{"id":67550,"date":"2025-11-24T12:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/67550\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T12:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:57:07","slug":"grateful-dead-gets-plaque-commemorating-famed-first-show-in-san-jose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/67550\/","title":{"rendered":"Grateful Dead gets plaque commemorating famed first show in San Jose"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Grateful Dead<\/a> will forever be associated with San Francisco, the epicenter of the \u201960s hippie movement in which the band did indeed play a prominent role during its less-than-two-year stay at 710 Ashbury St.<\/p>\n

But the first official Grateful Dead show<\/a> was actually performed some 65 miles south of Haight Ashbury in San Jose on Dec. 4, 1965. It\u2019s a relatively little-known fact, which isn\u2019t all that surprising given the amount of times that this legendary psychedelic rock group<\/a> \u2014 which was actually born in the Palo Alto\/Menlo Park area \u2014 has been marketed as a \u201cSan Francisco band.\u201d<\/p>\n

That could change on Dec. 4 when City of San Jose officials plan to finally unveil a plaque at City Hall \u2014 60 years after that historic first Grateful Dead<\/a> concert took place \u2014 celebrating the connection between the Bay Area\u2019s most populous city and the most-famous jam band of all time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about more than commemorating a concert \u2014 it\u2019s about recognizing San Jose\u2019s pivotal role in music history,\u201d said Dan Orloff, founder and \u201cchief rock officer\u201d of San Jose Rocks, the nonprofit organization spearheading the plaque campaign. \u201cThis is where the Grateful Dead<\/a> first played under that name, and this plaque will ensure that story lives on for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ceremony, announced today, will see city officials place the plaque outside on the south-facing wall of the City Council Chambers building \u2014 near where the first Grateful Dead show went down in a home located at 38 S. Fifth Street. The dedication ceremony, which includes speakers and entertainment, begins at 4:45 p.m. and is open to the public. For more information, visit sanjoserocks.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The event has been a decade in the making by the San Jose Rocks team \u2014 namely, Orloff and fellow music lover Mark Purdy, a now-retired longtime Bay Area News Group sports columnist.<\/p>\n

Purdy sees this project as another important step in helping people recognize the roles that cities not named San Francisco played in creating Bay Area music history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to me how much of San Francisco music didn\u2019t start in San Francisco,\u201d says Purdy, who Orloff calls San Jose Rock\u2019s \u201cchief fact-finding officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

For instance, those beginnings include: Creedence Clearwater Revival (started in El Cerrito), the Doobie Brothers (San Jose), Jefferson Airplane (huge ties to San Jose, Santa Clara and Palo Alto), Sly and the Family Stone (Vallejo) and Moby Grape (ties to San Jose).<\/p>\n

\u201cI get it \u2014 San Francisco was the postcard city and where the bigger venues were located,\u201d Purdy says. \u201cBut if you learn the history, certainly more than half of the bands \u2014 I would say 75 percent \u2014 started outside of San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s certainly the case with the Grateful Dead, which can trace its origin back to a Palo Alto-based outfit known as Mother McCree\u2019s Uptown Jug Champions.<\/p>\n

The Dead, as music fans would come to know it \u2014 with vocalist-guitarist Jerry Garcia, vocalist-guitarist Bob Weir, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, vocalist-keyboardist Ron \u201cPigpen\u201d McKernan and bassist Phil Lesh \u2014 really took flight in mid-1965, playing its first gig under the name of The Warlocks at Magoo\u2019s Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park.<\/p>\n

Yet, Lesh \u2014 who did not attend that first show \u2014 soon discovered that there was already at least one other band named The Warlocks. (Interestingly, another future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame act from the same era \u2014 the Velvet Underground \u2014 also got its start as The Warlocks).<\/p>\n

So, the group chose a new name \u2014 the now iconic Grateful Dead moniker \u2014 just in time to play that Dec. 4 gig at a 19th-century Victorian house on a San Jose lot that is now home to City Hall.<\/p>\n

The Dead debut doubled as the first real public \u201cAcid Test,\u201d a series of parties built around the collective use of the psychedelic drug LSD. These events \u2014 captured so vividly in the 1968 Tom Wolfe book \u201cThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test\u201d \u2014 were hosted by \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest\u201d author Ken Kesey and his famed Merry Pranksters brigade.<\/p>\n

They came to San Jose to host a large-scale public Acid Test, following a smaller debut event held about a week earlier at a home in Soquel. The hope was to capitalize on the foot traffic surrounding the two big Rolling Stones concerts happening just down the street at the San Jose Civic on Dec. 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about that \u2014 you had the Grateful Dead\u2019s first show on the same night when the Rolling Stones were playing five blocks away,\u201d Purdy comments.<\/p>\n

Kesey\u2019s crew merrily handed out flyers asking, \u201cCan you pass the acid test?<\/a> \u2014 and directing people to 38 S. Fifth St. if they wanted to give it a try. (LSD was still legal at that point.) There is only one known surviving copy of that flyer, according to Orloff, and it will be on display at City Hall during the Dec. 4 event.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to return that (flyer) to where it was 60 years ago,\u201d Orloff says.<\/p>\n

The flyer may be there, but the house definitely won\u2019t. That historic house that stood at 38 S. 5th St. \u2014 which was long thought to have been destroyed in a fire \u2014 was actually moved to 390 N. 4th St. to make room for the creation of the City Hall facility.<\/p>\n

\"File<\/a>File Photo: The house where the Grateful Dead played its first concert (as the Grateful Dead) nearly 50 years ago sits guarded by a dog on St. James Street in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. At the time of the concert on Dec. 4, 1965, the house was located on South Fifth Street until it was moved to make way for the new San Jose City Hall. (Karl Mondon\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, music lovers can now make plans to visit the site, and what they\u2019ll soon see is a plaque commemorating one of the key moments in Bay Area music history.<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Jose owns a very significant piece of the Grateful Dead\u2019s story,\u201d Purdy says. \u201cThis is the true and exact 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. That\u2019s very cool and worth celebrating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Grateful Dead will forever be associated with San Francisco, the epicenter of the \u201960s hippie movement in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,7,2644,4978,1533,181,330,8257,8258,88,90,89,198,200,420],"class_list":{"0":"post-67550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-concerts","11":"tag-downtown-san-jose","12":"tag-keywee","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-pop-music","16":"tag-rock-music","17":"tag-san-jose","18":"tag-san-jose-headlines","19":"tag-san-jose-news","20":"tag-santa-clara-county","21":"tag-south-bay","22":"tag-things-to-do"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}