Grateful Dead

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Home on leave from the U.S. Navy, I had been a deadhead since 1971. My sister and her husband Ed, lived in Rome NY at the time. He was a captain in the Air Force, stationed in Rome at the (now defunct) Strategic Air Command base. So I visited them, and we all went to Utica to catch this show. I had joined the Navy to avoid the draft!!! "How far can you run a ship?" I mused. I certainly didn't want to go to Vietnam. So, after my stint in bootcamp, I ended up on a ship called a Landing, Service and Dock (LSD -how fitting), and caught my first dead show in California. Shortly after that, I found I was headed to Saigon and Vung Tau, South Vietnam...Oh, those wily government miscreants... This was my second Dead show. What a long, strange trip it HAS been, friends...

The thing I remember most about this show and the one the next night was that the Utica police were busting lots of people for smoking pot at the show. They had under cover cops all over the auditorium. On the second night Bob made an announcement st the start of the show warning everyone there that the police were out in force busting people for smoking pot.

this show was quite an event; i recall the lights going on and phil stating that the show will not go on unless the lights go off... do others remember this, or was it Bobby's riff about the cops. i met an undercover cop upstairs, he really liked the music, said he was not going to bust anyone but keep things cool...he hung out with us (we were in compliance with house rules...for that part of the night). it amazes me that the dead played this town so often over the years, after the bullshit of the Utica gendarmes... note i do not recall the music... so it goes.... but it sure was fun....

There was no encore. Sugar Mag went right into Casey Jones.