In the corporate world of the recording industry, the Grateful Dead were never exactly team players.
They flew in the face of conventional wisdom by allowing fans to tape their concerts, even setting aside a special seating area for microphone-toting tapers at Dead shows.
The late Jerry Garcia once said, "When we're through with it [the music], it's theirs," and Deadheads responded by building a global community of not-for-profit tape traders who made the band one of the highest-grossing acts in history.
Now the surviving members of the group, who call themselves "The Other Ones," have embraced another technology that makes industry executives nervous -- MP3 -- to promote their new album. The Strange Remain, scheduled for release Tuesday, documents the band's live performances from last summer's Furthur tour.
Fans who go to Dead.Net can download an outtake from the album in either MP3 or Liquid Audio. The MP3 is also available on Rolling Stone Network/JamTV with additional information about the band. As of Friday, the MP3 had been downloaded over 6,000 times, and was listed as the third most popular file at MP3.com.
A webcast on the site Monday at 7 p.m. PST will feature band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Steve Kimock, and others. Bassist Phil Lesh, who is recovering from a recent liver transplant, may also appear.
Band spokesman Dennis McNally said the band's commitment to giving away "free samples" of its live performances has rewarded the members at the bottom line for decades. He attributes the success of the group's biggest chart hit, the 1987 "Touch of Grey," in part to sanctioning of tape trading.
"Tape was the medium Grateful Dead music moved in. Opening up taping was how we enlarged our audience. By the time we released that record, there was a clamoring mob waiting to buy it," McNally said.
The decision to put out a track in non-copyright protected MP3 format -- which the industry fears as an incursion into intellectual property rights -- also resulted in a call to McNally from a representative of the Recording Industry Association of America.
The caller had "seen our announcement of the MP3 on Usenet," McNally explains. "It was an open inquiry. MP3 is quite an issue."
McNally explained that the track was a gift to the band's online following: "We're not saying the Grateful Dead is the end of intellectual property. We have a savage objection to anyone profiting from our music."
The band is expected to announce a 1999 Other Ones tour during Monday's webcast.
"There will be a tour this summer, and Lesh will be on it," McNally said. "It was too much fun not to do again."
