Grateful Dead - Grateful Dead At The Hollywood Festival (2010)

As John Peel so rightly says Hollywood Festival and the arrival of the Grateful Dead for their first performance in the UK was a defining moment. The late sixties / early seventies counter culture and music scene in the UK had always aspired to West Coast USA bands and their ideology of large outdoor concerts. North West England with a strong counter culture, arts and music scene would go on after Hollywood Festival in subsequent years to see festival events and large outdoor rock concerts no longer just held in the south of England.

In the same spirit as the Grateful Dead and crowd gathering at Hollywood in1970 the North West would go on to stage Bickershaw Festival 1972 (Grateful Dead again) , Deeply Vale Festivals 1976-1979, Rivington Pike Free Festival 1976 and 1977, the Northern Carnival Against the Nazis, Alexandra Park Manchester 1978, and the Northern Carnival Against Cruise Missiles, Alexandra Park Manchester 1981. Some archive film exists of these other great music/counter culture events and if they haven’t been covered yet by DVD they may well be soon. Thanks to the late Mr Burgoyne of Burgoyne Film and Audio Services the audio and the film footage of The Grateful Dead (Free, Family and Screaming Lord Sutch ) at the Hollywood Festival 1970 was recorded for posterity. Added to Mr Burgoyne's film was some footage supplied by Mr Colover. Originally archived by Burgoyne Film and Audio the whole lot was then forgotten for a few years but it has now finally seen the light of day with what bits of Grateful Dead film and stills there were, being integrated with the Burgoyne Grateful Dead sound recording in an artistic way. This is not a big budget Woodstock movie production but it is an important glimpse at archive film and audio of the Grateful Dead's first visit to the UK.

Put together by Burgoyne Film and Audio Services using their archive sound recordings of the event plus their rare film footage combined with Bob Colover’s short bits of film and incorporating rare stills of the event what you have is a document of the first time the Grateful Dead came to play in the UK – fairly wacky disjointed film though it is in some parts as someone in the Grateful Dead’s entourage spiked everyone involved on filming the event with LSD!!!!.

A bonus CD from the mixing desk is also included of the Grateful Dead’s set. The DVD is NTSC region 0. A total of 17 live Grateful Dead tracks, 5 on the film and 12 on the CD. DVD running time 1 hour 11 mins, CD audio running time 1 hour 14 minutes. The tracks on the CD are different to those on the DVD.