Hey, Wall Streeters: Fed up with your job trading now-worthless derivatives? Angry at The System for not recognizing systemic risk? Annoyed that your corporate Yankees box got yanked? Perhaps you should consider a career change. The University of California-Santa Cruz is looking for someone to fill what can truly be called a unique job opening: full-time Grateful Dead archivist.
It's a dream job...for many. Christine Bunting, head of Special Collections and Archives at the university library, says she has received "several dozen" applications. The job has been posted for six days -- which is about the length of the average Grateful Dead jam -- so take note, all you burned-out hedgies: you've still got time!
Millions and Millions
Along with a masters in archives management -- a special type of library science -- the successful candidate will posses "expert knowledge in the history and scholarship of contemporary popular music, or American vernacular culture, preferably the history and influence of the Grateful Dead," according to the job posting.
"It's a priceless collection," Bunting says. "It really chronicles the history of pop culture throughout the 20th century, particularly in California." Because the archives were a gift from the Grateful Dead, there was no price attached, but Bunting says it's worth "millions and millions."
The collection measures 600 linear feet -- two football fields -- and includes office files, contracts, payroll documents, news clippings, setlists, and correspondence, including letters from Deadheads to the band, Bunting says. The Santa Cruz collection amounts to a kind of documentary paper-trail left by the band. (The master studio and concert tapes and reels are stored elsewhere in California.)
Dead Serious About Business
Although this iconic American rock band was associated with the hippie movement, the generation that grew up on its music between the 1960s and the 1980s now occupy the nation's top positions of power and influence. The Dead's bipartisan fanbase includes Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, Nancy Pelosi and Pat Leahy. Walter Cronkite was said to be a fan, and President Obama keeps them on his iPod.
Deadheads are also legion in the business world. "Some of the biggest guys I know are Deadheads," says real-estate entrepreneur Billy Procida. He cites as an example Tony Malkin, billionaire owner of the Empire State Building, who lit the landmark in tie-dye colors several weeks ago, to commemorate a fundraiser for the New-York Historical Society. "It just means they have good taste in music and are generally good, decent people," Procida says.
"I've done over $2 billion in real estate deals, and I've never gotten a bad deal with a Deadhead," Procida says. "It's the culture. it's all about doing the right thing. Think about it: Everybody in the Dead culture was all about helping each other and not screwing one another." (So to speak.) "I know so many CEOs who are Deadheads," Procida says. "If you interviewed the top 100,000 self-made guys in the country worth a couple million, I would bet the Grateful Dead would have the highest percentage of them as fans."