I might have to be a Debbie Downer here, apologies if mellows get harshed.
The closest FM station (KISW) to where I was in the 70’s never played any Dead, and so the only impression I had of them was the skeleton violinist poster in a head shop. A grade eighter fuelled on Hendrix and Sabbath, I figured the artwork suggested these guys were most likely really heavy, despite there being a violin.
And then in '78 (in grade 8) they were on SNL and I remember being all “psyched up”, after having seen that wicked heavy-looking poster, that, at last, I get to see these guys rock out!
And then I saw them. And then they played. Might have been “Casey Jones”. I was like “…Oh…Ok…”
Interesting to see “miracle” as a verb - I learned something, here, which edifies me.
Only other related thing I can think of is that the strongest acid I ever took was apparently a tiny sliver of a piece cut from a Dead ticket, maybe 1 mm by 1.5 cm, and yes, the only time I felt like I’d never return from the abyss.
Possibly 1,294,375 mics.
While I like a lot of their music, I was never a DeadHead (as a nuvo hippie, I was part of the Rainbow Family faction) but I went to shows when they came through the Bay Area, because I was a major acid head at the time, and there was this fellow called variously Dancing Rickie, Big Tall Skinny Rickie, or Rickie the Jew, from whom i used to purchase Visine eye drops bottles full of high-grade liquid LSD-25 every chance I got, and Rickie would only sell his lovely little bottles at Dead shows. Inside the shows actually; he had a theory that he was way less likely to get busted while at the concert. So it was part of my investment to buy a ticket. Once in, I would look around and spot all the little knots and loops and swirls of dancers, then locate the very tall, very thin guy wearing the widest and brightest colored wraparound skirt in the whole venue(Rickie might have been the first heterosexual DeadHead dude to start wearing wraparound skirts at GD shows, because they were much nicer than pants for dancing around wildly in). He’d stop whirling and swaying for long enough to locate one or two of the marvelous eye drops bottles in the big yarn bag he always carried, we’d swap bottles and money, then Rickie would grin rapturously and go back to dancing up a storm once again.
I’m also patchouli-intolerant.
I saw them in High School and the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium circa 1977 or 1978. I was totally hot wired on speed and then had to sit through and interminable 45 minute drum duet. Gawd, they were underwhelming. I passed when they played at UC Davis, and passed and a number of chances to see them.
I did, however, have the opportunity to see the Bob Weir Band a couple of times. Totally awesome. The show at CU Boulder did 3 encores. For the last encore, Bob came out and said “it’s gonna take a few minutes because the stage crew already tore down some of the amps”
A couple of years later circa 1981 or 1982, The incarnation of the Bob Weir Band played in a 1500 person venue at UC Davis. Holey shit, the guitarist from Steppenwolf played and an all star band. They did a totally smoking version of Little Red Rooster. They just rawked.
Very un Dead like in both of the Bob Weir incarnations I was privledged to see. The Dead, meh
This thread motivated me to go through my old ticket stubs to see just how many shows I’ve gone to. Looks like about 40 Grateful Dead shows, 10 Jerry Garcia shows and a handful of other incarnations (Further, Fare Thee Well, The Dead, Rat Dog, etc.) I’m pretty sure I must have lost a few stubs over the years as well. I lived in the SF Bay area for about 4 years (1989 - 1993) where I saw about half of the shows I attended and in New England for the other half. I’ve seen them in Oregon, Washington DC, Ohio, California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut and New York. The show in Ohio I actually accidentally stumbled upon. I was moving back to RI from CA and driving across the country. My girlfriend and I stopped at a gas station in Ohio and saw a bunch of Deadheads hanging around. We asked them what was up and they told us they were in town for the Dead show at Richfield Coliseum. We drove there, bought tickets, and saw the show. Probably one of the best shows I saw was a Jerry Garcia Band show at the Greek in Berkeley. Jimmy Cliff opened, then later joined Jerry on stage for “The Harder They Come”. I also saw Jerry on Broadway which was really cool. I hung around with a lot of Deadheads in college who turned me on to the Dead and other bands of their ilk. Good stuff and a lot of great memories.