The Grateful Dead

There they were, Jerry and Pigpen strumming in Jerry's empty lesson room. Pigpen was the janitor at Morgan's and played the keys and harp. From the front entered a curious Bob Weir and through hours of talking and sharing music the three clicked immediately. They all decided that they needed to jam and see how things worked out. They met in Palo Alto at a guys house that Jerry knew named Phil Lesh. Lesh had no idea he would be given a bass and expected to play, he was a music major from San Francisco State University and all around musical genius who played the bass because it was what they needed. Joined by a locally admired drummer named Bill Kreutzman, they were ready to jam. They started off as the Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, but quickly changed to the Warlocks.
             As the Warlocks they would play mostly bars exhibiting Pigpen's raw blues and Jerry's tight guitar fills. Trying to get there name into play a festival in Menlo Park; they discovered they weren't the only Warlocks, and worse they weren't the first Warlocks. Struck with this dilemma, they had a band meeting at Phil's in Palo Alto to decide what the new name would be. Jerry fingering through a dictionary, turned the page and his eyes led him right to the term Grateful Dead. He read a little further and Grateful Dead was a term for a type of ballad where a person dies leaving behind and unfulfilled promise, they then make a deal with a living person to fulfill that promise, the deceased person then becomes the grateful dead. .
             Gaining some local respect and somewhat of an underground fan scene, they began playing acid tests organized by the Kesey brothers or just Ken Kesey and the Marry Pranksters. In 1969 The last acid test the Dead played left a warehouse trashed, a band with a reputation and over 500 people and 10 cops tripping there brains out. The next three years would prove to bring much joy but greater sadness.