The Dead Live, Gratefully

By Lonny Strum

On February 22nd, "I saw Dead people." 5000 of them at the Carpenter Center at the University of Delaware. I was one of them. And I was thrilled to be there. It was a Furthur concert, the Bob Weir/Phil Lesh band. Doesn't get much more Dead than that. OK, no Hart or Kreutzman, but no biggee. And the band's lead guitarist is Jerry reincarnated.

The show was great. I've seen the Grateful Dead, Other Ones, Garcia Band, Kingfish, Rat Dog, Furthur, et al maybe 40-50 times. On the Dead Head scale that makes me a novice, but still puts me into the lower tier of serious fan. They make me feel good. Always did. Always will.

For you Dead Heads the set list was first rate:
Set 1: Here Comes Sunshine, I Need a Miracle, Estimated Prophet Candyman, Maggie's Farm Alabama Getaway, Black Peter Cosmic Charlie
Set 2: The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion), Jack Straw, Cold Rain And Snow, Peaceful Valley, Sugaree Revolution, Terrapin Station, Throwing Stones
E: Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, Ripple

Alabama Getaway in the first set and Ripple as the encore were the show highlights.

But the Dead are far from just brilliant musicians. The Dead are, have been, and will continue to be brilliant marketers. They have understood "social media" long before PCs, blogs and twitter. The have always believed in building a community, sharing, the influence of others, and the power of belonging to something bigger than oneself. If want to appreciate and understand the brilliance of Dead marketing I encourage you to read Joshua Green's: Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead in the March 2010 Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/grateful-dead-archives
It's an incredibly insightful, well written article. I learned a ton.

I leave every Dead concert smiling, but yearning for the songs they didn't play that evening. I will never be fully satisfied and therefore never have enough. This August it'll be 15 years since Jerry's passing, the same week as Mickey Mantle's death-a really bad week for my boyhood idols. Though Jerry's been gone almost 15 years, the music of the Dead lives. Nothing better than that.

Lonny Strum is Managing Director of the Strum Consulting Group which provides strategic business marketing and business consulting to professional services firms and companies seeking an independent audit of their marketing activities. Lonny has a 30 year background in marketing and has been CEO of two of the largest Philadelphia area communications agencies and had been part of the managment team of BBDO/New York, one of the nation's largest ad agencies.

For more information on Strum Consulting Group visit http://www.strumconsulting.com. Lonny Strum can be reached at 856-770-1154 or lonstrum@strumconsulting.com. Feel free to visit the Strum Consulting blog at http://www.strumconsulting.com/category/strumings/

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