Grateful Dead

That was a special night, the last one in the run. I was visiting San Francisco from Boston and went with a bunch of very close friends in the very right state of mind. What some of you may not know is what happened during the break and beginning of the 2nd set. During the break while the band was in the back, Bill Graham comes out to talk to us. The lights go up half way and he explains his crew has the dead busy and they can't hear us. As a "thank you" for an amazing run, he has a surprise in mine. While he's talking the house staff is going through the aisles handing out noise blowers and party favors. Bill asks we play it cool and after they come on stage they will turn the lights back up and and we can surprise the band. Needless to say, we (all of us in the audience) were laughing our collective asses off. The dead come out with the lights down and as the lights go up we all yell "SURPRISE" and "THANK YOU" and start blowing our noise blowers and twirling our party favors and what-not. The entire band cracked up. They were laughing really hard and got such a kick out of this. After they somewhat collected themselves, smiling ear to ear, they launch in to "MIGHT AS WELL" and the rest is history. After the show, my friends and I all piled in to one of my buddies very large mobile campers he was using that summer and rode down to big sur. We were like the Merry Pranksters and Neal Cassidy with music at full volume and partying up a storm in the camper as we scooted down California coastal highway. A high time indeed. Those were the days.

I think this might have been the only true date of my life. I took a guy I had a crush on who was an artist living in a warehouse in the mission or Folsom area. He'd never seen the dead. We had front row seats right in front of where Bob Weir stood in the electric set. We held hands the whole time and Bobby just kept smiling at us. Finding other gay guys at dead shows was just about impossible - out of at least 50 shows I met another once, in Las Vegas but the situational forces separated us, before we could trade ID's but not before . . check out http://queerdeadheads.com

Great show. I was there & also the night before.