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Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia recording an early album in 1966. Photo courtesy of Roberto Rabanne.

The summer of 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of “The Summer of Love,” when over 100,000 people, largely consisting of post-beat-generation youth who came to be known as “hippies,” converged on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood. The summer came to be defined by experimental rhetoric against the government, experimental drugs consumed by fans and musicians alike, and experimental music, performed at festivals like the now-legendary Monterey Pop Festival by groups like The Who, The Grateful Dead, The Animals, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. The 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love also coincides with the Anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s exponential rise to fame, as masterfully portrayed in Amir Bar-Lev’s six-part documentary on the band, “Long Strange Trip,” executive produced by Martin Scorsese and released in January 2017.  (more…)