About Deadweb: General ->
Summary
Back in the late 90s, I dreamed of
making something that linked all of the Grateful Dead's albums, setlists, and
songs together. You'd be able to look up a setlist, click on song to see its
lyrics or see its list of album appearances and then click on an album to see
the list of songs on a given album and then click on a date of a recorded song
to see the whole setlist from that date, etc.: a never-ending web of links and
pages.
I first created the album pages of this site as a way for me to keep track of my
own Grateful Dead album collection. At first there were no song or setlist
links, but in 2015 I decided to take the plunge and start adding setlist and
song pages. It's been a constant work in progress. As new discoveries are made
and new official releases are put out, it will never be complete, but I look
forward to the day when I finally have all the setlist and song pages completed.
Questions And Answers
Q: Why make Deadweb when there
is already numerous GD resources out there?
A: Aside from the the Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder, most GD
resources are not updated regularly and have numerous errors and inconsistencies
that have been corrected via more recent tape discoveries and official releases.
(I'm looking at you, Deadlists!) The same could be said of the setlist/lyric
content at Dead.net. I've long been enthralled with GD setlists; they're just
fun to read and look at. I've taken on the ardous task of transcribing every
single setlist because I want them to be consistent and as accurate as possible
with regards to the information that we currently have and information that will
be discovered in the future. You might hardly believe how many errors and
inconsistencies there really are in the traditional GD setlists that commonly
circulate. Even Deadbase 50 is not accurate to the level of detail I'm looking
for. They have no distinction between drums and space, ugly abbreviations (understandble
considering it's for print though), and overall less song/segue accuracy than
I'm looking for.
Q: This site looks old and terrible. Can't you make something more
modern?
A1: This entire site is made with HTML and a little JavaScript. It's made
to be functional and in accordance with my technical abilities. I could totally
see a more advanced version with a database backend and more functionality;
maybe even a phone app to go with it. Since those things are out of my technical
reach, I've decided to proceed with the project as is. I'd like to complete it
in my lifetime! As the primary user, I've found Deadweb to be exceptionally
functional on both PCs and mobile devices. If you have a serious interest in
expanding the technical ability of Deadweb, feel free to contact me on the
Contact page.
A2: When I initially set out on this project, I intended to offer this
website in a downloadable ZIP file (and possibly in printable PDF format). By
making the site HTML-only, it was going to be much easier to offer these offline
and printed versions. I later discovered that the Javascript menu at the bottom
of the all Deadweb pages does not work if you try to open the HTML files
locally, which greatly hinders the functionality of the website when used
offline. Once the project comes closer to completion, I still plan to offer the
entire website in ZIP format so that it could be mirrored, shared, or
distributed. I wouldnt't be able to do this as easily if the site moved away
from HTML, but I'd need a deadicated technical partner to even consider that. A
PDF version is likely a bit ambitious considering how much setlist work I still
have left to do!
Q: What's up with your shitty search site Freefind?
A: Surprisingly, Freefind works incredibly well. Google and other search
engines won't index every single page on my site, which is completely necessary
to execute the specific searches I would like to be able to run on Deadweb. I
hope to replace it at some point, but it works so well for all the searches
I do that I will be keeping it for now.
Expansion And Succession
As noted above, many GD reference sites
have fallen out of date in recent years. http://www.gdreferencesite.com, which
hosted transcriptions of GD album liner notes, has even gone completely offline!
I'm very concerned about what's going to happen to all the valuable GD-related
information sites as we move into the future and past the prime age of the
Jerry-era band of Deadheads that created all these resources. I sure hope that
these website creators have succession plans to keep these websites online past
their creators' lifespans. Deadweb does not yet have such a plan in place, but
having a succession plan is one of the goals of this project. I don't want to do
all this work only to have it disappear into the nether when I check out. If
it's valuable to others at all, I hope that the site will be kept online and/or
passed on to future Deadhead generations.
In that vein, I may look into mirroring content or having some kind of
repository for other GD-related information sites once I complete the bulk of
Deadweb's primary functionality. The GD Reference Site could be ripped out of
the Internet Archive, the Grateful Dead Family Discography could be mirrored,
etc. I just don't want all this stuff to ever disappear for the hardcore
Deadheads who can make use of it.