Grateful Dead

The ad in the paper said "Breakfast In Bed With The Dead", an obvious ploy to bolster flagging ticket sales for the upcoming US Festival. It worked for us!We partied at a pal's house until close to midnight, then took the drive to San Berdoo and waited for the sunrise. The rented transfer buses arrived at the parking lot (730-8am?) and were swarmed upon by the sharply increasing throng of arriving Deadheads. We squeezed onto about the ninth bus and headed off for a surprisingly long drive (10+ minutes?) through barren scrub desert to the concert site. (I wonder if they still find concert-goer's skeletons out there?) Once inside the gates we found ourselves standing in a vast expanse of very uncrowded cleared desert on the slope of a hill facing the stage with the US logos. As the Dead crew set up, piped music played from an Oregon radio station, including cuts from Brent's Silver band album. One thing was very obvious; it was VERY hot, but as usual, this didn't stop the obligatory doses. The band hit the stage very close to the promised 10 am and the temperature was already past 110 F! In years to come, I would be surprised to hear some folks refer to this as a "pedestrian" set; how often would one imagine the Dead would open an outdoor gig (let alone this early, this hot, on an unfamiliar PA) with Playin' snaking straight onto jamming in 10's, then drop into Shakedown? By several songs into the set it was clear that there were very pronounced crackles coming from some of the Fender Tube amps in the heat, Brent's and perhaps Bob's (?), which was causing "oh no, we're blowing it" glances among them. The Dead always seem a bit nervous when playing in front of non-Deadheads, with lots of wincing and signalling at each other. They shouldn't have been worried as a glance behind us revealed that most folks hadn't even arrived yet. Also quite comical was the general lack of wild dancing due to the intense heat, which for the most part had been reduced to standing still with lots of twitching fingers! Under the circumstances, crackles aside, the Dead were playing quite admirably as they cranked home the 1st set with a China Rider and remarkably, were gonna do their normal two sets. Break came and the sun rose higher. After a few minutes, the buzz of the audience went a little quieter as a familiar looking clown walked to the middle edge of the stage and laid down with his head propped up on one elbow and a microphone in the other hand. It was Wavy Gravy! The buzz became a murmur, the murmer a whisper, then the crowd finally became silent. "Warm, isn't it?" he sez, and proceeds to do a rap about how at Woodstock they dealt with rain, and here we're dealing with heat and here's a few tips, etc. Another memory I have is a guy in the crowd that had been running around in a white jump suit, hat, and whistle with a big water rifle backpack squirting hot fans. Later on he was flat on his back in the sun blowing the whistle, and occasionally when he'd go all quiet, we'd say "do ya think he's dead?, let's go check" and he'd burst into life laughing through that whistle again and again. The second set started out considerably mellower with Sugaree and Woman Smarter, but when they hit Space they pulled out all the stops, perhaps for the arriving and present alike, and just started pounding and banging those guitars "Kraaannnngggg!" and really giving the PA a workout. They finished with Sunshine Daydream and as they walked off the crowd responded with "ONE MORE SET! ONE MORE SET!", which elicited wry smiles and a USBlues/Satisfaction encore. As the piped music came back on, it was the Eagles singin' "we haven't had that spirit here since 1969". Too much! We stayed to watch Jerry Jeff on the giant TV screen in the desert from up the hill, overlooking the freight trains in the distance. We would come back in a year's time to pickup where we left off at the Country US Festival, but for now, one of our party had roadying obligations back home so we headed out. We, and quite a few others, passed thousands of MacHeads and BrowneHeads heading the opposite direction asking us in bewilderment where we were going, but we just told them that the best band had already played!

I remember that they were late, I later heard that Bill Grahm was not going to let them on stage; but, they rushed past him. The sun was just starting to set as they came on and they echoed off the hill, it was awesome. I went to all six days 82/83, and the memories will stay with me forever. Remember Edie Money singing give me some water as the water cnnons were getting us all wt? man, it was hot!

carlos, jerry, jimmy buffet, The cars?fleetwood mac and more very hot but they sparayed the crowd Hey kidd you still out here?mills bless dangerous doug and danno