Grateful Dead Lays Out Plan For Next 22 Years Of Archival Releases
By Scott Bernstein Mar 11, 2017 • 9:44 am PST
On April 15, 1991 the Grateful Dead issued One From The Vault, the first complete concert recording put out commercially by the band. Over 25 years later the Dead have mined their massive vault for many such releases and the good news is there’s no end in sight. Billboard published two articles yesterday which detail some of the future plan for Grateful Dead musical releases and beyond including a chat with archivist David Lemieux.
The Lemieux interview mentions the Dead plans to continue a 50th Anniversary reissue series – started with the recent release of the band’s self-titled debut – through 2039 and will also issue four Dave’s Picks installments as well as a big box set each year. Lemieux told Billboard he likes the plan, “It gives us some rare structure. We know for sure that every year we’re going to release four Dave’s Picks, which are the three-CD complete live shows, quarterly. We know we’re going to do one big box set each year, whether that’s an eight-CD set or an 11-CD set, like the one we have coming up. This gives us one other big thing to focus on every year.”
In 2006 the Grateful Dead turned over licensing of their music, merchandise and other facets of the business to Rhino Entertainment for a period of 10 years. The deal expired last May and after a lengthy bidding process Rhino scored an extension for a term that doesn’t quite span a decade but has been described as “significant.” Dean Budnick detailed the bidding process and chatted with Rhino president Mark Pinkus for a fascinating Billboard article. Pinkus shares a few other details about what lies ahead for Grateful Dead musical releases and beyond.
Pinkus, a Deadhead who helped win the trust of the band by spouting Dead lyrics on command to Bob Weir, confirmed a collection of 80 soundboard tapes recorded by the famed Betty Cantor-Jackson have been added to the vault. “It’s not just that we have 80 shows in the vault that we didn’t have before,” Lemieux told Billboard about the Betty Boards. “It’s also 80 of the best shows the Dead ever did. It gives us a little more variety that we can release at a bigger quality.” One of those recordings is Cornell ’77 which is part of the forthcoming May 1977: Get Shown The Light 11-disc box set. The Dead sold out all 15,000 copies of the set within four days, a crazy fact considering the impeccable quality of recordings from the set which already circulate and how many Deadheads already have the four May shows in their collection.
As mentioned, the Grateful Dead recently unveiled a 50th anniversary edition of their 1967 studio album. Pinkus confirms a similar set for Anthem Of The Sun is coming next year followed by the group’s other albums in chronological order. “For the sake of my age, we are not going to wait for the 50th anniversary of In the Dark [1987] and Built to Last [1989]. We’ll shrink the timeline. Through these reissues we will be able to reposition how great this band was in the studio. The 13 studio LPs were every bit as exciting as their live shows,” Pinkus told Billboard. The Rhino president also hinted at a soundtrack to accompany Amir Bar-Lev’s soon-to-be-released documentary Long Strange Trip about the Dead, “All I can say is that most great films have great soundtracks.”
The Grateful Dead’s board of directors tapped ROAR to manage its business in early 2015. Bernie Cahill is a principal in ROAR’s efforts with the band. Cahill shared news about a different way Deadheads will soon be able to enjoy the band’s music, “We’re going to announce a new and very significant partnership that is going to focus on high-fidelity streaming in the fourth quarter of 2017, if all goes well.” There’s also talk of bringing the Grateful Dead brand into the cannabis industry. “If we move forward from exploration to execution, it will be major,” Cahill said.
Head here for much more from Billboard’s feature on the Grateful Dead’s business plans.
