Fans toast Grateful Dead's 60th with concerts at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park
Fans of the Grateful Dead are pouring into San Francisco for three days of concerts and festivities marking the 60th anniversary of the scruffy jam band that came to embody a city where people wore flowers in their hair and made love, not war.
Dead & Company, featuring original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, will play Golden Gate Park's Polo Field starting Friday with an estimated 60,000 attendees each day. The last time the band played that part of the park was in 1991 — a free show following the death of concert promoter and longtime Deadhead Bill Graham.
Certainly, times have changed.
A general admissions ticket for all three days is $635 — a shock for many longtime fans who remember when a joint cost more than a Dead concert ticket.
But Deadhead David Aberdeen is thrilled anyway.
'This is the spiritual home of the Grateful Dead,' said Aberdeen, who works at Amoeba Music in the bohemian, flower-powered Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. 'It seems very right to me that they celebrate it in this way.'
Formed in 1965, the Grateful Dead is synonymous with San Francisco and its counterculture. Members lived in a dirt-cheap Victorian in the Haight and later became a significant part of 1967's Summer of Love.
That summer eventually soured into bad acid trips and police raids, and prompted the band's move to Marin County on the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge. But new Deadheads kept cropping up — even after iconic guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia 's 1995 death — aided by cover bands and offshoots like Dead & Company.
'There are 18-year-olds who were obviously not even a twinkle in somebody's eyes when Jerry died, and these 18-year-olds get the values of Deadheads,' said former Grateful Dead publicist and author Dennis McNally.
Deadheads can reel off why and how, and the moment they fell in love with the music. Fans love that no two shows are the same; the band plays different songs each time. They also embrace the community that comes with a Dead show.
Sunshine Powers didn't have friends until age 13, when she stepped off a city bus and into the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
'I, all of a sudden, felt like I fit in. Or like I didn't have to fit in,' says Powers, now 45 and the owner of tie-dye emporium Love on Haight. 'I don't know which one it was, but I know it was like, OK."
Similarly, her friend Taylor Swope, 47, survived a tough freshman year at a new school with the help of a Grateful Dead mixtape. The owner of the Little Hippie gift shop is driving from Brooklyn, New York, to sell merchandise, reconnect with friends and see the shows.
'The sense of, 'I found my people, I didn't fit in anywhere else and then I found this, and I felt at home.' So that's a big part of it,' she said of the allure.
Sometimes, becoming a Deadhead is a process.
Thor Cromer, 60, had attended several Dead shows, but was ambivalent about the hippies. That changed on March 15, 1990, in Landover, Maryland.
'That show, whatever it was, whatever magic hit,' he said, 'it was injected right into my brain.'
Cromer, who worked for the U.S. Senate then, eventually took time off to follow the band on tour and saw an estimated 400 shows from spring 1990 until Garcia's death.
Cromer now works in technology and is flying in from Boston to join scores of fellow 'rail riders' who dance in the rows closest to the stage.
Aberdeen, 62, saw his first Dead show in 1984. As the only person in his college group with a driver's license, he was tapped to drive a crowded VW Bug from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, to Syracuse, New York.
'I thought it was pretty weird,' he said. 'But I liked it.'
He fell in love the following summer, when the Dead played a venue near his college.
Aberdeen remembers rain pouring down in the middle of the show and a giant rainbow appearing over the band when they returned for their second act. They played 'Comes a Time,' a rarely played Garcia ballad.
'There is a lot of excitement, and there will be a lot of people here,' Aberdeen said. 'Who knows when we'll have an opportunity to get together like this again?'
Fans were able to see Dead & Company in Las Vegas earlier this year, but no new dates have been announced. Guitarist Bob Weir is 77, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann are 81 and 79, respectively. Besides Garcia, founding members Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan on keyboards died in 1973 and bassist Phil Lesh died last year at age 84.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is not a Deadhead but counts 'Sugar Magnolia' as his favorite Dead song, is overjoyed at the economic boost as San Francisco recovers from pandemic-related hits to its tech and tourism sectors.
'They are the reason why so many people know and love San Francisco,' he said.
The weekend features parties, shows and celebrations throughout the city. Grahame Lesh & Friends will perform three nights starting Thursday. Lesh is the son of Phil Lesh.
On Friday, which would have been Garcia's 83rd birthday, officials will rename a street after the San Francisco native. On Saturday, visitors can celebrate the city's annual Jerry Day at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater located in a park near Garcia's childhood home.
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Japan Today
20 hours ago
- Japan Today
Fans toast Grateful Dead's 60th with concerts at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park
By JANIE HAR Fans of the Grateful Dead are pouring into San Francisco for three days of concerts and festivities marking the 60th anniversary of the scruffy jam band that came to embody a city where people wore flowers in their hair and made love, not war. Dead & Company, featuring original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, will play Golden Gate Park's Polo Field starting Friday with an estimated 60,000 attendees each day. The last time the band played that part of the park was in 1991 — a free show following the death of concert promoter and longtime Deadhead Bill Graham. Certainly, times have changed. A general admissions ticket for all three days is $635 — a shock for many longtime fans who remember when a joint cost more than a Dead concert ticket. But Deadhead David Aberdeen is thrilled anyway. 'This is the spiritual home of the Grateful Dead,' said Aberdeen, who works at Amoeba Music in the bohemian, flower-powered Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. 'It seems very right to me that they celebrate it in this way.' Formed in 1965, the Grateful Dead is synonymous with San Francisco and its counterculture. Members lived in a dirt-cheap Victorian in the Haight and later became a significant part of 1967's Summer of Love. That summer eventually soured into bad acid trips and police raids, and prompted the band's move to Marin County on the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge. But new Deadheads kept cropping up — even after iconic guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia 's 1995 death — aided by cover bands and offshoots like Dead & Company. 'There are 18-year-olds who were obviously not even a twinkle in somebody's eyes when Jerry died, and these 18-year-olds get the values of Deadheads,' said former Grateful Dead publicist and author Dennis McNally. Deadheads can reel off why and how, and the moment they fell in love with the music. Fans love that no two shows are the same; the band plays different songs each time. They also embrace the community that comes with a Dead show. Sunshine Powers didn't have friends until age 13, when she stepped off a city bus and into the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. 'I, all of a sudden, felt like I fit in. Or like I didn't have to fit in,' says Powers, now 45 and the owner of tie-dye emporium Love on Haight. 'I don't know which one it was, but I know it was like, OK." Similarly, her friend Taylor Swope, 47, survived a tough freshman year at a new school with the help of a Grateful Dead mixtape. The owner of the Little Hippie gift shop is driving from Brooklyn, New York, to sell merchandise, reconnect with friends and see the shows. 'The sense of, 'I found my people, I didn't fit in anywhere else and then I found this, and I felt at home.' So that's a big part of it,' she said of the allure. Sometimes, becoming a Deadhead is a process. Thor Cromer, 60, had attended several Dead shows, but was ambivalent about the hippies. That changed on March 15, 1990, in Landover, Maryland. 'That show, whatever it was, whatever magic hit,' he said, 'it was injected right into my brain.' Cromer, who worked for the U.S. Senate then, eventually took time off to follow the band on tour and saw an estimated 400 shows from spring 1990 until Garcia's death. Cromer now works in technology and is flying in from Boston to join scores of fellow 'rail riders' who dance in the rows closest to the stage. Aberdeen, 62, saw his first Dead show in 1984. As the only person in his college group with a driver's license, he was tapped to drive a crowded VW Bug from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, to Syracuse, New York. 'I thought it was pretty weird,' he said. 'But I liked it.' He fell in love the following summer, when the Dead played a venue near his college. Aberdeen remembers rain pouring down in the middle of the show and a giant rainbow appearing over the band when they returned for their second act. They played 'Comes a Time,' a rarely played Garcia ballad. 'There is a lot of excitement, and there will be a lot of people here,' Aberdeen said. 'Who knows when we'll have an opportunity to get together like this again?' Fans were able to see Dead & Company in Las Vegas earlier this year, but no new dates have been announced. Guitarist Bob Weir is 77, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann are 81 and 79, respectively. Besides Garcia, founding members Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan on keyboards died in 1973 and bassist Phil Lesh died last year at age 84. Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is not a Deadhead but counts 'Sugar Magnolia' as his favorite Dead song, is overjoyed at the economic boost as San Francisco recovers from pandemic-related hits to its tech and tourism sectors. 'They are the reason why so many people know and love San Francisco,' he said. The weekend features parties, shows and celebrations throughout the city. Grahame Lesh & Friends will perform three nights starting Thursday. Lesh is the son of Phil Lesh. On Friday, which would have been Garcia's 83rd birthday, officials will rename a street after the San Francisco native. On Saturday, visitors can celebrate the city's annual Jerry Day at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater located in a park near Garcia's childhood home. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The Mainichi
5 days ago
- The Mainichi
Edging Toward Japan: Chiharu Shiota: The strands of blood that both terrify and bind
Article and photos by Damian Flanagan The City of Bilbao, the capital of the Basque Country in the north of Spain, is a place that was famously rejuvenated and reinvigorated through art. Suffering industrial decline and depression, its grand Victorian buildings and riverside warehouses fell into neglect and dilapidation, and about 30 years ago I doubt that few people outside Spain had even heard of Spain's fifth largest urban area. But then like the goddess Athena suddenly descending onto the stage, one of Europe's most famously distinctive modern art galleries, the Guggenheim, was built in Bilbao and the city's fortunes were transformed. Bilbao became a tourist Mecca, a must-see, and with the infusion of tourist dollars came a rediscovery of all the other great things Bilbao has got to offer -- its bustling medieval quarter and its grand central boulevard (that is quite the match of anywhere in Paris) and its delightful parks and Opera House and riverside walks. Bilbao is a lot to take in and a lot of fun. My younger daughter and I hired bikes and breezed about the lanes of the city in the hot days of early summer, reserving energy for the hard yards of the Guggenheim and other galleries. We obediently weaved our way between labyrinthine concrete walls, and exhaustive displays of abstract expressionism, a loan exhibition of five centuries of art from Budapest, and caverns of multi-media installations. And then we got to the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao and had centuries of local Basque artists to get through. By Day Three, I was thinking, "If I have to look at another painting..." We were back cycling past an intriguing building, the Azkuna Zentroa, an old wine market in the centre of the city that had lain derelict for three decades and been renovated into a kind of interior forum with shops, auditorium, library, fitness centre and exhibition space. There was a show on by a Japanese artist I had never heard of called Chiharu Shiota and so, with almost heavy heart, I felt professionally obliged to descend into the bowels of the building and give some more art a go. I'm glad I did so because it turned out to be the most outstandingly memorable exhibit of everything we saw in Bilbao. The expansive foyer of the building was punctuated by a crimson clue -- completely unnoticed by me as we entered -- to what was coming: billowing blood red lengths of cloth, like sails in the sky. Downstairs in the exhibit proper, you first enter a large room containing a house completely conjured from vibrant red thread. Another room leads you on a pathway around a community of dwelling-like spaces, all composed of red threads. The effect is a curious one. You feel a sense of calm and something soothing, while yet being aware that the red threads hint at capillaries of blood. Are the strands really meant to signify blood, that most unsettling of substances, or was that simply my imagination making an unwarranted connection? And why, then, is the effect so calming? When you enter the third room, all starts to becomes clear. We move back in time to the beginning of Shiota's career and a long-standing connection to the obsessive theme of "blood". Trying to uncover a deeper reality in her artworks, Shiota hit upon the idea that she was showing a calm, socialized, pleasant face to the world while something far more disturbing and terrifying lurked inside her psyche. Her facade of creamy skin was hiding the explosive, painful potentiality of blood that was her true inner essence. Shiota's inspiration was to expose the primeval and interior, so she first dressed the human body in a white surplice daubed with the messy confusion of blood, like a sacrificial victim, and then stripped naked, daubed in blood, and rolled in the muddy earth. This is art that is literally baring all, stripping away artifice and taking considerable risks. This is not the gentle art some might stereotypically expect from a Japanese artist. But then I noted that Shiota, now a longstanding resident of Berlin, originally hails from Osaka. And as anyone familiar with that metropolis will know, the people of Osaka are a brand apart -- grittier, more outspoken, funnier and far "earthier" than many of their Japanese compatriots. Having explored her theme of being defined by an interior narrative of "blood", Shiota developed the subject in numerous intriguing ways. There is a picture of an hour glass composed of blood-like particles as if our entire lives are measured by each dripping pulse of blood, and a large hanging installation of what looks like the organs of menstruation. Proceed into the fourth and final room and we discover a hospital bed set up with a drip, hinting at the rites of both our bloody entrance and often our exits from the world, and finally an entire labyrinth of tubing to walk around, pulsating with a blood-like substance connected to a heart-like pump, the ultimate exteriorisation of the blood networks contained, mostly unconsciously, within our mortal frame. It's an unnerving and sobering space to contemplate the mechanics of your own existence. In a world obsessed with classifications of skin into White, Black and Brown, you are suddenly acutely aware that the true hidden colour of all human beings is, underneath it all, Red. I was reminded of the words of Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice", "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" You wander back through all this visceral "blood-art" to the rooms in which you entered and contemplate again why that community of dwellings made up of blood-red threads appears as so strangely soothing. And then it came to me. Because blood as well as signifying pain and mortality is also the means by which we construct families, homes and communities. Blood ties are most frequently the means by which a home is kept together, through birth and death just as much as the physical materials hold together the buildings themselves. Having the company and support of people with whom we share familial blood is a foundation stone of society, and can ground and comfort us from the slings and arrows of a sometimes hostile exterior world, and a sometimes precarious solitary interior existence. "Blood runs thicker than water" runs the adage, and you can reflect on that ancient wisdom as you perceive the means by which Shiota has skillfully sublimated an unnerving landscape of self-questioning "blood-art" into an affirmative outer protective womb of blood threads. I read afterwards that Shiota often personally works on the construction of the installations, labouring through the night to get them finished on time, as if the very process of construction is an integral part of the artistic journey. I imagined her "sweating blood" to ensure her blood threads were knitted together on time. This blood-red contemplation of the true nature of existence is one assuredly worth taking. @DamianFlanagan (This is Part 67 of a series) In this column, Damian Flanagan, a researcher in Japanese literature, ponders about Japanese culture as he travels back and forth between Japan and Britain. Profile: Damian Flanagan is an author and critic born in Britain in 1969. He studied in Tokyo and Kyoto between 1989 and 1990 while a student at Cambridge University. He was engaged in research activities at Kobe University from 1993 through 1999. After taking the master's and doctoral courses in Japanese literature, he earned a Ph.D. in 2000. He is now based in both Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and Manchester. He is the author of "Natsume Soseki: Superstar of World Literature" (Sekai Bungaku no superstar Natsume Soseki).
Japan Times
09-10-2024
- Japan Times
To win back audiences, put more Asians behind the camera
"Crazy Rich Asians" was a standout cinematic and commercial success, but a rare one. Asian representation on screen may have improved in recent years, but to capitalize on growing audiences, we need to be behind the cameras as well. Ignoring this market means potentially writing off billions of dollars in lost revenue, but also, importantly, neglecting genuine storylines. The industry is losing out at a time when it can ill-afford to do so. Betting on Asian talent would help. Global cinema revenue is on track to recover from the COVID-19 downturn, but not as fast as executives would like. It's only in 2026 that sales are expected to surpass 2019 levels, which were peaking in 2018 when "Crazy Rich Asians" appeared. Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu, who starred in Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," is acutely aware of the mismatch between talent and plum projects. He's the studio's first Asian superhero, and yet despite his success is struggling to break through with more meaningful roles. At the Milken Asia Summit in Singapore last month, he bemoaned the lack of available scripts for actors like him. It was a similar refrain from actor Michelle Yeoh, whom I interviewed last year ahead of her Oscar win for the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once." "What I'm asking for,' she told me, "is the privilege to compete.' That this debate is still a thing in 2024, even after the success of "Shogun," "Squid Game" and "Sacred Games," tells you just how much discrimination still exists in the entertainment industry. Still, there has been progress. Research conducted by the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which looks at the diversity of movies in front of and behind the camera, surveyed 1,700 films between 2007 and 2023. It found that Asian representation on screen had soared to 18.4% from 3.4%. That increase makes a real difference to audiences in the region. Another study conducted in 2023 by McKinsey & Company and Gold House, a firm investing in and amplifying the Asian diaspora, found there was a higher representation of on-screen talent when at least one or more Asian or Pacific Islanders were part of the senior creative team. It's not just about authenticity, Bing Chen, the chief executive of Gold House told me. It also makes business sense. "The majority of audiences are multicultural, women and people of color,' he said. Crass stereotypes of Asian characters are costing studios money. Often, women are portrayed as sex objects, tiger moms or dragon ladies. Men on the other hand, are depicted as geeks, weak or undesirable. The McKinsey study interviewed 1,000 Asian and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. and found that nearly half of them would spend more cash and consume more content, if they saw their own experiences better reflected in stories they watched. Based on the current demographic trends, total additional spending could rise to approximately $4 billion to $8 billion a year by 2060. That's a lot of dollars to leave on the table. There are concrete steps that studios and content makers can take to tap into what could be a multibillion-dollar moment. The easiest would be to elevate Asian voices at the decision-making level, when projects are first commissioned. Increasing financial support for diverse projects and their creators would also help. This means recognizing the potential in a script that perhaps won't have big Hollywood names attached to it, as well as finding marketing funds to help boost its revenue and reach. No blockbuster is an island — the promotional dollars spent on creating a buzz around a film are often just as important as the movie itself. It is always easier to revert to what you know, particularly in an uncertain economic environment. Making movies that studios believe are likely to bring them a guaranteed hit — Walt Disney's "Deadpool" & "Wolverine" franchise for instance, or cute romcoms with Hollywood's sweethearts — are all back with a vengeance. And for good reason, they are highly entertaining and worth your time. But the stories that reflect the aspirations of more than half the world's population deserve a chance to be told, too. You can't be what you can't see.
