The Grateful Dead officially join TikTok
The Grateful Dead have officially joined the video-sharing platform TikTok. The iconic San Francisco psychedelic rock pioneers dropped their first video this Thursday.
“[The Grateful Dead TikTok page] will serve as an outlet to celebrate the decades of music, generations of community, and endless array of creativity that has woven the band and its fans into every new era of the world’s counterculture and consciousness,” the band’s organisation explains in a statement.
The inaugural video includes images and from across the band’s 30-year career. The clip is soundtracked by a remastered live version of ‘St. Stephen’ at San Francisco’s Fillmore West in February of 1969, the same run that was later compiled into the band’s first live album, Live/Dead.
The clip starts off with a TV interviewer asking Jerry Garcia: “People are crazy about The Grateful Dead. How can you account for that?” Garcia’s responds with “What’s the question? Say it again, real slow” and a laugh at the end of the video.
The band’s video was released on 4/20, a day of widespread cannabis celebration in the United States.
The Grateful Dead haven’t been a band since Garcia’s death in 1995. However, the group’s organisation continues to release live albums (including the ongoing Dave’s Picks series) and compile box sets, along with producing podcasts like the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast.
Original members Bobby Weir and Billy Kreutmann, along with longtime drummer Mickey Hart, are currently slated to embark on their final tour with Grateful Dead spinoff band Dead & Company this summer.
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