The Rock & Roll Fantasy

Don’t expect to find Bob Weir using any file-sharing services anytime soon. Weir, whose career as a member of the Grateful Dead was immeasurably helped by having live shows traded from fan to fan, recently told the Orlando Sentinel that the system doesn’t work as well now that it’s online. He said, “(T)he file-sharing phenomenon has cheapened music; it has been devastating to music. It cheapens people’s appreciation because they didn’t have to honor and support the artist that they are listening to … There was a hand-to-hand relationship among the people who were creating tapes … There was eye contact there. People knew each other and you established a community. These days, even if people do know the people they are getting the music from, they can’t tell what color eyes they have. They don’t know them by the sound of their voices. It’s a cyber-community which is a much, much colder medium.”

Weir and his band RatDog have one more show on the calendar for this year — a “Black Tye-Dye Ball” at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco on December 15th that will also include Little Feat and the Waybacks. Proceeds from the event will go to the Rex Foundation.