Few eastern musicians have made a stronger connection to the west than Zakir Hussain.  It is fitting since his father; legendary tabla virtuoso Allah Rakha, popularized the instrument worldwide and pioneered North Indian traditional music to England and the Americas.

Grateful Web took notice of the recently announced Grateful Dead Family Jubilee web auction and wanted to know more about it. How did these seemingly priceless things become auction worthy? Where did these artifacts come from? One of the auction organizers, Lisa Purze was kind enough to chat with Grateful Web about it. Providing us with the lowdown on the event that’s in honor of the 50th anniversary of Grateful Dead.

Few genres of music have stood the test of time unblemished such as funk. Though there have been progressions, evolution, and certainly fusion, the fundamentals are all in order. Grandfathers George Clinton, James Brown, and The Meters created a percussively punchy style of playing that was a liberating new form of music distinct in character and approach. Many bands will be described as funky, which is synonymous to loose, rhythm driven and interactive with an audience.

Last Friday at The Fillmore in San Francisco, I felt right at home. As a Colorado native who moved to the Bay Area just three months ago it’s been an incredible transition and vast discovery process with the amount of incredible local and national musical talent that plays here constantly. Last Friday was humbling on multiple levels. It was the debut Fillmore performance of my favorite improvisational funk band The Motet.

While the “Fare Thee Well” Forth of July at Solider Field announcement from the surviving members of The Dead have fans nationwide in pandemonium, California’s Bay Area has already begun celebrating fifty years of Grateful Dead with a number of intimate events. Guitarist Bob Weir has returned to performance with some stellar extended-for-network-TV jamming with host John Mayer on The Late Late Show.

GW: This is Dylan Muhlberg of Grateful Web here with Richard Loren. I am thrilled to have the company of one of the rock era’s most pivotal music agents. His new memoir High Notes, recounts his monumental career. His early days in the corporate music world representing such legendary acts as The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and The Chambers Brothers gained him recognition and success in the music business.

It’s been two weeks since the surviving members of Grateful Dead announced that they would be performing a final farewell three-day concert event over Fourth of July weekend at Chicago’s Solider Field. The most important psychedelic rock band in history turned fifty years old this year. Another equally significant anniversary for 2015 is twenty years ago this July were the final performances of the Grateful Dead with lead guitarist and bandleader Jerry Garcia.

It’s interesting to be able to think back on the music of the 1990s, let alone the 2000s and what evolved in the live music concert experience. The reemergence of the multi-day music festival gave the jam band revival a venue to gig multiple shows at once and get closer with the fans. What also changed was what kind of music was being performing in a live setting. There was always a separation between the deejay persona and electronica music from the whole rock’n’roll bands that jammed. That certainly changed with the growing popularity of summer music festivals.

Nels Cline’s music brings tangibility to abstraction. Over the years, as bandleader or featured sideman, his approach has little preconception of where the music needs to go or how his audience will respond to it. It’s the next evolution in the jazz idiom. While younger generations might know Cline as the non-exemplary lead guitar of alt rock band Wilco, his career as an established jazz authority dates back to the mid 80s.

There are plenty of instrumentally urbane bands touring that keep audiences captivated while still lacking true songwriting sophistication. It’s more than a challenge to play the weight of a show on strong original material. It’s an even larger feat to achieve that without being a mimic. Sometimes surroundings inspire robust and natural creativity. And its no coincidence that the lovely mountain state of Colorado is home and foundation for many thriving live music acts.