when did the grateful dead change their name
Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead began their career as the Warlocks, a group formed in early 1965 from the remnants of a Palo Alto, California jug band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions.[20] The band's first show was at Magoo's Pizza located at 639 Santa Cruz Avenue in suburban Menlo Park, California, on May 5, 1965. They were initially known as the Warlocks; coincidentally, the Velvet Underground (similarly influenced by avant-garde music) was also using that name on the East Coast.[21][22] The show was not recorded but the set list has been preserved. Gigging as a bar band,[23] the group quickly changed its name after finding out that another band of the same name (not the Velvet Underground, who by then had also changed their name) had signed a recording contract. The first show under the new name Grateful Dead was in San Jose, California on December 4, 1965, at one of Ken Kesey's Acid Tests.[24][25][26] Earlier demo tapes have survived, but the first of over 2,000 concerts known to have been recorded by the band's fans was a show at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on January 8, 1966.[27] Later that month, the Grateful Dead played at the Trips Festival, an early psychedelic rock concert.[28]