Be Dead or Die

Hartford'77.jpg…that’s really “Be the (Grateful) Dead or Die (an economic death)”.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that sometimes when my gravatar appears next to comments on Locally Grown, I’m wearing a Grateful Dead hat. Admittedly, I was a big Dead fan from about 1972 to about 1978. It’s not that I stopped liking them, it was just that during that period of time I thought that they were amazing.

About a year ago, Len Witt, of RepJ fame, referenced an article by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who in some ways has kind of become my creative/intellectual substitute for Jerry Garcia) titled “Bits, Bands and Books” but became known as the “We are All the Grateful Dead” piece. Of course, I had to immediately track it down.

Now this morning I got a Tweet from Jim Fusilli, rock critic for the Wall Street Journal, referencing a further development of that theme. It’s an article by Chicago Tribune columnist Greg Knot titled “Grateful Dead Ahead of its Time“. Knot gets deeper into the details of the Dead than Krugman.

Both pieces quote Esther Dyson saying that businesses and individuals would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”

Back when I was earning my MBA from St. Thomas in St. Paul, I had heard that there was a Harvard Business School Case Study about the Grateful Dead’s business model. I searched in vain for it. Now, with the internet, perhaps I’ll restart my search, and hopefully be more successful this time.

But you all know that this post is just an excuse to put up another picture of the Grateful Dead on Locally Grown.

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