do. I remember I was. I think it was at Buckeye Lake. I was talking to this old head who'd just been around forever, and he was telling me about those early tests and that the band wasn't even on stage half the time. They were just part of the soup. That's where that improvisational identity comes from. It wasn't about a performance. It was about an experience. In later years, we'd wait for that space segment in the second set, but. But back in 66, the whole damn show might just be space. On any given night, they were the only band crazy enough to let the chaos lead the way. While most bands from that era were trying to get a radio hit, the Warlocks, soon to be the Grateful Dead, were mostly just trying to make sure the floor didn't swallow them. By 67, the secret was out. The Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco became the center of the universe. And the Dead were the mayors of the block. What made the Dead different from the Airplane or Big Brother and the Holding Company was their complete lack of interest in being stars. They lived together at 7:10 Ashbury in this big, beautiful, chaotic house. It was a true community. They'd play for free in the park constantly. The Dead would show up on the back of a flatbed truck and play until the cops pulled the plug. And if they did schedule something, they might show up three hours late because they were busy looking for a missing tambourine or just forgot what day it was. There was no industry yet. It was just a bunch of people living out a weird experiment in real time. I think that lack of polish is what Bonded the fans to the band. So early on they weren't up on a pedestal. They were the guys from down the street who happened to be able to play guitar well. They were the neighborhood band for a neighborhood that happened to be changing the world. It's that lack of ego that defined them. And as we move into 68 and 69, the music starts to get seriously heavy. This is when Mickey Hart joins the fold and suddenly we've got the two headed drum beast. This is the era of Anthem of Sun and Oxa Moxa. Have you ever tried to listen to Anthem of the sun on a good pair of headphones? You know, it's a total sonic blender. They were literally splicing together live tapes and studio tapes, trying to capture the feeling of a live show on a piece of vinyl. It was kind of a noble failure in some ways, but man, it was ambitious. They were touring constantly now, heading out of the Bay Area and realizing there were kids in New York and Chicago who were hungry for this stuff. The sound was evolving from the garage rock blues into something much darker and complex. We're talking about the birth of the 11St. Stephen. These were weird time signatures. Most bands back then were playing in 4, 4. The dead were in 11, 8 and probably 13 something or other just to see if they could. And then 1969 happens. The year of Live Dead. If you're a new fan and you want to know why everyone lost their freaking minds over this band, you start with the Dark Star on Live Dead. It's the definitive statement of what they were capable of. It's 23 minutes of pure exploration. It's not just music, it's a conversation. I wasn't around in 69. Obviously I was probably just a glimmer in my parents eyes while they were watching the Dick Van Dyke Show. But listening to that album for the first time in my bedroom as a teen and then 90s felt like I was hearing a secret language. It's the sound of five or six people completely losing themselves in the moment. It was the culmination of everything they'd learned at the acid tests, finally captured on tape. They weren't just a band anymore, they were a force of nature. Let's not forget they. They played Woodstock in 69 and by all accounts it was a total disaster for them. They almost got electrocuted. The equipment was sliding off the stage and Jerry said it was the worst set they'd ever played. But that's the Dead. Even when they failed, they failed in a legendary way.

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And through that touring, a culture started. And this is the part I love talking about. Because the concept of a Deadhead wasn't a thing yet. There were just people who liked the band. But the seeds were being planted. Because the Dead played so differently every night, people started to realize they couldn't just see one show. If you went on Tuesday, you got one vibe. If you went on Wednesday, you got a completely different vibe. So people started following them. It started small, just a few vans following the bus up and down the West Coast. This was the birth of the traveling community. It's easy to think that the parking lot scene was this ancient institution, but in the late 60s, it was just a bunch of kids sharing sandwiches and talking about the show from the night before. There was no Shakedown street yet, nobody selling I survived the 60s T shirts because they were still surviving them. But that early DNA of We're all in this together never really left. Even when the shows got huge, the feeling of a secret society stayed. It all started with those first few hundred people who realized this wasn't just a concert, it was a way of life on this show. Once someone said the best part wasn't even the music. It was the fact that for those few hours, nobody told them what to do or how to act. And I think that's the core of our space and community. It's a place where you can just be. And in 65 through 69. That's the era that built that playground. When you look back at those five years, it's incredible how much ground they covered. They went from being a ragtag jug band to the architects of a whole new musical genre. They survived the madness of the hate, the chaos of the acid tests, and the commercial pressures of a record industry that had no idea what to do with them. Everything that came later, the Europe 72 tour, the Wall of Sound, the 80s comeback, even the shows I saw in the 90s, it all rests on the shoulders of these five years. They laid the tracks and they did it while the train was already moving at 100 miles an hour. Next time, we're going to dive into 70 through 74. Things get a little more acoustic, a little more cowboy, and then they get very, very big. We're talking Working Man's Dead, American Beauty, and the departure of Pigpen, which changed the heart of the band forever. It's a heavy era, but it's also a beautiful one. Thanks for hanging with me today on Tales from the Lot. Go put on a 68 soundboard and turn it up until the neighbors complain and just let it wash over you. I'll see you right here for the next one. Stay weird friends. Take care of each other. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please consider hitting the subscribe button and leaving a comment. Your feedback and engagement really goes a long way to supporting and growing the show. And really this. This is your show with your stories. So if you have a story or even a few of them from seeing Grateful Dead shows or experiences of how the band has impacted your life in some way, I'd love to hear from you and have you on. My email is willailsfromthelot.org reach out or you could use the new text me feature that's in the show notes. You can easily reach out and connect with me directly that way. And don't forget to follow on Facebook for updates and exclusive content. And for those who prefer watching, full videos of every episode are available on my YouTube channel. So thanks again and please be kind to yourself and others.