After All is Said and Done: Taping the Grateful Dead, 1965-1995 Mark A. Rodriguez

Published 2022 by Anthology Editions

“Tapes would be shared and worlds would be expanded, minds opened by the gift of revelry captured on cassette.” - Trixie Garcia, foreward to After All Is Said and Done

After All Is Said and Done: Taping the Grateful Dead, 1965–1995 by Mark A. Rodriguez is more than a history of the recording and collecting of Grateful Dead concerts on tape, it is the printed extension of a conceptual art practice. The book emerges from Rodriguez’s Gens installations, where the artist used tape culture as both a medium and a metaphor; a meditation on ephemera, transmission, degradation and devotion. Without that context, the scope of the project can seem puzzlingly obsessive: with it, the obsession becomes the point.

The first half of the book functions like a visual archive. Over 160 pages of hand-decorated j-card cassette inserts- drawn, painted and/or collaged by generations of Deadheads—reveal the personal, improvised aesthetics that grew around Grateful Dead taping culture. These images are not nostalgia: they are evidence of a participatory craft that blurred the lines between documentation and fan created art.

The interviews that follow further connect the narrative. Rodriguez’s conversations with sound hounds explain the evolution of taping—from bulky reel-to-reel rigs to cassette decks, while detailing the informal networks that connected tapers and collectors across the country. They also imprint the broader context of the Dead’s touring life, capturing how fans acted as carrier pigeons to preserve, share and celebrate the band’s live improvisations long before the digital era made archiving effortless.

In each of his Gens installations, Rodriguez would dub more than 2000 tapes, create j-cards for each cassette and construct massive walnut shelving systems inspired by the original Napa Valley Wooden Box Co. cassette shelves found on the walls of thousands of Deadheads from the 1970s through present day. To this end, each installation became both an archive and performance, a Sisyphean cycle of copying where each generation of sound degraded… intentionally. This deterioration is not a flaw; it is commentary. The loss of fidelity becomes a metaphor for memory, myth and material culture.

The accompanying book carries this idea forward. It is less than a catalogue of shows than a record of how sound moved through hands, rooms and time. For newcomers, that focus may tilt toward feeling overly specialized as Rodriguez assumes a baseline familiarity with Dead culture: the difference between a Betty board and an AUD and/or the etiquette of mic stand placement in the taper’s section.

Ultimately, After All Is Said and Done is a definitive account of a singular cultural phenomenon. It captures the energy, dedication and ingenuity of the taping community while offering insights into how the Grateful Dead’s music circulated beyond the stage. Seen through the lens of the Gens installations, the project becomes a conceptual loop: an artistic statement about copying that itself copies. For Deadheads, music archivists or anyone curious about participatory fan culture, Rodriguez’s approach provides a detailed, enthusiastic and remarkably thorough guide to a practice that helped the music—and the myth—endure to the present day.

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THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED 9/28/75 Lindley Meadows, San Francisco, CA

I owe Scott Mann several hundred Grateful Dead tapes- a debt I'm unable to repay. In the late '80s, whenever Scotty rolled up to visit me in Manhattan or Oakland, his Volkswagen Vanagon became a beacon for trouble. On three occasions, a window was smashed within minutes of arrival and the contents pilfered. Replacing glass was a costly irritation.; losing the Dead tapes was devasting. Scotty's hand decorated j-card inserts were artworks unto themselves. Copenhagen, Lindley Meadows, Veneta, Manhattan Center, Harpur, Dillon Stadium, Cape Cod, Billerica and dozens upon dozens more... gone. Then re-taped and redrawn only to be pilfered again... and again.

Nearly forty years later, I find myself sitting on three unopened 10 packs of Maxell XL-IIs... blank vessels for the music we once chased. Sadly, Scotty no longer has a deck and because I'm the world's least productive taper, the tapes stay blank, the debt stays unpaid and somewhere out there, three confused burglars may still possess tiny, accidental satellites of Gens.

Scott and I oft listened to Lindley Meadows. Sadly, I don't believe the source of our tape has been uploaded tot he web as Phil's calls for 'Sunny Place', the father of the baby who was born during the show, are absent or edited from all currently available versions.