A Time of Reckoning: New Approaches to Producing and Marketing Liveness (The 1980s, Part 1)

In celebration of the band’s fifteenth anniversary, the Grateful Dead performed a run of concerts at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco and Radio City Music Hall in New York City in 1980. Whereas the distinctive sound of liveness heard on the band’s earliest commercial live releases owed much to the production techniques associated with the recording studio, Reckoning and Dead Set, two live double albums released in 1981, were recorded and mixed so as to suggest the sounds and textures of fan-produced recordings. At the same time, advancements in video technology, the introduction of home video systems, and the growing market for videocassettes and videodiscs suggested new ways of experiencing and marketing liveness.