tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post5718666580334326229..comments2024-03-28T02:11:12.904-07:00Comments on Hooterollin' Around: Album Economics: Bear's Choice-The History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Why?)Corry342http://www.blogger.com/profile/08049035074121231425noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-6268454004608347382016-02-14T08:32:46.866-08:002016-02-14T08:32:46.866-08:00LIA, this is fascinating research, discovering tha...LIA, this is fascinating research, discovering that the rest of the band shot down what were likely more interesting versions of the album. Perhaps their feelings about Pigpen had more of an effect than I realized, or perhaps the band realized.<br /><br />Warner Brothers definitely had rights to the live performances during the era that the band recorded for them. This had to be a key issue for going with Rhino (owned by a successor to Warners).<br /><br />The Dead very well may have negotiated rights to their live material in the Arista deal in '76. Note that the very first "From The Vault" release was from the Grateful Dead Records period, as was the first Dick's Picks.<br /><br />However, by the early 90s, record companies had figured out the value in archival CDs, and Warners was willing to accommodate the band. So much so that they made the deal for the Vault a decade later.Corry342https://www.blogger.com/profile/08049035074121231425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-58066696378255879602016-02-14T00:26:25.366-08:002016-02-14T00:26:25.366-08:00A good find, showing a bit of the Dead's thoug...A good find, showing a bit of the Dead's thought process when they had to deliver one more album to Warners - "the bossest old things." <br />Bear's Choice could have had many different permutations before it ended up as a Pigpen/acoustic album, and I'm sure other song choices went through a lengthy veto process. <br /><br />Dick Latvala later said, “I asked Bear, ‘How come you chose tunes that were the least exciting parts of these shows?’ And he said, ‘I submitted over a hundred different ideas, and every one was rejected, and this was the one that got through.’”<br /><br />"Vol. 1" suggests that at the time, they were thinking of doing a series of these albums. But for whatever reason, the Dead didn't do another archival release until 1991. And you'd think more releases of live Dead material on their own label would have helped them financially! <br />But those days were different - the Dead may not have wanted to flood the market with old out-of-date live albums, and Garcia's comments quoted above indicate that he wasn't at all happy with this record, or perhaps even the idea of issuing old performances. <br />(I haven't found whether Warners owned the rights to live recordings made while the Dead were under contract, but that would have been an additional complication.)Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-41157749341343765882016-02-13T09:39:21.381-08:002016-02-13T09:39:21.381-08:00You mention reading about the release in RS in ear...You mention reading about the release in RS in early '73. Here's my cite for that.<br /><br />"Grateful Dead May Deal Their Own," Rolling Stone, January 4, 1973, 12.<br /><br />"While the Dead's three-year contract is expiring at year's end [1972], there remains a 'temporal contingency', McIntire said, that gives Warners at least one more album ... 'We're thinking about - we've always gotten lots of calls at concerts for 'Dancing in the Streets' or "Midnight Hour,' which we don't do anymore and won't record,' said Mcintire. 'But we have literally thousands of reels of old stuff that sounds really good, so that's our project for now and that may be the next album. The bossest old things.'"Fate Musichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05648291938690043423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-9875308395322189142016-01-14T09:28:25.573-08:002016-01-14T09:28:25.573-08:00> The Workingman's Dead
the album is titl...> The Workingman's Dead <br /><br />the album is titled 'workingman's dead' (as your image of the album cover shows). the use of the 'the workingman's dead' as the album title occurs on some reel to reel tape reel labels, and, on some early uk-released albums, where it appears in the record jacket spine and on the record labels.<br /><br />I-) Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-33387775761167399832015-11-20T18:36:40.010-08:002015-11-20T18:36:40.010-08:00In some ways, I've always considered Bear'...In some ways, I've always considered Bear's Choice as a sign that's someone's turning into a Deadhead and not just listening to tapes. It's a sign of someone seeing the Dead as more than just a party band. Of course, us younger Deadheads always looked on it with historical reverence and fascination. I can imagine that if you were expecting a release and got this that expectations would be dashed.DJFiveMillionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10552231630882129083noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-23139685011411800722015-11-17T13:39:25.371-08:002015-11-17T13:39:25.371-08:00Great post!
Interesting to see the comparison dra...Great post!<br /><br />Interesting to see the comparison drawn with Steal Your Face. That album was not just down to Phil. Bear had a big hand in it as well. <br /><br />I like Bear's Choice a lot, especially Katie Mae. Now, of course, more of that Pigpen solo material is available on the Family Dog at the Great Highway (18 April 1970) album, but for a long time it was like a single ruby, a singularity. I was never really that offended by Steal Your Face either. Of course, deadheads in Oz had to grab whatever Grateful Dead material we could find. Live releases were especially treasured.Robin Russellnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-18526511655814529302015-11-09T13:17:21.940-08:002015-11-09T13:17:21.940-08:00Thanks LIA, I knew I had read this recently and co...Thanks LIA, I knew I had read this recently and couldn't figure out where.Corry342https://www.blogger.com/profile/08049035074121231425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-7413618301232237482015-11-07T22:48:56.867-08:002015-11-07T22:48:56.867-08:00See Richardson's book No Simple Highway, p.198...See Richardson's book No Simple Highway, p.198-99. Smith sent a cranky letter to Fantasy Records ("I'd like to avoid any legalities in this matter"), and another letter to Garcia accusing him (politely) of being two-faced and dishonest.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-86231488212396421172015-11-07T18:56:17.180-08:002015-11-07T18:56:17.180-08:00"Certainly there is a known cranky letter fro..."Certainly there is a known cranky letter from WB head Joe Smith to Garcia, complaining about just that (Smith also complains about Jerry's vocals on Merl Saunders' Fantasy lps). I think Garcia had permission to play guitar, but the bounds were overstepped from WB's point of view."<br /><br />Where can I find this, or reference to it?Fate Musichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05648291938690043423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-45735999979603353642015-11-06T23:13:44.776-08:002015-11-06T23:13:44.776-08:00LIA, these are great research finds, which put the...LIA, these are great research finds, which put the band's view in perspective. I included some of it (with Links) in the post.<br /><br />I think most bands accepted Greatest Hits' packages as an inevitable byproduct. Most of those records sold well, and generally helped a band with attention, airplay and royalties. As you point out, Skeletons In The Closet was the Dead's best seller on Warners. A lot of people preferred to get a Best Of album, particularly for the first album they bought for a group.<br /><br />The subject of record companies "punishing" bands is far more interesting. The Dylan album from 1973 was a perfect example. Thanks to a recent Bootleg Series double cd release, we know what great material Columbia had in the vaults from Self Portrait and New Morning. However, they were angry at Bob Dylan for moving to Asylum (for Planet Waves) so they released the 10 worst tracks from the session to make him look bad. <br /><br />The really useful detail here is Garcia's explanation that if they wanted to release Europe 72 as a triple-lp, they had to deliver another album to Warners. I knew those sort of negotiations went on, but it's always murky exactly what was at stake. <br /><br />It may be that the Dead's second contract included Double albums as a single delivery, but not a Triple. Something to look for in the Archives.Corry342https://www.blogger.com/profile/08049035074121231425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-90118413460723474412015-11-06T20:34:16.904-08:002015-11-06T20:34:16.904-08:00Cameron Crowe talked to Garcia & others for a ...Cameron Crowe talked to Garcia & others for a couple of illuminating articles in 1973-74: <br />"Rather than choose the usual 'greatest hits' packaging, for their final [Warners] album commitment, The Dead dispatched production manager Owsley 'The Bear' Stanley to rummage through his collection of live tapes to find a unique performance LP with which to bow out... <br />'It’s a side of the group that never went on record,' says Jerry in retrospect... <br />'It shows a Dead you’ll never see or hear again,' Rock [Scully] picks up the story. 'The album is sixty percent Pigpen and the other forty percent is acoustic material. Needless to say, Pigpen is no longer with us and The Dead don’t do acoustic material onstage anymore. The record is very, very interesting if you know the history behind it.'" <br /><br />But a later article revealed that the Dead themselves were "ambivalent at best" about the album: <br />"Weir is upset about the inclusion of a flat 'Wake Up Little Susie' duet with Jerry. Garcia could care less about the whole thing. When handed his first copy of the album, he mumbled something about it having a less-than-stellar cover and didn’t even bother taking it home. 'We had to give that record to Warner Brothers,' says Jerry... 'We weren’t contracted for it originally, but we had [to] give it to them in order to make Europe ’72 a triple-LP. We could have been cut loose if we gave them two single records, rather than one triple album. We ended up giving them four discs instead of just two just to be able to go to Europe...<br />'As far as I’m concerned, it’s something we owe them. I’m not interested in making Warner Brothers any richer. In a way, I’m glad it’s a low-profile, non-success record. It just means there won’t be any more energy going to WB via us. The music is what it is, us in early 1970... The stuff we were doing at the time never got onto any of our records before now. I might not like it, but I played it. If they were no good, it’s too late to take those notes back.'" <br />http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/11/summer-1973-new-label-new-albums.html <br />http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/12/late-1973-garcia-grumbles.html <br /><br />In short, the band was just as dismissive of the album as fans would be! (This would be repeated later in '76 with Steal Your Face, when Phil made the song selections and fell into some of the same traps that Bear did here.) <br /><br />Another famous case comes to mind of a live album being released to fulfill a contract - Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys in 1970. Hendrix was required to give an album to Capitol because of his old contract with Ed Chalpin, and decided to do a live album featuring songs that weren't going to be on his next studio album. Hendrix's standards were still pretty high for Band of Gypsys, but he said, "I wasn't too satisfied with the album. If it had been up to me, I never would have put it out... The thing was, we owed the record company an album and they were pushing us, so here it is."<br /><br />You also mentioned that record companies could release bad albums to sabotage artists that had just left the label. 1973 saw one famous example: when Bob Dylan left Columbia for Asylum Records, Columbia vengefully released Dylan, a collection of rejected, mostly pretty bad outtakes. (Despite this, Dylan soon returned to Columbia.) <br /><br />Warners, in comparison, was rather polite in releasing the Skeletons in the Closet "best-of" album in 1974, after the Dead had started their own label. However strange the selections, it became the Dead's most successful album. Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-69273304481163790172015-11-06T14:55:54.195-08:002015-11-06T14:55:54.195-08:00Thanks for another excellent historic analysis of ...Thanks for another excellent historic analysis of a strange release. I love the Katie Mae, but agree that it seems like such a throw-away.Grateful Secondshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16866611234014012885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-1269862735020688222015-11-06T11:36:23.675-08:002015-11-06T11:36:23.675-08:00Douglas Records was an imprint of Columbia (Alan D...Douglas Records was an imprint of Columbia (Alan Douglas was the producer of Hooteroll), and I think that Douglas simply stuck Garcia's name on the cover without asking. Certainly there is a known cranky letter from WB head Joe Smith to Garcia, complaining about just that (Smith also complains about Jerry's vocals on Merl Saunders' Fantasy lps). I think Garcia had permission to play guitar, but the bounds were overstepped from WB's point of view<br /><br />On the other hand, in early 72 the Dead had had three hit albums in a row and were a popular concert attraction, so Joe Smith was indulgent with Garcia. He was mad, but probably not mad enough to sue. If WB had blocked Hooteroll, Smith would have been afraid that the Dead would go to Columbia. Little did they know, the Dead would just go it alone.Corry342https://www.blogger.com/profile/08049035074121231425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5268955857828486331.post-85334705836735907182015-11-06T11:26:13.862-08:002015-11-06T11:26:13.862-08:00Nice post. i often wondered how Douglas Records go...Nice post. i often wondered how Douglas Records got the rights to release Hooteroll as a Wales/Garcia release. There are plenty of precedents in the Jazz world for a featured player like Wayne Shorter or Larry Young to be players and composers on entire albums on other labels as long as the album was billed to someone else as bandleader, but that seems less common in the rock world. On the other hand, Hooteroll would not have sold nearly as well if it was released as just a Howard Wales album.<br />cryptdevhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13944617292210813801noreply@blogger.com