Grateful Dead was born 50 years ago in ... San Jose?

[KamaAina]

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_29187212/grateful-dead-was-born-50-years-ago-san

Rock 'n' roll took a mind-bending turn 50 years ago at an unassuming 19th-century Victorian house on a San Jose lot that's now home to City Hall.

It was there, on Dec. 4, 1965, that the Grateful Dead was officially born.

Yes, San Jose. The legendary band forever associated with San Francisco had already been gigging in the South Bay and Peninsula as The Warlocks and before that as a Palo Alto-based outfit known as Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. But it wasn't just the new name that made the Dec. 4 concert so significant. It was also its role in the first real public "Acid Test," a series of parties built around the collective use of the psychedelic drug LSD, hosted by "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" author Ken Kesey and his network of friends, artists, writers and musicians called the Merry Pranksters.

The melding of rock and LSD at these parties/social experiments, considered a watershed moment in the birth of the hippie movement, had a huge impact on the Dead, shaping its psychedelic rock sound and, perhaps more important, its foundation for the communal concert experience and the close-knit collective of fans it created.

So we have made a contribution to civilization besides the Doobie Brothers, the Eggo waffle, and competitive eaters Joey Chestnut and Matt Stonie! Oh, and I'm going to City Hall this very afternoon!

[Scuba]

1. Go Banana Slugs!!!

[KamaAina]

2. I thought it was "FIAT SLUG!".

I know a handful of UCSC grads.

[ghostsinthemachine]

3. The house actually exists, it was moved....

Big Nig's House, 43 S. Fifth Street, house moved to 635 St. James St.(Naglee Park), San Jose, CA
Big Nig's House
43 S. Fifth Street moved to 635 St. James Street (Naglee Park)
San Jose, California

Capacity 400
43 S. Fifth St., San Jose -- One of the world's most historic rock-'n'-roll sites. On Dec. 4, 1965, the Grateful Dead played its first gig here at an "Acid Test" organized by author and LSD advocate 
Ken Kesey. The Rolling Stones played a concert at San Jose Civic Auditorium earlier in the evening, and Kesey's followers handed out fliers inviting concertgoers to the DayGlo party at a large house 
near San Jose State University. A band from Palo Alto formerly known as the Warlocks provided the entertainment after changing its name to the Grateful Dead a few weeks earlier. The entire episode is 
documented in Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." In former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman's autobiography, he writes that Keith Richards and Brian Jones also dropped by the party. Later, the place served as local headquarters for the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The house was moved when San Jose's new City Hall was constructed.

635 St. James St., San Jose -- New location of the Acid Test/Grateful Dead house. The San Jose Redevelopment Agency moved it here when a buyer offered to renovate the 1895 Victorian if it were moved to this lot. The interior renovation is under way, but the exterior has been redone spectacularly. Bill Ekern, the agency's director of project management, had no clue of the structure's past while he supervised the move. "I'll have to go back and read Wolfe's book," Ekern said. 
"We made a decision to save as many of the homes on the City Hall site as possible, and I'm glad." Another former resident of the house, Ron Cook, says it later was the home for his band, 
Throckmorton. Cook and his pals filled the basement walls with sand to create a soundproof rehearsal space, and it became a virtual open house for many musicians, including Moby Grape member Skip Spence, the future Doobie Brothers and Stevie Nicks, then a San Jose State student.[9]
MORE HERE: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/house-address-unknown-san-jose-ca.html

[ghostsinthemachine]

4. Love the description in "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test"

"Yeah, I mean like, for the rent, man," says Big Nig, "you already blown six fuses."
Blown! Six Fuses! Garcia sticks his hand into his electric guitar and the notes come out like a huge orange laugh all blown fuses electric spark leaps in colors upon the glistening sea of faces. It's a freaking laugh and a half. A new star is being born, like the lightbulb in the womb, and Big Nig wants the rent--A new star being born, a new planet forming, Ahura Mazda blazing in the world womb, here, before our very eyes--and Big Nig, the poor pathetic spade, wants his rent.
A freaking odd thought, that one. A big funky spade looking pathetic and square. For twenty years in the hip life. Negroes never even looked square. They were the archtypal soul figures. But what is Soul, or Funky, or Cool, or Baby---in the new world of the ecstacy, the All-one...the kairos…"[4]

[KamaAina]

5. Big Nig?! And no way is St. James St. Naglee Park.

That's where my landlords live, south of Santa Clara St. and east of San Jose State.

[ghostsinthemachine]

6. Happy Birthday Guys!

thanks for the life.

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/127232/Happy-50th-Anniversary-Of-The-Name-Grateful-Dead