Dead’s ‘Euro ’72′ box set sells out, but …

That big gooey box set of the Grateful Dead’s European tour of 1972 is gone and nothing’s going to bring it back. Sort of.

The limited-edition box set — stuffed with “memorabilia and ephemera” — sold out in four days, but Dead.net now offers a “music only” collection for the same price: $450. The sets should ship in the fall.

Dead.net still promises that no more than 7,200 copies of the original box set will be created. The first lucky 3,000 Deadheads who preordered will get box sets personalized in some way. A hardcover coffee table book goes along with the memorabilia and more than 60 discs.

“Although perhaps not as cool as the boxed set, the bottom line is that the most important aspect of “Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings” is going to be made available to all, the music,” Dead.net said over the weekend. The site, exclusive seller of the Dead/Rhino box set, notes that the decision to sell the music separately came after “lengthy discussions.”

The music-only collection will house each concert in separate packaging.

Of course there’s no shortage of Grateful Dead albums on the planet, but this one hits the motherlode:

More than seventy hours of music spread over the 60-some discs. Every show, “every note” of the historic tour, mastered from the original 16-track tapes.

No doubt you recall that we’ve had a Europe ’72 set for decades. The one with the kid and the ice cream cone attached to his forehead. That three-LP album captured the Dead at their peak, as anyone who saw the group in the early years of that decade can attest.

Ron “Pigpen” McKernan left the band shortly thereafter; Keith and Donna Godchaux joined shortly before. The Grateful Dead’s previous studio albums were “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty,” both classics and signposts to the band’s future. And the Dead were … straight?

Bob Weir says a lack of dope helped the musical focus. “For that tour, everybody was pretty damn clear,” he told Rolling Stone. “Unlike in America, you couldn’t get pot over there. They had hashish. and nobody liked it much. … All we had was the music.” That didn’t stop the band from hourlong workouts on “Dark Star.”

While the old “Europe 72″ brought the band many of its fans, it wasn’t the real deal. The album had heavy overdubs on the vocals. This time out, it’s a pure shot from the sound board. Project producer David Lemieux calls the recordings “pristine.”

The news came about a week after plans for a Grateful Dead online video game were unveiled.

In other Dead recording news, “Workingman’s Dead” makes a return Feb. 1 via a Japanese import with extra tracks.

‘Music Never Stopped’: Rock to the rescue

“The Music Never Stopped,” a drama about a brain-damaged man and his father reconnecting over 1960s rock music, is front and center at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

The indie film features music by the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Stones. The Dead’s Bob Weir is in Park City, Utah, for a solo gig promoting the indie picture.

Roadside Attractions snapped up U.S. distribution rights to “The Music Never Stopped,” in one of the Sundance fest’s biggest and earliest deals. The movie was the featured film at the Salt Lake City Gala, one of Sundance’s big opening events.

Director Jim Kohlberg’s debut film is based on author-neurologist Oliver Sacks’s case study “The Last Hippie” (printed in An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales in 1995). Sacks remains best known for the tales “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”

The story goes something like this: The son (Lou Taylor Pucci), can’t remember much of anything, but he responds to music by the top rock and psychedelic music artists of back in the day. Two decades earlier, the young man ran away from home in part because his father hated his counterculture music. Now, in the 1990s, he’s in a hospital with cerebral trauma that leaves him stuck in the ’60s.

The dad (J.K. Simmons) tosses off his loathing of hippie music with the help of a music therapist. He shares the tunes with his broken son and there is peace, of a sort. The movie’s tag line is “No matter how lost you are, music can bring you Home.”

“I always connected deeply to the story and the redemptive qualities of the characters and the iconic music,” director Kohlberg says. The production company takes its name from a Byrds song: “Mr. Tamborine Man.”

“By far, getting the music was the hardest part of the production and I never really thought we would get it done,” Kohlberg told the Wall Street Journal. “I really didn’t. I was amazed I had overcome my self-imposed hurdle.”

The movie has three songs from Dylan, four from the Grateful Dead, two from the Beatles and three from Buffalo Springfield. The director says getting the Dead and Dylan on board was huge, considering the budget.

Sue Jacobs (“Things We Lost in the Fire”) worked as music producer/supervisor.

“You can’t beat the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash music in this film,” Roadside co-president Howard Cohen said.

One critic isn’t so sure. Matt Goldberg, writing on Collider.com, calls the use of classic rock lazy. “In my experience, people who love music are far more aware of deeper cuts and less-popular bands,” Goldberg wrote in a review. “I don’t have a problem with (the son) loving the Beatles or the Grateful Dead as much as I mind that the songs he connects to are “All You Need Is Love” and “Truckin”. … A music aficionado like (the son) should be more into obscure stuff.”

Actor Lou Taylor Pucci’s father is a rock guitarist from New Jersey.

The movie’s title comes from a Dead song co-written by Weir. A 1995 CD of songs by artists that influenced the Grateful Dead also borrowed the title.

New Dead game ‘a psychedelic journey’

Tired of your Grateful Dead jigsaw puzzles? Had enough of the Grateful Deadopoly board game? Good news: Soon you’ll be playing with the band.

“We’re planning to design an interactive masterpiece,” the developer of an upcoming online Dead game says. It’s being described as “sort of a psychedelic journey through Grateful Dead history” and a “social game.”

Release is set for Aug. 1 with access via dead.net, Facebook and some game portals. The unnamed game will be free (in the Dead spirit) but in-game revenue models might emerge. Fans’ input is being sought.

“From the first click the player will enter into a universe of Grateful Dead music, sounds, and visuals,” developer Curious Sense vows. “Games and activities will reside within several regions of the world, each designed according to a theme from Grateful Dead lore — the Old West, space, San Francisco, Giza.”

Expect plenty of top-hatted skeletons and roses from the most iconic band of them all. The soundtrack will come from the Dead’s records. Game players apparently will be able to remix and mash-up the music. The animated sequence from “The Grateful Dead Movie” could be part of the action.

The Dead already have a trivia board game and have licensed three “packs” of songs to Rock Band. Then there are the jigsaw puzzles, “Steal Your Face” playing cards and an edition of Monopoly. No wonder someone wrote a book titled “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.”

North Carolina-based Curious Sense — which gets its name from a line in the Dead song “St. Stephen” — is working with Grateful Dead Productions and Rhino Entertainment, which manages the band’s intellectual property. The Deadhead-run gaming company has done work for REO Speedwagon and the record labels Island, Epic, Geffen and Def Jam.

The game developer’s website features a “Survey of the Grateful Dead Experience” that will test some fans’ attention spans. Questions include: “What is a Grateful Dead memory that you cherish?” and “What 5 songs give you a taste of the spectrum of their music?”

‘Money’ talks: Pink Floyd, EMI in new deal

Pink Floyd and their longtime label EMI have reached a new global deal that appears to end the messy legal wrangling between the parties.

The five-year agreement sees EMI Music continuing to distribute and market the veteran psychedelic rock act’s catalog.

Individual Pink Floyd tracks will continue to be available via online retailers such as iTunes and Amazon, despite several U.K. court rulings last year favoring the band’s position that EMI did not have those rights.

“All legal disputes between the band and the company have been settled as a result of this new deal,” EMI said in announcing the Pink Floyd deal Jan. 4.

The band and record company go way back — to 1967. Both have been greatly enriched over the decades. The ubiquitous “The Dark Side of the Moon,” for example, has logged more time on the Billboard album charts than any other recording.

EMI Group CEO Roger Faxon said: “Pink Floyd are one of the most important and influential bands of all time and I know I speak for everyone at EMI when I say that it is a privilege to have the opportunity to work with them. We’re looking forward to continuing to help the band reach new and existing fans through their incredible body of work.”

The band recorded 14 studio and three live albums before going their separate ways.

Pink Floyd’s early 2010 legal victory over EMI was affirmed by a British appeals court in mid-December. The band sued the label over its online sales of individual tracks from albums such as “The Wall” and “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Pink Floyd had argued successfully that under a 1999 contract, EMI had rights to bring the psychedelic rock group’s albums to market — but not sliced into separate tracks, as is typically done on download music sites. Pink Floyd’s songs often flowed thematically into each other on their psychedelic concept albums.

In March, the chancellor of Britain’s High Court said the band had the right to defend “the artistic integrity” of its albums in both traditional and online media. EMI appealed the court’s decision at the time. Lawyers had said the legal action was largely to establish ownership of the digital tracks.

Meanwhile, ex-frontman Roger Walters said he’ll be filming the London stand of his “The Wall” tour for video release.