Music a mission for Dead's Hart

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"I might be the most recorded person in the world," speculates Mickey Hart, longtime drummer-percussionist with Ur jam band the Dead, who gave fan-based file-sharing their blessing long before anyone ever heard the phrase.

Before there was Napster, before there was Kazaa, before there were portable MP3 players, there were Deadheads, armed with "taper tickets" and analog recording machines, gathered for each show in a thicket of tall microphone stands near the soundboard.

They "file-shared" in the 1970s, '80s and early '90s the old-fashioned way -- by hand or by snail mail. They bartered in the currency of traded tapes, T-shirts, baked goods or, ahem, substances that may get one good and baked.

Nearly every show Mr. Hart has ever played with the Dead has been recorded unofficially for posterity. Almost every set list, too, has been cataloged, complete with online indexes that fans can cross-reference.

The tapers are still around, of course, as they were last week when the Dead -- the "Grateful" having been dropped in deference to the passing of guitarist Jerry Garcia -- and its nomadic tribe of fans rolled through the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md.

Nowadays, though, Dead tapers are more likely to use lightweight digital tape recorders, converting their audible booty into MP3 files that pass from hard drive to hard drive, rather than from a multigeneration tape source.

Cassette recordings of Dead performances may be outdated commodities, but the basic philosophy remains: Record music, share it, preserve it.

And, because technology is making it so easy, do it quickly.

Through www.dead.net, the band is offering fans digitally mastered soundboard recordings of every show this summer, almost all of which are already on sale.