DEADICATION: Plans for the Rock and Roll...

DEADICATION: Plans for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame led to a bidding war among cities vying to be the site of the attraction before it was built in Cleveland. Will Terra-pin Station, an ambitious facility being planned by surviving members of the Grateful Dead as a multimedia re-creation of the elements of Deaddom, inspire similar bidding?

Phil Lesh, the band’s bassist, hopes it won’t come to that--he’d like simply to find a place for it in San Francisco, the Dead’s hometown. He and others in the organization are setting up a meeting with city officials to initiate discussions soon. But he says they are also scouting sites in New York, the center of a huge northeastern Deadhead base, and has heard interest from other cities as well.

“I’m certain it would be an asset to any community,” Lesh says. “The feedback we’re getting from the Internet and various places from Deadheads is clear: If we build it, they will come.”

The facility, as seen in renderings being sent to fans via a newsletter and the band’s Web site (https://www.dead.net), will feature a live performance space, a room with big-screen video projections of Dead concert footage, a rooftop cafe and even a drumming room where people can go and, well, drum to their hearts’ content. Lesh says that its opening is tentatively planned for Dec. 31, 1999--with a reunion performance of the remaining Dead members a possible inaugural event.

Meanwhile, the Dead is trying to drum up financing for the next phase of development. That’s being done through sales of a new three-CD set of a 1990 concert and related items (lithographs of the artwork, T-shirts, etc.). In other activities, classically trained Lesh is composing a symphony based on melodies of Grateful Dead songs (in the tradition of his hero, composer Charles Ives) and is culling concert and rehearsal tapes of songs that had been intended for a new album when Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Plans call for a disc of the new songs to be the centerpiece of a boxed set to be released next year.