High pt of my life for many yrs! 1st show. I remember: waiting outside for the gates to open, seeing the deadheadforever signs all around the stadium, wondering "What could it mean?" The yellow shirted people with "Good 'ol Grateful Dead" printed on the shirts, them leaning over the top of the stadium at us waiting outside saying "Who needs a ticket?" A few hands in the crowd go up, the yellow shirts throwing a handful of tickets at us with advice to "pass 'em around", then "who needs a lid?", many hands going up, and the yellow shirts throwing out armfuls of sacks, saying "pass 'em around". A few minutes later the gates finally opened, and a wave of humanity moves through with hands holding tickets in the air, people carrying backpacks, coolers, etc, no time to check, just let 'em roll on in.
The tunes: 1st set seeming to be kind of standard, good stuff, crystal clear, spontaneous chants of "turn it up" finally getting to whoever in charge of volume... later amazing mind control realizations as everyone is up dancing and at some point music winding down, slower, softer, everyone's sitting, then music stopping for some seconds, you could hear a pin drop, before the spell breaks and the cheering begins...then tuning up (due to heat?) coheres eventually and you're up dancing and its a song, its the same song...How'd they do that?
The smoke signals: Seeing bursts of something brownish/silver (doves? jumbo confetti?) in the crowd at various points suddenly. My brain is braising and can't wrap around the fact that to have one, I'd have to stand up and catch a 4-finger sack of fine weed complete with matches, papers, and rolling machine, when they are released into the air from somewhere in the crowd close to us. Oh, well, we already had plenty to smoke. My addled think-muscle is confounded...how did they get all those sacks in here? Big truckloads? Gunny sacks full through the gates? Mulish yellow shirts? Transporter? Some time later, the Folsom Field looked to resemble some form of extremely wide, short chimney in a fun factory in full production, which, it turns out sent a challenge to the gods of weather.
The rain! Starting out as a beautiful late summer day on the front range, a thunderstorm blew up, trembled and exploded onto us during the 2nd set. This was a mixed blessing/curse as my feet seemed to have been in some mescaline induced torpor which wouldn't allow me to move them to the concession stand, and my mouth was so dry... anyhoo it rained inches, buckets, torrential biblical delugical amounts of water in a short time...I tilt my head back and get a wetted whistle...I see the backstage people trying to empty the water from the tarps covering the stage/backstage and the slosh going all over equipment...I see guys with a saw cutting holes in the stage for drainage...I see my buddy Mike next to me who had enough forethought to bring a raincoat but enough synapse cross-wiring to forget to put the hood up.. I see Bobby(?) making some quip about "aquapiano" on stage, then the band playing some warmup music for a third wake o' the flood set. Then I knew what the flags were trying to tell me, and I was on the bus!

Thanks to the earlier posters who revived many great memories. I was high up in the stadium and was too far to catch any of the free dope, but it was fun to watch. I seem to remember security trying to get to the folks who were vaulting the prized packages into the crowd, but they kept popping up at different parts of the field, and all we could see were the plastic baggies shooting up into the crowd like fireworks. No one mentioned it, but I could have sworn that after the rain delay, they came out and played Harrison's Here Comes the Sun. The other thing I remember was the show went over 6.5 hrs and the tix were $3.50

I was living on The Hill at the time. Five of us walked over to the stadium early and were able to sit on the grass about thirty yards back from the stage. When the rain came we were to messed up to move so we just put the blanket over us and waited. I remember people were worried that the someone on stage would be electrocuted like what happened to Les Harvey from Stone the Crows a year or two earlier. The highlight memory of the concert was when out of the corner of my eye I spotted what looked like birds being release into the air but they disappeared. I asked my friends if they saw it and they are like sure man whatever you say. A few minutes later I saw the birds coming at us and I caught one and it was a perfect lid of good Mexican weed complete with rolling papers and farmers matches. It looked like they Deads roadies had bushel baskets or cardboard box full of lids and they were grabbing them and throwing them out to an appreciative crowd. I know I rolled all mine up and passed it around. About that time Jerry Garcia said something to the effect of we love you Boulder or enjoy it Boulder. We were at the field for over six hours and it goes down and one of the best two concerts I have ever attended. The other one was the same year in June of 1972 at the Denver Coliseum for the Rolling Stones concert.1972 a fine year for music and sweet memories. Thank you Grateful Dead you forever live in our hearts.