Peter Shapiro is a live performance promoter, venue proprietor, journal writer and has simply added writer to his resume, with the Aug. 2 launch of his ebook “The Music Never Stops: What Putting on 10,000 Shows Has Taught Me About Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Magic” (written with Dean Budnick).
Primarily based on 50 pivotal exhibits which helped outline Shapiro’s life and information his companies, the ebook chronicles a profession lived at most quantity, beginning along with his 1997 buy of the Wetlands, a New York Metropolis membership that catered to followers of the Grateful Dead and Phish and integrated social activism into its programming, his later buy of Port Chester New York’s Capitol Theatre and the 2009 launch of Brooklyn Bowl, the primary of 5 mixture live performance halls-bowling alleys-restaurants, which has hosted giants (like Robert Plant), rarely-seen legends (Ms. Lauryn Hill) and regulars (Questlove).
Shapiro’s portfolio additionally consists of a number of festivals, like Lockin’ which has been held yearly in Virginia since 2013 (with a pandemic pause in 2020); the journal Relix, a number one voice of the scene since 1974; movie tasks (you possibly can watch his 1993 doc, “And Miles to Go Before I Sleep,” on YouTube) and all method of content material based mostly round hippie rules of the musical variety.
However his penultimate achievement was undoubtedly 2015’s Fare Thee Properly, a sequence of concert events marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Grateful Useless — and 20 years since Jerry Garcia’s passing — and that includes surviving members of the band (Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Invoice Kreutzmann) joined by Phish frontman and guitar virtuoso Trey Anastasio, in addition to keyboardists Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti.
Shapiro went into the stay music enviornment after the 1995 dying of Garcia, an necessary benchmark as a result of it left open the query of what would observe in Jerry’s spirit — and will a scene be sustained with out him? The reply was sure (see: Useless and Firm that includes John Mayer), Shapiro had wager on it and it paid out.
Shapiro joined Selection‘s Strictly Enterprise podcast to speak about his experiences as an entrepreneur and a dreamer, and likewise get into the difficult historical past of ticketing — from the pioneering strikes of the Useless, who instituted their very own mail order system (assume: verified fan in its analog kind), to the extra controversial dynamic pricing mannequin which has precipitated some consternation for Bruce Springsteen and his simply introduced tour.
Hearken to the episode beneath or wherever you get your podcasts.
