With tickets for the final Grateful Dead shows selling out in minutes, the surviving members of the rock legends on Thursday announced an additional concert joined by fellow stars.
The concert entitled "Dear Jerry" -- a tribute to Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995 -- will take place on May 14 at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, an outdoor music venue in Maryland between Baltimore and Washington.
The Grateful Dead, who emerged from the 1960s California hippy scene to create the "Deadhead" subculture of free-spirited fans who followed them, earlier announced three final concerts together on the July 4 weekend in Chicago.
Unlike the Chicago series, "Dear Jerry" is not billed as a Grateful Dead show but all four surviving members -- Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir -- are scheduled to perform either alone or with side projects.
Other acts scheduled to appear include Bruce Hornsby, the pianist and singer who has frequently collaborated with the Grateful Dead, Los Angeles Chicano rockers Los Lobos, Southern psychedelic rockers Widespread Panic, fellow jam band Moe and country music star Eric Church.
Keith Wortman, the executive producer of the show, said that the concert -- like the Chicago shows -- is aimed at celebrating 50 years of the Grateful Dead, but with a special focus on Garcia.
"His songs made us happy just to be alive," he said in a statement.
Nearly 500,000 people scrambled for tickets online for the Grateful Dead's Chicago shows when they went on sale Saturday, in a record for vendor Ticketmaster.
The Grateful Dead's staff is still wading through thousands of mailed money orders sent by fans as the band kept up its traditional way of selling tickets from the pre-Internet era.
Prices have soared for resold tickets. Three-day passes, which originally started at $194, were selling Thursday on the StubHub resale site for no less than $1,165, with two vendors of close-up tickets asking for more than $116,000.
Source: AFP