Death of a subculture

Wonder if Target had to outbid Walmart on this deal ?

Who is Grateful Dead merchandise these days ?

Would like to see the money flow chart on this.

fonzy + shark

Oh the Fonzy jumps Shark t-shirt

Got it at Target

The FOMO crowd think they can buy an E-ticket for an authentic experience, but the fact is this trend is long-established. What started as the Acid Tests was quickly commodified and became the way most concerts have been done for the last 50 years or so.

And yeah. Mayer.

There was a young adult who posted on social media that she didn't realize the Grateful Dead and Nirvana were bands. She thought the were clothing brands. 

After Touch of Grey took off, Jerry was asked why they finally decided to sell out. His response:

"We were always willing to sell out; no one was willing to buy."

Two words: White Levis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl0gAUvFO3Q

And four more words: Jerry Garcia and David Nelson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnXFJ7yMzOo

Does that hit the $9.99 price point ?

You couldn't put less thought into that if you tried.

I was literally on the Section 119 website just a second ago. I said, "Jesus, they'll license anything." The variety of sports bras is astounding.

Looking for a new sports bra Brian?

Love a new sports bra. 

I want pink shirts with GD images. 

This particular sub-culture met its' demise in 1987 when the Touch heads arrived........you guys are way late to mourning....

This is a just a natural evolution of what created the faux "subculture" in the first place...... the Shakedown scene in the lots.

More commercial? Perhaps. Less personal? Sure, but on the plus side it's not ruining concerts and nobody throws bottles at you when it's time to close.

Besides, how many of us still have Jerry ties in our closet? If that wasn't commercial shark-jumping I don't know what was.

And as for Touch Heads, they've always gotten a bad rap. They were no different than any of the rest of us who got hooked on the band when we were young, whether it was '87, '71, '94, '78 or '69, and no different from the legions of 17 - 25-year-olds who are discovering it now through Dead & Co and loving it exactly the same way we all did whenever we started.

Ascribing the change in the scene in the late '80s to Touch of Grey is shallow thinking. Did that song make the band more accessible to the larger population? Of course, but all the years prior to Touch of Grey the band had still played the biggest venues and sold them out.

It wasn't one hit song that changed everything. What changed around that time wasn't the band's popularity, it was the new culture of thousands of people showing up to every show without tickets, and that is once again far more attributable to the explosion of the Shakedown scene during that same period, and it was that unsustainable crush of people without tickets that drove the band out of smaller venues, overwhelmed surrounding communities and ultimately got them banned from many of those communities.

I realize we all suffer from a constant, insatiable need to feel superior to others, but I've always thought that the Touch Heads bit was pretty weak.

YMMV.

The touch head thing was way different in the North East than it was in the West. It completely changed the scene in the East from an underground nothing to see here vibe to a complete cluster fuck of fucked up college and high school kids with no interest in the music, but they had a lot of interest in buying crap in the lot which led to the professionalization of what was a barter economy and the birth of Shakedown. That whole scene then attracted the kinds of people who were there to take advantage of fucked up kids and they started touring. It went from a place where you could mostly trust the people around you to having to be careful. 

Whew, I thankfully beat the Touch Head bad rap by a year and a half!

It wasn't the Touch Heads. Many of them were way into the music. The real demise was around '93. The music wasn't consistently good, but more and more people were on Tour. Even through '90, the Touch Head years, everyone was looking for tickets and Shakedown would shut down during the show (pretty much).  By '93 there were tens of thousands at each show without tickets, and many of them weren't looking, even the vendors. Shakedown was just as bustling during the show as before or after. The show stopped being the center of attention and it was only about the party and money.

I don't blame anyone. It just happened.

One thing I have to say is many of the kids who got on the bus post Jerry have listened to way more shows with Jerry than I did when I first started going. They know the eras and for what it's worth they overwhelmingly like pre 79 Dead. 

I don't know what the word is for Dead & Co but they aren't a living band. That is the energy they are missing. That is what Phish still brings. Dead & Co doesn't play clunkers but they also never reach the heights. 

> do they even have malls anymore?

Of course they do. It's called the interwebz.

When cocaine entered the scene, it ruined everything. 

- Carolyn Adams

Everyone has their own opinion when things "went downhill".

what happened to jerry from 79-81? quite the transformation.

Blame Stanley Mouse. In 1966, he designed the first GD t-shirt.

>>>When cocaine entered the scene, it ruined everything.

So 72?

^ I believe she was referring to some point in '69.  During, or just after,  '72 Europe, the band was doing a collective coke dump, it had gotten really bad, apparently, by then. 

Kudos, I guess, to RS for the appropriately awful headline.

That was 1974.

> That was 1974.

The Europe tour in the Fall, according to McNally's Long Strange Trip:

It was a very different scene from 1972, without family or any sense of adventure or vacation, and the run began with Rex Jackson briefly quitting as they arrived at Heathrow. What it did have was drugs. The London gigs were at the Alexandra Palace ("All-Pally") with a promoter named Tom Salter, who was better known as a man about Carnaby Street. It was Rock Scully's gig, said Richard Loren. "I fought it. Rick was always trying to get in with promoters who weren't promoters, who had money and drugs. I wanted to work with Harvey Goldsmith, of course. Salter had the drugs." Rock didn't dispute Loren, and later wrote of the same time, "I am as coked up as a Taiwanese freighter, and the vibes are getting just as quaky. When your brain crackles and your eyeballs burst out of their sockets, it's usually a sign that you're overdoing it just a wee bit. I have to do something, but what?" He certainly didn't figure it out on this tour. Things were so bad that near the end of their stay in London, Ram Rod dared the band members to destroy their drug stashes, and they met his challenge. Unfortunately, stashes can be replenished (475).

1974 Robyn Hitchcock.  Great Song 

https://youtu.be/v-iztfUiKMI?si=SWrkFREJdidV9j0e

I don't know what the word is for Dead & Co but they aren't a living band<<<<<
 

They're a Cover Band, purely an exercise in nostalgia.

Thanks Surfdead and Mike. I forget about Europe '74. 72 is what always pops up. 

>>> Touch heads.

Arguably, throughout the band's lifetime, there were always 2 groups of people showing up. Those who would start off describing their show experiences as, ' I was so fucked up!' , and those who would start off describing  their show experiences as, ' That second set Morning Dew! That was my first  and it was so beautiful!' 

Those who threw their garbage on the ground, and those who picked it up. 

Maybe after '87, it  became much more visible bc of crowd size?

> I forget about Europe '74.

Sounds like an All The Years Combine moment. They happen, and melt into a dream.

> When cocaine entered the scene, it ruined everything.

Didn't the Airplane keep bowls of coke always available at their mansion, which they bought in 1968? I think I remember an interview with Grace where she said something like that.

I remember first coming on the scene in the early 80's and after 20 shows or so I had to decide if I was going to be a part of the Izod wearing, coke snorting, frat boy tribe or the acid freak pot smoking dancing tribe.

An ounce of coke would get you back stage in the 80's.

<<Those who threw their garbage on the ground, and those who picked it up. >>

Beautifully stated Joe, and a metaphor for humanity as well, at least to me:

(pick it up type)

Jay

>>>>Didn't the Airplane keep bowls of coke always available at their mansion, ...

They would've been good candidates for that type of home-warming decor.   Either them or Fleetwood Mac, Mike ;)

>>>(pick it up type)  ....

Me, too, Jay :)

I remember an article on the Airplane and the bottle of mouthwash in the house was liquid LSD

wishing for a maga thread

My first show was Irvine Meadows April 87.   I had never heard Touch Of Grey as I never listened to music on the radio.

My younger brother went on Friday and told me I had to go with him on Saturday because it was right up my alley.  And it was. Missed very few do-able shows from that day forward. Ended up seeing Jerry some 75 times or so. I always cringe when I hear someone bashing "touch-heads".

I left Fresno in June of 74 and moved to Calgary for a bit then started a 9 yr stint in the oil-fields. The Dead played Fresno that Sept. I often wonder how different my life would have been had I stayed around long enough to see them.