Music in Late Capitalism, and performance in general, was designed to be a scarce resource, withheld until payment was offered. If music was performed too freely, than people would stop paying for it. As a practical matter, this led to some mid- century nightclub economics that Jerry Garcia derided as . Radio disrupted this model, but not by much, since a listener didn't know when their favorite song would be played, and thus kept listening to ads while they were turned in. The Grateful Dead had a contrary assumption about music. To the Dead, if you gave people music for free, they would just want more of it, and pay for that privilege. Prior to the Grateful Dead, free concerts in the music business were the actions of the desperate. Free concerts in 1. San Francisco upended the notion that music was a finite commodity, and the Grateful Dead were fundamental to that equation. When free concerts became an untenable promotional scheme, the Dead moved to live FM broadcasts, another area in which they were pioneers. Ultimately, the Dead formally encouraged their fans to tape concerts in the mid- 1. Thus the Dead are credited with . Of course, Bob Weir and others have said that the Grateful Dead often did what was easiest, with little forethought, and so assigning them as incipient marketing geniuses may not be entirely warranted. While I think the Dead's influence in the music business has been overstated, however, it isn't irrelevant. Whether the Dead gave away music for free by accident or design, it has had a profound effect on the 2. Today, free concerts abound all over cities and college campuses in America, and many performers accept that at least some free performances help get your music across to people who otherwise might never hear it. This post will look at the Dead's free concerts as a commercial endeavor, primarily by examining the first free concert in any city where the Dead played. Since the 2. 0th century is now complete, this analysis probably has no current commercial value, but it should make for an interesting catalog. August 3, 1. 96. 6 Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC: Grateful Dead/United Empire Loyalists. The first free concert by the Grateful Dead can very definitely be identified. Remarkably, it was on their first international trip, to Vancouver, British Columbia. The story was recounted in detail in Rock Scully's biography, and confirmed by the teenage members of the opening act. I wrote about the band's trip to Vancouver at my usual length, but I will focus on just a few key points here. Briefly, the Grateful Dead had been invited to play the Vancouver . As the Vancouver event was modeled on the San Francisco Trips Festival from January, the two brightest lights from that event were invited to Vancouver. Although the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and The Holding Company would be legendary within 1. Big Brother took the train to Vancouver and hitchhiked to the venue (with Dave Getz's drums), and I don't think the Dead had any more glamorous of a trip. The Vancouver Trips Festival was not particularly well attended, although the Dead in fact played well (and their performance has recently been released). The Dead were an underground sensation, though, so a local promoter had booked a show with them for the next Friday night (August 5). However, the Dead had no record, and no one in Vancouver who hadn't been to the Trips Festival had heard them, so they had to be concerned about ticket sales. The Dead hung out and rehearsed at the suburban homes of the teenage members of the opening act, and while driving around they spotted a bandstand at a public park in Vancouver. So it came to pass that on August 3, the Wednesday before their show, the Grateful Dead and the United Empire Loyalists drove around Stanley Park in Vancouver, rapidly setting up their gear on bandstands, performing a few numbers and then being chased away by the cops. They played at least two places. Their teenage hosts were enthralled, and dedicated themselves to a life of rock and roll (until they went to college, but that's another story). How much the Vancouver free shows helped ticket sales wasn't clear, but the paying Vancouver show went ok, and it sparked an idea. The band's initial success in Vancouver was due to underground buzz, since that was all the Dead had to offer. Free concerts were a way for the band to generate that buzz themselves, and let the underground do their advance work. The West Coast was sort of a separate touring market from the rest of North America up through the early 7. Vancouver was part of that. The Dead drew well in Vancouver, but I don't know if many in Vancouver were even aware of the free concerts. The Dead did not play Vancouver after 1. I think that was because touring the Northeast was more desirable. Nice post hahaha damn cool pics hot chicks hot pics hot celebrities 6:39 AM. Which is your all-time favorite horror movie? If you are thinking along the lines of movies such as The Exorcist, The Conjuring, Halloween, and The Sixth Sense, then.
The important thing about the first trip to Vancouver, however, was the idea of publicizing shows by playing free concerts. September 1. 96. 6 Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco: Grateful Dead. The most mysterious and chimerical free shows in Grateful Dead history are the least documented. Various old- timers assert, with the casual confusion so classic of 6. Fall of 1. 96. 6 the Grateful Dead played some free concerts in Speedway Meadows at Golden Gate Park. There were no permits, no cops, no suburban wannabes, no hassles, nothing but fun. Of course, there were no tapes, no photos, no posters nor any other evidence that they really happened. Did they happen? We may never know. The timing makes sense. Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin managed to take control of 7. Ashbury in September of 1. Haight Street (at the Straight Theater), quick free concerts in the Park would have been easy. Everyone says that 1. So, realistically, these concerts were more like parties than concerts, even though they were held in public spaces. The commercial value of the free Speedway Meadows concert was probably close to nil, since the only people attending were insiders who probably came to Dead concerts anyway. October 6, 1. 96. The Panhandle, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Big Brother And The Holding Company/Elektric Chamber Orkustra Love Pageant Rally. LSD was made illegal in the State of California on this Thursday, and the Grateful Dead and Big Brother held an unsanctioned free concert in the Panhandle. There had already been at least one free concert in the Panhandle, with Country Joe and The Fish on August 1. Dead had played some free shows at Speedway Meadows in Golden Gate Park. This was a seminal event, because it was publicized, at least on the underground jungle telegraph. A few thousand freaks from everywhere in Northern California converged at the Panhandle, and discovered that there were a lot more of them in the Bay Area than anyone thought. The . It was a free concert, yes, but it was widely publicized and so drew a large crowd. This was in distinct contrast to any performances in Speedway Meadows, which seem to have been somewhat secret. Above and beyond the fact that the event was publicized, the location insured that numerous residents and commuters would see it or hear it, whether they wanted to or not. The Panhandle is not actually in Golden Gate Park, but adjacent to it, in residential Haight- Ashbury. The Panhandle is so- named because it is a grassy extension of Golden Gate Park (it is the . It runs eight blocks East of the park, from Stanyan to Baker, bordered on both sides by Fell and Oak streets. Fell and Oak are important one- way throughways for San Francisco drivers (. A weekday event in Speedway Meadows could pass by unnoticed, but thousands of people, young and old, were going to see or hear any Panhandle event. Not coincidentally, the Grateful Dead were on the bill that weekend (Oct 7- 8- 9) at the Fillmore, booked below Jefferson Airplane and Butterfield Blues Band. Airplane and Butterfield were headlining three weekends, mostly at Winterland, with various opening acts. However, during the first weekend, police had shot a black man in the Fillmore district- -nothing ever changes, does it?- -and there were violent disturbances in the neighborhood. All the suburbanites who normally drove into the city were afraid to park in the Fillmore district. The Airplane/Butterfield shows for the first weekend (Sep 3. Oct 1)were moved from Winterland to the smaller Fillmore Auditorium, but even then, only a few hundred people showed up. Thus the next weekend's shows were moved to the Fillmore as well, and Bill Graham had to be nervous about ticket sales. Thus a few ideas came together at once. The Grateful Dead played for free, as they apparently had been doing on occasion already. They publicized the event, and did it in a relatively public place, to insure that a crowd showed up, making them local heroes. And they did it the day before a show when they really needed the ticket sales, when they didn't have a record or any other way for potential fans to hear them. I don't know for a fact about attendance at the weekend Fillmore shows, but presumably things went well enough. What may have started as a lark soon became a method. Initially, the Grateful Dead did not have a record, and when they did they weren't getting any airplay, and even when FM radio finally arrived the band still didn't get as much airplay as other bands. The band's willingness to play for free, however, set them apart, and they became underground legends, more widely known than heard, so when they played a new city for free, there were a lot of curious people who would check them out. To be fair, other San Francisco bands liked playing for free, too, for the same reasons, but the Dead made a project of playing for free outside of San Francisco. January 1. 4, 1. 96. Polo Grounds, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/The New Age/Loading Zone/Sir Douglas Quintet Human Be- In. On a Saturday afternoon in January, some leading San Francisco bands played for free at the Polo Grounds in Golden Gate Park. There were 2. 0,0. Hullabaloo. Friday, June 2. Friday Night Sootherby digby. Grab a cocktail and watch these vids. Now watch this: Now have another cocktail and watch them again. You'll feel better..: ). PMTrump interviews lawyersby digby. Sounds right to me: His impression is just uncanny .. But as Ian Millhiser at Think Progress points out, there's a lot more to it, this horrible consequence being one of them. Let’s talk about “death spirals.”That’s not a political term that Democratic operatives made up to scare you. It’s called a “death spiral” because it often ends in the collapse of that market. And, because we are talking about health care, it will also end in the deaths of many Americans who will no longer be able to afford care. What is a death spiral? Before Obamacare, insurers were free to deny coverage to such individuals — and this wasn’t something they did simply because they were being cruel. The whole point of health insurance is that everyone pays into an insurance pool that they only take money out of when they need medical care. Pre- existing conditions can be quite expensive to cover — indeed, they can be more expensive than the insurer can reasonably charge in premiums. If you load up an insurance pool with too many sick people, they start taking more money out of the pool than the health consumers are paying into it — until the whole thing collapses. One possible solution is to simply require insurers to eat these costs, and pass a law requiring them to cover people with pre- existing conditions even if these individuals take out more money than they pay in. But such a law creates its own problem. If people can wait until they are sick to buy health coverage, people will wait until they are sick to buy health coverage. And that will leave insurers with too few healthy customers to cover the costs of their sick consumers. The death spiral begins after an insurer raises premiums to meet this funding shortfall. Higher premiums drive out more healthy customers, which forces the insurer to jack up premiums even more, which drives out even more healthy customers, which forces the insurer to jack up premiums again. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in the first Obamacare case to reach the Supreme Court, “in the 1. States — including New York, New Jersey, Washington, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont,” enacted laws prohibiting discrimination against people with preexisting conditions, and “the results were disastrous. This mandate imposes higher taxes on most people who are uninsured, giving healthy people a financial incentive to buy health insurance that wards off a death spiral. The Senate Trumpcare bill would repeal this mandate and replace it with, well, nothing. That’s a huge problem because, while the Senate bill does weaken the law’s insurance regulations and allow states to waive some of them, it leaves in place Obamacare’s provisions prohibiting insurers from charging more to people with preexisting conditions. That’s a recipe for a death spiral. Once the death spiral begins, things can get pretty grim, pretty quickly. When Kentucky tried protecting people with pre- existing conditions without also enacting an individual mandate, for example, nearly all insurers left its individual insurance market. In New Jersey, some premiums rose by 3. In Washington, some counties had no private individual insurance coverage available at any price. And, if the Senate Trumpcare bill becomes law, this fate could await all 5. They don't care. They want their tax cuts. I'm almost of the mind that they know Trump is either going to destroy the country or at thevery least destroy the Republican party. So they have just decided to go out in a blaze of glory. PMThe malevolent liar speaksby digby. Which one, you ask? The Big Orange Kahuna of course, who just gave his first interview since the Lester Holt debacle to some fangirl from Fox. Taylor Link from Salon wrote it up. When he found out that there may be tapes out there — whether it’s governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows — I think his story may have changed. You’ll have to take a look at that because then he has to tell what actually took place at the events. And my story didn’t change — my story was always a straight story, my story always was the truth. But you’ll have to determine for yourself whether or not his story changed, but I did not tape.”The president acknowledged on Thursday that he was not in possession of any recordings of his former FBI director. But Trump’s reasoning for saying that he did remained a mystery — until Friday, of course, when Fox News aired his interview, in which he conceded that he wanted to keep Comey honest. Trump’s confession was especially bizarre considering part of it directly contradicted his own past statements. Trump suggested in his interview with Earhardt that his strategy worked because Comey did not change his story. Earlier this month, Trump accused Comey of lying under oath to Congress. During a news conference with the Romanian president inside the White House Rose Garden, Trump said that Comey made false statements in his testimony and that he was willing to provide his own, truthful version of events under oath. The interview, his first since admitting to NBC’s Lester Holt that Comey was fired over the Russia inquiry, touched on topics beyond witness tampering and collusion investigations. Trump declares victory in “difficult” health care situation. Earhardt asked the president about the new health care bill in the Senate. Trump answered by declaring himself a legislative genius.“Health care is a very difficult situation,” he said. I’ve been here for five months. Well, I’ve done in five months what other people haven’t done in years.”In March, Trump said that a health care deal would be “easy.”Basically he said that his threatening tweet forced Comey to change his story. That's not true. But it does confirm that he meant it as a threat. He's delusional. Truly sick. He also implied that Comey and Mueller are extremely close friends (not true by all accounts) and therefore Mueller is unreliable. And he added that he hopes Pelosi doesn't step down because he wants the Republicans to be able to run against theold bitch and win like he did when he ran against an old bitch. Well, he didn't say . Makes me so proud to be an American. PMWho are the terrorists? Dave Neiwert has written a vitally important piece on terrorist violence for the Center for Investigative Reporting. It won't reveal anything that most of my readers don't know in the abstract, but here is the data that shows where the real terrorist threat in America comes from. Trump frequently had excoriated his predecessor, President Barack Obama, and his chief political opponent, Hillary Clinton, as naive, even gutless, for preferring “violent extremism” to describe the nature of the global and domestic terrorist threat.“Anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country,” Trump said at one campaign speech in Ohio. During another, in Philadelphia, he drove home the attack: “We now have an administration and a former secretary of state who refuse to say . The only Islamist terror attack in Pennsylvania over the past 1. Edward Archer, a mentally ill man who shot and injured a police officer in early 2. Islamic State. Far- right episodes of violent extremism were far more common. Just two years before Trump’s Pennsylvania speech, anti- government radical Eric Matthew Frein ambushed two police officers in the township of Blooming Grove, killing one and wounding another, then led law enforcement authorities on a 4. And in 2. 00. 9, white supremacist Richard Poplawski opened fire on Pittsburgh police officers who had responded to a domestic dispute at his mother’s home, killing three and leaving two injured before surrendering. Poplawski, who was active on far- right websites, said he feared the police represented a plot by Obama to take away Americans’ guns. This contrast, between Trump’s rhetoric and the reality of domestic terrorism, extends far beyond Pennsylvania. A database of nine years of domestic terrorism incidents compiled by The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has produced a very different picture of the threat than that advanced by the current White House: From January 2. Islamist domestic terrorism, meaning incidents motivated by a theocratic political ideology espoused by such groups as the Islamic State. The vast majority of these (7. During the same period, we found that right- wing extremists were behind nearly twice as many incidents: 1. Just over a third of these incidents (3. The majority were acts of terrorist violence that involved deaths, injuries or damaged property. Right- wing extremist terrorism was more often deadly: Nearly a third of incidents involved fatalities, for a total of 7. Islamist cases caused fatalities. The bomber, Timothy Mc. Veigh, and co- conspirator Terry Nichols were unabashed radical right- wing terrorists. But check the record. You won’t hear Trump use those words. There's a lot more. The right is in the process of creating a myth of left wing violence. As Joshua Holland points out in this piece for The Nation on the same subject. In the wake of the mass shooting in suburban Virginia last week that left House majority whip Steve Scalise (R- LA) and three others wounded, conservatives have been furiously waving the bloody shirt. With left- wing hate filling half the screen, Sean Hannity blamed Democrats, saying they “dehumanize Republicans and paint them as monsters.” Tucker Carlson claimed that “some on the hard left” support political violence because it “could lead to the dissolution of a country they despise.” Others have blamed seemingly anything even vaguely identified with liberalism for inciting the violence—from Madonna to MSNBC to Shakespeare in the Park. This is all a truly remarkable example of projection.
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