- Post reply Log in to post comments2,967 repliesmaryeJoined:New year, new update. Tell us of your musical adventures in real time!
- bluecrowJoined:12/9/81
Obeah's tale, anniversary date, and fact that close (lived across the street) high school friend from Chi-town area was at this show has me listening to Hunter Seamon's matrix (on the road now so my copy of DaP 20 not available.) Back around Christmas '81 mailed some tapes to Chris. He replied with tapes and a letter that included him being at the Boulder show - spoiler - it was freaking great. Side note - youngest brother and some friends and I saw the Rosemont show 3 nights earlier. That show had some cool moments - like a Set II To Lay Me Down and a Pearl Harbor Space - but it also marked the end of the Uptown Theatre era in Chicago and I think Boulder (plus Indy) smoked it. My personal feeling was that acoustics in the Rosemont sucked and what we lost was the mighty Uptown Theatre. That same high school friend wrote that he had heard rumors that a final run at the Uptown had been planned but fell through and that the Dead even considered buying the Uptown (latter seems a bit out there but ??). As it turned out the final Uptown concert ever was a Jerry Band show 11/17/81 ~3 weeks before the Rosemont show. That was my first of four Jerry shows, with youngest brother and Bill and Laura - we were in the balcony, it was crazy fun. So back to the point - listening to Boulder - np a ripping China - Rider to end Set I.
edit - i was mistaken that the 11/17/81 JGB show was the last concert in the Uptown. Zappa played 10 days later, there was also Rolling Stones simulcast from the Rosemont (of all places) in that span. J Geils Band w/ Southside Johnny and Asbury Jukes last show there{?} 12/19/81. A burst frozen water pipe in December '81 took the Uptown off line (so to speak). So my memory of the last days of the Uptown skewed by half baked memory and maybe rumor - but yeah it seems that for some reason the GD couldn't make it work/chose not to and that JGB show was sorta/maybe Jerry's farewell to what was a favorite venue for a few years.
- uncle_tripelJoined:swingin'...
...and stayin' within' the groove...
may 17 1977
@ the memorial coliseum
in tuscaloosa ALI've had this one on CD-R for a long as I can remember,
and I can remember listening to it
on a flight home from FLA in '98
on a Sony DiscMan
with huge white billowy clouds
shimmering over the wingPEACE for ALL!
uncle_tripeledit: OBEAH a big time :)
edit 2: read both howarth plangent process interviews; way outside of my digital processing :) - ObeahJoined:The Strange Odyssey of 12/9/81
BITD, the days of USENet, I looked over my list of tapes and realized I was really hurting on '80-'81-'82. I had started trading with some guy in Canada, and I saw on his list that he had a bunch of early 80s boards. So I asked him to select some of the very best. I remember one was the '82 "Raven Space" show; the second escapes me entirely now; and the third was 12/9/81 Boulder, CO.
Back then, tracking info wasn't what it was today, and in this case it was taking even longer since it wasn't a domestic mailpiece. I kept waiting for the tapes to arrive, but to no avail. Finally one morning a couple of neighborhood kids came to my porch as I was standing there looking at the day's mail delivery, a delivery that once again contained no packages. The kids said something like, "are you looking for your cassettes?" and with a sinking feeling I asked them how they could know that. Well, it came out that their sometime friend, a boy maybe 10-11 years old, had porch-pirated me and had stolen my package!
So I walked down to his house, one of the first McMansions on our block, and knocked on the door. His parents were sympathetic, and the kid was made to confess and apologize, but for some of the tapes it was too late - he'd found the music uninspiring, apparently, and had set about destroying the tapes by unspooling them and throwing them around. One was actually visible hanging from a nearby utility line.
The now-unremembered show was one of the casualties. So was tape II of the Raven Space show. I seem to recall that tape I survived with only minor damage (I was able to re-spool it). However, both sets of 12/9/81 were untouched. And what a show!
There are some good shows from this date - the Fox in '71; Kiel 8 years later; the LA Forum in '89. But this is my go-to show on December 9th. Thanks, Dave, for releasing this one! (And thanks to those kids for ratting out their 'friend')