Category: Dead Notes

Author’s note: this article originally appeared in 2012 on a now-defunct website called Dead Journalist. It has been salvaged, edited and updated for Aquarium Drunkard. – j jackson toth

It’s no secret Jerry Garcia was a freak of nature when it came to juggling his time with the Grateful Dead and multiple side projects. In 1970 alone, he was riding high on the FM […]

If you’ve been lucky, you’ve found yourself in some college dorm, surrounded by DayGlo tapestries, Nag Champa wafting in the air, stinging your eyes. Your singularly nicknamed but gracious hosts and their friends argue. It’s […]

How many Deadheads does it take to screw in a light bulb? 1000. One to do it and 999 to tape it. There was a time when yellow envelopes stuffed to the gills with Maxell […]

1974 is one of the greatest and most transformative years within the Grateful Dead’s history, with two major events setting the tone: the official unveiling of the infamous ‘ Wall of Sound ’ and the band ominously playing […]

Welcome to Dead Notes #11. Forty-two years ago, in the early days of March of 1973, Pigpen and a photographer friend sauntered into the band’s rehearsal space at Stinson Beach Community Center with the hope to have […]

Dead Notes: “Where all the print is blood. Where all the pages are my days…” Late last year we compiled all our Dead Notes columns into a print ’zine that heavily nodded to the early original issues […]

Welcome to Dead Notes #10 where we revisit Two From the Vault , recently released by Light in the Attic Records for the first time on vinyl. 1968 was a deeply exploratory period in the early history of the […]

Welcome to Dead Notes #9. In early 1969 we find our bohemian freaks spaced out on STP and nitrous oxide, holed up behind a 16-track recording console working on their palindromic 3rd album, Aoxomoxoa. The sessions are […]

Welcome to Dead Notes #8 where we find our steadfast pranksters in the pivotal years of 1967 and 1968. Long gone are the proto-psychedelic fuzzy garage jams, replaced with long, exploratory suites awash in subtle instrumental and […]

And we’re back. Welcome to the seventh installment of Dead Notes where we find our former psychedelic heroes continuing to shed their kaleidoscopic, meandering, ways. Tightening up, both literally and figuratively, by March of 1971 the Dead’s […]

Welcome to the sixth installment of Dead Notes , where we find the Grateful Dead in the Fall of 1970, gigging at the famed Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY. Between 1970 and 1971 the band played […]

Welcome to the fifth installment of Dead Notes where once again we find ourselves in the great Northwest, at the Sky River Rock Festival, on the outskirts of Seattle in Sultan, WA. Oddly enough the inspiration for […]

Welcome to the fourth installment of Dead Notes . Coming down from the 8/27/72 ‘Dark Star’ featured in #3 we’re heading to New York City’s East Village and the infamous Fillmore East . West coast rock & roll impresario Bill Graham opened […]