Changing times for the business of being Dead

The recent decision by surviving Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann to perform together under the truncated name the Dead evokes the group’s colorful history of communalism and extended family.

But other moves within the Grateful Dead organization may mark the end of the band’s actual communal business family, a change many have feared since the 1995 death of bandleader Jerry Garcia.

Assets of Grateful Dead Productions, the Marin County-based enterprise that encompasses the group’s music and merchandise ventures and assorted other in-house operations, are being downsized, sold and out-sourced, effectively ending what had for 30 years been one of the pioneering experiments in self-contained rock business models.

The Grateful Dead Mercantile, the mail-order and Internet retail outlet for the group’s music, and products ranging from tie-dyed T-shirts to golf balls emblazoned with skulls or dancing bears, is being sold to Musictoday, a similar operation run by Coran Capshaw, manager of the Dave Matthews Band -- an act whose own business largely followed the Dead’s blueprint. The Mercantile’s Marin offices and warehouse facilities will be put up for sale, and the Mercantile staff of 10, some of whom have been with the organization for many years, is being let go.

Additionally, Grateful Dead Records’ distribution deal with Arista Records is expiring. A new deal is reportedly in the works with Warner Bros. Records’ subsidiary Rhino Records, which oversaw the production and release of the acclaimed 2001 boxed set “The Golden Road.” And the valuable vaults of unreleased concert recordings -- which have been mined in recent years for the “Dick’s Picks” series and other live CDs -- may be put up for sale, though the Dead organization intends to retain creative control. It’s unclear what will happen to the rest of the operation’s staff of about 25.

“Clearly we’re going through a lot of contraction,” says Dennis McNally, the band’s longtime spokesman. “We’re in the process of changing the way we sell our products, mostly music and tchotchkes. But what gets delivered will be created by the same people who always did it.”

To some, though, the change reflects not merely business choices, but also a shift in the band’s surrounding Deadhead subculture.

“Both the blessing and the curse of the organization is that it was run by the friends and family of the band itself,” says Steve Silberman, author of the 1993 book “Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads,” and co-producer of “So Many Roads,” a 1999 boxed set of unreleased and rare Dead recordings. “There’s been enormous continuity. What’s incredible is that this $50-million-a-year touring organization was run by these sweet old hippies in a house in Marin.”

But with the death of Garcia and the end of the Grateful Dead as an active entity, the cash flow for what had never been an efficient business diminished.

Gary Lambert, a full-time employee from 1991 to 1997 who continues as editor of the official band newsletter, the Grateful Dead Almanac, has mixed feelings about the business changes.

“I’m personally bereft because there are people I love who I won’t be working with anymore,” he says. “But I find this a natural progression and quite understandable. These guys had businessman status thrust upon them years ago, or they took it on because they wanted to remain independent. I think they’re at a point in their lives where they want to simplify and come together to play music and not have all that infrastructure to worry about.”

Steve Bernstein, publisher of Deadhead-oriented Relix Magazine, agrees.

“This doesn’t do anything to change the music, and that’s the most important thing,” he says. “This could have all ended in ‘95, and the fact that it lasted this long is tribute to the fans and the band and what they have to offer.”

Not just another Blowtorch song

A documentary about the band Betty Blowtorch is being finished, with plans to showcase it on the spring film festival circuit in conjunction with the release of a rarities album from the female band. But the filmmaker behind the project is sorry he’s been able to complete the film. If it hadn’t been for the death of bandleader Bianca Halstead in a car accident caused by a drunk driver in New Orleans in December 2001, he says it would still be an ongoing work in progress.

Director Anthony Scarpa had even joked while he was in the process of shooting footage of the band earlier in 2001 that it would take either great success or a horrible tragedy to give the film a conclusion.

“I’d made a bunch of short versions of the movie, but I kept saying that I don’t really have an ending, so it’s not really a movie,” he says. “Unfortunately, it presented itself with an ending.”

The film, titled “Betty Blowtorch and Her Amazing True Life Adventures,” follows the band’s evolution into a rising act known for flashy live shows and, in late 2001, a group named by Spin as a band to watch for 2002. It includes live and behind-the-scenes footage, along with interviews of such supporters as Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan. It also explores the dissension that saw two members quit not long before Halstead was killed.

After her death, Scarpa was uncertain he wanted to complete the project. “They did a memorial in L.A. and her parents asked me to put together a little film, so I cut together a little 10-minute thing and showed it and everyone was crying,” says Scarpa, now working on the independent film “Grace,” his first feature. “Her dad said, ‘What will it take for you to finish the film?’ So we reached out to other people with film and video footage and then it was another year to wade through everything and get it done.”

Small faces

* Radiohead and Sigur Ros are planning to merge their ambitious musical aesthetics to collaborate on a score for a new piece by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company scheduled to premiere in October at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Meanwhile, a DVD of videos done for Sigur Ros’ music, including the short film “Untitled #1,” directed by Floria Sigismondi and premiered at the recent Sundance Film Festival, will be released in the spring.

* Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and his wife, entertainment executive Tracey Edmonds, will be hosting a celebrity sheet-music auction to benefit the City of Hope at their Holmby Hills home on April 2. Autographed music and other memorabilia has been donated by U2, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey, Barbra Streisand, John Mayer, Destiny’s Child and B.B. King, among others, for the event. A limited number of tickets will be available to the public. For information call (213) 202-5735. Last year’s inaugural event, held at producer Glen Ballard’s home, raised more than $90,000.

* Having been uninvolved with recent tours, Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White has co-produced the band’s first album of new material in six years. Titled “Promise of the New,” the album is due May 20 on L.A.-based Kalimba Records, with a summer tour to follow, though it’s unclear what role White, who has Parkinson’s disease, will have in the concerts.