Gear up, folks: There are now two competing TV series in development about the exciting lives of roadies. We’ve reported before on Showtime and Cameron Crowe’s Roadies, which hopes to show the glamorous lives of the attractive, Luke Wilson-looking people who devote their lives to helping famous musicians do their thing. Now, Amazon has announced development on a limited series based on Home Before Daylight: My Life On The Road With The Grateful Dead, Steve Parish’s 2003 memoir about the thrills and dangers of ensuring that a concert venue is disaster-proofed to withstand ten hours of uninterrupted, unkillable noodling.
Parish spent more than 30 years with the Dead, setting up concerts, touring with the band, and eventually serving as the best man in Jerry Garcia’s wedding. Now, his book is being adapted by Amazon with help from one of the band’s founding members, Bob Weir, who’s expected to executive produce the series and oversee its musical choices.
The Dead recently proved that there’s still a big market for purveyors of nostaliga-laden jamming, with the band’s recent farewell tour breaking Pay Per View records and sporting sold-out shows. It remains to be seen whether the group’s lingering popularity will be able to push the new series past Crowe’s filmmaking chops and continued musical credibility—not to mention whether either series will be able to match up to cinema’s greatest depiction of the roadie life: the Del Preston scenes from Wayne’s World 2.