Where was Grateful Dead’s first show?
The Grateful Dead were one of the most prolific live bands in history, playing thousands of shows during their 30-year existence at a rate of one performance every four days. In their early years, this rate was more like a show every other day or six months of non-stop touring.
While the band didn’t appear on stage outside of North America until 1970, they’d been playing together since early 1965 and under the Grateful Dead name since December 1965. During those years they braced scrapes with the CIA, dangerous jaunts with the Merry Pranksters, and just about made it through to stand as a unique symbol of freedom.
The main players in their initial lineup, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, started out playing together in a band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. The band recorded a folk performance live at The Tangent coffeehouse in Palo Alto, California, in 1964.
Joined by future Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, David Nelson, and Norm Van Maastricht, the group played their first proper gig under the name The Warlocks on May 5th, 1965. It was at Magoo’s Pizza parlour in Menlo Park, a suburb between San Francisco and San Jose, near Palo Alto.
But where did the Dead debut?
Whether or not we can call this gig the first Grateful Dead concert is debatable, given the informal nature of the performance and the fact that it happened under a different name. Nevertheless, the surviving members of the Dead celebrated its 50th anniversary with two special reunion performances in nearby Santa Clara back in 2015.
Meanwhile, the very first show, Garcia, Weir, Pigpen and others performed under the name the Grateful Dead, was at “Big Nig’s House”, 43 South Fifth Street, in San Jose. The place was a large neglected two-storey house built in the Dutch Colonial style, owned by an African-American distastefully referred to with the politically incorrect moniker “Big Nig” by show compere Ken Kesey and other participants.
The house played host to one of Kesey’s “Acid Tests”, a series of parties involving various musical and artistic performances, strobe and UV lights, and neon paint. They were organised to advocate the use of LSD and promoted with the slogan, “Can you pass the acid test?”. The Dead soon became regular performers at the events, alongside fellow Frisco Bay musicians Jefferson Airplane.
Whether we regard their pizza parlour performance as The Warlocks or their initial appearance at the Acid Tests as the Grateful Dead’s first gig, one thing is for certain. The band were already experienced performers by the time they became true countercultural trailblazers, with their performance at the Mantra-Rock Dance in January 1967 and their self-titled debut album. Even acid-fuelled jams take practice.
