Hey, Phil. Whatcha doing?
“Holding up a tennis shoe, dipshit. You blind?”
I’m not blind.
“That’s good. You can’t see how ugly you are.”
Thank you. What’s with the sneaker?
“No idea. Grahame said to hold it up. I didn’t want to, but he hid the remote.”
Been watching a lot of teevee during the pandemic?
“Going through about a dozen Law & Orders a day. I got three or four Tivos full of ’em. Great show. So, what the hell is this monstrosity?
Nike made them for the sneakerhead market.
“Is that a sex thing?”
No. Sneakers are, like, art or something now. People collect ’em. There’s a huge secondary market.
“Christ, your generation is a disappointment.”
I don’t disagree. Nice couch.
“Stop looking at me and my things.”
Okay.
A box of shoes will ease the blues
And merch will see you through
Why does phil look photoshopped
This whole thing smacks of John Mayer.
It should be easy to sell me some GD sneakers. But it aint that easy.
It does look like it’s raining outside those windows.
i’m not trying to be a buzzkill or sound harsh towards anyone but the question of “how would Jerry react to all this ‘merch” has crossed my mind more than a few times.
Any answers?
The answer that comes to mind is Garcia being the first, and very forcefully voice advocating the fans recording their music at their shows which started a whole subculture, and his and the band/organization strong insistence on keeping ticket prices very reasonable and out of the hands of the ticket distribution companies. And their playing free music in parks and on campuses. And what the Grateful Dead was about in the early days. I think of that and then I think of Garcia holding a 200 dollar designer Nike for the camera. Can’t reconcile the two. But that’s just me. That’s my answer
We’ll never really know, but I can’t help feeling the same way. A friend of mine in the biofuel biz had me design a few logos for him last year. The next project was some kind of GD glom-on idea for social media, and he’s not even a head – grew up in MN and worshipped the Replacements (I always joked he’s the 5th Replacement because he supposedly skated in their scene.) Anyway, I said “isn’t that cultural appropriation?” sort of half-joking and he never brought it up again.
I’ve done a good deal of creative work for that shoe brand and know the process well. It doesn’t look to me like they put their best team together for this one.