From Munck Music-

Dear customer,

The Dead has decided to close shop. While some of the older Grateful Dead recordings will still be marketed under an arrangement the band has made with Warner Brothers, the band's post-Garcia touring organization will be shut down. This also means that all sales of The Dead's "Official Concert Recording Series" - the live recordings from The Dead's 2003 and 2004 tours - will come to an end.

So, between NOW and August 18th is the last chance to get your hands on any of the 66 live recordings from The Dead's 2003 and 2004 tours, as well as the two 2003 New Years Eve shows from Mountain View, CA, and the 2/9/04 Winter Jam show at the Warfield, in San Francisco. After August 18th, the "Official Concert Recording Series" website will shut down, and none of these recordings will be available for sale anymore !

There were innumerable highlights during the 2003 and 2004 tours, including the 5-night runs at Red Rocks in Colorado; guest performances by Steve Winwood, Willie Nelson, Branford Marsalis, and many more; the 3-set shows at Jones Beach, NY in '03; and the shows from The Gorge, WA where the scenic beauty always seemed impose its special effect on the music. All wonderful memories. All now available for the last time!

We are hopeful that the "core four" surviving members of the band will decide to perform together again, and that MunckMusic will bring you the recordings of these shows when they take place. In the meantime, we will continue our work to record and market more great bands and music festival performances such as Bob Weir and RatDog, Bruce Hornsby, Little Feat, and over 100 performances from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and more - all available at www.munckmusic.com.

In closing, all of us at MunckMusic want to extend a heartfelt "thank you" for your interest in The Dead's recordings over the past four years, and for thereby helping to spearhead a whole new way for bands and artists to market their music. Thanks to you, good music and good memories will live on for a long, long, time.

And the fields are full of dancing
Full of singing and romancing
The music never stopped

Thank you!

Peer Munck
President, MunckMix. Inc.
service@munckmusic.com
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From Leah's column this morning:

"The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Warren Hellman's free Golden Gate Park picnic-concert-hootenanny -- first weekend in October -- has some new feathers in its cap. Earl Scruggs and Emmylou Harris, among many headliners who've been there before, will be joined by Billy Bragg, Bob Weir and the Waybacks, Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy, Alejandro Escovedo and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. On Friday afternoon, Elvis Costello and friends will perform, and in conjunction with Daniel Pearl World Music Days -- an international network of concerts in remembrance of the journalist killed in Afghanistan -- violinist winners of a Pearl music prize will play. Also, the San Francisco Opera is sending the SF Opera Bluegrass Dukes. This may be the first time veterans of the Opera and the Dead share a stage."

Leah, Wouldnt Bobby singing the National anthem with Frederica Von Strade (and Jerry Lawson) at whenever that was at (Pac Bell )whatever the Giant's baseballball park is called, be the first (sort of) stage? I have about 35 seconds of that on video somewhere around here.
.....