Grateful Dead

I just heard the Let it Grow on Sirius and this totally blew my mind. I know 77 was a great year, in fact it was the year I saw my first Dead show, and I know saying a certain version is the best ever, but I probably have heard 20-30 versions of Let it Grow and this is as good as any live song gets. Blew me away. I gotta get this show! ENJOY

When I heard the Dead were coming to Norman I enlisted support from my buddy Scott. He took his ex-wife and I took mine (notice a pattern here??). We headed to Norman on a Sunny October afternoon from Tulsa. He had friends attending OU and we went by Trip's house (not Captain mind you, but his nickname was Trip). After some pre-show preparation, we then ended up close in to campus for more pre-show festivities in a house filled with folks about to depart for the show. Once inside, the music didn't gel for my buddy Scott until they got to the Franklins Tower transition and at that stage, Scott was a die-hard fan. Here is the funny thing. Recently, Scott was attending a JJ Grey and Mofro show in Tulsa @ Cain's and he had Trip with him! Scott lives out of state now and when we were introduced after 35 yrs I almost crapped myself! I started talking about that '77 show and our first meeting. One of Scotts sons (he has 3) brought along some of their friends and one of these kids heard us talking about seeing the Dead in Norman and he stepped up to the codgers and said "thats my favorite show!" I listen to that show all the time....again, I almost crapped AGAIN! You guessed, it, I didn't own the show - he burned me a copy and now, after 35 F'n years I can now listen to this gem! I highly recommend this one to anyone who loves the Dead. Yes, its "that" year - 1977 was stellar, and this show is just one more example of why fans agree that these shows were among the best ever played by our musical idols.

The first GREAT show of the fall '77 tour. Highlights galore in set 1 with Help>Slip>Franklin;s, Peggy-O and Grow standing out. Dancing is a hot start to set 2, but it is the NFA in the middle that is the monster of this set. The jam gets a little evil, very dark, but we know that love cannot fade away, some cool call and response between Jerry and Keith, some of Keith's best playing, awesome jam. Great show 10/10

The year of 1977 was the year I spent following the sun. Winter-spring in Tucson AZ, spring-summer-fall in Boulder CO, fall-winter in Berkeley CA. Friends of my roommates in Boulder came out to see The Dead in Denver, October 9th. They were from SF, had gone up to Seattle for the start of the tour, then back to Portland, two more shows, and then out to Denver. They talked me into going with them in their VW bus to Norman OK for this show. I'd heard about people doing this, though I hadn't considered doing it myself. But I'm glad I went. It was a great time.

We got to the venue early, in the afternoon. We had no tickets, but my friends said not to worry, we'd have a miracle. There wasn't much security in those days, and none we could see, We just walked right into the place and started walking around the hallways. Somehow we found ourselves at the Green Room, where the band was having lunch. We stood in the doorway, looking in, not sure what to do. Jerry came along with a plateful of food and came right up to us, stuck his face in our faces, as if to say, "Yeah, whaddayou want?" We just said "Hi" or something similarly brilliant. He walked on, we walked on.

I don't remember how we got into the show, whether we just stayed in the venue and hung around or went out and found miracles. But we got to see the whole show, which I've since heard is considered one of the great ones. They started with a standard opening at the time - "Help on the Way" - "Slipknot" - "Franklin's Tower." Then they did something a bit odd, I thought: "Jack Straw" - "Pretty Peggy-O" - "El Paso," which made me remark that they were doing their cowboy songs, maybe because they were in Oklahoma. That may have been just coincidence, though it seemed kind of funny to me, and still does. They got more into their usual vibe, and in the second set did a fine version of "Eyes Of The World," one of my very favorite songs, so this all was fine with me.

For reasons I don't recall, my new friends decided they'd had enough of the tour. It was a bit less than 400 miles to the next show in Texas, and we'd come 700 miles from Boulder. Maybe it's because they'd seen eight shows, and were ready to call it, maybe they had obligations back home. That was all right; I was pretty satisfied. I hadn't been following them too closely in the 1970s, though I'd seen them a few times starting in the 60s (including at Montreal Expo 8/6/67 with Jefferson Airplane, my second rock concert and a whole other story) and early 70s. It had been a few years since I'd gone to a show, and now I'd been to two shows in three days. I was glad they decided this way, and I got to go back to my then-home in Boulder. But actually, I ended up going to San Francisco with them, as it had gotten too cold to continue busking at the Pearl Street Mall. I ended up in Berkeley and went to one more show that year: New Year's Eve at Winterland. But that, too, is a whole other story.