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To the non-obsessive layperson, the Grateful Dead are not exactly an obvious source of inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, which HBO adapted for TV as Game of Thrones. For a Deadhead, appreciating the art of the Grateful Dead is usually a relaxed experience, filled with pleasant vibes, the sounds of Jerry Garcia’s improvised guitar solos, and perhaps the occasional acid-induced hallucination. But for a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, the experience of enjoying Martin’s epic fantasy story involves gruesome violence, foreboding omens, and the occasional incestuous relationship. Watch an episode of Game of Thrones: it’ll probably be dark, tense, and funny (if there’s a scene featuring Tyrion or Bronn). Watch a Grateful Dead concert and it’ll be either blissful or boring (depending on your taste in music).

So how exactly did the...

The Voice Season 27 Teams & Advisors ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

The 27th season of The Voice is currently airing on NBC, and with the blind auditions wrapped, all four coaches, Kelsea Ballerini, Michael Buble, John Legend, and Adam Levine have picked the 12 members for their teams. To add to it, the celebrity advisors of the season have also been announced.

The Voice Season 27: All 4 Teams & Their Celebrity Advisors

Team Kelsea is headed by Kelsea Ballerini and advised by Little Big Town consisting of Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet, and Jimi Westbrook. The contestants are Alanna Lynise, a 21-year-old from Toledo, Ohio. Simone Marijic is a 20-year-old from Los Angeles. Brook Wood is a 33-year-old from Indianapolis. Robert Hunter is a 33-year-old from Garner.

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Hailey Wright is a 19-year-old from Redwater, Texas. Page Mackenzie is a 32-year-old from Charleston.

The Voice Season 27 continued on Monday with the fifth and final batch of Blind Audition performances. After Episode 4, the teams of John Legend, Adam Levine and Michael Bublé had two open spots while Kelsea Ballerini still had three. Each of the coaches had also already deployed each of their single-use advantages, the Coach Replay and the Block. That means that going into the last day of the first round, the artists themselves would have a majority of the power to decide which coach they'd move forward with.

Over the course of the night, only one artist had the pick of the litter with all four judges turning their chairs — that was Guyanese native Jay Ammo with his performance of "The A Team." John said that he has a "lovely voice" and felt it "floating through the room" as he played. Adam agreed, in a sense, calling his voice "ethereal" and...

Choosing a coach on The Voice can be tough—so why not let a toddler decide for you? That’s what one contestant did on Monday’s (February 24) episode as he brought his three-year-old daughter to the stage. The contestant in question was 33-year-old country artist Robert Hunter from Garner, North Carolina, who works as a Sheriff’s Deputy in the Raleigh area. Before he took to the stage, he revealed how he lost a friend and co-worker in the line of duty last year, which made him realize he needed to seize every moment in life. “The message behind this song is not to take right now for granted because tomorrow is never promised,” he said, revealing he’d be performing “Till You Can’t” by Cody Johnson. “Working in law enforcement, not knowing what tomorrow holds is a real thing in my family and I feel that this...

The Voice Season 27 continued on Monday with the fourth batch of Blind Audition performances. Adam Levine maxed out his advantages during Episode 3, blocking one artist from picking Kelsea Ballerini and then using his Coach Replay to scoop up another. He also won his fourth four-chair turn of the season. Going into day four, John Legend was the only one with a Coach Replay still to use. Returning champion Michael Bublé came into the night ready to fight hard for artists he liked, but Kelsea was not going to let him get away with any of them too easily. By the end of the night, they went head-to-head in competition for four different artists.

The first one Michael was keen on pulling on to his team was 19-year-old Texan Hailey Wright representing her Choctaw heritage with pride. Michael and Kelsea were the only coaches that turned for her performance of Freddy Fender...

Night 4 of The Voice’s Blind Auditions was pretty much par for the course for Season 27 so far: Some Ok performances and a couple of pretty good ones. But at the end of Monday’s episode, the sing-off ushered onto the stage a showstopper whose vocal was so ear-opening, she not only moved all four coaches to swivel their chairs, she wowed even me. What did you think? Read on, and we’ll discuss.

Kolby Cordell (Team Legend), “Never Too Much” — Grade: B | Kolby’s take on Luther Vandross’ smash inspired both John and Michael to turn their chairs for him.

Distilling the musical legacy of the Grateful Dead into one night is no small feat, and into three hours is an even taller order. But Don Was — longtime president of Blue Note Records, respected multi-instrumentalist and musical director for the Jan. 31 MusiCares Persons of the Year event — was up to the task, curating an inspired lineup of devotees, including Billy Strings, The War on Drugs, Norah Jones, Dwight Yoakam, Maren Morris, Noah Kahan and Wynonna Judd, and longtime collaborators like John Mayer, Bruce Hornsby and Was himself, who’s a touring member of Bob Weir’s Wolf Bros playing his signature upright bass.

As Was tells it, the set list came together organically, with the artists choosing which songs to play in concert with show producer Rac Clark and MusiCares’ Laura Segura. The end result ran the gamut from the popular (“Truckin’,” performed by Yoakam) to the ambitious (“Terrapin Station...

A few weeks back, Barack Obama unveiled his yearly summer songs playlist, which mixed fresh hits like Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” and Charli Xcx’s “365” with old favorites like the Miracles’ “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me,” the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go,” and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

However, Obama’s most surprising pick was Bob Dylan’s “Silvio,” a 1988 song co-written by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter that appeared on Down in the Groove,...

Paul Verhoeven's 1990 film "Total Recall" takes place in the distant future of 2084. Mars has not only been colonized, but it has also fallen under the rule of an evil governor named Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox). The planet is rich with a rare, valuable ore called turbinium, but mining it has caused widespread pollution and radiation. Many of the Martian citizens have mutated as a result, their bodies sprouting extra body parts or sporting unusual growths. In many cases, mutants are also mildly psychic. To combat Cohaagen's corruption, a Mutant Resistance has formed, led by the mysterious and difficult-to-find Kuato (Marshall Bell).

The protagonist of "Total Recall" is Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a former agent for Cohaagen who had his memory erased and his identity changed. It takes a long while for Quaid to understand what happened to him, but he eventually discovers that he has to combat Cohaagen and help the Mutant Resistance.

The long, strange trip just got a lot trippier.

Dead & Company opened their much-anticipated Sphere residency in Las Vegas on Thursday night, making good on the potential of the world’s most high-tech concert venue and delivering what has to be the most dazzling visual show in Grateful Dead history.

The group took the stage just past 7:30 p.m., opening with modest visuals — by Sphere standards, at least — for “Feel Like a Stranger,” as large live shots of Bob Weir and John Mayer were projected above the stage. It...

Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter’s long-lost manuscript, The Silver Snarling Trumpet, has been set for publication. Out October 8th, the recently unearthed book will tell the band’s origin story.

The late Hunter — who co-wrote Grateful Dead songs like “Dark Star,” “Touch of Grey,” and “Box of Rain” — originally penned The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead — The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter in the early 1960s. At the time, he had just been introduced to Jerry Garcia and began chronicling the band’s early days in the Bay Area, including performances at Kepler’s Books and road trips through the countryside.

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The Silver Snarling Trumpet features a foreword by Dead & Company guitarist John Mayer, an introduction by the band’s biographer Dennis McNally, and an afterword by Brigid Meier, a close friend of Hunter’s. Pre-orders are ongoing.

“Fans will...

It’s a good day for Deadheads: Robert Hunter’s lost manuscript is headed for publication.

The Grateful Dead lyricist — who penned gems like “Ripple,” “Box of Rain,” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Eyes of the World,” “Dark Star,” and more — died in 2019. Five years later, Hachette Books will release The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead — The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter, out Oct. 8.

Unearthed by Hunter’s widow, Maureen, Silver Snarling Trumpet chronicles the origin of the Grateful Dead in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1973, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia fulfilled a longtime dream when he formed the bluegrass supergroup known as Old & In the Way. For the rock & roller, circling back to his acoustic roots was more than just scratching a creative itch — it was a spiritual calling.

“It was something that was organic and fun,” Peter Rowan, singer, songwriter, and former Oitw guitarist, tells Rolling Stone. “And that evolved into playing [shows]. ‘Let’s take this outside.’”

On the ground level, Old & In the Way’s self-titled 1975 debut album was one of the...

Warning! Spoilers for Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest #2 ahead!After killing the original Captain Marvel and kickstarting the original Civil War, the underrated Marvel villain Nitro has received a new god-tier power upgrade. Given his bloodthirsty nature and the sheer number of people he's killed, it makes sense that Nitro has not been featured in the MCU. But now he has teamed with the all-new alien villain Nada to unleash an attack on Carol Danvers that’s so devastating, even he feels sorry for her.

Nitro and Nada carry out their assault on Carol in Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest #2 by Ann Nocenti, Paolo Villanelli, Java Tartaglia, Vc’s Ariana Maher and Sarah Spadaccini. As part of a mysterious plan to get revenge on Earth for poisoning her planet, Nada opens up a portal and transports Captain Marvel and a group of kids to a distant planet. She then gives...

Logan Ledger has a new album of original material coming later this year, but in a bit of spontaneity the California singer-songwriter puts his own spin on a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple.”

A track off the Dead’s 1970 American Beauty album, “Ripple” was written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter; Garcia handled vocals on the recording. Here, Ledger remains faithful to the original, with producer Shooter Jennings creating a warm, easygoing soundscape.

“I’ve long been a fan of the songs of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter.

Bob Dylan has essentially stuck to the same setlist since kicking off his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour in November 2021, but he wrapped up his show at Oakland, California’s Fox Theater on Saturday night by covering the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” instead of the standard set-closer “Every Grain of Sand.” It was his first time playing the song since 2007, and the first time he’s changed his setlist by even a single song in the past 37 concerts. Check out a recording of the big moment:

Dylan...

Owsley Stanley was known as the foremost underground LSD chemist of the 1960s. But he was also an exacting pioneer of live concert sound, a man who helped invent both monitor systems and high-fidelity amplification. When he died in 2011 at the age of 76, Stanley left behind a breathtaking array of some 1,300 reels amassed between 1966 and 1982. Buried inside are lost concerts by legends like Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac, Tim Buckley, and dozens of others, alongside the San Francisco psychedelic bands Stanley is most often associated with, such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

With its vast line-up of films, there’s bound to be a few stand-outs that slip through the cracks at Sundance. One we didn’t get to check out this year was the Cleveland-set, teen-centered drama The Land, but after a trailer debut, it definitely has our attention. With a soundtrack featuring Mgk, Erykah Badu, Kanye West, French Montana, Pusha T, Jeremih, and Nas (who also serves as producer), it looks to be a vibrantly shot exploration of skateboarding and danger on the streets.

“I wanted to showcase the reality of urban youth today: For the audience to witness that those we consider thugs or criminals are often really just kids, and could be a brother, a cousin, or the kid down the street from you,” director Steve Caple Jr. told Variety.

Check out the trailer below for the film starring Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Erykah Badu, Moises Arias, Rafi Gavron,...

In part one of Rolling Stone‘s exclusive interview with Robert Hunter, the legendary (and fairly reclusive) Grateful Dead lyricist looked back on his early years with the band: meeting Jerry Garcia, signing on as the primary in-house poet and writing epic Dead songs from “Dark Star” through “Truckin’.” In this second and last part, Hunter, speaking at his home in Marin County, talks candidly about the rougher waters that followed. As becomes clear in the conversation, few in the Dead world were as affected by Garcia’s addiction issues as Hunter.

Two years ago, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart showed up for a sail on the America's Cup boat Oracle wearing flippers, a dive mask and snorkel. "They let me out of rehab especially for this," he joked. He wanted to see what it was like to sail with the "best of the best," and to translate the rhythm and sounds of high-level, professional sailing into music.

He must have made an impression, because the America's Cup organizers want him back to head the entertainment committee for the international sailing competition,...