Grateful Dead

Always the best way to ring in the new year!

Brandford started of the night with that spacy 45+ min jam and beyond that I cant remember much...lol...Good thing it was on the radio and I got a tape of it...

I still get the chills when I think about my one and only New Year's run, my Deadhead pilgrimage to Mecca. Not the least of reasons for the chills was the fact that the Bay Area had record-breaking cold that entire week, the kind that causes burst pipes and such for those not accustomed to it. I slipped on a patch of ice (in freaking San Francisco!) the morning of the show and suffered for three weeks with a bruised ass (and an ego in a similar condition). But the entire run started on a marvelous high and just ascended from there. The Big Night did not disappoint: I think it has to have been one of the two or three greatest ones ever, perhaps THE greatest if just the quality of the actual playing is considered. The two most intense moments of Dead music I ever experienced were the last two or three minutes of Dark Star before drums this night, and the playing behind Ken Kesey's rap during Dark Star at the Halloween '91 show. When you're floating out of the arena, you don't even notice that bruised backside. They always were the best cured for what ailed ya! "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

Check out the DS>Drums/Space>Other One Other Worldly!!

My one and only new Year's Eve show (not for lack of trying!) Ten of us all mail ordered tix for the run. Lucky me, i was dating the only one of us who got THE TIX! After a long drive from the NW we arrived for the first show of the run. Of course we arrived too late to get checked in to our lodging for the stay. With all belongings in the sled we ventured in. After a lovely first show we returned to find the sled ransacked with many valuables missing, including some tix and "essentials." Lo, and behold wonder of wonders, the creeps did not spot the front zipper on my pack. There were those beautiful tix you see above. My gal wanted to sell 'em,to recoup the $ and other losses, but cooler heads prevailed, and we went on New Years! Bungee craziness and stilt walkers at midnight. Truly a wonder we made it!

The openers were great and it was amazing to see Jerry, Hornsby and Branford in a circle chasing each other's tails all night...

First New Years show and got miracled a backstage pass!!!! awesome show Thank guys!

I went thru a horrible progression of back and spiritual difficulties. they were probably due to 2 to 6 factors. But I crept back into isolation and became a loner; travelling on other tours to see how the "rest of the rockin' world" got along without my seemingly endless reference to the bulk of the culture that was GD. It was lonely. I loved the variance and the graceful shyness of the people. I'm still in debt to this day. PS: there's nuttin' like a grateful dead concert. keep your character, enjoy living, share your fortune, OXOX Merple Reddin

I had the luck of timing on my side that year and caught the whole new year's and Halloween runs, and sat 5th row at POLO Grounds for the memorial. While my favorite show will always be 06-08-1990, just for the sheer dominance of Garcia's playing that night, I will never argue that as entire show's go, this one takes the cake. The Dark Star and Other One->WR are legendary. Everything was in sych with the guys, even Vince was possesed. this.beginning really when they played He's Gone 3 nights before (greatest emotionally driven solo I ever saw him play, and I was at Death Don't Have when they busted it in Sept, which is a very close second.) This tape is my Catcher in the Rye for music, and Halloween is my Abbey Road, whatever that means to you :) What a Time!

My miracle ticket!

I had just barely missed working on the '89 New Year's show due to a snowstorm in New Mexico during our move out to northern California from Alabama to work for a special effects company pretty close to Bill Graham from the early days. I spent the earlier part of the day setting up pyro for the Red Hot Chili Peppers over at the Cow Palace, for their New Year's show, and then finagled my way into working the Dead show by the afternoon. I had actually had a dream while dozing in Ohio around the summer of '86 that I was somehow high above Bob Weir, and looking directly down at him from an impossible audience angle, but it was very clear and could not have been anything else. This day, I was high up in the support structure of the Oakland Coliseum, stringing flash powder airbursts for the midnight pyro shots of the concert. I had been working on a tugboat out on San Francisco Bay with two fireworks barges for the Columbus Day fireworks in San Francisco, when I learned of Bill Graham's spectacular helicopter crash on a little grainy pictured rabbit ears tv in the crew room, and this was to be the last New Year's Eve show because the band only did it for Bill - they preferred to be home with their families on New Year's Eve. I ended up in the security pit right in front of the stage on Phil's side all the time until midnight. Airto was performing and I was astonished when Mountain Girl walked up and was waiting for a moment before going up on the stage, and started to light a cigarette. I stopped her and said, (or yelled) "There's pyro here and if you light that we are both likely to be blown to the next county!" She laughed and patted me on the back, and then climbed the steps to the stage and went over to Jerry's side. It was an incredible experience with the sheer energy of the crowd behind me, and the band roaring away at full throttle just a few feet away. Does anyone remember the wall of big red flames across the stage, and the boom of the silver sparkles way up high above? I sure do. But, as soon as the pyro was shot off at midnight, I turned into a pumpkin and had to go 80 feet above the stage and start pulling wire and striking the gear from the rigging. At one point I was looking directly down over Bobby's head, and then I remembered the dream. What a long, strange trip it had been! They sounded like the worst garage band in the world up there, but when I left that night, someone had written "I Love You" in the dew on the side of my old Ford van, in those spooky sort of disappearing style letters. I had a 100 mile drive home, but it was magic of the first order that I will never forget.