Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead Trailer
The Grateful Dead championed the psychedelic movement and still to this day are seen as one of the most important bands to come out of the 60's.
Having formed in the San Francisco Bay Area, lead singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia and fellow band members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh Ron McKernan and Bill Kreutzmann wanted to create music unlike anything else around at that time. At the time their music was genreless; they touched on so many different musical styles that they really did fulfil their desire to be part of a band that was continually dynamic. The jam band was born and The Grateful Dead didn't only immerse themselves in their music, they also became heavily involved in the acid scene. Drugs - particularly acid - played a huge role within the band. Though Jerry Garcia was always seen as the 'lead' member, their way of working and writing was actually very communal and that's one of the reasons why their legions of fans stuck with the band, they felt that they were all equal - the fans and onlookers in a crowd watching the band were just as important to the overall experience as it was for one of the band on stage playing.
That mentality was at the forefront of their legendary live shows which just kept on growing in popularity. By the time 1974 came around, the band had turned their originally small jamming sessions into something that even modern day super groups would find hard to rival. To capture their sound in the best possible way the band (and their sound engineers) built a 'wall of sound', essentially six different sound systems combined that ran different instruments (down to individual elements) through different channels and different speakers in a bid to create a distortion free sound.
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