L A Times article about Tape Trading

[jazzbo]

Thanks to The Mule for the email about this article

POP MUSIC

Setting the live music free

Websites enable the exchange of concert recordings, a practice that has

thrived around the Grateful Dead and doesn't bother the music industry.

By Steve Hochman

Special to The Times

August 8, 2005

A decade after Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack while at a drug

rehabilitation facility on Aug. 9, 1995, the legacy he and the Grateful

Dead left is stronger than ever.

That's not so much a comment about the young fans who follow such

Dead-influenced "jam" bands as the String Cheese Incident. Nor is the

band's spirit to be found in its full flower at Bonnaroo or other

festivals furthering the scene the Dead anchored in its heyday.

If you really want to find the legacy of the Dead and its legion of

Deadheads today, go online.

In recent months there's been an explosion on the Internet of what

used to be called tape trading. This is not the illegal copying of

commercially available music that is being fought by the major record

companies. This is the free, generally legal exchange of fan-made

concert tapes, radio broadcasts and material that was never officially

released — by the Dead and just about anybody else.

It's a world that is growing daily at an exponential rate — and has

its foundation in the community of tapers and traders that initially

coalesced around and was nurtured by Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

"The Dead was the real forerunner," says Brewster Kahle, digital

librarian of Internet Archive (www.archive.org), which features a Live

Music Archive section for concert recordings. "The idea was you sell

some things, you give some things away, and that balance really

personified the Grateful Dead. They started a model."

The Live Music Archive's catalog of recordings just passed 25,000, up

from 20,000 in February and half that figure in March 2004. About a

tenth of those are of Grateful Dead shows, and the bulk of the rest are

from bands that share the loose jam aesthetic but not all. The list of

performers represented runs to more than 1,000 and ranges from

aggressive Texas rock outfit And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

to Billy Corgan's short-lived Zwan.

Such other sites as Dimeadozen and the Traders' Den offer a full

spectrum of selections. There's everything from obscure jazz dates from

the '50s to major rock concerts that happened just a couple of days

ago. Want to download Cream's Royal Albert Hall reunion shows from May?

A vintage 1969 concert by the same band? They're there. Bruce

Springsteen from the '70s? Easy. Arcade Fire at Lollapalooza last

month? Yours for the taking. This isn't limited to rock bands with cult

followings either. You'll find Mariah Carey and Ashlee Simpson

concerts, and videos as well as audio recordings.

These aren't the sites where you might find the new Mike Jones album

or other commercial releases without paying. These are the places for

people coveting music that can't be bought.

Nothing illustrates the phenomenon more clearly, though, than the

fact

that when the White Stripes played the San Diego Street Scene on July

29, a recording of the show was posted on a download site before

midnight — before many people who saw the show even got home.

"That's great," says White Stripes manager Ian Montone, himself a

Grateful Dead fan. "I love it when people come in and tape and the

shows take on an additional life when fans trade like that, when it's

talked about and people can study the nuances of the shows. It adds to

the lore and history."

In fact, Montone says that the band has fan taping to thank for

preserving at least one special part of the band's history — when Jack

White joined Bob Dylan for an encore at the latter's 2004 show in

Detroit.

"Thank goodness someone taped that, because otherwise we wouldn't

have

it," he says.

The Recording Industry Assn. of America, the music industry's

lobbying

organization that staunchly opposes illegal downloading, piracy and the

sale of bootleg recordings, says that it supports this kind of music

trading as long as the artists approve.

Dan Healy, longtime concert and studio producer for the Dead, was one

of the strongest advocates within the Dead organization not just to

allow taping but to encourage it — resulting in their concerts being

known for the seas of microphones on poles in a special section right

in front of the sound board. Fans would then keep in touch through

mailing lists and newsletters, exchanging tapes of the various

concerts. The current cyberspace explosion is a fulfillment of the kind

of community spirit Garcia stood for, he says.

"The more lines that are open, the more people will talk," says

Healy.

"That's a figure of speech, but what it means is the more readily

transmutable the stuff is, the more people that always wanted to swap

and trade will do it. The more conversations, the more swapping of

music the better. If anything it makes it more special. It's like love

— the more you use it, the stronger it gets"

And it is a community, or perhaps many interlocking communities, each

with its own set of rules and ethics. Policies vary greatly from site

to site. Some are anything-goes, but the ones that adhere most to the

spirit of the Dead have strict regulations prohibiting anything

commercially available or from artists who have not authorized such

trading. The Traders' Den is among the latter.

"Nothing that is available commercially is allowed in any way,

period," says one of the Traders' Den's administrators, who asked that

he be identified only by his screen name, bill_kate. "There are a few

bands that have expressed certain restrictions on how and what can be

traded. We respect these wishes."

Brian Wilson is among the several dozen performers whose name appears

on a "banned" list used by many sites' administrators. His views,

though, were shaped not by circulation of concert tapes but of

unauthorized releases that pieced together unfinished elements of his

long-delayed "Smile" project, which he finally completed and released

himself last year.

" 'Smile' was one of the most-bootlegged albums for many years," says

Jean Sievers, Wilson's co-manager. "It wasn't a finished work and it

wasn't what he wanted, and he was upset that people were taking those

tapes and spreading his unfinished work over the globe."

Other rules that are widely followed, at least on the sites most in

line with the Dead-spurred taping community, include asking users to

put music files in forms with the highest possible audio fidelity,

using "lossless" formats such as FLAC or SHNN rather than compressing

the data to lower-fidelity MP3 files. Posters are also asked to provide

as much information as possible about the sources of the recording and,

if known, equipment used to record in the first place.

But one rule is most adamantly stated by administrators and users

alike: The music is not to be sold.

"There is no money changing hands," says Kahle. "This was the ethos

back in the day — you couldn't even charge for the cassette you dubbed

music onto. People really stuck to that. What was interesting to me was

the level of labor and love put in by everyone involved."

Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars (a band whose

spirited blues-rooted shows are common in trading circles) says that,

over the years, bootlegs — whether bought in stores or traded — played

an important role in his music education.

"There's a bootleg film of the Allman Brothers," says the guitarist.

"Something else I collected over the years is Bob Marley live stuff.

That moves me more than even his regular records. And Jimi Hendrix, of

course! Live Hendrix!"

Dickinson himself has not experienced the Internet side of this — he

doesn't own a computer. But fans have routinely given him tapes and CDs

they've made of his band's concerts.

"I have a collection of tapes people have given me, and to me that

makes the 21 hours of the day that's spent off stage worthwhile," he

says. "People care and have documented what we do and it makes it

worthwhile."

In a twist, although the easy connections have increased availability

of unofficial releases, they have pretty much killed the profiteering

that long went on in that world, a form of piracy that has long been

fought by the music business.

ICE magazine, a monthly that targets collectors, has long chronicled

the "gray area" of bootlegging and says that the boom time for Internet

sharing has brought sad times for that black market's profit-minded

members — and a much harder hit than that anything the "real" music

business is suffering because of bootlegging.

"There's no question that the wind has been taken out of the

financial

sails of the bootleg world by this free exchange," editor Pete Howard

says. "Bootleg CDs used to be pressed in the thousands, if not tens of

thousands, for each title. Now, though it's funny and ironic to hear

the manufacturers moan and groan, no more than 500 copies is usual."

Meanwhile, the Grateful Dead continues to balance commerce and

freedom. Despite so many recordings readily available on the Internet,

the official releases of live albums continue at a steady pace, with

the "Dick's Picks" series now standing at three dozen titles alone,

complemented by other live releases, as well as a newer program of

Garcia solo concert recordings. Many make the argument that one feeds

the other.

"We've really hit on something with this community," says Internet

Archive's Kahle. "And yeah, it all came from the Grateful Dead, and it

will give them a long life. They're still selling stuff, and there are

young kids involved. It is relevant."

[RDK]

Read that this morning.

[jazzbo]

And you didn't post it!?

For shame!

Oh wait, you did, but you used invisble electronic ink!

[RDK]

Actually, you posted it before I signed on for the day.

-or-

I was afraid that Chuck might yell at me.

Take your pick...

[jazzbo]

Actually, you posted it before I signed on for the day. 

-or-

I was afraid that Chuck might yell at me. 

Take your pick...

←

Edited August 8, 2005 by jazzbo

[dsgtrane]

Good article. Have downloaded hundreds of shows over the past 9-10 months. Now if I only had the time to listen to them all!