Almost 30 years since the death of Jerry Garcia and disbandment of the Grateful Dead, the culture they created is bigger | dG1fWjBUZGxxSnQ4OEk
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00:00What is the dead or who are the dead for me?
00:03They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones that do what they do.
00:07People are not going to stop needing this music.
00:09There's a lot of people that want to hear this music live,
00:12they want to hear it go on, they want to hear it live forever.
00:15There's so many ways that the Grateful Dead paths that the music has pushed people in.
00:22Everybody's got their own little subculture, their own niche.
00:25The songs of Garcia and Hunter, Weir and Barlow, that's the anchor.
00:30It's like the dead created open source music.
00:33Everybody says you can throw a stone, hit a Grateful Dead cover band.
00:36You could swing a stick and hit a Grateful Dead tribute band.
00:39Jerry's friendship with my father had a profound impact and showed me how much fun music could be
00:46and they were such an amazing teaching force.
00:50A lot of people haven't heard the Grateful Dead before,
00:52but now that was really interesting and they're into it.
00:56And that's kind of an amazing thing to be having them torch for a moment
01:00and be able to pass it to people.
01:02Anthony, he's the type of person that he'll call you up and he'll say,
01:06I want to rebuild the wall of sound.
01:08Nine speakers on the bottom, nine on the top, and the same on the other side.
01:12So Phil could use his quad bass and send each string to its own nine speakers if he wanted to.
01:18Shakedown Street has been a wonderful place for the community to gather.
01:23It was this free market thing there.
01:25Everybody was out selling their merchandise, whether it was t-shirts or sandwiches.
01:29They'd stitch up a pair of beaded earrings and walk around and say,
01:33who wants to buy earrings? $10, because the ticket was $9.
01:38And they'd sell one pair of earrings, have enough money to buy a ticket and get into the show.
01:41People were so eclectic and so different and there was so much to see.
01:46It was like, oh, what magical fairy tale is this?
01:49My first Grateful Dead concert I ever attended,
01:52wandered around Shakedown Street the entire night, never went into the show.
01:56Just hung out in Shakedown Street and had the time of my life.
01:59You know, getting to see everybody from show to show, helping each other out.
02:02Shakedown's the last American freedom.
02:05The place where you can set up yourself, do your own thing, be your own person.
02:10The Deadhead is that person, wherever they turn up in society,
02:13that's looking for an adventure in America.
02:15It's a very American thing of the past that I don't feel like we have much anymore.
02:21You had this extended family everywhere you went.
02:24All the friends that we have met at shows, they've become lifelong friends.
02:29The idea of the Grateful Dead is an idea of acceptance.
02:31It doesn't matter whether you are a person selling T-shirts on the lot for a living or you're a bond trader.
02:38Everybody believes in this little bit of magic that the Grateful Dead created.
02:43I think you need that live experience even more.
02:45That real world, like, wow.
02:47More because we're all day like this.
02:50And that probably is even more of a need for that than when the dead were here.
02:54But I think that this community is special because it's carried on for 50 years.
02:58This has just been the grandest adventure that any individual can ask for.
03:04And they will not fade away, you can count on it.
03:13The Grateful Dead