people coming in thru the roof literally winterland was falling apart. one of my all time fondest memories. pancakes at six in the morning. jerry looking and feeling good chartbuster? --staggerlee jerry was into it. wharf rat j.g. kept hitting these notes that came flying out of his guitar straight at me .scarlet --fire-- all good loving every minute of it

My first NYE show, and one of my most life-changing nights ever. Caught the red eye after the Pauley show on the 30th. Crashed in a friend's van outside Winterland and woke up to find speakers on the corner playing great music, Uncle Bobo serving lentil soup, carrot cake, all sorts of good stuff. Finally the doors opened and we were treated to Animal House at 6, followed by the New Riders, Blues Brothes, Flying Karamozov Brothers and the Grateful Dead from midnight until dawn. Oh, and lots of little visine bottles being passed around - liquid refreshments free for the asking.

My folks still wonder why NYE is such an important night for me. 12/31/78 is why. If 3/18/77 (my first show) got me on the bus, 12/31/78 sealed the deal for life.

My cousin and his wife lived in San Mateo. I lived in Orange County having moved out west post Syracuse University graduation. The only way to get tickets to this show was to enter a lottery held at various Bay area record shops. I called my cousin and asked him if he was into the Dead and he wasn't (my good fortune). I begged him to enter the lottery for me. He agreed, I sent him the money and he and his wife entered this lottery. The story is over 1 million people tried for just 3500 tickets. My cousin's wife won and I got to go! To this day, this is by far the best concert I have ever attended. After Pauley, we drove all night to my cousin's place. We crashed on the floor till about noon. The night started round 6 with a screening of Animal House. I was there up front. Then the New Riders played for about an hour. The Blues Brothers came out and tore the roof off the place. Belushi doing his flips, it was awesome. Then the Flying Karamozov Brothers juggling. It was endless. Winterland was dressed up like a Grateful Dead Museum. I remembered thinking to myself...Dead Heaven. There were Dead stickers on the floors, the ceiling, everywhere. The walls were covered with historic posters of all the great shows of the past and the posters were varnished on. Every where you looked, it felt historic. Just before midnight this big curtained off area in the balcony in the back of Winterland came alive and Uncle Bobo was sitting a huge smoking joint dressed as Father Time. It started coming down over the crowd and Father Time was tossing roses and spraying a little champagne over the crowd. I had to duck as he flew right over my head on to the stage. It's midnight, thousands of balloons come down and are pushed to the front and the Grateful Dead are now there playing Sugar Magnolia. Man, I will die a Dead Head. They played until 6:30 in the morning ending with an acapella We Bid You Goodnight. To top it off, Bill Graham served me breakfast and I had the privilige of standing next to him and talking to him for about 10/12 minutes while he was dishing out eggs and pancakes. He told me they were trying to recreate the old days. He said he wanted to go back one more time and he said if I ever wanted to know what it was like back in the day, just think of tonight.