Grateful Dead

Bob Bralove came to the Grateful Dead in 1987 to teach them MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) technology and swiftly became the band’s on-stage tech wizard, joining in on space with his own keyboard, eventually contributing to songs as a co-writer and producer.

Way back in 1991, Bob Bralove produced one of the more interesting discs in the entire Grateful Dead canon: Infrared Roses is a fantastic and trippy CD of “Drums” and “Space,” tailored by Bralove, who was one of the Dead’s primary electronics gurus from the late ’80s until the end. It was Bralove who eased the band, one by one, into the modern marvel of MIDI sounds, and who, in the their last several years, often participated in creating some of the sonic landscapes of the “Drums” and “Space” segments from his offstage perch near Mickey and Bill’s Drum World.

So, what’s been happening with Bob Bralove—the former GD MIDI guru; Mickey and Bill’s partner in second set weirdness during the late ’80s and early ’90s; the genius behind both the exceptional Infrared Roses drumz-n-space CD and the instrumental group Second Sight (whose fine album marked one of Garcia’s last appearances outside the Dead); and many a mind-bending duet with ex-Dead keys man Tom Constanten in the ultra-trippy union known as Dose Hermanos?