Grateful Dead

Traveled from Kansas City with several car loads of friends. The mood was different from the beginning. I've been to many shows & the vibe was dark. I told my sister & aunt that this was going to be our last show. I had a feeling Jerry was going to pass on. Then they gate crashers came, NOT COOL! Not suprized the next day show was cancled. We couldn't get tickets to St Louis or Chicago plus we are responsible adults with jobs & families. For all those who crashed the gate - Karma will get you... You ruined it for the rest of the people who spent a lot of time, effort & money to get to the show.

indeed. I wasn't there, but I'm really fond of Keller Williams's "Gate Crashers Suck." Cracks me up every time.

The only 2 Deer Creek shows I missed were the single show in ’89 and the canceled 2nd nite of ’95. I setup my rig in the Taper's Section did the usual prepping and then a decent H.C. Sunshine to start, lil ruff but smoothed as far as I remember. After the usual first song or 2 of crazy level settings, several songs and dispose-a-bongs later, the small following of patchers I accumulated over the years know what I mean :D, it was time to get us some more to drink. I decided on soda instead of water for some reason, caffeine and/or some flavor perhaps, so I went to a concession stand. ½ way through the line I hear cheering in an odd spot of Desolation Row so I turned around to see the hordes flowing over the back fence and thought yeah great just what this already in dire straights scene needs. Walking through the now really overfull venue back to the Taper's Section it felt like the boys were now playing for a funeral, not one of the jazzy New Orleans types either. Thankfully it appeared the f*@&!#g gate crashers respected the Taper's Section and the people around the perimeter did not have to really do much to keep people out. In the lawn I think we were the only ones with any breathing room left. I know I dreaded the thought of having to leave for the bathroom later. And super thankfully there were no serious injuries from what I heard in the near hits and not so near misses horror stories. I heard about people just missing landing on a baby from the fall over the fence or landing on someone but they were ok. I read similar in the previous comments too. Unfortunately I did hear there were many injuries outside on “both sides”. From my understanding excessive use of force started quickly which escalated the whole thing and then the extreme measures sadly became warranted. IMO if less force was used early on it might not have turned so ugly so fast. But I was not outside and can really only go by other’s first hand reports and from those I think I can see the cops point of view and their fears with such large numbers of people being soo unruly. By this time I was bringing in sooo much gear that me and my “crew” were pretty much the first ones in a venue, runners carrying nothing of course would beat us but we were not in competition for where they wanted to go, and almost always we were the last ones out. It was easily an hour after the “dead” show, most staff were cool with us seeing how much we had to pack up and when no one had anything to do they would help clean up which seemed to be appreciated. Also the occasional ground score was a plus :P. Anyway when we were finally walking out to the lot there was still tear gas in the air, more police, flashing lights and such in one area than I still have ever seen, heads looking like refugees, even more so than the usual lot lizards that had pretty much been chased out or voluntarily left the scene before this point and just an overall terrible feeling. So much more but don’t feel like reliving for a more detailed description. An early post mentioned the vending scene was still in full swing but we thought the worst with the riot gear police and did not even check out Shakedown Street after bringing the gear back to the car. We just got in the car to go to the hotel with our heads low in shame and disbelief. For the not so surprisingly and understandably canceled next nite we stayed in town instead of heading to the next venue early since we still had a room and no provisions for showing up a day early to the Riverport Amphitheatre. Normally with that kind of a break I would have been making copies of the show to hand out at the next show, used to bring a portion of my home stereo including a few full size cassette desks, but with the emotions and not so great playing after the incident with not really needing replaying IMO we went to see Apollo 13 at a local theater. It seemed the thing to do as I bet more than ½ in attendance were heads.