Grateful Dead

...and no matter how often you ask, you can't get these new Deadmysters to offer a traditional Skull and Roses t-shirt. The whole thing appears to have gone cartoony to me.

which would you prefer? I think that compairing the stones to the dead is like comparing apples to elephants. Yes, I will concur that the stones in the early years were quite a rock and roll band, but in the later years, lets face it, they suck. No matter what your thoughts are about 90's dead, they certainly never sucked. I totally agree with Sam, the dead were never about making it big, getting that first million, it was about the music, were they not the last San Francisco band to get signed? I also agree with Tigerlilly, things sure did change when a dead show became a place for people to go and be a hippy for a day, altho I did witness some majical events at some of those post MTV shows. I remember the days when there were only 3500 people at the shows and it was like our own little secret, absolutely wonderful and those IMHO are the days that the Dead imbraced and really did create a counterculture all of there own, where all of us "freaks" could come and be renewed, reborn, reenergized, it was a beautiful thing, and one that, unfortunately, had to end due to the media exposure.

a major turning point for Dead fans being more "alternative" was when "Touch of Grey" etc hit MTV. At shows after that, it seemed that there was a new element of fan, who thought it was hip to play hippie for a night, as opposed to more of a fan-lifestyle like earlier.

I think the Stones were also actively promoting an image of it being cool to be "bad and wild", so yes I guess I agree with Sam's evaluation about the Stones being more about marketing all along, and the Dead being more about counter-culture and just making music. UNTIL aforementioned MTV, where the lines, at least superficially, got blurrier.

ach blah blah blah, am not sure anymore whether am making any sense with this thought, but will post it nevertheless.
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By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's I mean.
Mark Twain

These groups from the 60's and 70's were all fabulous in their time: Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd,Jimi Hendricks, Janis Joplin, ,all the Woodstock bands , how lucky we were to be teen agers then and be part of all this new music Rock and Roll ! We also were ecologists and anti-wars militants then ! And aware of how TV manipulated people into ready-made thinking too ! The Grateful Dead was the perfect example of this revolutionary alternative then , until Jerry died .

However, while I think Sam's description was accurate at the time he was involved, my feeling is that the Dead's vibe morphed into something very different. Whether that was their fault, or just that times changed, or they just became too big, I don't know.

"That path is for, your steps alone."