Long Strange Tech, part 2

Rich Mahan (0:05)

The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, the official podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarnow, exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the Committed And The Curious.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Dead Head, welcome to season six of The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast. I'm your co-host, Rich Mahan. As always, thank you very much for tuning in. Well, this deadcast continues the exploration of the Grateful Dead's long-term cosmic entanglement with the California technology world. This episode is part two of our journey into cyberspace with the band and some very crafty Dead Head, all driving that technology train to both connect and create. Pop on over to dead.net/deadcast and check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons one through five and link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen where you'd like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing, hit that like button and leave us a review. It helps more than you know. Thank you very much.

Have you checked out the transcripts we have now for many of our episodes? Well, head on over to dead.net/deadcastdashindex, click the transcript link and get reading.

And also just announced is the 50th anniversary deluxe edition of Bobby Weir's first solo album, ACE. There's a few configurations you need to know about. Bobby actually remixed the original album for this collection and he pairs that version with a new live version by Bobby Weir and the Wolf Brothers recorded earlier this year at Radio City Music Hall, featuring the Wolf Pack with special guests Tyler Childers and Brittany Spencer. Our own Jesse Jarnow even wrote the liner notes, so you know it's good stuff. There will be a two CD version, as well as a custom high roller pearl white vinyl release available exclusively from dead.net, both with a release date of January 13th, 2023 A black vinyl version also follows on February 3rd. You can pre-order any and all of the ACE releases and merch over at dead.net. Thanks to everyone who has recorded their stories over at stories.dead.net, we're now asking you to share your stories of serendipity, miracles, and the most unbelievable, craziest stories ever told. Share those stories at stories.dead.net and you just may hear yourself on a future Deadcast.

While The Dead were always on the forefront of sound technology, squeezing the most out of their gear and delivering the best sound they could to their fans. When cyberspace and its accompanying technology made the scene, it was just as eagerly embraced by Grateful Dead insiders and Dead Heads alike. Get ready to have your circuits blown as Jesse Jarnow takes us down the digital rabbit hole.

Jesse Jarnow (3:35)

We're going to start today's trip to the future of the past at the same time-space coordinates where we began the middle episode of our series about the In-And-Out-Of-The-Garden box set in September 1982 at the US Festival at the Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, thrown by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.

SPEAKER_4 (3:53)

It's time for a big event because there's a spirit.

Eric Davis (3:56)

It just seems so good.

SPEAKER_4 (3:58)

I felt other people would have the same feeling.

Jesse Jarnow (4:01)

As we learned last episode, the worlds of California technology and California rock and roll had been progressing together since the mid 1960s, sometimes entwined, but still mostly a novelty to one another.

SPEAKER_6 (4:13)

There were well-stocked food concessions, more than enough toilets, and even a technology fair where exhibitors were able to show off the latest in computers, connecting rock music with the scientific wave of the future. But the technology took second place to the main event, which was always the music.

The acts included a broad mix of styles, from new wave to country to the long-lasting San Francisco sound of the Good Ol Grateful Dead.

Jesse Jarnow (4:43)

In 1982, when people thought of computers and music, they probably thought of German pioneers Kraftwerk, who'd released and toured behind their future-looking Computer World album the year before.

At least one of their members, Carl Bartos, had caught the Dead in Düsseldorf on the Europe 72 Tour. Kraftwerk were and are future music, no questioning their mensch machine. Same for the wave of techno soon coming out of Detroit or any of the gazillion bands built around synthesizers. But in the early 1980s, the Grateful Dead were the present of music, in the current moment just as much as they were in the 1960s, even if they looked like a bunch of increasingly grizzled rock stars.

The Grateful Dead were at the cutting edge, a magnet for the future. In March 1983, Sony began to sell the first CDs in America. A year before that, in April 1982, a digital recordist showed up at the Dead soundboard, as taper Charlie Miller remembers.