Thanks for posting. All seems positive regarding "Buffalo"

I hate to pee on anyone's parade, but I never "got" what was so great about the Grateful Dead.

For a band with TWO drummers they seem to be, shall we say, a bit lacking in groove. A friend of mine, accurately in my opinion, once described their music as "flaccid rock."

Plus, they can't none of them sing, and Jerry Garcia's guitar playing seems like just a bunch of scales to me.

So, for those of us not on drugs, how do you justify this band?

Sorry you don't get it. No one is going to be able to explain it to you. You either like them or you don't. I don't enjoy everything you do, and I don't need to.

It's not my job to justify them as a band. If you compare the Dead to a typical rock outfit your missing the whole point. I do suggest that every so often you give them a try. Your tastes may change from year to year. I'll admit to not really "getting" all aspects of the Dead at first. Listen without prejudice I say! There are plenty of great suggestions in this thread to get you started.

Most Deadheads can insult the band more wickedly than people who profess not to like them. The band had such a long run with a change in the cast and inclinations that it's easy to like some years more than others and some not at all. Key buzzwords to start trouble are "Donna," "Vince," "Samba," "the '80s," "Drumz/Space," "Brent songs," and "MIDI" for starters.

And they didn't always have 2 drummers. Personally my favorite years are when they just had one. Check out the years from '72 to '74 if indeed that is one of your qualms. Though there's no getting around "the problem" of Jerry's guitar style.

Flaccid? Not in a fall '72 "Playin'," or the end of a hot "Deal." Not ever in the '60s. I mean some of their biggest fans were the Hells Angels. You wanna say their taste runs towards flaccid? I've heard "noodley," and a wet noodle is flaccid, so if that's what your friend is trying to explain then I can see it (at least some of the time.) When I hear flaccid I think of something like Billy Joel or Christopher Cross ballad myself.

Elvis Costello has gone on record as appreciating the vulnerability in Jerry's voice. Of course Elvis can't sing either can he?

Usually fans of power pop are less likely to like the Grateful Dead, since their attention span runs out after 3:30. Not that I'm interested in converting everyone to the band, but I've found that the live acoustic album "Reckoning" usually plays better for those who say they don't like the Dead more than anything else. But there's no guarantee.

But be careful, liking the Grateful Dead can happen to anyone, even those who never imagined it. I recently assisted a young British friend with some Dead recommendations from archive.org. He was grabbing Billy Bragg recordings and most of his collection consists of indie bands and folk singers. His curiosity got the better of him.

Great post. Frankly, what I "don't get" is someone posting in a thread on a band they admittedly "don't get," only to throw around insults - and insults apparently justified by professed ignorance, at that.

It's just kinda weird, ya know?

Bob Dylan's press release regarding Jerry Garcia's death

"There's no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player. I don't think any eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great, much more than a superb musician, with an uncanny ear and dexterity. He's the very spirit personified of whatever is Muddy River country at its core and screams up into the spheres. He really had no equal. To me he wasn't only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he'll ever know. There's a lot of spaces and advances between The Carter Family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There's no way to convey the loss. It just digs down really deep."

Thanks for the Dylan statement. That's nice.

To answer a couple of aspects of Kalo's question, disingenuous thought it may be:

Songwriting
Collectively, The Grateful Dead really were some of the great American songwriters. The songs of Garcia/Hunter and Weir/Barlow (or Weir/Hunter, or whatever), are significant contributions to the Great American Songbook. Random evidence:

Bertha
Box of Rain
Brown-Eyed Women
Candyman
Casey Jones
Cassidy
China Cat Sunflower
China Doll
Dire Wolf
Eyes of the World
Fire on the Mountain
Franklin's Tower
Friend of the Devil
He's Gone
High Time
It Must Have Been the Roses
Jack Straw
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
Looks Like Rain
Scarlet Begonias
Ship of Fools
St. Stephen
Sugaree
Sugar Magnolia
Tennessee Jed
Terrapin Station
Truckin'
Uncle John's Band

Improvisation
They were great songwriters, but what they did with those songs - letting them become their own things on any given night, night after night - was very, very special. Their dedication to playing in the moment testified, on the one hand, to a faith in the songs as entities unto themselves that could stand up in constantly morphing musical circumstances. On the other hand - and this is just as important - it testified to their unwillingness to let the songs "settle" into concrete forms. They saw it all as a shifting form, and that's much of their greatness.

Oh, and some serious instrumental chops, too.

Pffft. That guy couldn't sing either.

From Miles autobiography:

"So it was through Bill (Graham) that I met the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia, their guitar player, and I hit off great, talking about music - what they liked and what I liked - and I think we all learned something, grew some. Jerry Garcia loved jazz, and I found out that he loved my music and had been listening to it for a long time. He loved other jazz musicians, too, like Ornette Coleman and Bill Evans. Laura Nyro was a very quiet person offstage and I think I kind of frightened her."

I love that last sentence so much I couldn't leave it out.

Now as far as what Miles thought Steve Miller, see page 301. I would reprint it here, but kids are out of school for summer and all.

Yes, Garcia amazes me with his extensive love and knowledge of so much music, of so many styles. AND I feel he was a wonderful guitarist doing much more than running scales. . . . He's missed these days. Can you imagine if we still had him?

I've come to the Dead relatively recently (as in, during the past five years or so), but I've only just started getting really hooked on their music. Several years back, I picked up "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty." I also got a couple of "Dick's Picks" sets (number 8 and number 11) which I really liked. The only "early" album I had was "Live Dead," and I picked up a couple of other live releases ("Skull and Roses" and "Europe '72'). I dutifully upgraded these when the reissues came out in 2003 (my last act - literally - before getting fired at B&N). Since then, nothing at all until recently. Just for the hell of it, I put on "Dick's Picks #8" and...BAM. It just kinda hit me. Wow! What an amazing set! Don't know why I didn't see it before. Prompted by that, I got their first three studio albums and "Postcards from the Hanging" (live material from between '73 and the 1990s in which the Dead cover Dylan material...much better than they did with Dylan himself on "Dylan and the Dead," I might add...although I really don't think "Dylan and the Dead" is nearly as bad as its made out to be). I've also ordered "Blues for Allah," "Reckoning," and "The Arista Years" (which, according the Jerry Garcia's biographer Blair Jackson, is the best way to approach the material from the late 70s and 80s). I'd be interested in any other recommendations. I see that "Greyfolded" gets good reviews from the folks on this board. What else should I look for? What "Dick's Picks" or other live sets are essential? I've considered "Dozin' at the Knick."

As to how one "justifies" the Dead...It's hard to explain. What I admire in them is the same thing I admire about Elvis Costello: These guys were clearly fans themselves. Their sheer pleasure in playing a variety of music is clear when you listen to them. And Jerry's improvisations are definitely something that a jazz ear can appreciate!

The "bam" just happens out of nowhere doesn't it? I've had 3 bam moments, each leading to greater interest. The last one sent me over the edge.

As you seem to flitting between all of the eras and enjoying them, it's easy to recommend things for you to investigate. I like the choices you made, especially "Blues For Allah" & "Reckoning." And while I don't have it you probably did right by grabbing the Arista years, as it grabs the good ones from the later era. And going the route of "Skull & Roses" & "Europe '72" is very old school. That's the way all of us from the LP era did it!

Probably my favorite Dick's Pick is #12 (6/26-28/74.) The long intro to the China > Rider is one of the most beautiful things ever recorded. The jam out of the "Let It Grow" is pretty amazing too. A great "Eyes," and "Beer Barrel Polka" is the sort of thing to make ya love 'em even more.

I also really enjoy DP 18 (Feb '78) for the 2 second set discs (2 & 3). The 1st disc is a cobbled together 1st set from 3 nights (even though the notes say 2) which includes a tremendous "Music Never Stopped" and "Passenger."

Any of the '77s is worth a shot. Perhaps DP 29 (5/19 & 5/21/77) would be my 1st pick, but it's all good (might be the only time I've used that saying but it works here.)

From The Vault: Great American Music Hall, S.F., 8/17/75 is a must in my book. Aside from a powerful "Help>Slip>Frank" there are 2 beauties that they rarely if ever did live again (forgive me for not checking my Deadbase) - "Sage & Spirit" and "King Solomon's Marbles." Its price might be a little higher than a Dick's Pick but it is worth it.

I'm a big fan of DP 14 (11/30 & 12/2/73), but as a 4 disc DP that perhaps could wait for further exploration.

Tough call on whether to pick Dozin' over Without A Net (probably so.) You might want to consider the Nightfall of Diamonds (10/10/89) over both. Other Brent era considerations are DP 13 (5/6/81) and DP 5 (12/26/79.) I like DP 6 (10/14/83) but seem to be in the minority.

Oh yes, the '71 set Ladies & Gentlemen...The Grateful Dead: Fillmore East 4/25-29/71 is pretty durn good too. They were really on for that run.

I'll stop there. But there are other delights. OK, one more. The So Many Roads box might be a natural for you. Very nice selections from across the eras. The "Whiskey In The Jar" rehearsal from near the end is such a delight. Loads of good stuff.

You mentioned Blair Jackson earlier. You probably know of his website, but if not here's the link. His review of DPs and releases ends sometime around 2002.

Here's a list of Dick's Picks that might be of use as well.

Enjoy the exploration!

I love the dead, but I am still not a fan of Bob Weir's vocals.

I am a huge fan of Jerry's guitar playing. There are no other guitar players around then or now that can keep me interested for 30 minutes on one theme. There is a dynamic and fleet in his playing that I get lost in, especially on those earlier psychedelic flights of 1968-1970.

I agree with you on Jerry's playing.

I'm a fan of Weir's singing though. . . always have been. . . it was Jerry's singing I had to warm up to, and did, and love it now. Pigpen is Pigpen and when he was on he was the bluesman from hell. . . . When I'm in the mood he's great to listen to.

anybody's choice, for your pleasure, our pleasure
grateful dead was and will always be music and feeling of friendship, mystery and love

Maybe they should call themselves "Jefferson Wheelchair"???

New this week to www.yourmusic.com : three Jerry Garcia cds:

Reflections
Run for the Roses
Cats under the stars

Just heard on the radio that today is Keith Godchaux's birthday. A good excuse to listen to some Dead. I'm Rockin' The Rhein right now!

Just playing the latest Dicks, the legend of the houseboat tapes...First album is a bit lackluster, but after a good Truckin at the end of cd 1, BAM! cd2 begins with a stunning China Cat and all is forgiven!

Had a chance to listen to this yet? Any good?

The cover has caught my eye more than once, already....

.....and it gets better, one can really hear what Lesh is up to in the engine room on this Dicks and there is some really nice jamming. If this and Ladies and Gentlemen are indicative, 71 was a pretty good vintage.

YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

http://dead.net/merchandising/music/DECD291/

Forgot to add if you do the pre-order you get a bonus disc. I have no idea what's on it.

later 71 is cool. earlier 71 is a letdown from earlier yeas. too much experimenting with new songs-concise tentative arrangements. towards the end of the year things got a bit wilder.

Wow this seems like a steal at the price, especially with the bonus disc. Whether I NEED all that is something I'll ponder in the coming week or so.

Just landed and loving: The 5cd soundtrack set.

Oh my god, I may very well have to get that...

Thanks for the heads up Chalupa! My order is in ! I am not going to miss this puppy!

From the pre-order page at dead.net:

"All pre-orders of the "Fillmore West 1969-The Complete Recordings" before November 15, 2005, will receive an exclusive bonus CD containing previously unreleased Grateful Dead performances recorded at the Carousel Ballroom and Fillmore West between 1968-1970."

Given the 10cd complete Live/Dead set is limited to 10,000 copies, what are the chances that it'll sell out pre-release?

if only PigPen weren't on it

Previously unreleased Dead performances!

How many of those can there be?

On the shortlist for reissue of the year!

kalo, you are giving the les mcann "invitation..." people a hard time. you are giving these "deadheads" a hard time. give me a f_cking break. you are basically trollling the dead fans over here (not that i am one of them, but i read this and the mccann thread back to back). just because you don't agree, these are perfectly viable forms of musical expression.

Point taken. My bad.

I'll try to resist in the future.

I haven't heard any of these shows to featured on the box. Are they as magical as they say? This is my favorite period of the Dead, the swirling psychedelic and jam-heavy version of the band. Dark Star holds a special place in my heart, and I imagine that these are some killers.

So, who has heard the tapes? Highlights?

If you have Live Dead you've heard a wee bit.

St. Stephen, Dark Star - April 27 (also The Other One from the box is this night.)
Death Don't, Feedback & We Bid You Goodnight - March 2

If this is your favorite period it is a must. It's rare to meet someone who loves '69 who hasn't heard the run though I know you're a well-rounded individual musically who hasn't spent every waking minute of your life looking for extra crispy tapes of this run and that show.

Although every night has a Dark Star > St. Stephen > The Eleven segment there is enough of a difference in the playing over the 4 nights to make it a recommended purchase. Well heck, look at how each night begins and how that effects the vibe:

2-27 - Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
2-28 - Morning Dew
3-01 - Crytical Envelopment > The Other One
3-02 - Dark Star > St. Stephen > The Eleven > Lovelight

Like the kids say, that's just sick!

What do y'alls make of this one? Recommended?

I've heard it a couple of times but don't own it, though I have another show featuring the 2.

It has its moments in some of the jams but it's not something I go to very often.

Got back from a week in Waikiki and saw my email announcing this preorder, and that the Bix Volume 5 on Origin Jazz has been released. . . .

Dang! Preordered and ordered!

In honor of Jerry's birthday today I broke out the 2nd set of 2/27/69. The Mountains of the Moon > Dark Star gets me every time.

http://www.dead.net/RobertHunterArchive/fi...l#anchor6780779

Ten years since old Jer kicked the bucket? Seems more like fifty. Nothing about his passing seems like "only yesterday," rather as long ago and faraway as my childhood.

From the sublime to the vicious, everything that could be said has been said and said again. Yet, the essential mystery of who Jerry Garcia was remains. What can be said with fair assurance is that he was a source, an original way of seeing the world that agreed with others in a few broad and important outlines, but which in just as many other dimensions confounded all expectations.

I wouldn't say he delighted, in any Whitmanian sense, in what appear to be his contradictions, nor that he had control of them; predictability was not his strong suit. Not even self predictability. He could be alarmingly kind in situations where kindness was the last response to be expected - and altogether gruff where sympathy seemed the more natural response. You could almost say he had weather rather than climate.

Few would disagree that a key part of him remained isolated, unknown and unknowable. His art is the closest thing to an available roadmap of his singularities, amorphous clues, and clues only, to the nature of his true affections. Where he entered, he dominated, generally to his dismay. He knew he was not a leader, more a scout striking out in the wilderness of his intuitions, unwittingly summoning others to tag along through virtue of his magnetic personality and apparently deep sense of inner direction, but basically antipathetic to following or to being followed. Driving back and forth across the bay from Larkspur to San Franscisco on Workingman's Dead recording sessions, our conversations would range wide, or, sometimes, nothing would be said at all. I remember once we got to talking about directions. He professed to having none and inquired as to mine. "For the time being," I said, "I'm just following you following yourself." "Then we're both lost," he muttered.

A persistent image I have of Jerry which seems strangely resonant with his coming and going: a brilliant sunny day on a boat bobbing above the abyss of Molokini where the floor of the ocean suddenly drops off a cliff and plunges to unknown depths, I watch him check his gear then sit on the edge of the boat and tumble over backwards into the water, which is clear to a depth of several hundred feet. I watch him dwindle in size as he descends further and further, spread eagle and motionless, until he is only a speck to the eye, then disappears altogether from view and there is no more Jerry, only ocean.

from someone who knew him perhaps better than anyone. thanks

I've been listening to so much early 70's material that this one just didn't click upon first listen. I need to give it another shot.

I thought it was quite good. The "In The Dark" material is even better here than on the studio album. The only thing I disliked about this disc was the "Drums/Space" segment (dated by drum pads and MIDI technology) and Brent's "I Will Take You Home" which is unbelievably schlocky (even moreso than on other live recordings of the period).

From todays L A Times (thanks to an email from The Mule)

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."

Nice article on much-needed, alternate forms of music dissemination.

NP: Grateful Dead - June 10, 1976 • Boston Music Hall (from the internet archive)

Hard to believe that today marks 10 years....

Jerry, my friend,
you've done it again,
even in your silence
the familiar pressure
comes to bear, demanding
I pull words from the air
with only this morning
and part of the afternoon
to compose an ode worthy
of one so particular
about every turn of phrase,
demanding it hit home
in a thousand ways
before making it his own,
and this I can't do alone.
Now that the singer is gone,
where shall I go for the song?

Without your melody and taste
to lend an attitude of grace
a lyric is an orphan thing,
a hive with neither honey's taste
nor power to truly sting.

What choice have I but to dare and
call your muse who thought to rest
out of the thin blue air
that out of the field of shared time,
a line or two might chance to shine --

As ever when we called,
in hope if not in words,
the muse descends.

How should she desert us now?
Scars of battle on her brow,
bedraggled feathers on her wings,
and yet she sings, she sings!

May she bear thee to thy rest,
the ancient bower of flowers
beyond the solitude of days,
the tyranny of hours--
the wreath of shining laurel lie
upon your shaggy head
bestowing power to play the lyre
to legions of the dead

If some part of that music
is heard in deepest dream,
or on some breeze of Summer
a snatch of golden theme,
we'll know you live inside us
with love that never parts
our good old Jack O'Diamonds
become the King of Hearts.

I feel your silent laughter
at sentiments so bold
that dare to step across the line
to tell what must be told,
so I'll just say I love you,
which I never said before
and let it go at that old friend
the rest you may ignore.

~Robert Hunter

August 9, 2005
Jerry Garcia: The Man, the Myth, the Area Rug
By SETH SCHIESEL, NYT

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 8 - One of the icons of modern American culture now resides in a nondescript warehouse about 30 miles north of here, in a windowless, climate-controlled, heavily-alarmed room built like a bomb shelter that is called simply the Vault.

There, in towering rows of 13,000 audiotapes, 3,000 videotapes and about 250,000 feet of traditional 16-millimeter film lives the recorded history of the Grateful Dead, one of the seminal American rock bands.

The Grateful Dead ceased to exist on Aug. 9, 1995, when the band's lead guitarist and most recognizable figure, Jerry Garcia, died at age 53 of a heart attack at a drug treatment center. Yet 10 years later, the man and the band remain alive for millions of fans, and the once notoriously ad hoc Grateful Dead business operation has become a model for a music industry struggling with the Internet and digital democracy.

"When I first got into the record business I learned that it wasn't cool to be into the Grateful Dead," said Christopher Sabec, 40, a lawyer who said he saw the band more than 250 times and is now chief executive of the Jerry Garcia Estate L.L.C., controlled by Mr. Garcia's heirs. "But if you look at where the music business has been forced to go by technology, now it's not about selling records. It's about live shows and inspiring a fan base to be absolutely loyal. Hello? Who did that first? The Grateful Dead."

The Jerry Garcia company and Grateful Dead Productions are separate businesses each generating millions of dollars of revenue a year. Just how many millions is not publicly known. But consumers still buy more than a million J. Garcia-brand neckties each year, and Cherry Garcia is often the top-selling brand of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, each pint generating royalties for the Garcia heirs.

The band's four surviving members - the drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, the bassist Phil Lesh and the guitarist Bob Weir - have toured occasionally as the Dead, though not this year. They control the Grateful Dead's licensing business, which oversees thousands of products sold around the world, like gas tank caps, incense burners, golf club covers and sandals. (The Garcia company receives a share of the proceeds.)

But for cultural and practical matters, the heart of the Grateful Dead's legacy resides in the 10,000 cubic feet of space in Novato, north of San Francisco. The Vault feeds a continuing business based on regular releases of old concert recordings on iTunes, on the band's Web sites and in stores, feeding old Deadheads and creating new fans.

Physically, there is only one key to the Vault, and only two people know where to find it. David Lemieux, 34, the band's archivist, is one of them. Jeffrey Norman, one of the band's engineers, is the other.

"This is it, the key to the Vault," Mr. Lemieux said, holding up the gleaming shard of metal, a sliver that to some Deadheads may be more sacred than a splinter from the True Cross.

One major way the band and the Garcia company have kept the flame alive is by regularly releasing audio and video recordings of old concerts that have been restored with the latest digital techniques. Two years ago, for instance, the band released a DVD of its performance that closed San Francisco's legendary Winterland Ballroom on Dec. 31, 1978.

"There is just no way we could have done the Winterland release without the current technology," Mr. Lemieux said in his memorabilia-plastered office.

For fans used to fuzzy old cassettes, the new releases are a revelation.

"Many of us Deadheads are experiencing a renaissance now in our appreciation for the band because such high-quality recordings are available," said Amir Bar-Lev, 33, a filmmaker from New York who said he saw the band more than 100 times. "Ten years ago I was listening to 20th-generation tapes kicking around the floor of my car. Now, thanks to all of the technology, I can hear the band in all its glory."

Mr. Weir, the guitarist, said in a telephone interview on Friday from West Virginia, where he was on tour with his band RatDog, that although Mr. Garcia sometimes resented his own celebrity, he would have been pleased that his music endured. "I'm glad people can still enjoy it," he said.

He continued: "I am a big fan of Duke Ellington and I never saw him live. I'm a big fan of John Coltrane and I never saw him live. I don't want to put us on that level, but we don't play all of this music casually or callously, and of course Jerry would appreciate people being able to experience it."

More broadly, the Grateful Dead's emphasis on touring over selling records presaged the music industry's current predicament over file-sharing on the Internet.

The Grateful Dead was the first major band to allow fans to freely make and trade recordings of its live performances in the belief that spreading the music that way would ensure long-term success. That formula was later adopted almost wholesale by other successful bands, including Phish, and fans still avidly trade live Grateful Dead recordings online.

Even though there are now high-quality recordings for sale, created using the official sound-mixing boards used at concerts, fans are still free to trade recordings made in the crowd. The band used to offer a special section of seating for amateur tapers.

"They wanted to create a space for themselves and their fans to gather and play, and that didn't sit well in the offices of the record business," said Mr. Sabec, who is perhaps best known in the music industry for discovering and managing the 1990's teen-pop group Hanson. "Now I find myself sitting in meetings where other bands are using the Dead as a model."

In the years immediately after Mr. Garcia's death, Grateful Dead merchandising brought in more than $50 million in annual gross revenue. That figure may have declined a bit since then, and the band's licensing activities are now separate from the Garcia estate's business affairs, but both entities continue to thrive.

In addition to ties and ice cream, the Garcia company has expanded into rugs and wine. An artist as well as a musician, Mr. Garcia signed his work "J. Garcia."

"I'm not trying to turn the J. Garcia brand into something you find at Target, but I am trying to broaden it," Mr. Sabec said. "There are J. Garcia carpets that my mother would be happy to have in her house, and she's not a Deadhead. If you were to position it only for people who were fans of Jerry's music, it would be a much smaller market than what we're going for."

Yet even as the Garcia company has expanded its ambitions, the band's business wing, Grateful Dead Productions, has in some ways pared down its operations in recent years, like many United States companies.

For a few years after Mr. Garcia's death, as the technology bubble expanded (Aug. 9, 1995, was also the day Netscape stock went public, signaling the coming dot-com boom), the band pursued a vision of creating a business tentatively called Bandwagon, which would function as a one-stop merchandising and online distribution operation for a variety of musical acts. In addition, the band came close to creating what would have amounted to a countercultural theme park in San Francisco.

"The whole Bandwagon thing was a function of the dot-com mania, especially spectacularly in the Bay Area," said Dennis McNally, the band's longtime publicist and historian. "There was also an idea of creating a performance space and museum called Terrapin Station, which we figured we needed $50 million to do. And in the context of the dot-com revolution, that seemed perfectly doable."

In the end, the band balked at potentially having to cede final control of the projects to outside investors. And as the dot-com bubble burst, the band went in the opposite direction. It laid off dozens of longtime employees, closing its own warehouse and largely outsourcing the logistics of the memorabilia business.

Now, the band has only about 10 employees, including Mr. Lemieux at the Vault.

Although the theme park never came to be, on Sunday in San Francisco, the city unveiled the newly renamed Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in John McLaren Park, near the blue-collar Excelsior District where Mr. Garcia grew up before moving to the better-known Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

Backstage at the event, Mr. Garcia's older brother, Tiff, seemed to share his sibling's somewhat ambivalent attitude toward the marketing of celebrity.

"They're trying to do an Elvis on him, with all of the garments and merchandise and different items," he said. "But I'm not surprised. He meant so much to so many people, and I'm proud of the fact that one individual could draw so much attention."