So we dug that for a while, and then they played it out and we took over and spent the whole night doing that there. It was a little bit later when we started running the halls, and they came on with us to be part of the scene and play along with us. We set up in a place that was empty—they would set up on one end and we would set up on the other.

We showed the movies on the wall. Roy Sebern was probably one of the first ever to do a light show, which he developed. Sometimes they played, sometimes we played and sometimes we would play at the same time. We had movies going on all at the same time. Then there were two plastic trash cans in the middle of the floor with Kool Aid, and one trash can said, “For Kids: OK” and the other said, “Adults Only: No Kids.” We never knew or ever cared who did it, but somebody would fill the adult one with LSD.

One funny myth that has grown is that we were purveyors of LSD, and the bus trip was all about us going across the country and giving out LSD to everybody, but we never did that. We only used it ourselves. We never paid attention to where it was coming from or who was doing it. We did have one rule about the Acid Test—we said that everyone should stay until dawn because we didn’t want anybody running around out on the streets, acting loony and drawing attention.

So it just developed from that and then, at some point [November 1965], Jerry Garcia opened up a page [in a Funk & Wagnalls dictionary], stuck out his finger and from then on, they were the Grateful Dead.

Jerry Garcia said that part of the beauty of the Acid Tests was that the band could play or not play and it didn’t really matter. Either was acceptable and the band took a lot away from that in the long run.



Well yeah, because there were no stages. We would just set up on the floor, and of course, the audience was on the floor. There was a thing that really happened during that time where the barrier between the audience and the band was not there. A lot of times during those Acid Tests there would be a lot of people banging and playing on things; bringing their own noisemakers and all that, so it would be the whole place going. We had one Acid Test at the Fillmore where there was a stage, and the other place there was a stage was the Trips Festival. That was a three-day event, and we were one night—the Dead, and the Pranksters. We did our show there.