Grateful Dead -Dawn Of The Dead The Grateful Dead & The Rise Of The San Francisco Underground [DVD] [2012] [NTSC]

In the mid-1960s a new twist on contemporary rock music emerged out of San Francisco. Known as 'psychedelia', it was pioneered by a close-knit community of local bands who merged traditional American forms such as folk, country, blues and rock & roll with new sounds often developed under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Bound up with the social and cultural changes for which San Francisco was also the focal point, it was a combination that made for a radical re-imaging of youth culture. This film traces the movements, events and sounds of those heady days, and traces the story of the definitive band of the psychedelic age, The Grateful Dead. Giving time too for the involvement of Frisco's other lead players such as Big Brother & The Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, The Charlatans and Quicksilver Messenger Service, the program explores what it was that, for a while, turned San Francisco into a 1960s Shangri-La. Featuring brand new interviews with Grateful Dread manager Rock Scully; the Dead's experimental professor, Tom 'T.C.' Constanten; Big Brother's Peter Albin; Mike Willlhelm from The Charlatans; publicist and official Dead biographer, Dennis McNally; Counter-Culture and Dead author and journalist (and host of 'The Grateful Dead Hour'), David Gans; Merry Prankster and best friend of the late Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, plus comment, criticism and review from Rolling Stone's Anthony De Curtis, Village Voice's Robert Christgau and Mojo's Ritchie Unterberger. Also including the rarest archive in existence, live and studio footage of Grateful Dead and the other Frisco bands, vintage interviews, location shoots, news reports plus the music that soundtracked the entire movement, which all together make for the most detailed overview yet of the social upheaval on America's West Coast which ultimately changed the world forever.

Documentario retrospettivo che ripercorre movimenti, suoni ed eventi relativi alla nascita ed allo sviluppo della psychedelia nell'area di San Francisco alla metà degli anni '60. La città americana diventò il fulcro culturale di quella musica straordinaria che qui rivive con la storia della band simbolo The Grateful Dead. Il resto del film prende in esame anche le altre famosissime bands dell'epoca: Big Brother and The Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Charlatans e Quicksilver Messenger Service, attraverso nuove interviste, testimonianze sul campo e contributi filmati d'archivio con rare performances live e in studio dei Grateful Dead e delle altre Frisco bands.