Unwinding the Mystery of Grateful Dead’s First Performance

Dan Orloff has spent more than four decades connecting Silicon Valley to its own soundtrack. As Founder and Chief Rock Officer of San Jose Rocks — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit documenting and celebrating the music heritage of Santa Clara County — he is on a mission to prove our region belongs in the same conversation as Nashville, Memphis, and Motown.

On May 29, Dan brings Rotarians a genuine music-history detective story: the long, winding path to unwinding one of rock’s great mysteries — where, and when, Grateful Dead first performed under that name. The trail runs through Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, a modest downtown house, and decades of conflicting accounts. And it leads to San Jose Rocks discovery of two key artifacts, long thought lost to time, that finally pinned the story down for good.

A longtime Santa Clara Valley resident, marketing veteran (Orloff Marketing, since 1992), and managing partner at Pruneyard Cinemas, Dan is a past president of the Campbell Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Board of Directors of the Rotary Club of San Jose. He has produced and promoted live music across the region for over 40 years.

And he won’t leave Saratoga out of it — expect a few local gems, pieces of Saratoga’s own music history hiding in plain sight. Come for a band you already know. Leave knowing your own backyard helped launch them — and how San Jose Rocks proved it.