Melissa Goldberg first fell under the spell of the Grateful Dead at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Even though the Grateful Dead were sandwiched between the Who's Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing finale and Jimi Hendrix's electric guitar explosion, the Dead's long, intricate riffs captured Melissa's attention.

Two months earlier she had abruptly left home and college behind in Madison, Wisconsin, to be part of the 1967 Summer of Love celebration well underway in San Francisco, California.

Her father, a heart surgeon, and her mother, an English literature professor, had insisted that they knew what was best for their 19-year-old daughter.

Melissa disagreed.

She knew in her heart that now was the time to discover the rest of the world.

She had grown up happy and well cared for in Madison; she even looked forward to the harsh winters when her snow-covered neighborhood felt at peace with itself.

Then came the Vietnam War and America's invasion of that Asian country.

Vietnam was but the first of many crimes that she had discovered during her freshman year: the virtual slavery of Negroes in Mississippi, the corruption of the industrial military complex, and the nation's materialistic obsession that robbed poor countries of opportunity.

Melissa even came to realize that her parents—who had attended her every dance recital and piano performance—were part of the problem.

She had been raised by the enemy.

Even the cold winters seemed oppressive now.

To prove her purity, she gave away all her possessions to the Salvation Army while home from college one weekend.

Her father's response was swift and clear: He took away her car, further proving that America's ruling class was willing to do anything to crush rebellion.

So initially, she let her parents catch her smoking marijuana.

They first threatened to take her to the police: “I will not have illegal drugs in my house,” her father had shouted as loudly as he could.

Then they invited a friend for dinner, who turned out to be a psychiatrist intent on “letting her talk.”

She had no interest in discussing her internal hurts with a moldy old friend of her mother; besides her boyfriend was more than willing to share his stash of dope, drive her where she wanted to go, and even give her a place to stay if her parents threw her out of the house.

The last major fight had been about the boy she was dating.

They didn't think he was good enough for her.

On that count, they were right.

Although he had initially agreed—enthusiastically, in fact—to accompany her to the West Coast, when it came time to leave he proved to be as spineless and undependable as her parents had predicted he would be.

Only one semester short of graduation from the University of Wisconsin in engineering, he elected to finish school, vowing all the while to join her the minute he got his degree.

Melissa had no-zero-interest in waiting for a guy who could not be spontaneous and free.

So she took to the road traveling by thumb-catching rides when she could and walking when she couldn't.

Melissa needed 13 days of hitchhiking to reach California, detouring at one point to New Mexico because the trucker was going that way, and then San Diego before reaching San Francisco.

When she arrived, she was penniless, having given her money away to needy people along the way, and without a place to sleep.

At the time, Melissa arrived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district—Ground Zero for hippie culture—the Grateful Dead were a local phenomenon referenced often by TV commentators and bus operators ferrying middle-class tourists through Hippie City.

The hippie hop tour through Haight-Ashbury was advertised as “The only foreign tour within the continental limits of the United States.”

The band was even photographed on their front porch for Time magazine's “Summer of Love” issue, making their abode a hippie White House of sorts.

Melissa was quickly welcomed into a commune housed in a shabby chic Victorian that was exploring the emerging concepts of blending free love and free-form music.

To Melissa Goldberg, the Summer of Love in 1967 seemed to be one endless party.

Everyone was either high on mescaline, grass or LSD; friends were living in tepees along the Big Sur, high school runaways were flocking to big harvest pot parties while she played bongos and drank red Mountain wine at all-night parties.

As Melissa told friends back home, “it was the undressed rehearsal” for a changed world.

When a British film crew from the BBC attempted to capture the essence of a “hippie party,” they had to stop filming because there were too many naked party people.

The footage was too risqué to be broadcast.

Melissa had originally gone to the Monterey Pop Festival because the Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas & the Papas where there, but left in love with the Grateful Dead.

The Grateful Dead, melded together in 1965, pioneered an eclectic style that fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, jazz, psychedelia, and space rock.

The Dead started their career as the Warlocks, a group formed in early 1965 from the remnants of a Palo Alto jug band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions.

The first show under the new name Grateful Dead was in San Jose, California, in December 1965, at one of Ken Kesey's Acid Tests.

In January, the Dead appeared at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco and played at the Trips Festival, an early psychedelic rock show.

Charter members of the Grateful Dead were: banjo and guitar player Jerry Garcia, guitarist Bob Weir, blues organist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the classically trained bassist Phil Lesh, and drummer Bill Kreutzmann.

The name “Grateful Dead” was chosen from an old dictionary, which defined “Grateful Dead” as “the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged his burial.”

The band's first LP, The Grateful Dead, was released on Warner Brothers Records in 1967.

But their first live performance at the Monterey Pop Festival was unscheduled.

Melissa awoke from sleep after midnight to discover an impromptu concert underway with Eric Burdon of the Animals singing “House of the Rising Sun” with Pete Townshend of The Who playing lead guitar.

This was followed by jam sessions combining the talents of The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, David Crosby, and the Jefferson Airplane.

Once the official festival began, Melissa got to hear Country Joe and the Fish sing antiwar ballads, Otis Redding mesmerizing with his energy, and Jimi Hendrix playing his Stratocaster with his teeth and then setting the guitar on fire.

But Melissa's personal showstopper was Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

Live performances featured long musical improvisations that made every concert unique; “Their music,” wrote Lenny Kaye, “touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists.”

She especially appreciated the Dead's decision to “borrow” nearly one million dollars' worth of Fender audio equipment to perform another free concert, this time in San Francisco.

Even after the equipment was returned, the authorities failed to see the humor in the situation.

Melissa desperately wanted be part of this world, where people threw off theories concerning music just as casually as her mother discussed Jewish holiday recipes.

The idea of the moment was three-dimensional sound; the goal was for every instrument to be in stereo by fashioning every guitar and every drum set to have a right and left channel, so the audience could hear everything.

Most bands thought this concept was technologically impossible.

Melissa's chance to meet Jerry Garcia came because of a water balloon fight among several members of the band.

Melissa took half a dozen blows—soaking her from head to toe—when Garcia rescued her and they started to hang out, even after the Dead were busted for pot possession and harder drugs began to circulate.

And Melissa was unquestionably ready to join the caravan of fans when the Quick and the Dead Tour started in January 1968; the concept of the Dead spreading their vibe to the whole country was simply awesome.

Melissa figured she was attached to the greatest show on Earth: a hippie Buffalo Bill show jammed with young, freaked-out American rock ‘n’ roll music.

They took a song and turned it into a sound journey—one that sometimes had to be altered on the band's albums.

The Grateful Dead's almost seamless, continuous soundtrack had to be cut into pieces because record companies paid royalties based on the number of tracks on an album, not the number of minutes recorded.

Melissa trailed the Dead every step of the way; if they were playing, she was in the audience.

She wasn't alone: One of the more unique customs of the Deadhead community was to go on tour with the band.

Deadheads typically quit their jobs and left everything behind to follow the band from venue to venue, seeing as many shows as possible.

The parking lot scene before and after a show resembled a street fair, complete with the sounds and smells one might expect.

It was the “show before the show” and where friends met afterwards to exchange thoughts on the night's experience and to make plans to meet later on in the tour.

Deadheads from around the country converged on what was known as “Shakedown Street,” the main row of venders (Deadheads with goods to sell or barter with), which over the years reached mythical proportions.

Melissa bought and sold homemade tie-dyed clothing and hemp jewelry.

All the while, Deadheads sat around playing acoustic guitars, banging out deafening rhythms in drum circles, throwing Frisbees, or sleeping to recoup energy for that night's show.

Different songs filled the air; once the gates opened, the experience simply moved inside.

To keep track of her travels, Melissa kept a journal of the shows she attended, decorated with ticket stubs, pictures of friends at the shows, hand-drawn pictures, and most importantly, setlists!

Melissa became fanatical about the setlist as a written record of the songs played (in order) during a show.

Some Deadheads scribbled them on ticket stubs, matchboxes, or envelopes—usually in the dark—during the show.

But Melissa was meticulous.

She knew her setlists were part of the living legacy of the Grateful Dead and the Deadhead community.

It wasn't always easy: Unlike most bands, the Dead didn't always end their songs.

Often, she found, they simply segued into another song.

Several times an entire set was nothing more than several songs played continuously.

These song pairings encouraged a setlist shorthand that joined songs with an arrow.

For this reason, some familiar song pairings were condensed: “China Cat Sunflower” followed by “I Know You Rider” would be written as “China/Rider,” while “Scarlet Begonias” followed by “Fire on the Mountain” was recorded as “Scarlet/Fire.”

When she lost the bound notebook in a police raid, she took it as a sign that it was time to return home.

Besides, the health of original band member Pigpen had deteriorated to the point that he could no longer tour with the band; his final concert appearance was June 17, 1972, at the Hollywood Bowl.

On June 18, 1972, Melissa made a long-distance phone call; she had not seen her parents in five years.

The flower child or hippie movement started around 1965 in San Francisco and spread across the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe.

Inspired by the Beats of the fifties, who declared themselves independent from the “authoritarian order” of America, the Haight-Ashbury “anti-community” rested on a rejection of American commercialism.

Haight residents eschewed the material benefits of modern life, encouraged by the distribution of free food and organized shelter by the Diggers, and the creation of institutions such as the Free Clinic for medical treatment.

Psychedelic drug use became but one means to find a “new reality.”

According to Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, “Haight-Ashbury was a ghetto of bohemians who wanted to do anything—and we did—but I don't think it has happened since. Yes, there was LSD. But Haight-Ashbury was not about drugs. It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one's existence.”

An all-volunteer army of hippies flocked to San Francisco, congregating near the corner of Haight Street and Ashbury Street, where the world got its first view of this unique group.

The place came to be known as the Haight-Ashbury district, where average Americans took bus tours to view the flower child phenomenon.

Average Americans were shocked by their hair, clothing, drug experimentation and alternative lifestyles, even though most hippies were young people from prosperous middle-class homes.

The Haight-Ashbury district was in the very center of San Francisco and incorporated Golden Gate Park.

Musicians in the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin's band Big Brother and the Holding Company all lived a short distance from the famous intersection.

The prelude to the Summer of Love was the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park on January 14, 1967, billed as a “gathering of tribes.”

Haight-Ashbury's own psychedelic newspaper, the San Francisco Oracle, commented: “A new concept of celebrations beneath the human underground must emerge, become conscious, and be shared, so a revolution can be formed with a renaissance of compassion, awareness, and love, and the revelation of unity for all mankind.”

The gathering of approximately 30,000 like-minded people made the Human Be-In the first event that confirmed there was a viable hippie scene.

This was followed by the term “Summer of Love,” when thousands of hippies gathered there, popularized by hit songs such as “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)” by Scott McKenzie.

A July 7, 1967, Time magazine cover story on “The Hippies: Philosophy of a Subculture,” and an August CBS News television report on “The Hippie Temptation” exposed the hippie subculture to national attention and popularized the Flower Power movement across the country and around the world.

The ever-increasing numbers of youth making a pilgrimage to the Haight-Ashbury district overwhelmed and alarmed the San Francisco authorities, whose public stance was that they would keep the hippies away.

The mainstream media's coverage of hippie life in the Haight-Ashbury district drew youth from all over America, especially after writer Hunter S. Thompson labeled the district “Hashbury” in The New York Times Magazine.

tripping on DNA: Going to a show with a member of your family.

tour rats: Hardcore Deadheads who travel from show to show, live in the parking lot during a tour, earn money by selling homemade goods, or wait for a miracle ticket.

miracle ticket: An extra ticket given to another Deadhead without a ticket free of charge.

wooks: Hardcore backwoods hippies who attend shows wearing nothing but a pair of dirty shorts.

ick: Tour slang to describe the common bacterial or viral infections resulting from undernourishment and overexposure while on tour.

spin: To copy a tape.

puddle: A larger-than-average-size dose of LSD.

noodling: The description of the band's searching excursions during jams and solos.

benji: A hundred-dollar bill used in case of emergencies. I think these exist in folklore alone.

bugment: The music being so intense it makes your eyes bug out.

crisp: A soundboard tape that has no saturation or hiss.

the Pepto pink: Bob Weir's painfully pink guitar.

teef: To steal something small and of no significance.

de-reek: Getting rid of “truck mouth” with mouthwash or a breath mint.

puppied: Being so relaxed that you want to snuggle with somebody.

spinning madly: The copying of several tapes.

biscuit shows: Good shows in out-of-the-way venues only the most hardcore Deadheads attend.

family: Friends that are Deadheads.

get on the bus: The moment people realize they are Grateful Dead fans.

BIODTL: Beat It On Down the Line

FOTD: Friend of the Devil

GDTRFB: Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad

GDTS: Grateful Dead Ticket Sales

NFA: Not Fade Away

NSB: New Speedway Boogie

TLEO: They Love Each Other

WALSTIB: What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

PITB: Playing in the Band