While we should not be naive enough to believe that a band can change the world, the best of them tend to leave their mark. And true to form, the Grateful Dead have left theirs in the strangest of places.
I give you two examples; Paul Krugman, and Celebrity Death Match
maybe you can give me more.
Tonight: the Paul Krugman edition, or the coming Grateful Dead economy;
But her most compelling illustration of how you can make money by giving stuff away was that of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged people to tape live performances because "enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets. In the new era, the ancillary market is the market."
Indeed, it turns out that the Dead were business pioneers. Rolling Stone recently published an article titled "Rock’s New Economy: Making Money When CDs Don’t Sell." Downloads are steadily undermining record sales — but today’s rock bands, the magazine reports, are finding other sources of income. Even if record sales are modest, bands can convert airplay and YouTube views into financial success indirectly, making money through "publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing."
and how about this for a catch quote ending his piece:
Now, the strategy of giving intellectual property away so that people will buy your paraphernalia won’t work equally well for everything. To take the obvious, painful example: news organizations, very much including this one, have spent years trying to turn large online readership into an adequately paying proposition, with limited success.
But they’ll have to find a way. Bit by bit, everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property ever easier to copy and ever harder to sell for more than a nominal price. And we’ll have to find business and economic models that take this reality into account.
It won’t all happen immediately. But in the long run, we are all the Grateful Dead.
I turns out that 'Touch of Grey' wasn't the only time the Dead were on MTV, or at least the likeness of one member wasn't. Their gory claymation series 'Celebrity Deathmatch' raised a few chuckles from me, I didn't see this when it was on TV, but it was another Youtube score. I give you Jerry Garcia vs Elvis;
I seem to have found a bunch of stuff all from spring tour 1993. It wasn't on purpose, just happened that way. A couple of them are from soundboard patches, so enjoy whether you watch the vids or not.
Terrapin Station; 3/14/93
Eyes of the World Pt. 1
Eyes of the World Pt. 2
Crazy Fingers 3/24/93
Jack Straw (same show)