You know what the economy needs? More Grateful Dead!

Back in August, on the 14th anniversary of his death, I did a post titled: RIP Jerry Garcia: The Godfather of social networking

In today speak, Garcia and the Grateful Dead launched multiple, synergistic initiatives to leverage their installed base. He was a visionary leader who understood social networks, marketing and monetization. I’m making him sound like a dot-com CEO! Have I completely lost my marbles? I don’t think so and here’s why…

Seems like I wasn’t that far off after all, as both The Atlantic Magazine and CNBC, the business news network, have done extended pieces looking at the Dead and their business success.

The Atlantic: Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead Archive, scheduled to open soon at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be a mecca for academics of all stripes: from ethno­musicologists to philosophers, sociologists to historians. But the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created “customer value,” promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning.

Dead Right on Business

The Dead Business Model

RIP Jerry Garcia: The Godfather of social networking

The best example I could find explaining what Jerry Garcia meant to Deadheads comes from legendary venture capitalist Roger McNamee, of all people. From the New York Times on the day Garcia died, August 9, 1995,

“I feel like a member of my family died,” said Roger McNamee, a general partner at Integral Capital Partners in Palo Alto. He also said that the day was one of emotional contrast for him. As a technology investor, he had been elated by the early success of Netscape Inc., a hot new Internet company that had its first public stock offering. But when he learned that Mr. Garcia had died, he felt devastated, he said.

Just how big of a deal was that hot new Internet company?

FORTUNE Magazine
Remembering Netscape: The Birth Of The Web

It was the spark that touched off the Internet boom. On Wednesday, Aug. 9, 1995, a 16-month-old Silicon Valley startup called Netscape tried to go public, but demand for the shares was so high that for almost two hours that morning, trading couldn’t open. The stock, which had been priced at $28 a share, zoomed as high as $75 that day and closed at $58.

And he felt devatstated.

Garcia understood the connection. In today speak, Garcia and the Grateful Dead launched multiple, synergistic initiatives to leverage their installed base. He was a visionary leader who understood social networks, marketing and monetization. I’m making him sound like a dot-com CEO! Have I completely lost my marbles? I don’t think so and here’s why…

P2P File Sharing, 1965
Fifteen years before Shawn Fanning was born and 33 years before Napster was invented, Jerry Garcia launched a P2P file sharing network. The files of the day were cassette tapes and the people sharing them were Deadheads who were free to record and trade the music. Over time, so many people wanted to record each concert, the band established a “tapers section” that allowed for great recordings and minimal interruption to the audience. Last month Forbes, of all places, actually published an article on this topic titled, Grateful to the Dead,

Like the Grateful Dead, Phish and Widespread Panic are notorious for their open recording policies, encouraging fans to record their shows for free. “Music once spread through word of mouth. Now it happens on the Internet–very quickly,” says John Bell, the lead singer of WSP. While Internet downloads bite into record sales, it’s plausible that if these bands had enforced their copyright, they never would have achieved such popularity.

Self Publishing, 1973
After several less than satisfying experiences working for “the man”, Garcia and the Dead decided to bypass record companies and start their own label. They self-published. Just like bloggers, tweeters and Facebook friends.

Built social network, 1973
From Sandy Troy’s 1994 biography of Garcia,

Part of the band’s confidence in starting their own label was rooted in the Dead Freaks Unite campaign initiated by Garcia on the inside of Grateful Dead (album), which had the following notice, “DEAD FREAKS UNITE: Who are you? Where are you? Send us your name and address and we’ll keep you informed.”

The response was overwhelming and the band quickly built up a list of twenty-five thousand names. With this direct mail list and a newsletter to communicate information, the band had an effective link with their fans, now known as Dead Heads.”

Garcia and the Dead didn’t just build a social network, they monetized it. Out of that list grew a business empire that eventually included music, a full line of merchandise, even ice cream, designer neckware and art. Ten years after his death, in 2005, the New York Times wrote,

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.

He helped to build a durable, thriving band brand and he did it by harvesting and building on the community of Deadheads by using innovative means of communication and information sharing.

Like I said, the Godfather of Social Networking.

Since this is a Jerry Garcia post, I think we need a little music as well.
Franklin’s Tower from Radio City Music Hall, 10-31-80

Twitter Addiction

No, this post isn’t about my looming Twitter addiction. It’s about what you can learn from using social networks. One of the people I decided to follow when I started on Twitter recently was John Perry Barlow ( @JohnPerryBarlow)

I mostly know of Barlow through his songwriting work for the Grateful Dead. He was a frequent collaborator with Bob Weir and helped write such classics as Cassidy, Lost Sailor, Saint of Circumstance, Hell in a Bucket, Music Never Stopped and I Need a Miracle. All great, great songs. I also knew that he was a very close friend of John F. Kennedy Jr. What I didn’t know was that he was also a lifelong friend of LSD advocate Timothy Leary and a founding members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In short, a fascinating character and someone I was definitely interested in following. Well, I haven’t been disappointed. They say brevity is the soul of wit and Twitter’s 140 character limit puts it to the test. Barlow, well, he’s made for Twitter.

Microsoft responds to Google by announcing it plans to eat itself: It’s releasing a free Web-based version of Office.

About a week ago comes this,

I’m in rehab. Folks say, You’ll admit that? Hell, why not? I was a famous drunk. I won’t mind being a famous alcoholic.

Damn. How about that. He throws it right out there and shares it with his social network. I don’t know why but this really struck me, the openness, the sharing. It was so social when most would try to keep it so private.

The way I see it… If an economy as fucked up as this one can be in recovery, why not me?

I’m sitting between Seattle & Tacoma with my dear pal Creighton King, surrounded by my fellow inmates in our green scrubs.

Rehab is for quitters.

I am heartened by the support of my friends & Twitterers. I went public about this ’cause I will need that support actively.

This is not in keeping with AA doctrine, but I’ve never fully embraced that religion. I associate anonymity with shame.

What came next was a thunderbolt, at least for me.

“One of these days I’m gonna pull myself together, soon as finish tearing myself apart.”

I wrote that line for Brent Mydland, dead 19 years today. A sweet, doomed genius he was, who could only speak in music.

Has it been 19 years since Brent Mydland died? Most of you are scratching your heads. He was an incredibly talented singer and keyboard player who played with the Grateful Dead from 1979 to 1990. I remember it like it was yesterday, exactly where I was and who I was with when I heard the news.

Barlow’s reminder of his death got me thinking about Mydland’s daughters, who were close to my kids ages (6, 5) at the time of his death in 1990. Nineteen years. I wondered how they were doing. Were they married? Have kids of their own? Think of how much he missed in nineteen years. Addiction is like cancer in that most everybody knows somebody who has struggled with it. Some more than others. I’ve known more than one, believe me. What a destructive force addiction is. It is like a hurricane that blows through lives and destroys everything in its path. If you’ve ever watched Intervention on A&E, you know.

Mydland got plucked from relative obscurity to join one of the most popular and profitable bands in the world. He was married with two beautiful little girls. What would drive a man in his position to shoot a speedball? Addiction.

Inevitably I started thinking about my life, my health, my priorities and my kids. I don’t want to miss a thing.

And what got me thinking all these deep thoughts? A guy Tweeting from rehab. Life lessons in 140 characters or less.

Great moments in parenting courtesy of Diana Krall

So last Tuesday my six year old daughter finished her third piano lesson. She was clearly loving it and showing quite a bit of natural ability. When I went home that night, my wife and I decided that we needed to get her something to practice on. We were thinking a desktop keyboard, something small to start with. Just for the hell of it, I checked Craig’s List and came across a fresh post for an upright piano. The best part, it was for $150 delivered! Not only that, the piano was tuned perfectly. On Wednesday morning, I took my daughter to school and an hour later, the piano was delivered. Needless to say, when she came home from school that afternoon, she was so excited. It was like Christmas, only better, because it was so unexpected.

This weekend I set the DVR to tape Diana Krall Live in Paris from 2001. This has long been one of my favorite Jazz CDs. I’ve listened to it literally hundreds of times. However, I’d never seen this concert film. When my daughter came down stairs this morning, we sat together and I told her I had something to show her. I hit play, and we watched this, the opening song,

The look on my daughter’s face was priceless. Her eyes were as big as saucers. What an inspiration it was for her to see a “girl”, as she put it, playing piano like that! It was just a great moment, and a reminder what an influence people like musicians and athletes have on young people. Diana Krall, you’ve touched a six year old and inspired her. Now please don’t go and get busted for taking steroids!

For Deadheads, the best week ever

I’m a Deadhead. I love The Grateful Dead and the beautiful music they made for nearly thirty years. In college, Spring Break did not mean Daytona Beach or fun in the sun. It meant one thing. A week on the road with the Grateful Dead on their annual east coast spring tour. These epic road trips started in central Maine and included three nights in Albany, NY for shows at Knickerbocker Arena, then down to Nassau, Long Island for three nights and then, if we had any money left, three more nights in Landover, MD. Ahhhh, the memories.

The New York Times recently wrote a great article about the Dead and their die hard fans, Bring Out Your Dead .

There are at least five different levels to how fans talk about the Dead. The basement level concerns the band’s commercially released albums. This is how a lot of interested but inexpert people once talked about the Dead — myself included — in the early 1980s. The next level is periods or eras, the conversation I was prepared for. There was the aggressive, noisy, color-saturated improvising from 1968 to 1970; the gentler and more streamlined songwriting and arranging of ’72 and ’73; the spooky harmonies of 1975; the further mellowing and mild grooves that lay beyond. Next comes the level of the Dead’s best night…

After that comes particular songs within particular performances.

For the record, my favorite Dead era’s are, in order, 1975-78, 1972-73, and 1981-83. The article went on to debate what was the best Grateful Dead show of all time. My personal favorite is Venetta Oregon, August 27, 1972. Of course, this is a completely subjective exercise with no right or wrong answers. With more than 2,300 concerts to choose from, it makes for an interesting conversation, amongst Deadheads at least.

Deadheads have often been polled about their favorite show, through fanzines and Web sites. The answers have stayed fairly consistent. May 8, 1977, at Barton Hall, Cornell University.

After reading this article last month, I have gone on a deep dive thanks to Archive.org where there are thousands of Dead shows online and ready to stream. I’ve listened, and re-listened to many of the shows that are on the short list for “greatest show ever”, including the amazing week of shows in May 1977, beginning May 5 in New Haven, CT to Boston Garden on the 7th, the epic Cornell show and finally May 9 in Buffalo. That spring tour in 1977 is widely regarded as their best tour ever. After re-listening, it’s easy to see why.

The NY Times has also posted a great interactive feature for Deadheads to debate The Greatest Show Ever. The Times lists four shows to pick from,

1.) Fillmore East, February 13-14 1970
2.) Harpur College, Binghampton, NY May 2, 1970
3.) Venetta Oregon, August 27, 1972
4.) Barton Hall, Cornell University, May 8, 1977

Grateful Dead era’s are usually broken out by keyboard players, as that has been the hot seat in the band. Remember Spinal Tap and all the exploding drummers? They got that gag from the Dead and their revolving keyboard players. The rotation of keyboardists was a hinge point for the band to take their music in new and exciting directions. The early years, 1965-1972 were defined by the blues singing of keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernen. Pigpen drank himself to death in 1973 at age 28, opening the door for two new band members and an entirely different sound. In 1972, the husband and wife team of Keith (piano) and Donna Jean Godchaux (vocals) joined the band stayed on until Keith’s drinking forced their exit in 1979. This was, in my opinion, the period of their most amazing and consistent work as a band. The band then turned to the great Brent Mydland, who combined amazing vocals with virtuoso electric piano and organ work that electrified the band in the early 1980’s. After Brent died from a drug overdose in 1990, the band brought in Bruce Hornsby for a number of shows, and then finally, Vince Welnick for the final few years until Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995.

1970 “Pigpen Era”

1972 “Keith and Donna”

1977 “The Greatest Year”

1980 “Brent Midland”

1990’s “So Many Roads” (This is a beautiful song)

For a bonus, here is a great Jerry ballad and one of my favorite songs to see live, Loser. It takes until about 1:45 mark before they start playing, but it is worth the wait

Here’s why you should never judge a book by its cover

R.I.P. Freddie Hubbard

Legendary jazz trumpet master Freddie Hubbard has passed away at age 70.

A towering figure in jazz circles, Mr. Hubbard played on hundreds of recordings in a career that began in 1958, the year he arrived in New York from his hometown of Indianapolis, where he had studied at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music and with the Indianapolis Symphony.

Soon he had hooked up with such jazz legends as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, and Coltrane.

“I met Trane at a jam session at Count Basie’s in Harlem in 1958,” he told the jazz magazine Down Beat in 1995. “He said, ‘Why don’t you come over and let’s try and practice a little bit together.’ I almost went crazy. I mean, here is a 20-year-old kid practicing with John Coltrane. He helped me out a lot, and we worked several jobs together.”

… within a couple of years he would develop a style all his own, one that would influence generations of musicians, including Wynton Marsalis.

“He influenced all the trumpet players that came after him,” Marsalis told The Associated Press earlier this year. “Certainly I listened to him a lot. . . . We all listened to him. He has a big sound and a great sense of rhythm and time, and really, the hallmark of his playing is an exuberance. His playing is exuberant.”

Here he is playing the song I Remember Clifford, a tribute to another amazing trumpet pioneer, the one and only Clifford Brown.