Documenting The Grateful Dead Experience
"There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert" was a saying popular among Deadheads, as the loyal fans of the band are known. During their performances, the Dead valued musical improvisation, jamming extensively, and they changed their set lists nightly. As a result, their music was best appreciated at live concerts. But beyond that, Dead shows generally had a positive, happy atmosphere, as the band and the audience interacted with each other to create a special environment of musical celebration. Capturing this phenomenon on film is the admittedly paradoxical goal of The Grateful Dead Movie.
To document the Grateful Dead experience, the film showcases the fans much more than is usual in a concert movie. Sometimes they are shown enjoying the show, and in other scenes they discuss the music and the band, and what it's like to be a Deadhead. The film also includes interviews with members of the Dead, and vintage footage from the early days of the band showing some of their colorful history. Also featured, especially at the beginning of the movie, are animated scenes of icons from Grateful Dead art such as the Uncle Sam skeleton. This psychedelic inspired animation was created by Gary Gutierrez, using some techniques that he developed specifically for this project. All these elements combine to make The Grateful Dead Movie much more than just a concert film.
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Famous quotes containing the words grateful, dead and/or experience:
“To be the subject of alms-giving is trying, and to feel in duty bound to appear cheerfully grateful under the trial, must be still more so.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“When a Man is in a serious Mood, and ponders upon his own Make, with a Retrospect to the Actions of his Life, and the many fatal Miscarriages in it, which he owes to ungoverned Passions, he is then apt to say to himself, That Experience has guarded him against such Errors for the future: But Nature often recurs in Spite of his best Resolutions, and it is to the very End of our Days a Struggle between our Reason and our Temper, which shall have the Empire over us.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)