Look for a while at the Dead and Co..

Remembering Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, And Mickey Hart's 'Deadheads For Obama' Benefit 12 Years Ago Today [Full Audio]

 

A good number of Deadheads believe Dead & Company are more interested in making money than music. They use terms such as "Dead & Corporation" and "cash grab," labels I am still reluctant to apply to the band but my resiliency, and respect, is waning: no newly-written songs (as Hunter churned out lyrics right up to his passing), no rehearsals, no more cool song breakouts, no West Coast shows this summer, and too many Jerry songs being poorly sung by Weir, most notably "Days Between," which they sorely need to drop from the rotation.
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As for their summer tour, why isn't the band playing west of Boulder and how can they hold their only tour of 2020 without San Francisco or Left Coast dates ?
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All of this is the byproduct of making a deal with the devil — going for the mega-bucks by allowing John Mayer's manager, the sleazy Irving Azoff (pictured below with long-time ally Harvey Weinstein), to represent, and guide, the band. I am not knocking Mayer, whom I admire and appreciate, but it may well be time for Dead & Co. to end it. (The shelf life for most post-Garcia bands has been, more or less, five years: the Other Ones, the Dead, Furthur.) Like Bruce Hornsby in 1992, Mayer will need to get back to his own career, obviously too consumed by it to write with Hunter or put the hours, and rehearsing, into next-leveling Dead & Co.
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Once again, the Dead & Co. ticket-buying process is enough to send your heart racing, your blood pressure through the roof and your anxiety levels skyrocketing, the now-familiar feeling that Deadheads are being bamboozled, and pressured, into participating in a ticket-buying frenzy that is not just unnecessary and unethical but unlike anything we saw during the halcyon days of GDTS, mail-order ticketing, and the Grateful Dead.
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In Thursday's press release announcing Dead & Co.'s 17-date summer tour, we were inundated and overrun by a litany of terms — pre-sale registration, Ticketmaster verified fan, limited quantity of tickets, the only headline tour dates, American Express® card members, first-come first-served, registration closes on Sunday — strictly designed to make ticket-buying Deadheads believe we need to participate in a pre-sale registration sham in order to buy tickets to Dead & Co.'s shows.
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Nothing could be further from the truth.
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The intent of the pre-sale is solely to allow Ticketmaster to utilize a scaled-ticket pricing system or, translated, a legalized scalping system. During the pre-sale, Ticketmaster raises its prices for quality seats by as much as three to four times above their face value.
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The entire process is an affront to the Grateful Dead ethos the band spent 30 years building.
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I'm not saying don't see Dead & Co., but I am saying don't get caught up in the "pre-sale" hysteria and Ticketmaster's attempt to create an unnecessary, and unscrupulous, ticket-buying mania.
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Most of these shows are not going to sell out, and tickets will be available long after the "pre-sale" shakedown has come and gone, on both Ticketmaster and re-sale sites such as StubHub, which will be littered with fair value tickets leading up to the shows. The "Fun Run" fall tour, for which we were misled to believe they'd be only four shows, turned into a half-dozen and the two additional gigs at the Nassau Coliseum were so badly undersold that tickets were retailing for $22 a pop on StubHub the day of the shows.
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Do not push the panic button and get caught up in the hype created by the monopoly Ticketmaster and Dead & Co.'s co-manager, Irving Azoff, who brokered the deal that saw Live Nation and Ticketmaster join forces to become a single conglomerate.
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& that must be baby Jerry... so cool.

 

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I remember Pearl Jam boycotting them. I wonder what would happen if Dead & Company were to boycott them. There must be a thousand ways to sell tickets without them. & while I have purchased from them before (I remember because I got the follow up email to prove it...) they're not my favorite. I like Eventbrite.

I don't go to lots of shows primarily because of the expense. Excessive prices make for a lousy time. It's really a crying shame.

Pearl Jam: Taking on Ticketmaster
Eventbrite

 

California is such a craphole that even the Grateful Dead are grateful to only have to play there twice a year..

 

"& it was bobby weir all along..."