The 50th-anniversary celebrations for The Grateful Dead are well underway. Reaching the height of their fame in the United States, the Dead were the embodiment of San Francisco’s proto-hippy sound in the ‘60s and are still regarded by many as the last legendary American band. They often played alongside Big Brother & The Holding Cie at the Acid Test parties organised by The Merry Pranksters’, where mass usage of LSD – which was still legal in California – was the name of the game. Following their purely psychedelic debut album, the band then released the experimental Anthem of the Sun and the trippy but expensive to produce Aoxomoxoa, before changing course completely and turning to country-folk music. Indeed, by 1970 the hippie movement was in its twilight years. Inspired by Crosby, Stills and Nash & Young, the band’s iconic guitarist Jerry Garcia decided to play in a different register and toned down his hypnotic guitar riffs, reviving his bluegrass roots and playing the pedal steel guitar instead. The band had to record their album Workingman’s Dead during some lengthy jam sessions at the Pacific High Recording Studio in San Francisco in a total of just nine days due to their financial situation. In a clever mix of frantic beats such as New Speedway Boogie and shorter folk and country tracks like Uncle John’s Band, the album thrills some and confuses others. Likewise, its companion album American Beauty, which is considered their greatest album, followed suit a few months later. To celebrate its 50th anniversary this 70’s classic has been remastered into two CDs and features live, previously unreleased material from a concert in the Capitol Theatre, New York, in 1970 – that’s more than enough for their diehard fans – the Deadheads – to feast on! © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz