Bob Weir Movies

A young filmmaker eager to document an unexplored element of the contemporary music scene achieves auditory enlightenment while discovering the duality of existence in director Les Claypool's seamless mockumentary. Electric Apricot is a band for the ages. Fearless in their musical experimentation and never afraid of breaking new ground, the band seeks to achieve a higher consciousness through music. When an aspiring documentarian sets out to prove there's more to modern music than the charts would suggest, what he discovers is a musical universe teeming with unbound creativity and limitless potential. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A lot have people have opened rock clubs for a lot of different reasons, but Larry Bloch is one of the few to have opened a music venue as a medium for social change. In 1989, Bloch and a handful of friends, none of whom had experience running a nightclub, opened Wetlands in New York City's Tribeca district, and as part of their business plan, each month a percentage of the club's proceeded were to be donated to a nonprofit Center for Social and Environmental Justice, with the annual payout often exceeding 100,000 dollars. In addition to the club's success as an avenue for fundraising, Wetlands helped give a home to a new breed of bands whose music suited the hippie-esque vibe of the club while opening new territories in improvisational rock, and Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, and Gov't Mule were among the acts who were regulars attractions at Wetlands before finding worldwide fame. Dean Budnick, a senior editor at Relix Magazine (a journal that frequently covers the jam band scene) makes his directorial debut with Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Rock Club, which examines both the music and the message behind this fabled venue. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Harry Dean Stanton narrates this documentary that takes a look at the career of the musical group the Band. The group emerged in the late 1960s and their musical style was something new for the times -- a style that went beyond the psychedelic musical movement of the 60's. Go behind the scenes and see the private and professional lives of the band members. Hear how they became a group and what inspires their musical style. This video highlights music from the albums Music From Big Pink, and The Band. See film footage from performances of: "The Weight, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "Up On Cripple Creek," and "Life is a Carnival." ~ Beth Deki, All Movie Guide

No rock band ever attracted a more loyal audience than the Grateful Dead, whose followers would often travel alongside the band, drifting from show to show, selling food, T-shirts, or trinkets in the parking lots of their venues in order to pay for their tickets, or simply panhandling from more solvent fans to scrape up enough money to move onto the next show. The downside of the "Deadheads" bohemian carnival lifestyle became clear during the Dead's 1995 summer tour, during which violence between the audience and security forces led to the cancellation of one show, and a horde of ticketless fans tore down a fence at another concert, turning it into a free event -- much to the band's consternation. The End of the Road is a documentary that looks at the events of the summer 1995 tour, which proved to be the group's last when guitarist and leader Jerry Garcia died a month later. While the film features no performance footage of the Grateful Dead, The End of the Road does include interviews with several group members, including Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart, as well as a number of people who worked with the Dead and the many Deadheads who followed the band. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Armed with a piano and his distinct voice, pop rocker Bruce Hornsby became a Grammy winner and double-platinum selling artist with songs like "The Way It Is." In this 1995 concert film, Hornsby is joined on stage by such all-star pals as Bonnie Raitt, Pat Metheny, Bob Weir, and Don Henley. Among the songs on the set list are "Walk in the Sun," "Mandolin Rain," and "The End of the Innocence," a Hornsby-penned tune that bacame a hit for Henley. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

The Grateful Dead had been archiving audio recordings of their concerts for years when, in the 1980s, they also began keeping a library of video recordings of their shows, often from large-venue performances where a multi-camera video setup would be used to provide a better view for those in the back of the hall. Grateful Dead: A View From the Vault, Vol. 3 is the third home video release from the Dead's concert video archive; this preserves the June 16, 1990 performance at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA. Selections include "Touch of Gray," "Friend of the Devil," "Estimated Prophet," "China Cat Sunflower," and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Learn about the people involved in the peace movements of the '60s and the '80s with this collection of interviews. ~ All Movie Guide

They used to say "There's nothing like a Grateful Dead concert," but this video offers the next best thing -- two and a half hours of the Dead onstage at Oakland Coliseum on New Year's Eve, as they stretch out (as only the Dead could) on such songs as Bertha, Uncle John's Band, The Music Never Stopped and Hell In A Bucket. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Shot December 31, 1978, The Grateful Dead: The Closing of Winterland is a concert film featuring the seminal jam band performing a six-plus hour show to mark the last night of San Francisco's legendary Winterland Arena. In front of an audience that included such celebrity guests as Dan Aykroyd, John Cippolina and Ken Kesey, the Grateful Dead performed 27 songs, including "Fire on the Mountain," "Thank You, Uncle Bobo," "From the Heart of Me," "Playing in the Band," "Dark Star," "Good Lovin'," and "The Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band There Ever Was." ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide