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Main article: Deadhead

Fans and enthusiasts of the band are commonly referred to as Dead Heads. While the origin of the term may be shrouded in haze, Dead Headswere made canon by the legendary notice placed inside the Skull and Roses album by manager Jon McIntire:

“DEAD FREAKS UNITE
Who are you?      Where are you?
How are you?
send us your name and address
and we’ll keep you informed
Dead Heads

PO Box…”

Many of the Dead Heads would go on tour with the band. As a group, the Dead Heads were considered very mellow. “I’d rather work nine Grateful Dead concerts than one Oregon football game,” Police Det. Rick Raynor said. “They don’t get belligerent like they do at the games”.^[53]

[edit]Tapers

Like several other bands during this time, the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to record their shows. For many years the tapers set up their microphones wherever they could. The eventual forest of microphones became a problem for the official sound crew. Eventually this was solved by having a dedicated taping section located behind the soundboard, which required a special “tapers” ticket. The band allowed sharing of tapes of their shows, as long as no profits were made on the sale of their show tapes.^[54] Recently, there have been some disputes over which recordings archive.org could host on their site. Currently, all recordings are hosted, though soundboard recordings are not available for download, but rather in a streaming format.^[55]