Your 4/20 present has arrived: It’s The Grateful Dead, who’ve now officially joined TikTok.
According to a press release, The Grateful Dead’s TikTok account “will serve as an outlet to celebrate the decades of music, generations of community, and endless array of creativity that has woven the band and its fans into every new era of the world’s counterculture and consciousness.” We estimate that good chunk of Deadheads are probably too old to use TikTok, but we digress.
The band’s first post on the platform is 30-second video compiling archival concert footage, candid scenes from Shakedown Street, handmade artwork, and more throughout the decades, from their beginnings in the late 1960s to their final shows in 1995 just days before founding member Jerry Garcia’s death.
Soundtracked by a remastered 1969 live recording of their song “St. Stephen” at San Francisco’s Fillmore West, the clip begins with a TV interviewer asking Garcia: “People are crazy about The Grateful Dead. How can you account for that?” Garcia’s response: “What’s the question? Say it again, real slow.”
Follow The Grateful Dead on TikTok and check out their inaugural post below.
As far as other unlikely artists who’ve found their way to TikTok, The Grateful Dead now join the likes of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Mick Fleetwood, Radiohead, and The Beatles.
Editor’s Note: While you’re at it, follow Consequence on TikTok, too.
@gratefuldead Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right ⚡️💀🌹
♬ St. Stephen (Live at the Fillmore West San Francisco, 1969) [2001 Remaster] – Grateful Dead