A Deadhead Carole

Bobby Scrooge Weir decides that trading in live bootlegs over the Internet is no longer cool and sends poor Cratchet out to shut down downloading on The Live Music Archive.

The Ghost of Dead Shows Past (aka Jerry) appears in Bobby's dream and takes him to Fillmore West in 1969 and they jam to Dark Star.

Then they go to Hartford, CT in 1983 (I was there for that one) and do the classic Scarlet/Fire combo.

Finally, they go to the Boston Garden in 1991 and end the show with Eyes of the World.

Bobby Scrooge sees the light and gives the Live Music Archive the greenlight to keep the bootlegs up.

The story ends happily except that Jerry is a stil a ghost.

Comments

[jackson]

I think Bobby's issue is that he's not making as much money as he was in the late eighties. The Dead doesn't draw like the Grateful Dead did. if your not s3elling out stadiums, it doesn't make sense to stay on the road like they used to. What they should have done was record more back when they were a viable band. It always amazed me that the Dead only did one studio record in the eighties (Okay, two, Goes to Heaven was 1980). I guess they were never a forward thinking band. I'm sure LP's like American Beauty and Workingman's Dead still sell well, but how much money Bobby's getting from those sales we don't know.

[Page]

I'd like hear Bobby's official statement. While I did hear an MP3 of his argument from a recent radio spot, the issue seems to be that what the Archive was doing was illegal.

Being that all bands on the archive need to give permission, I doubt that this is really the issue.

I think that there is actually a greater issue at hand, than the potential for the Archive to compete with either Itunes or further plans to commercialize the vault.

This is a cultural war. Users are now armed with excessive amounts of bandwidth, and they are visiting organizations that have massive storage capability. These organizations have their front doors slung wide open and out onto the Web.

This is why Google Books is such a great debate. The issue is that permanent and perfect archives are a reality, and existing copyright laws including policies for taping and trading were never written with that in mind.

[P-Air]

I sure hope there's more to this story than simply Bobby wanting things shut down, especially as I sit here typing this while enjoying their accoustic set fm Reckoning in the background. It also makes me wonder if the Grateful Dead would have ever reached the level fame and notariety that they've enjoyed if they had prevented distribution of their concert tapes fm the get-go. It would be kind of like Craigslist all of sudden saying that all classified listings are gonna cost what the newspapers were charging before CL came along.

Please say there's more to this story than simple greed...please...just need some idealism to hold on to in Bush-minded world ;-)

[DeusExLibris]

So, why is it always Bobby that's acting like a jerk? ;-)

Seriously, I really don't get this. If you have ever listened to a taper version of a show and then the same show from the "One from the Vault" or "Dick's Picks" series (compare Tampa, 1973 - archive.org to Dick's Picks, Vol 1), it is clear that the taper recordings won't detract from the sales of the GD produced recordings. This should be viral marketing at its best.

Frankly, even those rare tapes that come straight from the soundboard can't compare in quality to a recording professionally mastered by an experienced sound engineer.

On a related note, I completely disagree with this commentary on NPR - Diehard Deadhead Yearns for Old-School Bootlegs - I know of very few who collect live GD tapes for the sake of collecting them. Sure, it's cool when you come across a rare tape that you don't have and there is a certain inherent joy in that serendipity. But that isn't really the point. Ultimately, it is all about the music and how, in the best shows, the band, the music and the audience come together and create something wonderful.

[Thomas Hawk]

Or as Boing Boing points out, all of the above is simply a PR smokescreen:

http://thomashawk.com/2005/12/grateful-dead-reversal-on-fan.html

[Sandy Streim]

As for all the reasons given, etc, it's worth a look at this from a customer relationship perspective, from which the band has ultimately been known, and still sets the standard for viral marketing.

I know of no other "corporate" entity that has reversed its policy so quickly as the Dead has. Where else has there been such an outcry among loyal users, and seeing the results (mostly positive) in days? Kudos to the quick turnaround, even if the results are not 100% of what everyone feels they're entitled to. Imagine if your favorite F500 company moved this way.

Personally, I still prefer the professionally rendered Dick's Picks and other live label releases to the bulk of tapes and mp3's I've picked up over the years. Though always looking for that lost nugget.

[Patrick Briggs]

Just to clarify - the entire policy has not been reversed. Grateful Dead soundboard (SBD) recordings are no longer available for download from Archive.org. Has anyone else noticed that you can, however, still download Bobby's Ratdog SBD shows on Archive.org? (Not that you'd want to!

What's stranger still is that the Dead is still allowing users to stream their SBD recordings from Archive.org. Huh?

And what about the myriad of other bit torrent aggregators that continue to enable the distribution of the SBD shows? Is it now "illegal" to download/distribute all SBD Dead shows - or just not possible at Archive.org? Has it always been illegal? Confusing policy.

[Jen]

Hey, Im a parsons student in a youth culture and fashion class. And i chose to do my project on deadheads. I was hoping if any of you could answer a few questions for my paper. I understand this is a blog about acquiring the music, but since you guys are fans, I figure that you must be the authority to talk to...here are some questions...
How did you become a deadhead? and do you believe you still are today?

Do you think that this effected your way of dress?

What is it about the shows that you went to that made you become such a fan and a part of this culture?

Do yo believe that deadheads are a seperate subculture? and if so why?

Do yo believe there are many crossovers into the hippie subculture and movement?

How many shows did you attend?

Thanks so much...and if you think there are other important questiosn i should have asked, which i am sure there are, it would be great if you could talk abotu that too.
thanks