The John Paul Jones Arena isn’t the type of venue that screams "long, strange trip," but in April, local Deadheads can get their kicks all the same. The surviving members of the Grateful Dead—Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart—will perform at JPJ as part of a 19-concert tour dubbed "An Evening With The Dead" on Wednesday, April 15. Plenty of lead time for tickets on this show, folk; seats go up for sale on Friday, January 23, at 10am.
I don’t mean to digress, but…actually, you know what? If you’re a Deadhead, you live for digression. So, tell me: Can you teach the Dead dogs new tricks? Read on below the skull.
A press release from publicity firm Mitch Schneider Organization says the tour comes on the heels of "months of fan speculation" following the Dead’s gig at a Barack Obama rally in October and "three recent viral Internet videos." This is interesting, in part because (a) I seem to be able to find only one copy of each video on YouTube, on this guy’s account, and (b) saying that a video released a day ago is "viral" is like calling 2009 "the best year ever"—a bit early to say, you know?
But the viral videos also interest me because so much of how the Dead marketed their music—encouraging soundboard and audience recordings, show swapping, etc.—affected how we value media. Roughly 40 years before Girl Talk and Radiohead put out records with blank price tags, the Dead essentially did the same by opening their live performances to folks with tape recorders, so that they could encourage more folks with tape recorders to buy tickets to see them live. Music managers like Coran Capshaw have built upon the Dead’s business model, in some respects, to great success, yet websites like the Internet Archive hold more than 6,000 free Grateful Dead concerts.
Which brings about an interesting question: If you can hear the Dead’s show at John Paul Jones Arena, note-for-note, on the Internet a week later, why would you pay for a ticket? The lines are now open; hit me with your knowledge, Deadheads.
Current listening: Grateful Dead at The Strand Lyceum, May 25, 1972.
