It was December of 1992 when I attended my first Grateful Dead concert. They played in Phoenix at Compton Terrace, for 2 days (Saturday and Sunday) and I was amazed at the experience I had. The culture just blew me away. Dead heads everywhere, the parking lot scene, the campgrounds, the kindness, the sharing. It was like something I had never expected. Since that time, I went to several Dead shows, mostly the ones that were near the southwest like Vegas, Southern California and Colorado. I was hooked on the "scene" and the music wasn't too bad either. I heard a funny joke once, "What does a dead head say when he runs out of pot? "God this music Sucks!"". Well, my affinity for "The Dead" continued and a few years later, the lead singer, Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack. This was in 1995. Around this time, I bought my first computer, logged in on AOL 2.5 with my 28,000 kbs dial up connection and started surfing the web. One of the first sites I journeyed to was the Grateful Dead Website.
Since then, I have continued to visit the website. The pictures on the website usually consists of banners and pictures reminiscent of some of the album covers from years past. Here's an example of what you will get when you log into the website. Notice the lettering at the top of the page? It's almost identical to the front of their Winter land '73 album cover. The Grateful Dead is about memories for me and seeing the lettering on their website definitely brings back memories. The Dead play a lot of folk style music and I also feel that folky vibe coming from some of the pictures they put on their website. The font on some of the page is really generic. It is just there to give you the information. However, the pictures on the page and the hyperlinks of those pictures provide an interesting backdrop to the dull text. Of course, the website always has the "Steal your Face" insignia on it. Dead heads didn't like the albums quality so they dubbed it "Steal your Money".
The website also contains chat rooms for fellow dead heads to log into and chat with each other about various shows, memories, and future concerts of some of the spinoff bands from the original Grateful Dead group members. Speaking of Dead Heads, the Grateful Dead has had a following of people unlike any other musical group in history. Dead heads traveled with the band from show to show via hitchhiking, bumming rides or bumming gas to fill their VW buses. The Chat rooms allow the dead heads to meet up and stay in touch with old friends from the road. It's truly a nice feature of the website.
The BEST thing that I love about the website is the Archive section. It allows dead heads to find out what songs were played at what shows the dead performed. It also lists the lyrics of their songs. This is a MUST for Dead heads as they like to keep track of bootleg copies of shows.
I am extremely biased when analyzing this website. I love The Dead. I love what message they tried to convey and I love the people that I met while attending shows. The website is simple to navigate. It has great information about other spinoff bands. The gallery is extensive and the Store has some cool shirts on it. It takes a certain kind of person to enjoy the Grateful Dead and I'm guessing it takes the same kind of person to enjoy the website. The actual template of the website is extremely similar to the style of posters that you would find pinned up on walls informing dead heads of future shows. There isn't anything super fashionable or loud or obnoxious, but then again, that is another way one can describe The Dead.
Very well written article on Grateful Dead. They were such a cool group with some great songs. I particularly liked their "Bluegrass" style songs. I actually have a good friend from high school who now sings professionally with a folk music/bluegrass band. They are currently on tour around the U.S. and actually were in concert here in Prescott not too long ago. The group is Elephant Revival. If you haven't heard of them, I would recommend checking out some of their music. Sage, the member of the group who I grew being friends with, loved Grateful Dead when we were teenagers.
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