Grateful Dead - Dawn of the Dead - DVD

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 American forms such as folk, country, blues and rock & roll with new sounds - often developed under the influence of psychoactive 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. Covering too 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, temporarily, set San Francisco aside as a 1960s Shangri-La.

Featuring brand new interviews with Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully; the Dead's experimental pioneer, Tom 'T.C.' Constanten; Big Brother's Peter Albin; Mike Willhelm from The Charlatans; publicist and official Dead biographer, Dennis McNally; GD author, journalist and DJ (host to this day of 'The Grateful Dead Hour'), David Gans; Merry Prankster and Ken Kesey collaborator, Kenn 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.