I'm a newcomer. In late 2008 my friend showed me a live Let The Good Times Roll from i think maybe 91? could be wrong but i remember he pointed out to me a scream in the middle of the song, turned out to be Brent, and we all thought it was hilarious. I listened to that song for about a week straight and finally said "Hey send me some dead!" he sent me the big ones, fire on the mountain, scarlet begonias, touch of grey, truckin, ect. and then we were hanging out when his father came down and said " My bands going on tour want us to order you tickets?" saw The Dead in worcester in 2009 and only knew about 5 songs they played in two nights but i still had the time of my life. I've now seen Furthur about 8 times and it just gets better and better.





Let your life proceed by its own design!!!

I live in Marin...They were (the Dead) everywhere here. They played across the street at my high school for free in Golden Gate Park and for weeks at Winterland. This was back in the 70`s... They were one of the many bands coming out of Marin ....the Marin sound if you will.....

9/26/69. they were opening for country joe @ the fillmore east, where i'd just scored a gig is the mic tech. i'd only heard about the grateful dead from that song in "hair". it was my second week there, and i was just starting to set up the stands and mics for the show when this jolly looking bear of a man in a mexican serape came over, put down his guitar case and proceeded to role up the hugest doob i'd ever seen. (in nyc in those days, our j's were like little toothpicks) he proceeded to smoke me out, the first time i'd ever dared smoke out in "public" and then left. i didn't realize until the band took the stage that night that he was jerry garcia, and my life's never been the same since...

ps. the pic on the left was taken at the fillmore east a few months later...

nice story

Unfortunatly I just got on the bus at the Ratdog/Allman Brothers show 8/20/08 - the Meadows in CT. The Allmans were still great but I thought Ratdog blew them away and have seen every Dead related show in my area that I could make ever since.

Theres a few that I wish I went to like the Brooklyn shows last year were close enough for me and I never saw Phil & Friends which I def could of made some of those. From now on though I wont be missing anything within 3 hours of me and I'll consider them if there not to much farther. I'm lucky enough to be in CT and have a bunch of shows around me but I would travel farther for Furthur if they wern't playing close....I have to make it out to Red Rocks sometime to.

I am only 24 so really never had a chance at seeing Jerry enless my parents were really into it but I still could have gotten into it sooner, luckily my days of listening to rap were short lived!

I'll forever be mad at myself for not getting on the bus sooner but what can I do? just hope that the bus keeps rolling on....

Having been born in the late 1950s, I knew who the Grateful Dead were as a little kid in the 1960s, but I didn't have any particular interest in them.
However, in Fall 1974, riding to high school with a chum in the AM, he and I would smoke a little and then he'd invariably insert 'Skeletons' into the 8-Track player and proceed to tell me how cool the Dead were. Initially, I was only convinced that they were a bunch of old guys whose time had passed. Anyway, little did I know that the Dead weren't even 1/3 of the way through the trip by that point in time. I was 15.

good stories keep em comin! not gonna lie im pretty jealous of everyone who has seen jerry. i would give my left leg for a time machine and and a chance to go back and see him.

The Dead were something of a phenomenon at my high school in the late '70's. It was considered tres cool to be into them.

I remember my sisters playing Europe '72 and my resolving not to like the band, simply because everybody else did.

I was a serious stoner at this time, so it wasn't long before I couldn't ignore just how well the Dead complemented that... I decided to go up to Madison to see a show, and the rest is history.... I was a goner!

so crazy that you were an outcast for not liking the dead in highschool and i was an outcast in highschool for liking the dead. How the times have changed

I too am a newcomer to the Grateful Dead. I'm 23 so I was young when Jerry died, but I definitely remember it happening and that it was a big deal. Basically I knew the band existed, had a devout following, what they were associated with, I just never bothered to listen to them to even find out what they were doing musically. My older sister had quite a few t-shirts, and even though I was really fascinated by them I still didn't listen to the music. Freshman year of high school, we had "Decade Day" and 9th grade had the 60's so of course I wore one of my sister's t-shirts despite it being a million sizes too big. My sister was always trying to school me on classic rock but it just wasn't a genre I had much interest in. My parents are in their late sixties and listen to oldies so that's the extent of their musical influence on me... thankfully my boyfriend listened to a lot of classic rock and was very familiar with the Dead so a couple of years ago he turned me on to them.