Grateful Dead

I graduated from Campo 20 years after this show happened and there was a lot of myth that surrounded it: "The entire senior class dropped acid!" "The senior class and all of the teachers dropped acid!!" "The Principal at the time, dropped acid, quit his job, followed the Dead around, and I just met him recently at the Greek shows!". Needless to say, we were insanely jealous that, if we had been 20 years younger, we could have really experienced something fun on campus. We did our part in trying to have fun, but everything we did by the late 80's was pretty much frowned on by the mainstream high school crowd (Thank you Nancy Reagan!), but we made the best of it, and I did get to see a lot of really fun shows, although I wish I could have traveled back in time to see them in their heyday.

Well, yes, that is Tom Constanten on my left, the band's right... Not only was I at the show, but I was part of the school committee that put the show on. Our senior class put on two rock and roll shows as the "less than traditional" fundraisers that year. We had the "Santana Blues Band", Country Weather and the Ace of Cups play in the Fall and the Dead, Frumious, and Campolindo's own Velvet Hammer play in May. Some senior classes put on bake sales or do car washes, we put on rock shows. The Dead show made the senior class a whole lot of money (to be handed off to the next senior class) but it was a less than artistic success. We paid the Dead $2400 to play and it was in that period where they were taking any and all gigs they could after Lenny Hart had taken off with their bankroll. The Velvet Hammer sounded like high school kids, Frumious played a great set and JUST as soon as the Dead hit the stage our Dean of Boys, Joseph Anthony got in Jerry's face and told him he couldn't smoke on stage. Jerry threw his guitar down and basically did not play. There was a ragged version of "Doin' That Rag", Bobby sang a couple of tunes, there was the shortest "Lovelight" ever and then it was over. I think the band played 52 minutes. I had lobbied hard for booking the Dead because my friend (and drummer) Rod Harvey and I had been dropping acid and going to hear them every chance we could that year. And every time we saw them it was a quasi-religious experience. Suffice to say that didn't happen at Campolindo. David Mahler

Well, other than St. Mary's games. Lovely place, Moraga, but borderline hilarious to think of the Dead playing there from the perspective of what it is today.