Grateful Dead

Special mention to the Shakedown opener on 6.30

My first show was 10.14.84 (Hartford) ... Everyone was of course raving about Augusta, which the tapes - once I got them - confirmed the special atmosphere and performance for that gig. I liked 10.14, especially the Let it Grow late in set 1. But Jerry was all bloated and seemed (and mostly was at that point) quite a different person than all that I had seen/heard of him in the few years before and after 1980 ... Anyway, it was a pretty decent introduction and the crowd + sound was overwhelming in the good way - enough for me to try to get tickets for spring '85.
I scored two for Providence 4.03 & 4.04. But given hassles & limitations surrounding my friend Bill's Mom's insistence on chaperoning/driving us (she went to a movie or something, while we went to the 04.03 show) I ended up selling the Sunday tickets and Saturday's show was just OK (I think Doc, and perhaps others can confirm that).
Rinse and repeat for the summer tour, as far as still being somewhat of a noob to the ticket process and tour 'flow'. But, having just graduated HS and bought my first beater car, I was emboldened - wanted SPAC but did not get them ... and announced to my parents that I was going to Maryland (for 6.30 and 7.01).
At least for me, the feel of these shows was way different than the first two I saw, and the awesome 6.30 Shakedown gave me that total 'liftoff' sensation and pure joy factor of all around that I'd heard/still hear with goosebumps on the 10.12.84 Augusta Stranger.
So 6.30 Shakedown is probably the singular moment. Though the next night is the one forever etched into my circuits - being 2/3 the way or so up the pavilion on the right - with Dupree's (!) and what I thought was a fine My Brother Esau-Stagger Lee-Let it Grow sequence (less the Day Job closer +/-). Shrooms kicked in fully around there ... And Scarlet - Fire blew me away. (I love where on the sound board you can hear one of the boys say 'Wow. I wish we could do it like that every time). That's to say nothing of the sort of fugue-like organ that permeates Playing, Uncle John's (more pure joy all around), the exploding toy shop space into Dear Mr. Fantasy + GDtRFB - Good Lovin. Satisfaction was a little weird for me (I did not know how relatively rare/special it was at the time). But the Baby Blue that followed is 100% archetypal and seared into me. I vaguely recall the cool lights on the paths (bridges?) in the trees (??) as I walked up and out.
I saw about 30-35 more shows, some were late 85, '86 - 87 & 2 in mid '88 Maine on the East Coast, before moving to CA. Then fully on board as much as possible through August 1991.
Also grateful for the good fortune/timing to catch a similar number of JGB shows (35 ish) - starting at the Orpheum in late 88 or early '89 + virtually every Warfield show from then through1990-91 + Electric on the Eel & the Greek Theater with Jimmy Cliff, which was really a great night for a variety of reasons.
As I said somewhere else a couple of hours ago, I'm feelin' it and soakin' it in ... So, Peace and Love to you All - And Cheers to all the good times we (surely rubbed elbows at and) experienced together at these shows !!

At the Des Moines Fairground with the 'wall of sound' set up in the middle of the horse racetrack, facing the grandstands.

A three set show which left me speechless (for you who know me realize that was a feat in and of itself) and blissful.

"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Phil Lesh

That and 7 13 84

:)))

Providence June 26, 1974

First show was Boston Music Hall December 1 1973, but we were relatively clueless and I didn't get it yet. At Providence, it finally kicked in. THAT'S the night I got on the bus. First life changing Grateful Dead experience.....

Second was Augusta October 12, 1984. Minds boggled and restored our faith in the Dead, for ten years after that we were chasing Augusta..............

Rock on,

Doc

Best time I've ever had. Met all the right people. Showed up as a kid on tour, left as family.

Free concert Central Park Bandshell, May 1970. No rhyme or reason . Just was, for the obvious.

Sat Nov 18, 1978 Uptown Theater Chicago
A great friend and I heard the GD were coming to town. We were just 16 and way out in the burbs. But we plotted and planned. We went the first night on Thur the 16th. It was kind of strange and fun. But it peaked our interest. So we independently decided to go again. And on the weekend we called each other and blammo we got into my ‘68 square back VW and headed into the city. My friend had scored 4 hits of some green dragon. We ate it as we drove. It kicked in as we pulled into the parking lot. And right away a head there had some Mr Natural tabs. I got two more just in case. We got out onto the street ticketless. Started asking for tix. Another head was selling hits in line and got busted by undercover cops right in front of us! What a freak out! We were having a hard time finding tix. It was getting dark out and cold! We were really feeling the green dragons. Then all of a sudden this disco Dan type guy in line with his dancing debutant date got out of line. He had two tix from radio station WXRT and sold us those 7th row center seats. We were “Jerry saves” kids now. We got inside. My buddy went to the bathroom. He Bought two Rising Phoenix tabs just in case while in there. I mean the Uptown was 1940’s shiek adorned out with the coolest accents and red velvet walls. Then we saw a good friend alone with balcony seats. Told him we can get him down to 7th row. We did. We waited an eternity for the band to come out. They did. Holy shmit. That first set put us on a serious edge. Or was it the extra hits we ate? Either way four hits in our mouths. And the set break nearly broke us. But we persevered. And they played scarlet/fire. They played a late ‘78 miracle. And that other one into a meltdown was way crazy. It was for sure the moment in Scarlet/fire that I was telepathically communicating with Jerry. I mean he was comforting me and sending me into a psychedelic spiral. They did a Olin Arrenge Jam out of drums that I was not even aware of. Not for decades did I learn that.
Yah, that show was it. If the GD were within 500 miles of me I saw them. Didn’t care what was going on. Sometimes I’d get bored and a friend would say hay, the Dead are playing in Philly or Berkeley and I’d find myself in a car or a plane heading to a show sans tix and no longer bored. And yes, on the plane I’d meet heads that had extras, why? Who cares that’s the way it went on the road to find out the next show. For certain a trip to the Greek theater in berzerkeley 1982 had a playing/uncle John’s into drums that was one of the best things I’d ever heard the band play.
Oh, outside the Uptown a homeless woman was sitting on the curb. 9 months pregnant with a sign on saying anybody want a baby with an arrow pointing at her tummy. With my suburban life I was like completely shocked. What kind of a band attracts people like that? It just added to the pageantry of wonders surrounding the Grateful Dead. But, it was the area. Not the band. She was not in a good way at all. It was a challenge after the show trying to drive home. But we did. And it helped me have the confidence in life to get through the strange. 101 GD shows under my belt. More various band member related shows. Donna to Jerry Bob Bill and more. The bus just keeps moving further. Happy trails campers. And avoid the opiates kids!

It was a beautiful early summer’s eve, it was the delightful outdoors setting of the Hollywood Bowl, and it was the Dead, a band I’d grown to love through the recordings, but as everyone knew, it was playing live where they shone.

And it was the end of high school for me, forever.

The concert was fabulous, though the windowpane might have been an influence. We were back from the main stage a fair distance, a couple of tiers from the floor level. The Dead played many of their classics, they wound up the crowd, pulled them in, pushed them away, pulled them back at higher volume.

Except for my brother, who didn’t drop acid (since he was driving, thank the stars), we were all soaring, particularly one of my friends, who was swaying so much to the music I thought he was sure to fall over the small wall he was standing on, dividing us from a lower level.

One of the great contrasts in that concert was that I was in ecstasy over the music, yet rabid over some security goons who punched a couple of people from our level who’d dropped over the wall to get closer to the scene. The goons were apparently college football players who’d been hired for security and they popped a few people pretty good directly below us, and those confrontations happened a few times. So, when we weren’t flying to the music, we were yelling at the security to back off.

Those guys had armbands that said “Peace Power,” but peaceful it wasn’t.

The concert marked the last performance of Pigpen before his early death. He didn’t sing at all, and just played some listless notes, never going into the big blues persona he carried so well. Thus began the curse of prematurely dead Dead keyboard players over the succeeding years.

We, however, lived, and returned to my friend's house, where his parents were gone for the night. We had bought an entire case of Peanut Butter Cups, one of my favorite candies, and we ate them all. Sweet.

Watkins Glen was a great 3 band concert experience indeed. However, the Dead started the show in the early afternoon which just didn't seem normal nor proper. The set was shorter than other shows because "The Band" and " The Allman Brothers" needed their time. What seems to have circulated most widely is the recording of the soundcheck. At that time the boys were loose and having fun as compared to the actual afternoon concert.

Still have my ticket stub from '73 although my Summer Jam T-shirt long ago fell apart into the rag heap. So it goes.

First Show: Barton Hall @ Cornell University Ithaca NY 5.8.77. Yup--FIRST show. Didn't really dig the Dead until then. Was knee deep in Zappa, Yes, ELP etc, but always open to new music. Went to school with a bunch of Heads who had already been to 100 shows, and if you "don't have two copies of every Dead album then you don't have a record collection." So went with them and opened up a whole new world. Especially when they were saying, "I can't believe they're playing this--oh they rarely play that!
Awesome psychemusic experience made me a fan for life!