I posted this on rec.music.gdead just now, so I might as well post it here, too.
JonP wrote:
Why do you think that david gans has been posting her nonstop since this started?… Damage control for gdp..I wouldnt be surprised of they asked him to do it…
They didn’t.
I don’t know how many times I have to say it: I am not an insider.
The truth is, I don’t really need to suck up to them to do my job. Back in the ’80 and ’90s when GDP was rolling in money, they didn’t “need” the GD Hour to help them sell tickets, and many powerful insiders (John Cutler and Dennis McNally, to name two) didn’t particularly want my help in selling records, or anything else either.
For example, when Arista hired me to make a promotional interview disc for “Built to Last,” Cutler wouldn’t even let me use the GD studio to do interviews. He did let me use one half-decent microphone for the Garcia interview, but I was on my own aside from that. McNally never sent me press releases, invited me to press events, facilitated interviews w/ Jerry, etc.
Dick Latvala was happy to make music available to me for the radio show, consistent with his generally kindhearted nature and his desire to get the music out into the world – but he was fucked with mercilessly by crew people (and especially Cutler, who didn’t have the balls to get in my face so he abused Dick emotionally behind my back) – to the point where I stopped asking Dick for music for several months at one point because I couldn’t stand what it was doing to him psychologically. Peter McQuaid intervened, took me and Dick out to lunch one day, and told Dick to stop letting the hecklers interfere with our mission.
So I was never inclined to suck up to anyone; oftentimes it was all I could do to keep from spraying gunfinre.
Nowadays the relationship is much more professional on a certain level, because David Lemieux and Jeffrey Norman are sane, professional, decent guys who appreciate the value of the GD Hour. I haven’t asked David for any unreleased material for quite some time, for a variety of reasons – one of them being that I have access to tons of great material that is already outside the vault. Amusingly, I’ve gotten plenty of shows directly froom archive.org – or CDs from Charlie Miller as he prepared them for upload to the archive.
I have also given Charlie quite a bit of music to post on the archive and asked that my name not be attached to it.
So the bottom line is, STFU already about me sucking up.
I”m here to serve the music, and always have been. I’m not terribly sentimental about the GD organization, because although they have allowed me to earn a good living promoting their music, and I have gotten a great deal of satisfaction from the job over the years, for most of my tenure on the periphery of the scene I’ve had to fight one fuckhead or another just to do my job. It’s left me profoundly unsentimental about the “family,” believe me.
I can vouch for Gans on this one. When I was first allowed to plug into the soundboard one of the first people I would give tapes to was David for the Dead Head Hour. It was made clear to me by both Dan Healy and John Cutler that I was not to do this anymore.
Healy was upset because David would give me credit on the air for supplying the tapes and Healy wanted all the credit.
Cutler was upset because he really didn’t understand the marketing value of David’s show.
I remember being in the GDP board meeting when the subject of having someone be in charge of the vault was brought up. Dennis McNally pushed a close friend of his named Lou. I pushed David Gans because I knew that he had an incredible knowledge of Grateful Dead tapes and shows (I never told you that David, sorry!)
I think it was Kidd (Phil’s crew guy) that suggested Dick Latvala. Dick was known around the Club Front because he always had awesome Bud and was always talking about this Dead show and that Dead show, etc.
The band went with Dick Latvala.
Except for the time that Peter McQuaid was president of GDM, David Gans was basically on his own.
Gans, you rock. Way to break it the phuck on down.
Dennis McNally is a fool. It’s his job to publicize the band, and he does nothing to facilitate the growth or success of Grateful Dead Hour.
Ego is a hard trip to beat.
Ithink a large portion of the Deadhead community is unfairly lashing out at many, not least David Gans.
I hate to see the way this has gone. People losinbg their heads all over the place.
And no, I’m not getting a check from GDP either. I wish the hell I was!
I’m just a loyal fan with a deep sense of fair play and a pragmatic POV.
I think you do a great job with turning people on to the music, even in spite of the cold shoulder you sometimes get from GDP and all of them.
People should give you more credit than they do. I think that everyone assumes a truck just pulls up to your place and dumps a bunch of freshly copied, unreleased Dead for you to play on the air. From what I see, that’s far from the truth, and it’s wonderful you’ve hung in there like you have.
Terrapin
Terrapin Station
Well, looky what I found over at David Gans’ blog: Terrapin Station – A brand-new Grateful Dead blog. Welcome to our Dead bloggers community, Terrapin….
David, your first problem is reading anything posted by Jon Perdue. The guy is a total clown with too few brain cells and way too much time on his hands. Seriously, I love reading what you have to say, but debunking Jon is like debunking the Lyndon Larouche supporters who think Queen Elizabeth is a drug dealer.
I admire David’s honesty and candor. I can relate to his treatment from some in GDP. Sometimes when I think I’m really crazy I think about the GD Corporation and all the insane moves they’ve made over the years – like taking 90 people to Egypt to record the Pyramid shows for an album and not being able to find a piano tuner, or a rental piano in a city of 12 million. But worse than not being able – just not wanting to do it. ??????
My hat is off to David, Steven, and Charlie. Thanks for maintaining your love of the music through the hassles and egos. Now maybe some of the naysayers will STFU.
David, I’m still not sure why you ever paid the GD a dime, when you supplied them with a solid hour of GD advertising every week for a decade and running…
When this whole Lamagate thing went down, I found myself in a bewildered state of mind. See, my wife had gotten me an iPod in attempt to cure me of my addiction to collecting CDs containing “hippie music.” The terms of our treaty required me to get rid of the CDs. Or what remained of my collection; this would amount to my fourth and final(?) round of “perfecting the collection.” So, here I was, parting ways with hundreds of CDs. While I remained faithful to many shows and kept them in the ever-perfecting hippie music collection, a great number of shows did not fare as well. I tried to keep my composure and not fret, reminding myself that this was a good thing; less baggage, yadda yadda yadda.
“I’m a roadrunner, baby…”
Anyway, if I did hit a bump in the road and was moved to go on a bender, the Archive would always be there to soothe my soul. Or would it? One of the voices in my head got me to downloading a few shows from the Archive and burn them to CD for safekeeping in the “perfect hippie music archive.” Just in case. You never know when the band will change its tune (again). After all, we’ve never been able to pin this band under our collective thumb in any predictable way (apart from, say, Drums and Space), so why would we expect some kind of homeostasis to arise from the arrival of a fairy-tale-come-true but not-sanctioned-without-qualification archive of the band’s music.
David, you really are one of the good guys. It’s unfortunate that so many in the fan base have not recognized just how much positive you have brought them and how much negative you have endured (and continue to endure) to make it happen. There would be no “hippie music” collection without you. Moreover, I am quite confident in stating that without your undying efforts in spreading this music (by allowing folks to hear it every week), the music archive may never have existed. If nothing else, your deadication to the MUSIC shows that you are and were more an insider to the community of fans than anyone can claim you were an insider of The Company.
This is why I blame you personally for my addiction to this band’s music and subsequent marrital woes. Please have your attorney compile a list of your assets and let me know where I can have the Marshall deliver the papers. ;^)
Sean,
First of all, I don’t really exist and certainly don’t use my real name, so your process server is just going to wander the earth for decades without finding me. Sorry about that.
Second, I didn’t mind paying a royalty to GDP for the right to profit from the use of their music. The deal we made was a fair one, and when the radio game became less lucrative in recent years they were cool about changing the terms and eventually eliminating my payments.
Sure, it was all advertising for the band, and in a rational world I would have been embraced for my tireless evangelism of GD music to the world. But this was not a rational world, and every petty tyrant who had a chance to fuck with you would do so to the limit.
John Cutler was a total prick about this from the start, my written agreement notwithstanding. He hassled Dick about it relentlessly. Heartbreaking stuff, but not at all untypical of the psychological warfare that characterized life behind the laminated curtain.
Because the GD road crew were also such dicks about this, Dick and I usually waited until the band was on the road to have a little dubbing party. Because Cutler refused to allow me to use the facilities of the GD studio, I would bring a carload of gear with me – a PCM adapter or two and two or three VCRs; two or three DAT decks; sometimes a cassette player, too. (Dick had a decent reel-to-reel deck in the vault that I was allowed to use, and a poorly-aligned dubbing cassette deck.)
We’d set up all the gear and then pick out some shows to copy. I usually had a list of items I wanted to check out, and Dick often had some suggestions of shows to copy or things he wanted to listen to. We’d get two or three dubs rolling, fire up a fat one, and hang out for the day. I monitored on headphones, mostly.
We always had a great time at these dubbing parties, despite (or maybe even because of) the vaguely criminal atmosphere. Although I had a written contract with GDP that gave me access to this music, this was very definitely GETTING AWAY WITH SOMETHING in the eyes of the crew.
Oy, the stories. I could go on, and I’m sure I will.
Over the course of the last few years, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time talking with a former vault employee about his experiences working in that hallowed sanctum. His sole job was to dupe tapes to DAT. He recalls that it was Parrish who was the gatekeeper during this time. Parrish made it clear that Deadheads were not allowed to work in the vault. I think we can assertain why. The story goes that Parrish flipped his lid when the guy’s girlfriend came by to pick him up one day and there was a Stealie on her car. He never did make it out of there with any music. However, he did present me with the actual soundboard cassettes of a June 1990 show that were supposedly given to Pete Sears after Brent passed away (which he had acquired during his employment at UltraSound). I had the painful job of telling him that the show was already in wide circulation on CD. 🙂
I guess my point in relating the above is that having been inside the vault, even as an employee, does not make one an insider.
So, who are the real priests of the temple? I think a lot of us would like to know the answer to that.
Dave, I just wanted to add my name to the ranks and tell ya how much I’ve appreciated your deadication over the years. I still pluck analog tapes of your shows from their old wooden box covered with tour stickers, from time to time, and those tapes still comprise half of my show collection. Alas, I wish I hadn’t edited out Dick’s appearances on the show…those stoned raps always cracked me up. He was a great guy, and so are you.Hope to see ya at Nelson’s Ledges again this coming year.
Along with rec.music.gdead, have you ever considered posting on the Phil Zone?
I guess I just reached a point where I couldn’t keep up with all the places to talk about this stuff. My online home has been The WELL for twenty years, and I started posting on rec.music.gdead before it was called that. I participate on DeadNet Central some, but beyond that, I don’t tend to visit other conversation sites unless someone points me at a specific place where my name has come up or whatever.