David Lemieux Interview (part two)

From JamBands:

The Houseboat Tapes, The Fillmore Box And Listening Forward
(Part Two of An Interview with Grateful Dead Archivist David Lemieux)
John Patrick Gatta 2005-08-09

Our follow-up to last month's conversation with David Lemieux picks up just after I mentioned seeing Phil Lesh at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. Phil took part in the Hall of Fame Series Q&A and did a book signing that included taking photos with fans.DL: I haven't done that. I've got to do that some day.

JPG: Everyone probably expects that you are in the middle of it all.

DL: Well I am, but I don't ever get my picture taken. Somebody asked me, ‘Can we get a picture of you with one or any of the band members?' ‘I don't have any.' ‘Don't you see them?' ‘Yeah, like daily, but I don't have a camera.' I got to do that. I really do. I'd like to get pictures taken with ‘em.

JPG: That gets me to thinking when you go out and people figure out who you are, especially if they're Deadheads, are they buying you drinks all night in an attempt to get you fished up enough to get you to dish about work or what the next release is?

DL: Crazy Deadheads...I'm one of them, so I understand where they're coming from.

JPG: With your position at Grateful Dead Productions, does it always blend well or does it get conflicted? Do you go to work now and you're kind of like, do I ask Mickey when he comes in why aren't you doing a 40th anniversary show or...?

DL: Anything that remotely has to do with what they're doing now or anything that even remotely has to do with anything, that's frankly their own business.

If they were to announce a big 40th tour, I'd be ecstatic and it'd be great. I'd just be happy for the people that get to see it. At the same time, that's the question I get asked most these days, like the last three months ‘Is there going to be a 40th tour?' ‘Why isn't there going to be a 40th tour?' I tell ya, that is so far off my radar because I'm so busy working with twenty, forty year-old tapes that that's really the focus of what I'm doing and really my only interest is that stuff.

I find that interesting that that's the example you used because I do get asked that ALL the time, like ‘Oh, is Phil going to tour this summer?' I care only because I know how much people enjoy seeing it. It's nice to know if I'm here and there's a show in Ohio that there are 17,000 people and that does my heart good. It makes me realize, Wow! This thing is not only still alive, but thriving.

JPG: The questions keep coming up. I saw Gov't Mule do a q&a at the Rock Hall and during the autograph signing afterwards, several times I heard Warren Haynes tell people, ‘I don't know.' ‘Yeah, it was nice to play with ‘em last summer.' ‘I don't know what they're doing.' And then there are people who enjoy spreading rumors of Phil hates Bobby and Bobby hates Phil and this and that. I caught five Dead shows last summer and it certainly didn't look as if there were any problems onstage.

DL: I really don't know that there are any issues aside from musical. But I do know if there are, as soon as they walk on that stage, they're gone. If people are saying, ‘Oh, you can tell there's a bad vibe.' You can't. I've seen them rehearse enough and seen them live enough in the last three years that if there is anything going on and, honestly, I have no idea if there is, but I hear the rumors as much as you do, they absolutely check it at the door. If there's no tour, I think people want there to be a reason. They want them to say that they're not getting along or whatever...

JPG: ...or they want them to say, ‘Well, there's not going to be a tour this year but there's going to be a really big show coming March of 2007' or something like that. By the way, when you talk about not bringing it onstage, it reminded me of seeing the Dead at Vernon Downs Raceway in 2003 and Phil and Mickey were having some heated discussion during Willie Nelson's set, and I thought, ‘Whoa, that doesn't look good.'

DL: I've seen enough of those that they were, honestly, probably disagreeing on whether the Celtics were going to win the last game. I'd say 95% of the time that's what it's about. It's about something that really is exactly what you and your buddies argue over. You're both very strong in your convictions about, ‘Are we going to go out for ribs or are we going to go out for veggie burgers?' I swear it's the same kind of thing. It's so far from being musical that, again, once they get on that stage, they're so pumped to play all that stuff falls away. Forty years of brotherhood and it comes through any of that.

JPG: Back to your position in all this, do you feel pulled by fans trying to get information, and is it okay, like it's an unwritten part of your job description so you just ride with it?

DL: It's funny because I've got a small but very good group of friends, people who I've met since being here. People who I, obviously, knew before being here and, to a person, every one of them is completely respectful and they don't pry for information.

It's great and it's not like it's always been an untalked about situation. I've never had to say, ‘Don't ask me that. It makes me uncomfortable.' It's just a very respectful situation. Aside from that, nobody knows who I am. To anybody that I meet at a show or a party or a bar, I'm just Dave. They've got no idea that I work for the band. That works out well. And if they did, they'd probably think I have a lot less contact than I do, which is great too [because] then they wouldn't ask for information about the band.

I get requested a lot less what's coming up next in the pipeline. And I definitely barely ever get hit on, ‘Could you make me a copy of my first show?' I think that it's largely because nobody, thankfully, knows who I am. I don't have a public face and I don't go around telling people who I am nor do the people I'm with. So, it's basically a non-topic in terms of being bugged. It's nothing I ever have to worry about.

JPG: That's good. It's a bit surprising that for someone involved with the band, and being a Deadhead, you sound as if you don't make it to a lot of shows, whether it's Phil or RatDog or Dead shows. Is that correct, you're more involved with the work?

DL: I don't go to too many. If they're playing in my backyard, like Bobby's playing in Marin County, I'll go see Ratdog. I'll go see Ratdog a lot, actually. That's partly because I've become good friends with their sound guy and a couple of guys in the band, so that's more of a social occasion. I do see Phil sometimes. It depends on where he's playing.
I did go on The Dead's Summer Tour 2003, the one with Joan Osborne for four or five shows just to help with those recordings, to help make the masters of those. I enjoyed what I saw, but at the same time I'm so busy working on the old stuff, I don't have a lot of time to get out and go see them. Equally important is where they do play. I don't necessarily enjoy the venues. So, I'm just becoming a little lazy, I think. They play big places and they draw well, which means a lot of people, which means my personal comfort is (slight laugh)...I will go see them again, for sure, and if they were playing this year I think I would go because it's the big 40th and, hopefully, 2006 will see them get together and I could go see that.

JPG: One would presume, ‘Oh yeah, he's a fan and he's in the middle of it, he probably has a Golden Ticket. He could just fly anywhere and go anywhere with it.'

DL: Nope. I don't get passes. I sit up where you sit. No Golden Ticket. No Willy Wonkas.
JPG: Speaking of post-Grateful Dead projects, are those being stored in The Grateful Dead's Vault? Are you working on those recordings as well?

DL: No. About two years ago, we had to move The Vault. It meant going from 2,400 square feet of space, which was sizable, about 60 by 40 and then we went down to 18 by 40. We now have under 800 [square feet].
At that point, I really had to make some decisions. Obviously, I wasn't going to get rid of any Grateful Dead. It's their Vault. I realized Mickey had about a 1/6 of the entire 2,400 feet. I talked to the band and the CEO and the decision was made that each band member would take responsibility for their own stuff. Phil doesn't have a lot of stuff, but what he has is very safe. Mickey has built himself a vault. Terrific little place. Bobby has his in a specialized facility. Hunter same thing. Garcia [estate] has theirs in a very specialized facility. What we do get is The Dead, all the audiotape they do for the CDs they sell, the hard drives, the videotapes. They pull video off the big screens. All that ends up in the Vault. It's in it's own little area, quite well organized. If Phil or anybody had an idea that they remember a certain great version of "Caution'" from 2003, it's very easy for me to grab that tape.

JPG: I imagine that applies to The Other Ones?

DL: It does. We have The Other Ones going back to ‘98 from which [the two-cd set] Strange Remain was on, 2000 we have those and they multi-tracked a good chunk of that. In 2002 onward we have all that. Basically, Alpine Valley onward. And Alpine, we've got the multi-track and the video and all that material. It's pretty neat.

JPG: That was a heck of an emotional time...

DL: Sure was. I went to that and had a great time of my life.

JPG: Let's get to the projects before we get too deep into other things. Dick's Picks 35. I got the email from Dennis McNally about the "Legend of the Houseboat Tapes" (Jerry Garcia gave Keith Godchaux a bunch of reel-to-reel tapes to listen to in order to prepare for playing in the band. They may never have left the box, which was found earlier this year when Keith's brother was cleaning out his parents' houseboat.)

DL: What happened was I got the call from Donna [Godchaux] April 12 or 13. We were literally about to start on Dick's Picks 35. We had something else selected that was just dynamite. We were very confident. We were happy with it. So, we were going forward with that. Jeffrey [Norman] was going to start mastering on a Wednesday or a Thursday and then on Monday or Tuesday this call came in. The tapes arrived by Fed Ex from Donna. ‘Hold on. It turns out that this could be something.' If these are good, I could determine that within one listen and I could spend a couple weeks really going through them to see if it's release worthy. On the first listen of just the San Diego show I said, ‘Okay, this is pretty cool.' Then, I put on the Chicago show. Then, I put on the Yale Bowl, which unfortunately were blank, which was too bad. That was the one I was really kind of hoping for. I love the audience tapes. I love the show. But the Yale Bowl couldn't happen and we had the one from Hollywood, 8/6, from the Palladium.
We went through and there was some other stuff that we might tap in the future, but these two shows in particular, San Diego and Chicago, were fantastic and there was enough room for the 65-minute Hollywood Paladium bonus material. So here it is, pretty much the most unanimous choice in terms of when we all heard it. I won't say it's the quickest one we put together ‘cause Jeffrey spent a ton of time mastering it. The booklet. Wait ‘til you see the booklet. It's outstanding. It's a really terrific Pick, but usually it's about a six-month lead-time, which the other Pick was. We'd started working on it in October/November and then we put that one to the side.

JPG: Still, compared to the original choice, in a little over a month you got this one together. That's a very quick turn around.

DL: It was. You know we have a good production team. Jeffrey and Eileen [Law, Archival Research for Grateful Dead Archives] and myself putting them all together. It was a lot of work. We knew we had to get it done fast in terms of getting the booklet together and all that. Usually, it's a more leisurely pace amongst many other projects, but this one we all went full force to make sure it happened properly. We knew we had to get it on sale by June 17 or 18.

JPG: I understand the excitement of finding these lost tapes and wanting to get them out, but why not just make it Dick's Pick's 36?

DL: We knew that by waiting we wouldn't have made it any better. It wasn't like a rash decision; first listen then we said we'd do it. Jeffrey listened to it for sound quality issues. Eileen went through her archive to see what kind of photos and stuff. It was about a 10 day to two-week process since we got the tapes to realize, ‘Can we do this and do it right?' If we couldn't have done it right and we'd slapped it together, we wouldn't have done it, but we knew we had enough of time. If it had been early May, we wouldn't have had enough time, but with 35 being a big one and with everything literally in the Vault being out there in circulation in one form or another, it was exciting for us to be able to put something out that doesn't circulate.

JPG: Just making sure here, when you say this is something that hasn't been in circulation, you're referring to soundboard as well as audience?

DL: Yeah. There are no audience tapes of either San Diego or Chicago period.

JPG: Is there any reason for that? It's just surprising that there would be a show that somebody wouldn't have had taped?

DL: The San Diego setlist was never even known to anybody. It was not on DeadBase. It wasn't online. The Chicago setlist was known based on people who were there, their memory, so they put it out. They're actually pretty darn accurate considering there were no tapes. But San Diego was literally a complete mystery to all of us. We put it on that first time and we had no idea what the next song was going to be.

JPG: But like I said, it's just really wild to find any show involving the Dead that wouldn't be...

DL: Prior to '72, yeah it is. '71, there still are a couple that aren't around. Overall, it's definitely rare that you see something that doesn't circulate in any form. '69 there's a lot.

JPG: Now that the Houseboat Tapes arrived are there other shows that you don't have a good Vault copy? I know you mentioned your disappointment at the Yale reels being blank.

DL: Yes. Oh my God, plenty. In terms of 1970, June to December, we don't have a single show. August '71, we didn't have anything until three months ago thanks to the Houseboat Tapes, Dick's Picks 35. '72, we have about 2/3rds of the year. '73 we have closer to maybe 4/5ths of the year, if not the entire year. '74, virtually the entire year. '76, half to 2/3. ‘77 half to 2/3. From '87 onward, we have every single show.

JPG: Is this a matter that people didn't bother hitting ‘record' or like the Houseboat Tapes, the reels either were borrowed or sent somewhere?

DL: A little of both. I know for sure that most of '70 was not recorded. Nobody hit ‘record.' August '71, we had thought at one point that nobody from Yale Bowl ‘til Chicago to Gaelic Park had not recorded. Well, we know that people did record. And they were given away, which answers the second part of your query.

JPG: Do you think at some point there might be a call out for anyone who has an audience tape of a particular date to send it to you and with current technology Jeffrey can make it sound as good as possible?

DL: A very timely question. Dick's Picks 35 uses a substantial section of the 8/6/71 Hollywood Palladium show. There have been fantastic audience tapes of that show forever including the "Hard To Handle" in that show in audience form, which is used in Fallout from the Phil Zone. We got cuts in the master reel a few minutes into "The Other One," and the people who recorded that show loaned us the master audience tapes of that concert. So, we actually used it for the first time ever on a Dick's Picks.

I know that Dick was very public in looking for the missing piece from 10/21/78 Winterland. It's the big "Other One" and "Stella Blue." In the board cuts are missing 25/30/40 seconds, and Dick put out a call for submissions, ‘If you have the best audience tapes out there. Let us know. We want to do this maybe as a Pick and we want to be able to bridge that gap.' So, the call is out there if not explicitly, implicitly, if you have something and you want to give us a CD or DAT of it, it would be nice to fill our collection.

I know that Phish has very effectively. I don't think they have actually gone out and said, ‘Can we get your tapes for the ones we're missing.' For the early days of Phish, mid to late ‘80s they have been getting a very, very good collection for the few that they don't have in their own master tapes. I don't know this for sure but I think they've got a very near complete collection of Phish shows. I won't say they have everything, but by getting tapes from tapers, whether they're audience tapes or people patching into the boards, they have a very close to complete collection. For that I very much envy them that they do have that, for the historical significance of knowing that they have that.
Whereas, ours, if we got some audience tapes from the late 60's, we know that they wouldn't be releasable quality. They're not going to sound good enough. It's a good thing to fill in the gaps. So when we do get them, they immediately go into the Vault, a special section box that is not Vault source material. We put it in the database, if ever we were doing a pick of a soundboard from '71, for example, that had a really nasty cut that we just couldn't fix with any other piece because it was a unique piece of music only played at that show. It's one thing when a chorus and a bridge are missing from a song, a very straightforward "Brown-Eyed Woman" or something, we can fix that with another night. If it's a unique jam that was only played once at that show, a unique "Dark Star" jam, we obviously want to use a piece from that same show. If it's an audience tape we will use it.

JPG: Then the call is out for anything or for shows that aren't listed in DeadBase or...

DL: My email is very public. It's vault@dead.net. If anybody has a question that they have a tape, do we want it? By all means, I get a lot of emails like that. This goes back to your very first question from awhile ago, do a lot of people bother me for things. I want to say it's refreshing ‘cause they never did. I don't even know if I consider it a bother, but regardless, most of the questions I get are things like that.

For instance, about a month ago I got this email out of the blue and he said, ‘I live in' I don't know, some town near San Francisco, ‘and in 1969 I designed a Grateful Dead concert poster.' I talked to Eileen. ‘Do you have this?' She said, ‘No, but I know the poster. I've seen it.' Generally, these people are not contacting us to sell them to us. They're just happy to be involved. I said, ‘If you have an extra...' He said, ‘Yeah, I kept six.' This was a 1969 concert poster! I met him and he gave me a concert poster and we have it now in the Dead's Vault in the archives. So, that's how we fill in a lot of the gaps. People sending photo submissions to Eileen or people contacting me.

JPG: You mentioned Eileen Law again...

DL: She's been the Dead paper and everything archivist except for the tapes and video for, oh boy, 35 years. She was at the San Diego show that was part of this Dick's Pick. She's been here for a long time. She knows every photo and newspaper article and letter the same way that I know the tape archives. She loves getting stuff like that as long as it's dated so she knows...

Basically, what it comes down to whenever we're doing something she'll go through her archives and look chronologically for what she has. So that's why when people send her photos it's mentally helpful for it to have the date and show on it, so if we're ever doing an Alpine '82 Dick's Picks for instance, we know there are photos based on her incredible cataloguing.

It's an impressive system. There's a lot of cross-referencing, too. If she knows a certain photographer took a lot of photos from ‘72-'74, we can go to that photographer's name and see his entire list or we can go to the show date and have a cross reference to who it was.

JPG: I'll have to see if I have anything she may be interested in.

DL: You can send it to PHOTO ARCHIVESC/O GRATEFUL DEAD PRODUCTIONSPO BOX XNOVATO, CA94948
Just make sure you put dates. If you just want to send a nice list that just says what photos you have that would be immensely helpful to her -- an Excel spreadsheet that says Black and White from this date to that date.

JPG: Back to the music, the release that was going to be 35, is that going to be pushed to 36 or will it be 40?

DL: No, it's not. It's going to be available as a download. We're doing our download series now. It has been, I won't say relegated because it is an amazing show, the whole point of our download series isn't to relegate anything to anywhere. It's to get more good music out to more people in different ways.

We released two already -- 4/30/77 from the Palladium in New York and 1/18/70 from Portland, Oregon. Then, 10/26/71 Rochester, New York at the Palestra. That's a complete show also, two-cd complete show.

JPG: How do you go about picking out the downloads versus a Dick's Picks?

DL: We have a big listing in-house that we work with. They're based on our own listening, other people's input, Dick's notes obviously, what Dick said to people about some of his favorite stuff. Things that for years I've loved that other people have. We know with only three or four Picks a year, we're only going to get a limited number out. What this has done is open it up to another 10-15 shows a year being made available to people. We're really drawing from the same list. Why some are going to become Dick's Picks and why some download at this point I really don't know if there's much of a methodology behind it. I kind of like it that way. I don't want there to be these are the Picks and these are the downloads. I want it to be Grateful Dead music.

The Portland, Oregon 1970, we didn't want to put out a one CD Dick's Pick and this is a one CD show. There was actually one song that didn't make the cut because it was completely plagued with massive technical problems. It was a little song, but regardless, you're basically getting the entire Portland show, one CD worth which is the show. It just didn't feel like it was a Pick, so we're making it available. There's no way that it should be languishing in the Vault.

These shows are given the same care as Dick's Picks. They're given several weeks of mastering. They're cleaned up. We're not just taking the master and putting it onto a DAT and uploading it. We're really creating masters. In fact, when Jeffrey does them, I don't even know if I'm giving him the information that this one's for a Pick and this one's a download. I don't think he cares either. He's creating a master, which is either being sent to a pressing plant or sent out for upload. So we're putting out as much good music as we can with good variety, too.

JPG: With all the different projects, I can understand why you're so busy.

DL: Right, exactly, amongst many other things under the radar for now. I really thought after the Winterland and other projects, and then last year we did the big 12 CD box set plus The Grateful Dead Movie, my mind is spinning. I thought 2005 would be relatively normal in comparison, meaning much more mellow and it hasn't been. And I like it that way. I like coming to work and having the challenge of four completely distinct projects and working on a Pick and a DVD and a box set and some downloads and then maybe a small side little Phil project.

JPG: Speaking of things that are now on the radar, there's the Fillmore West 2/27/69–3/2/69 set. From what I heard, it's a 10 CD limited edition package and then Rhino/WEA will release a three CD compilation of cuts from it...

DL: Correct. That three CD set will be very similar to a traditional Grateful Dead Vault release, nicely packaged in stores, widely available. It's like a Steppin' Out or Ladies and Gentlemen..., something like that. The 10,000 limited edition box, which I've got the mock up in front of me of how it's going to look, it's fantastic. We've got the booklet in preparation right now. It's 76 pages. It's got so many photos, about 100 photos, an awesome essay by Dennis McNally. We really are pulling out all of the stops on this. I think even to a greater degree than The Grateful Dead Movie.
The first show is two CDs, second three, third two, fourth three. It's in four separate distinct digipaks, a two, a three, a two and a three for each show and each one will be given its own information, its own songlist, obviously, its own color scheme, everything, but follows the overall theme of the package. Then, in the slipcase, in addition to those four digis, a big 76-page booklet, full color. It's really nice. Each one will be individually numbered.

Biggest, best, most impressive project I've ever worked on yet. You can quote me on that. It is without a doubt in my opinion and I think a lot of people would agree the best four night run the Dead ever played. I've been working on it the last eight months. Any of the 10 CDs you grab, you're never disappointed. Literally, any time I grab one of the 10, it's always a thrill. Each of the CDs, every song, every note is worth it. It's similar to the Village Vanguard recordings where you get a complete three night run and a lot of repeated songs but each version of each song is worthy of critical analysis. They're so good. It's worth appreciating it all. So this run more than any other in the entire Vault is the one that was worthy of doing a complete four night run release.

We knew that Rhino would take the three CD set for the people who don't necessarily want four "Dark Star's and four "That's It For The Other One." Well, I do and I think a lot of people do. The price is, I think, going to be remarkably low, considering the music and the packaging, but it's really going to be a special release.

JPG: The initiating of this and other projects, does it come from you or Dick's notes or a band member recalling a particularly good night?

DL: Occasionally Mickey's the one who'll definitely have input on things like that and be the real conscious one of what he wants released. But overall, I don't think there's all that much band involvement. I think they do listen once they're released or if they're working in the studio, they'll stop in and hear what Jeffrey's doing mixing or mastering. They'll always be impressed with what's going on. Like I said, everything is a four to six month in advance decision. Something like The Grateful Dead Movie or the Fillmore box a year, year-and-a-half lead-time.

We have meetings in September of 2004 on what we anticipate releasing in 2005, and, frankly, that list does not get veered away from very much as we go forward to 2005. We know that we're going to have three Dick's Picks on March 15, June 15 and October 1 or whatever the date is for that. We know we want to do a DVD in the summer. We know we want to do something massive for the fall and that's where the real fun begins, where we say, ‘Well, what should we do this year as a massive thing?'

JPG: Does everyone have their own possible choices of what to release or are you the one who walks in the room and they turn to you to find out what's available?

DL: It's very much in a way a sales pitch, but it's not because it's a very sincere description of what I feel passionate about. It's not at all like I really have to convince anybody if I'm bringing something up. It's because I know it's good. If it's something that I'm bringing up, I'm quite confident about.

I do these PBS appearances for The Grateful Dead Movie for [the stations] pledge drives. People say, ‘Wow! You seem confident and sincere.' Because I'm not selling anything. I'm passionate about the projects. I think that comes through. That's what it really is.

I always have two or three things [for meetings]. I never want to go into any situation with the possibility of being massively disappointed because it's not going to be selected. I always have a couple things because maybe this year isn't the time to do a big DVD, but maybe it is.

JPG: So, what's being talked about past the Fillmore stuff?

DL: That gets us into 2006. We've got a couple sizable DVD projects that are far from slated, but they're definitely good possibilities. We've all been talking about them for about a year as 2006 releases. We've all kind of agreed that this would be a cool thing to do. We are looking at something substantial in the DVD aspect and we know for sure there will also be some substantial audio releases, too, in 2006.

We definitely don't see any kind of limiting in the Vault right now. I just feel that we keep outdoing ourselves in terms of ‘Wow, we did the closing of Winterland, I can't believe that we pulled that off.' Did the Movie, then did the Fillmore box set. It keeps going. We keep realizing that the deeper we dig, the more impressive it can get.

JPG: As far as the downloads and Dick's Picks...?

DL: Yeah, let's say three a year [for Dick's Picks]. We did four a year for a couple years. We're back on a three a year schedule. Probably as many as 15-20 downloads a year.

JPG: That's a lot of listening on your part.

DL: It is. I am drawing from a sizable list of things that I know are good that I do want to come out. I think what it does, it allows us to hit more eras than we've already hit without feeling that we're ignoring anything that we have not necessarily hit for Dick's Picks. I know that we haven't hit 1979 at all enough in the Dick's Picks series. I know we haven't hit 1980 at all. I know '91, we've only hit once, ‘82 once, '83 once, '84 once, '88 never. I also know that we've hit '73 and '77 a lot in Dick's Picks. And I also know that there's a lot more music from those two years in particular that need to get out and this is going to allow that to happen.

JPG: Speaking of '79, I know that Dave Schools of Widespread Panic will be happy. Years ago I interviewed him and the Grateful Dead came up and it turns out he's a ‘head as well. I don't know if he ever got what he wanted, shows from 1979.

DL: With the downloads you will see a lot more of these things that might have been overlooked in the series, and, equally, might have been hit upon a few times in the series. I specifically mean '77 and '72 and '73, but the wealth of material in those years, both the quality of performances, the quantity of tapes and the quality of tapes, sound quality equals absolute releasability, of so many shows from those three years in particular. But we can't keep putting out every Dick's Picks from '72, ‘73, '77. This is allowing us a lot more flexibility.

The reason we started the download series with 4/30/77, we've done a lot of '77 as Dick's Picks, just did one as number 34, but 4/30 was almost going to be a Dick's Picks, but we went with the six CD set from 5/19 and 5/21. The download series allows us to do 4/30 rather than waiting five more Picks.

JPG: Just to cover everything, with the downloads are there plans to make The Other Ones or The Dead shows available as well?

DL: Well, I haven't been asked to do that. I think The Dead live CD series, the official concert recording series, has been so successful critically amongst the Deadheads and I think on a business level. I think it's definitely made itself worthwhile. I don't see that entering into the Dick's Picks or Grateful Dead download world.