Report on the Grateful Dead I have chosen to do my report on the Grateful Dead. They were a rock and roll band from the sixties that stayed popular and still influenced rock and roll until 1995 when the lead singer, Jerry Garcia, died and the band dissolved. The Dead remained popular for so long because of the style of their live concerts that made people keep coming back. In 1959 when Jerry Garcia was thrown out of the army, he picked up his guitar and started playing music with his friend Robert Hunter. Robert Hunter would later become the Grateful Dead's non- performing song writer. Robert and Jerry lived in San Francisco, California. On one New Year's Eve party, Garcia and Hunter met Ron "The Pig Pen" McKerman, who played harmonica, keyboard and was also a vocalist. Pig Pen was the janitor at the music shop where Jerry gave banjo lessons. During the concert of that night, they also met guitarist Bob Weir and together they formed a band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. A few weeks later Bob Matthews,who later became a part of the Grateful Dead electronics and recording family,joined the group along with John "marmaduke" Dawson,who later joined the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Work was scarce for the Jug Champions until Dana Morgan, owner at the store where Jerry taught banjo and Pig Pen worked,provided the money and equipment for them to become electric. After they had become electric they renamed the group the Warlocks. Dawson and Matthews were soon to leave and they were replaced by drummer Bill Sommers (Krentemann) and Phil Lesh, who was a trumpet player who learned to play bass guitar in a very amazing two weeks just to get the spot. This completes the now familiar Dead line up. The Warlocks played their first concert in July 1965 and they played pretty straight rock and roll music until the "acid tests." In early 1965 a state hospital in the Palo Alto area was conducting experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. This was still legal at the time. Robbert Hunter and others volunteered to try them. Before long the whole music group was participating in "acid tests" and their music became more diffused, the numbers stretched out and the volume turned up. Jerry Garcia became known as "Captain Trips" and they played at the Ken Kesey organized trips festival. In February 1966 the Warlocks had to change their... ... middle of paper ... ...e group members that he was going to a rehabilitation center. He had told them that he was taking a trip to Hawaii with his wife. It was a shock to the rest of the group to find out that Jerry Garcia had died in a drug rehabilitation center. "Garcia's last performance with the Dead, was July 9, 1995 in Chicago", that night will not be forgotten by anyone who attended that last show. Jerry Garcia was fifty-three years of age when he died. Jerry was the Grateful Dead's singer, song writer, gutaitariest and many believe the heart and soul of the Grateful Dead. This tragedy has left many to wonder if the Grateful Dead will ever play again. One thing is sure about the Grateful Dead, "The Grateful Dead are the best-known and longest lasting of all the San Francisco bands,..". In conclusion, the Grateful Dead is a very unique group and has vary unique followers. it is one of the longest lasting bands and has played for over three generations of people with their own style and creativeness. They have had a long journey and there have been many bumps in the road. There is only one phrase that can wrap up the Gratefuldeads career, "What a long strange trip it's been".
The Grateful Dead was a famous rock and roll band throughout the 1960’s. They had a lot of ups and downs during their time as a band together. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann were all in the band together. The Grateful Dead played a variety of music but mainly they were a rock and roll band; blues, reggae, country, folk, and space rock.
Joplin's talent was revealed at an early age. Encouraged by his parent's, he became extremely proficient on the banjo and gained an interest for playing the piano. After Joplin's parents purchased a piano for the family, he taught himself how to play the instrument so well that his piano playing became remarkable. Joplin soon began playing for church and local social events. By age eleven, while under the teachings of a German music teacher named Juliuss Weiss, Joplin was learning the finer points of harmony and style. As a teenager, he played well enough to be employed as a dance musician.
In 1967 the Beatles were in Abbey Road Studios putting the finishing touches on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At one point Paul McCartney wandered down the corridor and heard what was then a new young band called Pink Floyd working on their hypnotic debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. He listened for a moment, then came rushing back. "Hey guys," he reputedly said, "There's a new band in there and they're gonna steal our thunder." With their mix of blues, music hall influences, Lewis Carroll references, and dissonant experimentation, Pink Floyd was one of the key bands of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, a pop culture movement that emerged with American and British rock, before sweeping through film, literature, and the visual arts. The music was largely inspired by hallucinogens, or so-called "mind-expanding" drugs such as marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide; "acid"), and attempted to recreate drug-induced states through the use of overdriven guitar, amplified feedback, and droning guitar motifs influenced by Eastern music. This psychedelic consciousness was seeded, in the United States, by countercultural gurus such as Dr. Timothy Leary, a Harvard University professor who began researching LSD as a tool of self-discovery from 1960, and writer Ken Kesey who with his Merry Pranksters staged Acid Tests--multimedia "happenings" set to the music of the Warlocks (later the Grateful Dead) and documented by novelist Tom Wolfe in the literary classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)--and traversed the country during the mid-1960s on a kaleidoscope-colored school bus. "Everybody felt the '60s were a breakthrough. There was exploration of sexual freedom and [...
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, more commonly known as Jelly Roll Morton, was born to a creole family in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Morton lived with several family members in different areas of New Orleans, exposing him to different musical worlds including European and classical music, dance music, and the blues (Gushee, 394). Morton tried to play several different instruments including the guitar; however, unsatisfied with the teachers’ lack of training, he decided to teach himself how to play instruments without formal training (Lomax, 8). ...
The first instrument Robert played was the harmonica. Robert quit school as a teen and started working in the cotton fields. Robert left that life to travel and play his music. He began to play the guitar around the age of fifteen. Famous blues men; Charlie Patton and Willie Brown influenced Johnson when he was young. At age 17, Robert married Virginia Travis. She and their first baby died during childbirth. Johnson then went on the road. Robert traveled all over the Midwest and all the way down to Mississippi and Arkansas. He married Calletta Craft during his travels. She died only a few years later while Robert was on the road.
This paper is about how a small time boy from Oak Cliff, Texas with a dream, revolutionized the way blues guitar was played. By 17 he new what he wanted to do with his life, thus dropping out of school to become a blues guitarist. All throughout Stevie's career he was loved and adored for his gentle touch and majestic rhythmic guitar playing. Throughout his life he led three bands to hitting it big, released five albums with "Double Trouble". Most importantly, Stevie became sober. He turned away from the substances, even though he believed they gave him the drive to play the way he did.
“West End Blues” begins with a 12-second trumpet solo that displayed Armstrong’s wonderful range and demonstrated the syncopated styling unique
	One of the main traditional themes that Hunter uses is the gambling theme. The poems "Candyman" and "Loser" exemplify this motif the best:
Jerry Garcia’s life was filled with wonderful things, many of which he never expected in the first place. After an almost fatal heroin overdose in 1986, “ Garcia philosophically stated, ‘ I’m 45 years old, I’m ready for anything, I didn’t even plan on living this long so all this shit is just add-on stuff.’ ” (“Garcia”) This attitude shows why Garcia did all of the things he did and even how some of them came about. Garcia, who “functioned as the preeminent pied piper of the rock era,” led a life of great artistic ability which he used in many ways(“Grateful Dead_ Rockhall”).
how this trip affected his life and how it was such a complete shock that it
Having rules and setbacks are like guidelines guiding a person through a reality journey called life. Life has and is all about the challenges, overcoming one’s fear, and finding the determination, strength and courage to ____ what’s ahead (of us). Through the hardships that one endures, in th...
his health issues, he talked of looking forward to the day when he could walk again and toss his wheelchair into the lake near his
The Rolling Stones were described as the voice of teenage rebellion. The huge success of The Stones proved any talented musician can make it in the music
“Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about” (Wynton Marsalis). Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901. Armstrong was born into a poor Southern black family and suffered from many of the difficulties this community endured at the turn of the twentieth century. At a very young age, Armstrong’s biological father left his family and his mother was forced to work all the time, therefore, leaving Armstrong and siblings on their own. According to the Louis Armstrong House Museum, a Russian family (the Karnofskys) unofficially adopted Armstrong and gave him a job in their family store, which helped him save enough money to buy his first instrument. The Karnofskys, provided him with meals, gave him a job at their junk shop and even loaned him money to buy his first instrument. He began by playing on the street corners, which eventually caused
Vaughan was recognized as great talent by Rock n Roll musician’s as a teenager, by ...