Blow your mind with this highly prized, mint-condition Acid Test-ed offering from 1965
On May 5, 1965, a band called the Warlocks made its debut at a Bay Area pizza joint. It was an inauspicious debut for the men — Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Bill Kreutzmann and, eventually, Phil Lesh — who, six months later, would rename themselves the Grateful Dead (and sound like this.)
Keepsakes from those early days of the Dead are extraordinarily hard to come by. But one of the most coveted, celebrated and reprinted — the very first poster to advertise a Grateful Dead show — comes available during Heritage Auction’s Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Signature Auction to be held in Dallas April 4 and 5.
As you can see, this mint-condition poster is far more than just a concert handball.
It’s the veritable history of the San Francisco scene scrawled and sprawled across one groovy, mint-condition sheet of paper. It’s an acid flashback bearing the names of the Merry Pranksters who Acid Test-ed the limits of the mind and the music that came after: Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, The Fugs Roy’s Audio Optics, Movies and, of course, the Dead.
“It is the seminal psychedelic concert poster in music history,” says Heritage Auction’s Pete Howard, Consignment Director for Entertainment & Music, in the history lesson below. “Just an absolute masterpiece of psychedelic art.”
The Grateful Dead’s “Can You Pass the Acid Test?” 1965 poster, the best of its kind ever offered at auction, is available at Heritage Auction’s Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Signature Auction April 4 and 5.