Grateful Dead

For this my first and only Grateful Dead concert, one of my most vivid memories of this show is one of the people I spotted in the audience. I was wandering around the stands soaking in the atmosphere when who should I run in to but WWF wrestler Superstar Billy Graham. I spoke to him to confirm that he was who he appeared to be. Who knew that there was at least one Deadhead in the Wrestling profession.

This was sadly my first and only Grateful Dead show...I only remember a few things... The parking lot salesmen, the cops chasing some poor kid and slamming him into a wall, the heat and the crowd, Dylan playing so hard that he broke his strings, an amazing and profound realization of who "the Dead" was (I just didn't know who they were until that day - I was a young Dylan fan and the only Dead song I'd ever heard was Casey Jones...), and the strange, new, beautiful experience that occured that night after I paid a dollar to some guy on the way out of the stadium... Epiphany

Yup, what they said..Actually, wasn't half as crowded as the sold-out Madonna show a week earlier would've been, and the crowd was overwhelmingly tie-dye'd. Security was a bit tight letting refreshments in, but Ralph and Tina just staged an argument about who was gonna take the packed ice chest back to the car until security looked the other way, then dashed right in. I smuggled a Walkman and mikes in my pants, then affixed the mikes either side of my hat with garbage ties hidden by a bandana, with wires running down my neck and under my shirt, and became a human mike stand (much to the amusement of folks who eventually noticed). The show was billed as "Dylan & The Dead/Alone and Together", but this was a bit of a misnomer. The Dead blasted through their usual double set, bolstered by the recent In The Dark material, but we were kinda impatiently waiting for interaction and solo Bob stuff in there, too. His Bobness arrived for a 1 hour extended encore slot (there was no Bob alone). Despite much anticipation, and recognizing Bob tunes, the set was surprisingly mushy and muddled. I couldn't figure if the Dead had shot their wad on their own set, if they were pulling the rug from under Dylan, if Dylan was performing flatly and pulling the rug out under the Dead, or if it was simply "the curse" of "blowing the big ones". I still don't know, but these days I listen to a little compilation of some of the inspired nuggets found buried in the Dylan/Dead Rehearsals and reflect that there was inspiration and fun behind the idea of this mini-tour, and it coulda been a whole lot better.