Grateful Dead

The 1st venue of the taxi tour 3/30/09 NYC, this place was awesome!!

1983 great shows all year, but for all around great vibe the hult center-eugene ore. gotta say my favorite though was the downs of santa fe-wavy gravy welcoming us all as we pulled into the campsite the night before the shows, dancing in the rain, then a beautiful rainbow emerges behind the boys as the rain comes to a stop. phil wearing a huge sombrero and stepping to the mike for harmonies on cold rain and snow-first time i'd seen him sing in a long time. what a tour though-park west-spent the night in utah in a cave up in the hills-one more labor day night. still looking for cd's and any related merchendise (stickers, shirts, et.) from 1983. any help would be greatly appreciated. heading down to charlottesville in 2 days-looking forward to seeing the boys with warren

Something happened to me in Saratoga.

Hard to top Redrocks as far as being in a venue,, but when the whole town of Telleride became a venue,, well you just had ta be there,,

But the Ultimate Venue, was never played (there are a few others) by The Grateful Dead but I would have to say Sedona, AZ at the top of Schnebly Hill Rd. was the greatest venue of all time by far bar none. Ok, so maybe where they played, and I saw, I would say, right now, there is no doubt about The Greek....so close to the Redwoods you could smell them in the rain. So I agree with UncleJon I go Greek here! _____________________________________________ Will you come with me? Once in awhile you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right!

"As we enter a Realm of the New Spirit of Partakement of ShakeDownment that Transcend Time,Being,Place and the Spirit of Past Manifests itself in "Joy of Being" Part of Once was, As Is and Always will Be...a Special Force of Uplifting Energy Channeled through the Ages as a "Kryptical Envelopment of our Souls."

What's more cosmic than not sleeping for a couple of days in Vegas with the Grateful Dead in town? "When the smoke has cleared she said, that's what she said to me. You're gonna want a bed to lay your head and a little sympathy"

The Fillmore was my everything and the Avalon was about as cosmic as it comes but as the concerts went on, going to Winterland was like stepping into a giant mushroom that vibrates and sings. Full of music! Grate place.

Like Curly, I loved being at Englishtown. It wasn’t that the place was all that great – but the performances and the overall vibe were both amazing. The spring of 1977 was a heady time too. Not only did I get to catch the Dead on 5/4/77 at the Palladium in NYC (a great old theater in its time) and then just a few days after that on 5/7/77 at Boston Garden (a wonderful dump, which, like the Palladium is long gone), I also got to watch as my apartment building burned to the ground about a week later! Being suddenly without a lot of possessions changes you, at least for a while. So realizing I had nothing better to do (having dropped out of college only a week before), I decided to head out to California to see what I could see. My wanderings brought me to Kansas City a week or so later, where I learned that the Dead were planning a 3-night stand at the Winterland in San Francisco in just two weeks. I went to a Ticketron outlet and snagged seats for the second night, 6/8/77 and continued my way to SF. I found SF to be a really fun city. To make money, I hung around Fisherman's Wharf and sold soapstone carvings I'd made. It was enough cash to keep me going and I met some new friends while I was doing that. On the afternoon of 6/7/77, one of my new friends wandered over to where I was selling my stuff. She asked me if I was going to catch the Dead that night. I told her I had a ticket for the 6/8/77 show, but not for that night. "Let's go get you one then!" she said as she pulled me along to the bus station. I protested, arguing that the show had to be sold out already. She laughed at me and then gently explained that Bill Graham always left a few hundred tickets at the door to be sold a couple hours before show time. Sure enough, when we got to the Winterland, there were tickets being sold at the window and I bought one. We went inside and discovered that Bill Graham was on-stage with a mic in his hand, calling out relay races that were being held on the floor. Teams of folks from different cities were there in an informal round-robin tournament, competing for free tickets to the next night's show. It was a fun time and Graham seemed to be having a ball calling the races, urging on the runners, and hyping up the crowd. In between races, I went back into the Winterland lobby just as a horde of motorcyclists came roaring up to the front entrance. They began unloading themselves and what appeared to be an endless supply of cases of beer. It was the Hell's Angels. Bill Graham's security people went out to tell them that they couldn't bring the beer inside. "It's okay" said one of the bikers as he hefted a couple cases under his arms, "Jerry says it's alright." No it wasn't, the security people responded quietly. You can't bring beer into the Winterland. "Well then" said the same biker, "Then Bill says it's okay." Realizing that a riot with 40 or so angry Hell's Angels was going to put a real damper on the evening, the security people backed off and welcomed the Angles in. The Angels for their part happily offered free beer to the security people (and to anyone else who was around) and peace reigned supreme. It was an excellent evening already and the band hadn't even taken the stage. "When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest!" - Bullwinkle Moose

Having mostly traversed the East coast for the majority of my 80+ shows, I unfortunately can't speak to the lavish beauty of more organic show settings (like Deer Creek, or Alpine). But I will always have a special spot in my soul for the urban antiquity that was RFK stadium in Washington, D.C.And it's a wonder that we never set that ton o' dynamite and live artillery off at the armory next door with all our stomping and spinning! I always enjoyed the cloak that nightfall would put on the old arena, as the second set started to take shape. The oddly curved open dome would seem to richocet the light show out into the starry universe. Somewhere deep into the set the entire building had the feeling of an interstellar Ark preparing to launch for an intergalactic journey. And anyone who has ever been there, for a concert or rowdy football/baseball/soccer game will never forget the sight of (or participation in) the literal rocking and bouncing of the concrete on the lower level. It's an amazing sight to look out and see the frenzied gyrations of the fans actually bending the structure like a rolling wave. Seemed my friends and I always gravitated to the "Center of the Universe" directly across from the stage, tucked just under the upper deck. The sound quality was always pristine. I know the old stadium has passed it's usefulness to the D.C. area as a functional arena, but when they finally go to tear that old building down I will be looking to purchase a couple of those awful orange stadium seats for my music room.