if you haven’t caught this yet, i think you should check it out. it is an extremely well produced documentary on the grateful dead. i saw it on the big screen at its debut, and have since then watched it via amazon at least a couple of times. i say ‘least’, because the streaming version is conveniently broken up into bite size pieces, usually around 45 minutes each. some segments i have watched more than others. it clocks in at four hours and is filled with all kinds of footage, some never before seen, plus an almost never ending soundtrack. for fans of the band, it is almost not long enough. for people not familiar with them, it might get a little long, but if you are an overall music fan and are interested in the culture of the sixties and seventies, i think you will find the story very compelling. for at the end of the day (and even though the band would dismiss such a notion), the grateful dead were very much an embodiment of the counterculture of those two decades. the documentary is not a glossy portrait of the band – it is an honest and thorough glimpse into the wonders and the dangers of a rock and roll life. they remain, in my mind, one of the quintessential american bands of all time.