I am a Deadhead who has been part of the scene literally for more than half my life.  And I am proud of this! I knew Jerry Garcia before there was such a thing as the Grateful Dead, even before they were known as the Warlocks--when he was a folksinger, playing his banjo at civil rights and Peace demonstrations in San Francisco! (around 1964).
     The first time I actually saw the entity--the actual Grateful Dead, was in 1965, when they were the "house band for Ken Kesey's acid tests. I was blown away by the genius, the creativity, the depth of the music. I knew
then that what they were playing was a new musical form--as innovative and as revolutionary as any new musical form had been in the past.

  People actually paid attention to the music at a Grateful Dead show. It was incredibly cool to listen and to think...and to dance.

    Because of the Grateful Dead's collective knowledge of all forms of music; because their long extended improvizatiopnal jams would ring out in symphonic splendor--incorporating classical music,jazz, blue grass and folk melodies-- rock music could now truthfully be known as a genuine art form--Yes, it was no longer the simplistic 4 chord one-dimensional crap that AM radio had been blaring into my ears since the early 1950s. And so, the Grateful Dead and we Deadheads,(along with other kindred bands and solo musiciansand became representative of the "new" scene of liberation and free thought that bloomed along with the burgeoning movement for civil rights and peace. 

   (Understand, I'm not putting down Soul music or Motown--which I always respected for its beautiful expressions of the feelings and desires of a people
struggling for freedom); I'm talking about The "Hit Parade stuff, the conformist junk that was so much a part of the culture of McCarthyism-- the"thinking is subversive" America.

   To me, the Grateful Dead have always been a vibrant part of all things progressive. They never caved in to the music industry businessmen whose mantra, "profits first music whenever" had formerly typified the motivations behind all popular music. Indeed,the Grateful Dead never compromised with, nor gave into the music establishment. They never wrote the requisite 3-minute superficial ditties demanded by the Biz. As a result, the establishment tried in vain to ignore the Grateful Dead, who like all true revolutionaries simply would never go away!
     Oh, the stories I could tell!!! Volumes have been (and are still being) written about this band, the culture it helped shape and will always be a part of and on..and on.....,so, I'll just end this with a quote from
a Jerry tune: "Let there be songs to fill the air."  Ilene Richards, jerrysjingles@aol.com