Grateful Dead

My buddy Rick's hometown. The show was good. Dougles

Very sweet. Best Friend of the Devil ever, IMHO.

Does anyone have a copy of this show or know any way I could find it?

I love a building made of bricks

Yet another great time with the Dead. I loved every song they did that night. Dead shows were such a treat. The first set was just one good song after another. The second set with Playin into Crazyfingers makes wanna dance even now. Truckin into Spoonful, Wharf rat and Good lovin. I wish I had a time machine.

26 years ago today, in fact, at this very hour 3 PM, I at 19 arrived in Richmond VA with a general admission ticket to see the Dead at the Richmond Coliseum. This was about the 8th show I had ever seen and it was different because I was brave enough to go the show with quite casual friends, In effect, this was truly my first Dead show basically alone. The weather was a day very much like today. Fall in the south, crispy bright sunlight, upper 70s, to cool down to upper 50s on the overnight. These were the days of Dead shows where the floor was all general admission and they were never sold out. Anyway, I do not remember much of the pre-concert festivities, I do remember that the party materials were awesome. The Show I remember the inner joy when the lights went down and the band took the stage…..I was on the floor near the sound board in front of the tapers……The band tuned up for what seemed like an eternity….a full 2 minutes of tuning….endless…..then broke into a seriously musically intense Song 1 Feel Like A Stranger…..Jerry’s jam at the end showed he was seriously on tonight and I remember him teasing us with a few Franklin’s Tower licks…..then, another long tuning and I moved closer to the stage….the folks that had crowded up dissipated some……Song 2 Friend of the Devil, a crowd pleaser but not my favorite….slow song that doesn’t match my buzz….The jam was long and mellow…..more people left the floor in front of me so I moved ever closer….by now perhaps half the floor from the stage….Jerry-side…..Song 3 New Minglewood Blues…..body rush, great song, tight band, great smoking version….it was an on music night……I danced my way closer…..from Minglewood…into Song 4 BROWN EYED WOMEN….one of the best songs ever….closer and closer I danced up…..at this point I was 10 or 15 feet from Jerry and mesmerized……..I had plenty of room, owing to the huge barf splat and a naked dude dancing to left of me….no matter, I had the Dead and I was so dancing with glee….and Jerry and I made eye contact….my first direct eye contact….Jerry is a nice man…..Song 5 Cassidy...yay…Song 6 West LA Fadeaway….Song 7 Hell in a Bucket….at this tour both songs were brand spanking new…..finally Song 8 DEAL….a great version, great first set…… Set 2….after a lot of dithering and tuning….Jerry, obviously playfully annoyed with Bobby, who Jerry wanted to pick the song and Bobby didn’t….breaks into a set opening Day Job….odd but true…..then…..and I say then with incredibly body rushes as I type this…into Playin in the Band – Jam – Crazy Fingers…..this was and remains one of the best 80s dead playing in the band jams…..and crazy fingers…..”something new is waiting to be born”…..drums…space….s smoking Truckin out of space….incredible Spoonful….Wharf Rat….again me, maybe 4 or 5 people deep directly in front of Jerry….mega eye contact….into the continuation of the Bobby play fight…Jerry starts Sugar Magnolia….then Bobby changes it to Good Lovin!.....”you may be weak you may be blind…but even a blind man knows when the sun is shining….cuz he can FEEL IT….”……oooooo got to have lovin! US Blues encore….and me, a forever Dead head. This show, this day, changed my life. God Bless the good old Grateful Dead.

A great show. One fact I remember that is not mentioned here is that "The Boys" started into Sugar Magnolia and then didn't sing it.....! Instead they deliberately modulated from the Key of A (Mag Key) up a step & a 1/2 to the key of C (Good Lovin' Key)!The rest was history......Good old Good Lovin'. When the fake was apparent, I remember Bobby put up a smile. He obviously enjoyed their stunt and that they pulled it off........

Oh, you can see we did get the Sugar Mag the next night!GreensBoro, NC.......

I just remember being on the floor and feeling such immense joy during Friend of the Devil...I started crying. The beginning of a long, strange, life-changing tour.

This show kicked off a great tour. We wet from warm in the south to freezing in the north by tours end. Every night was fun and had expectations having The break out of St steven and Crazy fingers again after a year off from it

we were the 1st in the venue ! .. friend in a wheelchair got special treatment. Taping was still stealth, and we laid out my blanket ‘right in the sweet spot !’ .. great tour opener .. pump fake with sugar mag, then Good Lovin’ ! Only ‘83 Crazy Fingers ‘It’s gonna be a long tour’ .. (nobody knew what was in store .... ;-)

The first of about 250 ending with the Memphis run in 1995. I went to this show with the guy who turned me on to the band. He was a Richmond native, Chris, I met 2 months earlier as a freshman at Hampden-Sydney College. We had a parting of ways a year or so later, and I never had a chance to thank him for this indescribably profound journey he started me on. I also never got to thank him for that hug he gave me when I returned to campus in April of 1984 after my Mom’s death. I had never been hugged by a guy my age before, and it meant the world to me. OK, finally got that off my chest.

By the way, I was the goofball in the first row of Jerry-side seats screaming Jerry’s name during ‘Wharf Rat’. Sorry about that.

I still miss him so much.