The night before Easter April 10, 1971 students packed Franklin & Marshall College"s Mayser Gymnasium for an evening of psychedelic music.
For just $4.50, students saw the legendary Grateful Dead, with New Riders of the Purple Sage as openers.
These days, $4.50 likely won"t even buy a beer at one of the upcoming Grateful Dead reunion shows.
The band announced in January that four original Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir will reunite for the band"s 50th anniversary. (Notably absent will be Jerry Garcia, the band"s most famous face, who died in 1995, and Rob "Pigpen" McKernan, who died in 1972.)
The surviving bandmates, joined by Phish"s Trey Anastasio and other musicians, will play a total of five shows two in Santa Clara, California, this weekend, and three at Chicago"s Soldier Field on July 3-5.
These, they say, will be their last performances together.
The Chicago performances will be broadcast live at select theaters. Local Deadheads can watch them at Penn Cinema 14 in Lititz.
Despite being an iconic symbol of the San Francisco music scene, the Grateful Dead has more connections to Lancaster County than just that one groovy night at F&M.
Lititz-based Clair Global, the world"s biggest concert-tour audio company, worked with the Grateful Dead before it was supporting Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake.
And the people at Clair aren"t the only local folks who can put the Grateful Dead on their resume.
Timothy Truman, a Manheim Township artist, writer and musician, has worked with the Dead since 1991. He was the main contributor to Kitchen Sink"s Grateful Dead Comix. He also contributes to the Grateful Dead Almanac, illustrated album covers for 2013"s "Dave"s Picks" live series, and illustrated the Grateful Dead-opoly board game.
His work with the band started the way most of his projects start: He was asked to send a portfolio and told the publishing company would get back to him.
"They called back 10 minutes later and said, "No use to send your portfolio Jerry Garcia knows your work," " Truman says.
Truman"s work offered him insight into Garcia"s little-known comic book hobby.
"I got to be pretty good buds with Robert Hunter, the lyricist," Truman says. "He said he remembered sitting with Garcia in the middle of Jerry"s apartment floor with this big collection of EC comics an old 1950s pub outfit, did mostly horror stuff . like, sorting them in chronological order, by date, and putting them in a box and putting them in Jerry Garcia"s closet."
When working on Grateful Dead Comix, based on the band"s songs, Truman almost always goes with the first images that pop into his head while reading the lyrics, he says.
"I get a chance to tell Robert Hunter and the band what I"m seeing when I listen to the song," Truman says.
Some of Truman"s work appeared on T-shirts, and in some cases helped him discern which Deadheads were devoted enough to travel to their shows.
"It was also a kick I used to do a shirt that was particular to certain areas," Truman says. "It was fun to see people in Pennsylvania wearing those southern tour T-shirts."
In honor of the 50th anniversary, Alvarez guitars recreated Truman"s cover of "Dave"s Picks: Vol. 8" on one of its Grateful Dead Series Guitars ("AF65GD/F-Flag"). Alvarez gave Truman one of the guitars, which he proudly displays in his living room "so everyone who walks in the door can see it."
F&M"s student newspaper, The College Reporter, covered the Dead"s performance, noting it opened with "Casey Jones" and closed with "Uncle John"s Band." The article, provided by the archives and special collections of F&M, says Garcia was onstage for a whopping five hours 90 minutes playing pedal steel with New Riders of the Purple Sage, and 31-w hours with the Dead.
It seems Garcia might have acquired a souvenir at the show, too. Multiple Grateful Dead online message boards questioned a shirt he wore in 1977"s "Grateful Dead Movie" emblazoned with the legend "FUM SUB."
The meaning? "FUM" is a slang term for F&M, and SUB stands for "Student Union Board."
The class memory collection on F&M"s website also includes a detail about a student, in accordance with the impending Easter holiday, dressing as the Easter bunny, hopping around onstage and delivering candy to each band member in a ploy to get a good seat.
The document says the student got to sit onstage for the show, and a photo of someone in a rabbit suit appears in the 1971 F&M Oriflamme yearbook.
Despite forming five decades ago, the Grateful Dead is still selling merchandise.
Lancaster city"s Puff "n" Stuff store sells T-shirts, stickers and posters.
"We"ve been here since "69," says Jake Borders, the store"s assistant manager. "A lot of those people that have been following the Dead since then come in here, so of course we"re going to keep it in stock."
Borders says plenty of younger fans come in asking for Dead merchandise, too.
The band has also had a lasting influence on contemporary musicians.
Local musicians Corty Byron, Andy Mowatt, Mike Vitale and Travis Warlow performed "Jack Straw" in the LNP Studio as part of our tribute to the Grateful Dead.
Byron and Mowatt played a Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers tribute show at Tellus360 earlier this month and said it drew a crowd that was diverse in age.
All four agreed that the band had some impact on their music in particular, its ability to apply free-form jazz improvisation to rock "n" roll.
"Jerry said when you let go of wanting things to happen and hang out for a little while, while you"re playing, then other things start to happen," Byron says. "I think that was the biggest influence. It"s OK sometimes to take a minute and listen to everybody and something else will happen."
---
Online:
http://bit.ly/1QXycco
Source: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/entertainment/article25834813.html
