“American Beauty” was softer, even more accessible than “Workingman’s Dead.” But “Truckin'” was very radio-friendly, and it got played, and was continued to be played. I feel the same way about “Ripple” as I do “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” if I hear it I’ll have an uncontrollable urge to hit someone. And then “American Beauty” was released fewer than four months later, in November, of 1970. ![]() You’d hear “Uncle John’s Band” on FM radio, when you were hankering for more of those Crosby, Stills & Nash harmonies, we didn’t yet know the Dead’s vocals were never close to pristine in real life. They’d play…until they could play no more, until the sun came up, this was something new.Īnd then came “Workingman’s Dead” and everything changed. All to promote the shows that began at midnight. They started with a full page photo on the back of the program, with a caption about 2,600 people being happy during the Dead’s show. Credit Bill Graham and the Fillmore East. Most people had no idea what their music sounded like, most believed it was heavy, a la Black Sabbath, Consider the moniker!īut then there was a concerted effort to push them on the east coast. And really, the only impact they had was in the San Francisco area. The Gen-X’ers who came on board during the eighties, who are convinced they know the history because they’ve listened to all the tapes, don’t. The soundtrack to this movement? The Grateful Dead. ![]() It was the opposite of today, where you go to the city for the action, fifty years ago people had had enough, they moved to Vermont, Oregon, upstate New York, long before the era of the internet and smartphones, even before cable, you were out in the boonies not only physically, but emotionally. Yes, everybody lost faith in their ability to move the needle when it came to the government and the war and they retreated to the country. The sixties were about testing the limits, pushing the envelope, the seventies were about licking our wounds, there was the back to the land movement. ![]() The past is starting to blur, but I’m here to tell you the seventies were different from the sixties.
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