Right now I’m dripping with it. Any more and I’d need a snorkel.
Maybe I should start at the beginning…
I used to collect and trade Grateful Dead bootlegs on cassette tape. Hundreds of them. One of my all time regrets is that I stock-piled my Max Points waaaay past the date in which I could have redeemed them. I was saving up for the Corvette. Back then, had you asked me to pick my poison, I would have answered a Don King bowl and a twenty pack of Maxell XL-II’s. 90 minute or 100, it didn’t matter. It started out innocently enough, just among a few friends I went to school with, and a small circle of people I met through the previously mentioned poisonous pursuits.
Now, this wasn’t just music. I’m not sure if I can fully express the importance of these recordings. When I went on my Greyhound trips, I measured the miles between stops in how many bootlegs it would take. The summer I spent living in a VW Bus on an 80 acre plot of undeveloped Wisconsin forest, it was a rinky-dinky cassette deck and a handful of my favorite boots that provided the soundtrack. May 8th 1977, February 13th and 14th 1970, August 27th 1972, June 10th 1973. These are historical documents. And this might be resin-coated hyperbole, but they’re every bit as important as the Bible or the Bill of Rights.
Tapes trickled in. Each one fondled with loving fingers, my eyes pouring over the physical form of them, identical to the tens, the hundreds that would come before and after, yet so original to the night it captured. A date marking the unique character would soon become synonymous with a feeling or a mood. There were tapes for road trips, for chilling, for introducing those poor souls not-as-of-yet indoctrinated, and tapes for setting the hook. There were tapes for laughing, tapes for weeping.
And then the internet hit, and all of a sudden there were hundreds of lists posted on-line from fellow Heads all over the country. Next thing I know I’m dabbling in blanks plus postage, five for five swaps and not just any show will do any more, it’s got to be a soundboard, crisp and with documented lineage. But it was still a community. We’d get on-line in a Dead forum and talk, arrange trades, update lists. Then one day it stopped. It wasn’t immediately after Jerry died, in fact his death spurred a growth in my collection.
But one day the internet went from being a little sneeze, to a full blown disease. The community I knew, no longer needed to exist. Bandwidth, storage and applications evolved to replace it and trading became a thing of the past. My collection of tapes ceased to grow. They’ve been replaced not just by CD’s, but hard-drives, backed up as data on DVD’s. Now for the irony. I’ve been lamenting all this the past few nights as I’ve been out walking the neighborhood, plugged into my iPod, listening to live Grateful Dead.
Where it used to take a few weeks to get tapes in the mail from one of my trading partners, I can now download a complete show in a few minutes. But is it progress, or does it even get measured in those terms anymore because the world has been re-defined by this technology?
The irony continues.
A few days ago, I was made privy to (via the internet) a woman who was unloading a bunch of free, out-dated film. When I went over to claim it, we got to talking and she wanted to know if I wanted a few of her old Polaroid Land Cameras. They were in MINT condition, including original boxes, instructions, warranty cards and filters. I, of course, gladly accepted them. This, despite knowing full well, that in a few months time, if not sooner, I very well might not be able to buy the film intended for these cameras. Who knows, I might not be able to get it even now.
I thought about this too, on these walks I’ve been taking the past few nights. The reason for the walks have been caused by the recent influx of live Grateful Dead music I’ve been acquiring, and despite not taking a camera with me, I’ve still been “seeing” pictures I’d like to take. So it was, I went out last night, with my camera. My digital camera. The very same beast partly responsible for the demise of Polaroid and the film I could have used in those Land Cameras.
And what do I take a picture of? Well, irony of course.
Who needs this clock anymore, especially as it was only 11:30? And why is it still lit? When was the last time anyone used this clock to tell the time? Had I really wanted the irony to pour from this, I would have taken a picture of it with my cell phone. Convenience indeed.
But, BUT! At my very core, I guess I am a romantic, a wistful practitioner of nostalgia, which explains the reason I kept 47 of my all-time favorite boots on cassette. I still pick them out of the old wooden Coke-a-Cola box I stored them in, though I haven’t listened to them in years. I love to look at the set-lists faithfully written down on the carefully crafted, home-made, custom tape covers I made for each show. On photoshop no less. And I still love to set the hook in those poor, unfortunate, as-of-yet indoctrinated souls. So, SO! Should any of you reading this wish to begin your collection, let me know, I have a few shows you need to hear. I’d gladly do a B+P (blanks plus postage) for you, or hell, I could even email you them.
