On Saturday, Feb 23, David Gans will walk into the studio at the Berkeley-based KPFA and put on a song by the Grateful Dead, thereby launching a 16-hour Dead marathon popular around the world. It will be the 27^th time Gans has hosted the marathon, a fundraiser that nets thousands of dollars each year for the radio station.

Gans is now a Grateful Dead expert with a weekly syndicated radio show highlighting the band’s music. He is also the author of Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead, among other books, and a guitarist and accomplished songwriter. As Gans prepared for the Grateful Deal marathon, which will run from Sat. at 9 am to Sunday at 1 a.m. at 94.1 FM, Berkeleyside asked him how he started to love the band and why the music is so enduring.

When and where was the first time you heard the Grateful Dead? At what point did you fall in love with their music? And after having listened to it for decades, how have you not grown tired of the music?
My roommate and songwriting partner dragged me to a show on March 5, 1972. I found it attractive enough that I started listening to the records, and when the Dead came back to the Bay Area in August of that year I went to four shows in a week. … Continue reading »