The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area amid the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. The founding members were Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums). Members of the Grateful Dead had played together in various San Francisco bands, including Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and the Warlocks. Lesh was the last member to join the Warlocks before they became the Grateful Dead; he replaced Dana Morgan Jr., who had played bass for a few gigs. Drummer Mickey Hart and non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter joined in 1967. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973, and Hart, who took time off from 1971 to 1974, the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history. The other official members of the band are Tom Constanten (keyboards; 1968–1970), John Perry Barlow (nonperforming lyricist; 1971–1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards; 1971–1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals; 1972–1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals; 1979–1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards, vocals; 1990–1995). Bruce Hornsby (accordion, piano, vocals) was a touring member from 1990 to 1992, as well as a guest with the band on occasion before and after the tours.
The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, "[Jerry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary ... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial". According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of Fictionary. In the Garcia biography, Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. The term "grateful dead" appears in folktales of a variety of cultures.
Live performances
The Grateful Dead toured constantly throughout their career, playing more than 2,300 concerts. They promoted a sense of community among their fans, who became known as "Deadheads", many of whom followed their tours for months or years on end. Around concert venues, an impromptu communal marketplace known as 'Shakedown Street' was created by Deadheads to serve as centers of activity where fans could buy and sell anything from grilled cheese sandwiches to home-made t-shirts and recordings of Grateful Dead concerts.
In their early career, the band also dedicated their time and talents to their community, the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, making available free food, lodging, music, and health care to all. It has been said that the band performed "more free concerts than any band in the history of music".
With the exception of 1975, when the band was on hiatus and played only four concerts together, the Grateful Dead performed many concerts every year, from their formation in April 1965, until July 9, 1995. Initially all their shows were in California, principally in the San Francisco Bay Area and in or near Los Angeles. They also performed, in 1965 and 1966, with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as the house band for the Acid Tests. They toured nationally starting in June 1967 (their first foray to New York), with a few detours to Canada, Europe and three nights at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt in 1978. They appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Festival Express train tour across Canada in 1970. They were scheduled to appear as the final act at the infamous Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969 after the Rolling Stones but withdrew after security concerns. "That's the way things went at Altamont—so badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play", staff at Rolling Stone magazine wrote in a detailed narrative on the event.
Their first UK performance was at the Hollywood Music Festival in 1970. Their largest concert audience came in 1973 when they played, along with the Allman Brothers Band and the Band, before an estimated 600,000 people at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen. They played to an estimated total of 25 million people, more than any other band, with audiences of up to 80,000 attending a single show. Many of these concerts were preserved in the band's tape vault, and several dozen have since been released on CD and as downloads. The Dead were known for the tremendous variation in their setlists from night to night—the list of songs documented to have been played by the band exceeds 500. The band has released four concert videos under the name View from the Vault.
In the 1990s, the Grateful Dead earned a total of $285 million in revenue from their concert tours, the second-highest during the 1990s, with the Rolling Stones earning the most. This figure is representative of tour revenue through 1995, as touring stopped after the death of Jerry Garcia. In a 1991 PBS documentary, segment host Buck Henry attended an August 1991 concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre and gleaned some information from some band members about the Grateful Dead phenomenon and its success. At the time, Jerry Garcia stated, "We didn't really invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead, you know what I mean? We were sort of standing in line, and uh, it's gone way past our expectations, way past, so it's, we've been going along with it to see what it's gonna do next." Furthermore, Mickey Hart stated, "This is one of the last places in America that you can really have this kind of fun, you know, considering the political climate and so forth." Hart also stated that "the transformative power of the Grateful Dead is really the essence of it; it's what it can do to your consciousness. We're more into transportation than we are into music, per se, I mean, the business of the Grateful Dead is transportation." One of the band's largest concerts took place just months before Garcia's death — at their outdoor show with Bob Dylan in Highgate, Vermont on June 15, 1995. The crowd was estimated to be over 90,000; overnight camping was allowed and about a third of the audience got in without having purchased a ticket.
Their numerous studio albums were generally collections of new songs that they had first played in concert. The band was also famous for its extended musical improvisations, having been described as having never played the same song the same way twice. Their concert sets often blended songs, one into the next, often for more than three songs at a time.
Tapes
Like several other bands during this time, the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to record their shows. For many years the tapers set up their microphones wherever they could, and the eventual forest of microphones became a problem for the sound crew. Eventually, this was solved by having a dedicated taping section located behind the soundboard, which required a special "tapers" ticket. The band allowed sharing of their shows, as long as no profits were made on the sale of the tapes.
Of the approximately 2,350 shows the Grateful Dead played, almost 2,200 were taped, and most of these are available online. The band began collecting and cataloging tapes early on and Dick Latvala was their keeper. "Dick's Picks" is named after Latvala. After his death in 1999, David Lemieux gradually took the post. Concert set lists from a subset of 1,590 Grateful Dead shows were used to perform a comparative analysis between how songs were played in concert and how they are listened online by Last.fm members. In their book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History, David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan identify the taper section as a crucial contributor to increasing the Grateful Dead's fan base.
After the death of Garcia in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as the Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and the Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company, Furthur, the Rhythm Devils, Phil Lesh and Friends, RatDog, and Billy & the Kids.
Iko Iko
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Sit-tin' by the fire - My grand ma told
Your grand ma: "I'm gon na set
Your flag on fire" -
Talk-in' 'bout, Hey now! Hey now! IKO, IKO
Un day jock-a-mo fee no ai na-né
- Jock-a-mo fee na-né-
Look at my king all dressed in red-
IKO, IKO, un day i bet-cha five dol lars
He'll kill you dead - jock-a-mo fee na-né
Talk-in' 'bout, Hey now! Hey now! IKO, IKO
Un day jock-a-mo fee no ai na-né
- Jock-a-mo fee na-né-
My flag boy and your flag boy were
Sit-tin' by the fire - My flag boy told
Your flag boy: "I'm gon na
Set your flag on fire"
Talk-in' 'bout, Hey now! Hey now! IKO, IKO
Un day jock-a-mo fee no ai na-né
- Jock-a-mo fee na-né-
See that guy all dressed in green? -
IKO, IKO, un day he's not a man
He's a lov-in' ma chine -
Jock-a mo fee na-né -
Talk-in' 'bout, Hey now! Hey now! IKO, IKO
Un day jock-a-mo fee no ai na-né
- Jock-a-mo fee na-né-
The song "Iko Iko" by Grateful Dead is a classic New Orleans tune that has roots in voodoo folklore. The song tells the tale of two girls, one's grandmother from New Orleans and the other's from a neighboring village. As the girls discuss their common roots, one girl tells the other that she will burn her flag, a symbol of her tribe, as a way to gain superiority in their friendship. The term "Iko Iko" is a chant used in Mardi Gras parades and it is thought to come from the Creole phrase "Ayeko Aneko," which can mean many things, including "I see you, I see you."
The song's catchy hook, "Jock-A-Mo Fee Na-Né," is actually a chant that was used by New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians. The chant was used to taunt rival tribes during the parades. The song's opening line, "My grand-ma and your grand-ma were sit-tin' by the fire," is actually a reference to an old Creole children's song. The song's narrator is telling a story about how his or her grandmother is warning a rival grandmother about the consequences of messing with their tribe.
The line "See that guy all dressed in green? He's not a man, he's a lovin' machine" is also a reference to the Mardi Gras Indians. The "guy in green" is likely a reference to the "big chief," who was the leader of a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. The "loving machine" part is likely a reference to the way the tribes showed their love for one another during the parades.
Line by Line Meaning
My grand-ma and your grand-ma were sit-tin' by the fire.
The two grandmothers were having a casual conversation while sitting beside the fire.
My grand-ma told your grand-ma: "I'm gon-na set your flag on fire."
The singer's grandmother casually threatened to set the other grandmother's flag on fire.
Talk-in' 'bout, Hey now ! Hey now ! I-ko, I-ko, un-day
Jock-a-mo fee-no ai na-né, jock-a-mo fee na-né
Using a phrase commonly used for calling people's attention, the singer introduces and repeats the chorus of the song.
Look at my king all dressed in red I-ko, I-ko, un-day.
I bet-cha five dol-lars he'll kill you dead, jock-a-mo fee na-né
A man in red clothing is pointed out, and the artist claims he will kill someone for five dollars.
My flag boy and your flag boy were Sit-tin' by the fire. - My flag boy told Your flag boy: "I'm gon-na set your flag on fire."
The artist refers to another informal exchange where someone threatened to set the flag of another person on fire.
See that guy all dressed in green? I-KO, I-KO, un-day.
He's not a man, he's a lov-in' ma-chine Jock-a mo fee na-né
Another person is pointed out as the focus of the song, he is described as a 'loving machine' and referred to in the chorus.
Talk-in' 'bout, hey now! Hey now! I-ko, I-ko, un-day
Jock-a-mo fee-no ai na-né, jock-a-mo fee na-né
The chorus repeats with a call to people's attention, using a common phrase to communicate enthusiasm.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Grateful Dead
"One of the largest crowds to see the Grateful Dead perform live in the 1980s and 1990s, at the last-ever concert at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium, the July 7, 1989 audience was treated with one of the best shows of 1989, a year that's widely considered one of the most consistently great of the Dead's 30 year touring history. Opening with Hell In A Bucket, the band then jumped right into their unofficial party anthem, a song that was always certain to get everyone up and dancing: Iko Iko. This staple of the New Orleans sound at which the Dead were adept at playing was always a buoyant, ebullient entry in any Grateful Dead setlist. As you'll see in the video, the band has much fun playing it on this night as we all had dancing to it." - David Lemieux
Wolf Sings
Bravo!!!
Brian Roberson
Blazing hot day, blazing hot show. Crumbling old stadium. Massive crowd of wild-eyed dancing dervishes. Colors, the sound mix eating away at my brain, the stadium's light towers bending and swaying in the boiling sunset like trees in an invisible thunderstorm.
Retriever19 Golden
Iko Iko was one of the highlights of their show in Syracuse NY, War Memorial, '81 or '82, I forget, but it was a blazing show, I thought it was better than the Cornell University show, '77 I think.
Matt Creedon
I love seeing Jerry smile at one of them n they'll play off each other n then he'll turn to Phil or Bobby or whoever n do it again with someone else love the in the moment live interactiveness of this band like with the improvisation not to just go horribly wrong all the time is amazing in itself let alone it all perfectly coming together as perfectly as it so many times did it's just crazyyyyy
Xavier Strong
I interviewed Jerry before this show -- almost 4 years to the day before my first interview with him in Pittsburgh. What a difference. He was full of energy, upbeat, and of course, sober. The last time I talked to him was June of ''95. Again, what a difference. He seemed so tired. I couldn't help thinking the end was near. And of course it was.
BreakTheStereoRadio
That's really interesting! Is there anywhere we can read or listen to these interviews? I'd love to check those out. Peace and love
STSGuitar16
Would love to know more about your interactions that gave you these impressions of Jerry. I'm not trying to deny what you are saying about the situation, I am just honestly curious about this topic.
Xavier Strong
@BreakTheStereoRadio Hey, thanks. Sorry for not getting back sooner. I've been out on the AT the last three weeks -- unwinding and unplugged!
Unfortunately, the two interviews I did with him in '85 and '89 were of course long before the Internet made its way into our lives, and the paper I worked for at the time did a lousy job moving their feature desk work from their internal archives to the online archive NewsBank (there was no story in '95 -- I just talked with him for 5 or 10 min. backstage in Albany.)
So I've never seen them online, and I've only got newspaper clippings of the stories (and I'm not even sure I still have those.) So anyway, sorry -- I realize that's really unnecessarily long-winded way of saying, "no". (It was a long three weeks -- still trying to get my brain back up to normal speed LOL!)
BreakTheStereoRadio
@Xavier Strong Glad you got to have those experiences! Thanks for the response:)