Grateful Dead

I come by my love of The Dead naturally. My father had several albums and attended a few Dead shows in his younger days. I got to know Europe ’72, Reckoning and Workingman’s Dead from pilfering my father’s LP collection. Talk of seeing them didn’t come until I got to high school. By the ’94 Boston run, I was 16 and had made some Deadhead friends. I had some bootlegs and was pumped when my buddy secured me a ticket to the first night of the run (9/27/94). Random memories: The scene on Causeway Street was fun but orderly. Our group ran into the new, young history teacher at our school while smoking cigarettes. Whoops! He jokingly told us we needed to report for detention the following day. We stopped at The Penalty Box for a slice of pizza and I ended up sitting next to a guy who was doing the whole run. I recall thinking how nice it was to have conversation flow so easily with a stranger. Soon after, when I got up to use the restroom before going back across the street, there were two guys snorting lines of cocaine off the sink. Weird! The band comes out and opened with FLAS. Our seats were front row balcony on the opposite end of the court from the stage. Pretty far back, but the sound was excellent since we facing the stage and PA stacks directly. The rolling message boards on each end of the floor had a row of dancing skeletons with a top hats with the obligatory: “Boston Garden Welcomes The Grateful Dead.” Fun first set with the hands down highlight being the one-two punch of ‘Maggie’s Farm -> Cumberland Blues’. A more adoring crowd I had never seen or heard. It was another revelation at the time. Second set started up with a high energy ‘China/Rider’ and kept it up with a lively ‘Women Are Smarter.’ The UJB -> Drums was fine but the Space really brought me down. The AATW brought things back to a boil. JGB encore and the show is over. The old Garden did not have AC and late September can still be pretty warm in Boston. Leaving the show, the sweat on the floor made it look as if someone had dumped buckets of water everywhere. Don’t think I’ve seen anything like that since. In hindsight, 9/29 or 10/1 would have been the shows to see from this run but I couldn't have possibly known this. We were psyched to see them again next year and bought tickets. Everyone knows how that ended.

yup good show good vibes all around

I took a buddy to this one his first show. He was not into the scene but was blown away with the music! Jerry was going off !