Category Archives: Fare Thee Well

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Once again, in Offically Unofficial News, the foundations of the world have shaken as the Dead’s brilliant marketing arm leaked just enough information to stay on top of Internet algorithms like drunk sailors on Japanese hookers. The news came as a festival promoter nobody ever heard of before disguised themselves as Scott Allen and received more attention than a woman at a Rush concert. The hints lead to Santa Clara, California, a location we all have tons of recordings from. When news hit the home office in Stinson Beach, 5 employees moved to Mexico immediately. “Fuck that shit!” they said as they sped towards the border. When asked about the demand for The Dead, Mickey said, “This shit is outta control like Bill’s eyebrows!” When Bill was asked aout this response he said, “That Cro-Magnon Vulcan would have a single eybrow across his head that looked like the scouring side of a sponge if he didn’t get that shit landscaped by Mexicans in his neighborhood every week!” It seems like everybody is getting along just fine… One thing is absolutely certain, it’s either happening or it isn’t!

Dead Fans from the left coast, specializing in passive aggression, stopped complaining for the first time since January 16th. Apparently monthly shows by Phil and his friends right in their back yard aren’t enough as the group of people still pissed off about missing Hampton in ’89 have been crying since day 1. They’ve taken solace in Death Don’t Have No Mercy being busted out at Shoreline for 26 years now. People with names like Jeff and Sam moved West many years ago to continue life with names like Huggie Bear and Tranquil Stream have quickly moved from waiting on long lines for Apple Product Releases to crying about the absence of Bay area shows and getting screwed by ticket releases. They moved out west decades ago to buy a wig and get the crabs and sleep on Owsley’s floor. Those guys have been releasing the pent up and still ingrained east coast aggression they’ve been trying to deny having since 1977. Internet records displaying their inherent hostility have been spewing out since January. They will now begin acting like they were kind all along. As long as they get tickets… At a price close to what they cost 35 years ago…

Somehow, those that thought 3 shows were a cash grab feel better that they’ll be more. Unbridled joy at the developing story was spreading just as fast as the negativity will once details and ticket sales are announced. Some fans are wondering if their money orders will be returned in time to send them back again. Plans are being put into place to keep tickets out of the hands of scalpers which is difficult since many of the scalpers are actually guys like Huggie Bear and Tranquil Stream hiding behind ebay and StubHub profiles, selling their tickets and hoping they won’t be revealed as the fake ass bitches they really are. You can find them outside of their peaceful status diatribes and picture albums filled with photos of Buddha statues, arguing on the Grateful Dead Tour Vets pages.

While people think this will have a dramatic effect on decreasing the cost of Chicago tickets, some scalpers have commissioned professional artists in anticipation of the upcoming mail order. Peter Shapiro is proving once again he’s smarter than you are because he already sold all of the bad seats to Chicago the first day on TicketMaster. He is still holding back on the good seats that people will gladly purchase, even if they already have purchased bad seats, as upgrades a month or two from now. There’s tens of thousands of tickets that haven’t been released yet. When it all it goes down, you’ll remember you heard it from The Official Home Of Unofficial Grateful Dead News!

Paul Abdell and his editor Michelle Cohn will be gathering up volunteers as fast as GDTS TOO as their group, Social Tactics Operating Properly Against Nemesis, Anti Scalping Society (“STOP AN ASS” for short) has made a huge impact on the ability of scalpers to reach their prospective victims utilizing free media sites like Craigslist. Their work has had a tremendous impact on the ability of scalpers to sell their tix. Good work y’all!!!

Michelle and her sister Robbi need tickets for Chicago. If you have extras, please find them on Facebook. Anybody thats been a fan for any length of time has seen countless photos taken by Robbi. They are obviously some ladies who undoubtedly deserve tickets to the event.

Another show honoring the man with the sound we’d all be willing to act kind again in order to hear, sold out faster than Doug Irwin once he got a couple of guitars back. The Dear Jerry Show however sold out in 4 seconds. For one of those seconds I was prepared to write at length how wonderful it was to use ticketfly. Instead, I feel like I was screwed by a neutered animal this time. I got all the fuckin with none of the balls. At least Ticketmaster humored me by spinning the balls around giving me the impression there was some mystical entity that was trying to work on my behalf. With Ticketfly there was no waiting, no line, no balls. There was however a nice little man on a treadmill when I tried to get through on the pre sale. It was nice to feel like I was exercising while spending my second month in a row on the computer pounding some kind of ticket selling website which seems to be as useless as Charles Manson’s parole hearings and yielding the same results… Nothing.

“The last thought… The final thought… the hard thought… The Warrior thought is that We ain’t many!!! In any given situation there’s always gonna be more dumb people than smart people, We ain’t many!”
-Kesey 10/31/91

You know what Jerry would say, he’d say, “STOP FUCKING ASSUMING YOU KNOW WHAT I’D SAY! YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT!”

More will be revealed in the weeks that follow… New York Got the ways and means…

Ladies looking for some gorgeous Guatemalan Hippie Gucci can find some beautiful stuff from my friend Sugar Mags right here.

Preparation for The Dead’s Fare Thee Well shows has begun!!!check it out here.

Gratefully Deadicated,
Dean Sottile (pronounced SoTilly)

www.gratefuldean.com
Dean SoTilly on Facebook

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The week following internet ticket sales proved to be as flattering on Dead Heads as spandex on fat chicks as the Dead community showed its ass more frequently than a spinner in a miniskirt. The community has rapidly turned into its own microcosm of “haves” and “have nots”. The “haves” have been busy blowing cheerful sunshine into the bludgeoned assholes of the “have nots” as the mood across message boards is a mix between a wake and an Iron Maiden concert. It’s times like these you wish more people would’ve been hauled off into the middle of nowhere by bandaid wielding cultists that puddled naive wanna be hippies with Neosporin on the maroon bus to spend their days building furniture.

Hunted turned hunter, Paul Abdella, has now become the Kingpin of the Anti Scalping Task Force leading the charge in filling the underpants of scalpers with broken glass and scorpions. Paul has declared every day until July 6th “Flag Day” on Craigslist, ebay and any other site attempting to scalp tickets to this event. His lengthy posts are scattered all over the internet attempting to utilize passion and emotion while speaking to a bunch of ticket agents that don’t give a shit. When asked about Paul’s existence, a scalper named Dagma, without a doubt the ugliest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen in my life, said, “If he spent that much time getting another fuckin job he’d be able to buy his tickets within 2 or 3 weeks!” Paul and his faithful army of flagits move forward none the less in this battle of wills.

In an effort to apply some salve on the butthurt of thousands, a celebration honoring the music of Jerry Garcia was announced for May and seemed to make everybody happy for 10 minutes. Then somebody checked their calender and realized the show was on a Thursday, perfect only for people that live in D.C. or those that still don’t have jobs or young kids. It looks like everybody other than Trey will be there but ya never know… 86 of your favorite musicians are scheduled to perform. The backstage area will be as crowded as the men’s room at Phish concerts.

This event should obviously sell out in 10 seconds and leave everybody complaining until May. Why wouldn’t it, the same guys are gonna be there and the capacity is 1/3rd of Soldier Field and there’s only 1 night. I wonder why the hotels haven’t sold out yet. Ticket prices have been left to the imagination and are posted absolutely nowhere. Their inevitable unveiling should provide another fine round of insults aimed at all parties involved while .0001% of proceeds will benefit the Rex Foundation. Unless of course there’s a loss on the cooked books at which time the Rex will get about $75.

Deborah Koons, fresh off of vaginal rejuvenation surgery, was not invited. I know everybody is heartbroken about that but her spirit is alive and well and can be experienced through non stop bitching and chronic insane behavior on any of the Dead’s official pages. What the fuck happened to us? Didn’t we used to laugh our way around the country without a care in the world? If the attitudes displayed as of late were that way since the beginning, we wouldn’t be celebrating 50 years at all. We all went on Tour to live in a world free from the bullshit that it appears we’ve currently become. Where have all the people gone, my honey???

It was brought up on my Facebook Group whether or not I would have the same things to say about everything if I didn’t happen to score tickets through CID, the only officially licensed scalper of The Anniversary Shows. My response is this, I mail ordered for one set of shows every year since ’87, New Years Shows. Between The Grateful Dead and all the New Year shows Phish have played, I’ve mail ordered for tickets or entered the lottery for the past 27 years. I received my tickets TWICE… NYE ’89 and Big Cypress in ’99 (EVERYBODY got their tix to that one). Since tickets have been sold online through Ticketmaster, I’ve scored exactly ZERO tickets for New Year’s Eve Phish shows. That’s a pretty bad record for scoring tix in advance for the big ones. I actually don’t think in my history of more than 350 Dead shows (all with Garcia, offshoots don’t count) and over 200 Phish shows, I’ve NEVER had tickets this far in advance. I never cried about the band’s popularity. I never cried about scalpers. I never worried about any of it until the day of the show, usually once I woke up around 3:00 PM or so. I got shut out of New Year’s Eve once in 88. I was young and inexperienced in the ways of shows and didn’t really know anybody on the scene. Since then, not only have I scored tix for all the big ones, I’ve always had great seats.

Chill out y’all… There are tons of unreleased seats for these shows. They did a brilliant thing by selling all of the bad seats first. Nearly everyone I know that scored seats on Ticketmaster scored 3 day passes behind the stage. I don’t know a single person that got decent seats from Ticketmaster, do you??? Look on StubHub or ebay and all you’ll see is uppers, seats behind the stage, or directly across from it, both endzones, with little to nothing in between. The best way to keep scalpers at bay is releasing tickets the week of the show. Scalpers have too little time to deal with them at that point. Shapiro and the crew are pretty smart. There’s a lot of tix that haven’t been released. I’d wager to say that half of the seats have actually been sold. Be patient, spread love, trust in the process. Love you long time! Talk to y’all soon!

If you have an extra, sell one to Eric Schwartz. He’s a true contributor to the scene for a long time and hosts Lone Star Dead Radio out of Dallas, TX.

Video Journal of the experience can be found here:

Gratefully Deadicated,
Dean Sottile (pronounced SoTilly)

www.gratefuldean.com
Grateful Dean on Facebook
The Official Home of Unofficial Grateful Dead and Music News Facebook Group

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