Watch Philly’s Evening Magazine explain The Grateful Dead to viewers in 1979

By 1979, The Grateful Dead was closing in on a decade and a half of recording and touring, were headlining arenas on the regular, and the non-countercultural media was becoming reasonably certain that Jerry and the boys were, you know, not just a fad. Enter Evening Magazine, a television news features program that aired locally on CBS-3; they caught up with the Dead and their devout Deadheads at The Spectrum in this segment that aired on November 6, 1979.

After some amazing reactions from the energized and very Philly-accented crowd (“Best band in rock and roll!” “It’s a way of life! Peace, man, you know?”), the reporter – who we haven’t been able to identify, but if you know who they are, let us know in the comments! – informs the viewers that, no , The Grateful Dead is in fact not dead (heh) and takes us to a backstage interview with founding members Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir.

Some highlights: the guys really don’t like being pegged as a 60s band, as the reporter does in his first question, but Garcia sums up the 70s as “people scratching their heads about the 60s, seemingly. ‘What happened in the 60s?'” The legendary shows the Dead played at the great pyramids of Egypt were recalled as “spooky.” Also, this great quote from Weir about what keeps him going: “You can’t have fun without adventure. And if it’s not fun, I can’t picture doing it for the rest of my life, or for the next year, or the next two weeks.”

Check out the video below.