320: The Warlocks Become The Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead were an American rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco, California as “The Warlocks” . The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, fusing elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, country, jazz, psychedelia, ambiant music, and gospel into their songs and for having long extended “jams” of music and improvised free form playing. As time went by and the band got better, they went to record an album, and found out there was another band named the Warlocks, so they had to change their name in order to get a recording contract. The name “Grateful Dead” was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, in his biography “…Jer (Garcia) picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary…(and)…In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, ‘Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?’” The definition there was “the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial. According to the Garcia biography, Captain Trips by Sandy Troy, the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. They remained the Grateful Dead until the passing of Jerry Garcia when the remaining members toured briefly as The Other Ones. The only other time they used the name “The Warlocks” was during a 2 day stint at Hampton Coliseum on October 8th and 9th in 1989. The Grateful Dead had been banned from playing at the coliseum, so they played as the Warlocks.