Deadheads: An American Subculture

CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing "Dancin' in the Streets" on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park. The Hippie Temptation!

This project was done with humor, truth, and sarcasm. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, UCSC, where I went to college, there were many fans of The Grateful Dead. They called themselves Deadheads. I had not heard of the band before attending the school. I listened to the music, and I didn't understand why people felt so passionately about the band. I was intrigued. So in 1986, I decided to try and understand these people and the music they loved, and to create a video of my quest. This documentary project is the result. Enjoy.

Drop out of school to ride with the Merry Pranksters. Form America’s most enduring jam band. Become a family man and father. Never stop chasing the muse. Bob Weir took his own path to and through superstardom as rhythm guitarist for The Grateful Dead. Mike Fleiss re-imagines the whole wild journey in this magnetic rock doc and concert film, with memorable input from bandmates, contemporaries, followers, family, and, of course, the inimitable Bob Weir himself.

Recorded on Shakedown Street in Albany, NY during Grateful Dead's Summer Tour, 1992.

In 1993, Grateful Dead took the stage at Buckeye Lake Music Center in Hebron, OH. On hand that night was Peter Shapiro, at the time a Northwestern film student spending a month on summer tour alongside cameraman Philip Bruell. The Buckeye Lake show opens and the Heads document the swelling Dead scene.

This documentary explores the Deadhead phenomenon. For thirty years, Jerry Garcia played guitar and sang for the Grateful Dead, and by doing so, inspired a modern cultural phenomenon: the legions of nomadic fans that made a communal way of life out of following Jerry and the Dead, the Deadheads. The End of the Road began shooting three months prior to Garcia's death in 1995, on the road with the wandering family of Deadheads- on what would be the final tour with Jerry and the Grateful Dead. Featuring a soundtrack by Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia, the film celebrates this social, political and cultural movement in its twilight.

A short documentary about the Grateful Dead's legendary May 8, 1977 show at Barton Hall at Cornell University.

The tale of the Grateful Dead is inspiring, complicated, and downright messy. A tribe of contrarians, they made art out of open-ended chaos and inadvertently achieved success on their own terms. Never-before-seen footage and interviews offer this unprecedented and unvarnished look at the life of the Dead.

The Grateful Dead performs live at Winterland in San Francisco in October 1974.

View from the Vault, Volume One, sometimes known simply as View from the Vault, is the first release in a series of DVDs and companion soundtracks by the Grateful Dead known as "View from the Vault". The audio is taken from the soundboard and the video from the video screens at the concerts. The first volume was recorded and filmed at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh on July 8, 1990 with bonus material recorded two days earlier at Cardinal Stadium, Louisville. The set was certified Gold by the RIAA on February 2, 2001.

Jerry Garcia, legendary lead guitarist for the Grateful Dead and David Grisman, virtuoso mandolinist and founder of "Dawg" music… Now, for the first time ever, the musical matrimony and extraordinary friendship of Garcia and Grisman is traced in the award-winning documentary Grateful Dawg.