The Political Economy of The Grateful Dead with Jesse Jarnow

The Grateful Dead are one of America’s weirdest musical stories, an avalanche of tie-dyed hippies, 30-minute drum solos, acid, and endless, endless touring. But over their 30+ year career, the band also proved themselves to be incredibly prescient, helping to create everything from noise cancelling headphones and concert live-streaming to the “experience economy.” In fact, the idea of distributing free music to enable live shows that they invented has become the basic model of the industry overall. To learn more about how the Dead’s unique approach helped lay the groundwork for the 21st century, we talked to Jesse Jarnow, Author of Heads: A Biography of Psychadelic America, and the co-host of the Dead-Cast. He filled us in on the philosophy of “FREE,” dead-head-tech, and...how much Jerry just didn’t want to be a cop.   

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