Grateful Dead

In the late 90s Pete Rowan was the featured musician on a multi-day float trip with the local river company on the mighty San Juan River. Folks brought their instruments and there was jamming around the campfire every night. After the trip he graciously played a free show in the tiny Nadabar for us folks in town. At one point he started talking about Muley Point, which has one of the most iconic and spectacular views in the southwest, looking south from atop the edge of Cedar Mesa across the Goosenecks of the San Juan to the Navajo Nation including Douglas Mesa, Monument Valley, and beyond. And he finishes with something to the effect that "I wrote this song while I was camped up on Muley Point years ago." And then he played Land of the Navajo.

Midnight Moonlight holds a special place for me in those Old and in the Way songs. Listening to some of that Boarding House music right now. Nice unexpected music detour for a gray afternoon.

Anyone have any books by Ray Robertson? Which ones should I read, please?

Opera is fine by me, but it has to be live. My wife humors me by coming along, but I'm the one who listens to classical music all day (with breaks for GD, Dylan, and Jazz).

Sluggish sales? Let's be honest--we have TONS of GD already, so it does become difficult to get too wound up over new releases, unless the release is from a lightly-mined era, or is from recently-recovered tapes of a true classic show. Some of these recent boxed sets might have been better off with just a couple of the gem shows being Dave's Picks instead?

And yes, if I watch sports (which is mostly soccer), I mute the announcers. It's always fun when the music I'm playing suddenly synchronizes with the on-field action!

Be kind, rewind.

p.s. DMCVT, I LOVE that! :) Just took the entire family to Carmen last spring. I've seen it two or three times now . . .

Confession time... as an all music lover, have enjoyed opera and as a kiddo, sung in the street urchin chorus for Bizet's Carmen performed at the Carter Barron Amphitheater in DC. Loved the Who's Tommy when it came out fifty years ago, of course. OK now I feel much better, back to my regular programming.

53 years ago today, the Grateful Dead were busted down in New Orleans, down on Bourbon Street. They wouldn't play in New Orleans until 1980, when they played a couple of acoustic/electric shows, that would make a nice release.

Yes, interesting to hear all the theories.
However, there wasn't a change in eBay reporting. The change was at the Federal level and was included in The American Rescue Plan.
All payment platforms, which include eBay, PayPal, Venmo, etc. are required to report to the IRS and the account holder all payments over $600 for the year. The old threshold was $20,000. This is a huge change. It means if you sell your daughter's bike on Craigslist and you get paid through PayPal and it is over $600, it will be reported to the IRS. It would also include your buddies paying you for dinners or drinks through Venmo if it exceeds that $600 for the enter year. This has caused a huge disruption with these platforms, including Ebay. It was such a big issue, the IRS decided not to enforce it for 2022, but warned everyone would have to comply in 2023.

Okay, I am sure this is really boring, but sure it impacts all types of sales, including Ebay.

We will have to wait and when #45 eventually sells out. I see the LTTR and the MSG box sets are both still for sale.

Hope you all receive your #45 soon.

just ripped in set 1 10-1 promised land and TLEO are from Audience tapes they say the deads masters for those 2 songs were unsalvageable.

Interesting to read the different views on the failure to sell out, I do hope it is down to fatigue, either of the 70's generally, or 77 specifically. That said, I do fear PT Barnum maybe nearer the mark and always wondered if the increase to 25k was, perhaps, a step too far.

What is clear is that whole model is based on each volume selling out. Not necessarily immediately, but reasonably promptly. As soon as volumes stop selling out we descend into the vicious spiral of cherry picking increasing while subscriptions fall. Cherry picking is fine in theory, why shouldn't people only buy the volumes they want? Because it means fewer units sold and consequently the model becoming unsustainable without reducing the numbers.

I'm not familiar with the new ebay restrictions mentioned, but I've always found it a little ironic that the resellers have always taken quite a bit of stick here, when the reality is that reselling has been absolutely critical to the success of Dave's Picks, building demand and driving numbers up and making it what it is to day. It's worth remembering that each Dave's Picks now sells about four times what the Road Trips releases used to sell and about half of those were full shows.

On a more optimistic not, didn't volume 41 take a while to sell out?

Assessing sales and what it means is always tricky.
Hobo Song and Land of the Navaho always get me.
So The Who pulled it off with Tommy, why not? I could see some story pulled from the ballads and expanded into an opera. So many, Jack Straw comes to mind in a dust bowl hobo storyline. Or Terrapin with the Lady & The Fan story.
The GD Movie's first few minutes of animation work for me as almost a visual opera but I'm a cartoon child and all the classical music I know is from the Loony Tunes cartoons. And all my knowledge of ancient history comes from Fractured Fairy Tales with the voice of Edward Everett Horton.
Cheers
That New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival line-up is humongus (or is that humungus?)!

It may be better that they take a while to sell out, so non subscribers ( mentioning no names) can pick up a copy. It would be more worrying if they sold out on day one, before everybody that wants a copy can get one. That would light up the board, if that happened ! But all the Dave's Picks have sold out reasonably quickly, which is the main thing. So maybe they have got it right after all.
It wouldn't do any harm to move out of the 70's, though. My preference would be to go back to the 1960's, but there are surely others would be just as keen for the series to move on into the 80's and 90's. I personally might not buy them, but I am sure there are many that would.

The Dead might not have played opera, but they look as if they going out to hear one on the cover of "Go To Heaven."

If only the GD would have done an opera! (kidding). I have seen a few and get them although they are not usually my thing. I had a colleague who's side hustle was support and production of Operas, he took us to see one of Mozart's Magic Flute once, a project he helped see through. It was fun enough.

My favorite opera moment has to be Tim Robbins playing \Mozart, the Marriage of Figaro over the PA in the Shawshank Redemption. A pretty powerful moment in that film and a testament that Music can heal. For me, a great song to pull me through tough times is The Hobo Song. An up-tempo bluegrass song, the words, however, speak of deep despair.

I guess I am in the minority, I don't blame EBay taxes for Dave's 45 still being available. For some reason, the Fall '77 shows seem to be less desirable than Spring and Summer. I think the perceived drop in demand has more to do with an impending recession and resulting less disposable income for many, but the real reason is the 25,000 subscription number. Remember.. the first year the subscription was capped at 12,000 copies. Even us diehards openly discuss not needing every single release. As much as I love 1977 GD, I have listened to it a ton.

It is going to be hard for Rhino and the GD to keep the hype going at 25k copies. Treading carefully as they must, the greatest hype period was probably in 2015 with Fare The Well, etc.

One last comment, the first release each year always takes longer to sell out. Not sure exactly why.. perhaps it's because each year attracts a churn of new Deadheads that got on the bus late and buy a few ala carte CDs while the people that drop off the wheel and quit subscribing affect subscription numbers, which they can control somewhat and the impact is largely hidden to us.

I don't think it's primarily an EBay phenomenon, but I could be wrong.

He Used to be a Gamblin' Man Just Like You......