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Deadheads)
Dead Heads are fans of the band The Grateful Dead. They follow the band's tours, record their live shows, trade tapes of concerts, and scream "Rev It Up!" as an anthem to the band.
Many are devoted fans and have gone out of their way to see many of the several hour long shows the band produced. The appeal was, in part, created by the way the band structured their concerts. While it could be expected that the band would play two sets in a show, with the second set containing a drum solo and improvisational "space" jams, the night to night song selection would change entirely. Thus each show became unique and a Deadhead could attend several consecutive shows, seeing few or no duplicate songs.
Additionally, because the band was improvisation by nature, each time a song was performed it was slightly different from the prior time it was played. Over time this forced songs to under go an evolutionary process where the current incarnation could sound radically different from the first time it was performed. The improvisational nature of the band, the choice of songs, as well as other factors such as location, crowd enthusiasm and the band members' energy would create the difference between a good show and a great show (also called "on nights".)
In the view of Deadheads, "on nights" were what set the Grateful Dead apart from many, if not all, other bands. Since the possibility was slight of catching an "on night" during any given performance, Deadheads would go to several shows during a tour or throughout the year in order to guarantee seeing one. With large numbers of people attending strings of shows, a community naturally developed out of the familiarity. It also led to a need to create a "financing" feature to enable traveling Deadheads to support themselves when on tour. For Deadheads, "living in the Lot" on tour developed a community culture, and infrastructure of sorts. Thus many Deadheads became vendors of unofficial Gratedful merchandise such as T-Shirts, bumperstickers, pictures, posters and also necessities such as food. Much of this could be found in a vending area sometimes termed "Babylon" or "Shakedown Street" referring to one of their songs (often called simply 'the Lot') in parking areas surrounding the venue where the Grateful Dead was playing.
It has sometimes been said "you can find anything you need in the Lot": Deadheads would fund their tour by selling car parts and mechanical services, massages, books, artwork, toys, clothing, by recycling, or by 'passing the hat' during artistic or theatrical performances of their own devising -- often these products and services were quite unrelated to the music of the Grateful Dead.
At almost every Grateful Dead show, it was common to see fans openly recording the music for later enjoyment. This occurred with the complete approval of the band, which is considered by many to be the first taper-friendly band. It is a matter of strict custom among Deadheads that these recordings are freely shared and circulated with no money ever changing hands. The desire to trade grew out of the Deadhead's desire to listen to tapes of the "on nights" and the ones they went to. It is not uncommon for Deadheads to have collections spanning the 30 years the Dead performed consisting of over 200 separate nights of recordings.
Deadheads have been known to purchase, or even 'steal', bootleg tapes from unscrupulous bootleggers who are illegally selling Grateful Dead music, and to copy them and distribute them for free - often at the same location as the bootlegger, in an attempt to stop the bootlegger from profiting. These recordings are sometimes called liberated bootlegs.
Many deadheads now freely distribute digital recordings of the Grateful Dead's music, and there are several websites which provide and promote legal access of lossless music. The following are some among the most notable:
Because of the practice of distributing Dead music in lossless formats -- with checksum verification of file integrity -- and since the music continually circulates, the body of free Dead music is perpetually re-archived. This is one of the only ways to reliably archive music, because while the media on which the music is stored deteriorates, the music itself does not, and so any corrupt file can be readily replaced with another identical copy.
In Grateful Dead lore, the Deadheads are actually a part of the band itself. New fans are always being born, and some of these fans will surely become fanatic enough appreciants of Grateful Dead's music to become Deadheads themselves. Because of this, and the fact that the Dead's music is being continually re-archived, it is taken as an article of faith by some that the band will "live forever".
"Dead-finitions"
There are numerous unrelated definitions of the term deadhead, favorite among deadheads are definitions such as:
"a person seeing a show for free"
"driving with an empty load" or in Trucking or Railroading Industry "a movement to a location with just a Cab or Engine"
and "riding for free"
both of which stem from commercial practices:
- in theater, it is customary to distribute free any unsold tickets to avoid an 'empty house', a practice known as deadheading, the holders of these deadhead tickets are called deadheads.
- trucks, trains, buses, and planes, returning home without cargo or passengers is deadheading or, on a deadhead run, and the term also refers to a driver, pilot, or engineer riding free on the company's conveyance, to return home when not needed by the company at the remote location. This person is referred to as a deadhead as well.