NationStates Jolt Archive


Jerrry Garcia must be spinning in his grave!

Eutrusca
30-11-2005, 14:29
COMMENTARY: While I understand their reason for doing so, I mourn The Dead's sharp turn toward commercialism. Sigh. Things change, people change, the world moves on. :(


Deadheads Outraged Over Web Crackdown (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/arts/music/30dead.html?th&emc=th)


By JEFF LEEDS
Published: November 30, 2005
The Grateful Dead, the business, is testing the loyalty of longtime fans of the Grateful Dead, the pioneering jam band, by cracking down on an independently run Web site that made thousands of recordings of its live concerts available for free downloading.

The band recently asked the operators of the popular Live Music Archive (archive.org) to make the concert recordings - a staple of Grateful Dead fandom - available only for listening online, the band's spokesman, Dennis McNally, said yesterday. In the meantime, the files that previously had been freely downloaded were taken down from the site last week.

Dissent has been building rapidly, however, as the band's fans - known as Deadheads - have discovered the recordings are, at least for the time being, not available. Already, fans have started an online petition, at www.petitiononline.com/gdm/petition.html, threatening to boycott the band's recordings and merchandise if the decision is not reversed. In particular, fans have expressed outrage that the shift covers not only the semiofficial "soundboard" recordings made by technicians at the band's performances, but also recordings made by audience members.

To the fans, the move signals a profound philosophical shift for a band that had been famous for encouraging fans to record and trade live-concert tapes. The band even cordoned off a special area at its shows, usually near the sound board, for "tapers" - a practice now followed by many younger jam bands.

But more broadly, it suggests that a touchstone of baby-boomer counterculture - the recording made by and shared, sometimes via mail, among hard-core fans - may be subverted in a digital era when music files can be instantly transmitted worldwide.

The move comes as the group, which disbanded after the 1995 death of its leader and ringmaster, Jerry Garcia, has begun selling downloads of its live concerts through its own official Web site. The band (whose surviving members - the guitarist Bob Weir, the bassist Phil Lesh and the drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann - have since played together under the more compact name the Dead) sells album-length recordings of the shows at prices that can run from about $8 to roughly $16 a copy.

Unlike the digital files sold at popular music services like Apple Computer's iTunes or Real Networks' Rhapsody, the band sells its music as files that can be copied and transferred without restriction.

The independently operated Live Music Archive evidently posed unwelcome competition.

"These folks assembled a Deadhead's dream collection and made it available," Mr. McNally said. "When we discovered it, we decided to take a wait-and-see approach. Eventually, it was the band's conclusion, after a long discussion with them, to request that they change their policies" and make the live recordings available only as streams.

The contretemps makes clear that the band's decades-long support of fan recordings and trading did not anticipate the popularity of music online.

"One-to-one community building, tape trading, is something we've always been about," Mr. McNally said. "The idea of a massive one-stop Web site that does not build community is not what we had in mind. Our conclusion has been that it doesn't represent Grateful Dead values."

Most fans, he continued, "understand they were being granted an extraordinary privilege, and they responded by taking it very seriously" by respecting the band's wishes not to sell their live recordings. "This is not the same situation," he added.

David Gans, who is the host of a syndicated radio program, "The Grateful Dead Hour," said in an interview yesterday that the battle is rooted in the band's "historically lackadaisical attitude toward their intellectual property." He added: "When they were making $50 million a year on the road, there wasn't a lot of pressure to monetize their archives." Now, however, it may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. While the move to revise the Live Music Archive may deal a blow to what many fans considered an organized library of material, "the idea that they could stop people from trading these files is absurd," Mr. Gans said, adding: "It's no longer under anyone's control. People have gigabytes of this stuff."
Willamena
30-11-2005, 14:41
bummer
Dakini
30-11-2005, 15:05
Hmm...

One of my friends trades in bootlegs but doesn't deal with mp3s for that purpose. It's a rather interesting system they have, they do actually send burnt cds a fair distance back and forth. I ended up with a couple of them since my friend got duplicates. I get the feeling that a lot of big fans are doing the same and don't even deal with the online stuff.

That still sucks though.
Teh_pantless_hero
30-11-2005, 15:07
Hmm...

One of my friends trades in bootlegs but doesn't deal with mp3s for that purpose. It's a rather interesting system they have, they do actually send burnt cds a fair distance back and forth. I ended up with a couple of them since my friend got duplicates. I get the feeling that a lot of big fans are doing the same and don't even deal with the online stuff.

That still sucks though.
But they know they can't do shit about bootlegging so they make a fake monster out of mp3s.

When all else fails, blame the internet.
Cahnt
30-11-2005, 18:51
Why is this a surprise? The Dead have been all about aggressively marketed merchandise for twenty odd years at this point.
Drunk commies deleted
30-11-2005, 20:52
Why is this a surprise? The Dead have been all about aggressively marketed merchandise for twenty odd years at this point.
The Dead have also always allowed taping of all their concerts and free distribution of the bootlegs. That's why this is a surprise. It flies in the face of the Dead's tradition of allowing trade in bootleg concert recordings.
BackwoodsSquatches
30-11-2005, 21:12
As much as all the Deadheads want to believe that their beloved band are all a group of benevolent angels, who disdain capitalism, and financial gain, the sad truth is that without Jerry, these guys arent raking in the money anymore, and are trying to squeeze out a few dollars from the residual fanbase they have left.

Welcome to the real world Deadheads, your crappy band is full of assholes and greedy bastards, just like everyone elses.
Cahnt
30-11-2005, 21:13
The Dead have also always allowed taping of all their concerts and free distribution of the bootlegs. That's why this is a surprise. It flies in the face of the Dead's tradition of allowing trade in bootleg concert recordings.
So the people who are using this site taped the concerts themselves, did they?
Drunk commies deleted
30-11-2005, 21:19
So the people who are using this site taped the concerts themselves, did they?
Doesn't matter. The Dead always allowed anyone interested to trade bootleg concert recordings. There was a head shop in Cherry Hill NJ where you could drop buy blank cassette tapes and choose which shows you wanted, from any venue and any year and they'd copy them for you. Obviously the owner of the store hadn't been at that many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of concerts and taped them all. He just traded for them.
Cahnt
30-11-2005, 21:23
Doesn't matter. The Dead always allowed anyone interested to trade bootleg concert recordings. There was a head shop in Cherry Hill NJ where you could drop buy blank cassette tapes and choose which shows you wanted, from any venue and any year and they'd copy them for you. Obviously the owner of the store hadn't been at that many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of concerts and taped them all. He just traded for them.
Was he broadcasting the recordings on shortwave? That seems to be why they've had this site done away with, after all.
Drunk commies deleted
30-11-2005, 21:25
Was he broadcasting the recordings on shortwave? That seems to be why they've had this site done away with, after all.
Oh, I didn't actually read the whole article. I thought that they were just trying to crack down on people trading bootlegs. Either way, it doesn't much matter to me. I've never owned a bootleg dead tape. I do own a bootleg A Perfect Circle concert CD though.
Cahnt
30-11-2005, 21:27
Oh, I didn't actually read the whole article. I thought that they were just trying to crack down on people trading bootlegs. Either way, it doesn't much matter to me. I've never owned a bootleg dead tape. I do own a bootleg A Perfect Circle concert CD though.
This sort of thing is going to harm the sales of the dozens of live albums they have in print. I have no idea why anybody is surprised they pulled this.
BackwoodsSquatches
30-11-2005, 21:37
This sort of thing is going to harm the sales of the dozens of live albums they have in print. I have no idea why anybody is surprised they pulled this.


No, not really.

See, the dead encouraged people to record bootleg copies of their shows and distribute them to anyone.

We have that established.

Now, what you have, is that certain performances from different shows, from different dates.
This means that fans are collecting "April 25, '84, at Red Rocks."
They do this becuase given the GD's varying performaces as a "jam band", some shows are more desirable than others.

In other words, the live performances are whats its all about.
To sell a packaged live album, isnt desirable, as its ONE show...wich the fans are used to not paying to get.

Also,. to my knowledge the Dead dont have many "live albums" for actual sale, by thier (former) record label.
Most of their live materal, is all in bootleg recordings.

So, even if the GD DID have several live albums for sale, the fans are interested in the particularly spectacular performances, or the hard-to-find shows, that are only available on bootleg.
Cahnt
30-11-2005, 21:39
No, not really.

See, the dead encouraged people to record bootleg copies of their shows and distribute them to anyone.

We have that established.

Now, what you have, is that certain performances from different shows, from different dates.
This means that fans are collecting "April 25, '84, at Red Rocks."
They do this becuase given the GD's varying performaces as a "jam band", some shows are more desirable than others.

In other words, the live performances are whats its all about.
To sell a packaged live album, isnt desirable, as its ONE show...wich the fans are used to not paying to get.

Also, to my knowledge the Dead dont have many "live albums" for actual sale, by thier (former) record label.
Most of their live materal, is all in bootleg recordings.

So, even if the GD DID have several live albums for sale, the fans are interested in the particularly spectacular performances, or the hard-to-find shows, that are only available on bootleg.
I imagined those Dick's Picks things then?
BackwoodsSquatches
30-11-2005, 21:44
I read the article, didnt see anything about "Dick's Picks"....

What are they?

Are they copies of the Grateful Dead, or the group "the Dead", minus Garcia?

I believe that the fans are having issues with not being able to download shows from the site wich enabled them to pick up the Grateful Dead's shows for free.

The group, (minus garcia) the Dead, are selling thier live shows, that too, has the fans miffed.
Drunk commies deleted
30-11-2005, 21:52
I read the article, didnt see anything about "Dick's Picks"....

What are they?

Are they copies of the Grateful Dead, or the group "the Dead", minus Garcia?

I believe that the fans are having issues with not being able to download shows from the site wich enabled them to pick up the Grateful Dead's shows for free.

The group, (minus garcia) the Dead, are selling thier live shows, that too, has the fans miffed.
Dick's Picks are Gratefull Dead concert recordings that are sold in stores.

http://grateful.dead.net/merchandising/music/grateful_dead/Dicks_Picks_5/
BackwoodsSquatches
30-11-2005, 21:58
Dick's Picks are Gratefull Dead concert recordings that are sold in stores.

http://grateful.dead.net/merchandising/music/grateful_dead/Dicks_Picks_5/


Ahh.

I wouldnt think many fans are too eager for those, as all of the tracks can be found on other recordings, from the shows they took place at.
It seems like it would fall under the "nice to have, but not essential" category.