THE GRATEFUL DEAD...a fans memories

The first time I went to a concert was 1972. It was a double date with my friends. There were three bands playing that night. The Sons of Champlain, The New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Grateful Dead. We all smoked marijuana during the first act and the other couple fell asleep in each others arms on the floor of the Winterland Arena (San Francisco). We let them sleep until the last song of the night. Casey Jones. Years later, I had fun mocking my friends about that night because they grew up to be very conservative Christians. All that I really remember about that show was that the last song kept on getting louder and more intense and I felt that it was impossible for it to get any more powerful and then it did...

The next year I went to Chico State college. In my opinion the people that were fans of the Dead were too obsessive. I tried to keep out of that scene because the people were just TOO fanatic. In 1974 a group of us kids got into a Van and went to see the Dead at the University of Reno. I was in the back playing harmonica with my friend Jimmy on guitar. We spent the night at a cabin at Lake Tahoe. We all bought some 4-way windowpane acid. This turned out to be a mistake. The quality was frighteningly bad. The next morning we went to the football stadium at 10 AM. We took the LSD and it made us feel anxious and upset all day. Lucky for me, I gave away 3/4 of the tablet to some ladies. The Dead were using a sound system called "The Albatross" or "The Wall Of Sound". They NEVER got it to work. It was a huge sound system that was so complex that it turned out to be impossible to get it working correctly. They would play half a song and then something would go wrong and they would stop. At 8 that night they finally gave up and we left. By then the fear caused by the acid had gone away and I had a good time looking at the flashing lights in downtown RENO. There were some sculptures of Showgirls that were 40 feet tall. They were very impressive. I took some photographs at that show. I also had borrowed a halloween mask from my roomate. During my nightmare trip I realized that it was way too muck stuff to have to keep track of. I was upset that I had eaten such horrible acid.I had bad memories of Sugar Magnolia for years.It took me a few pleasant performances of that song to erase my bad memories.

Eventually, I went to 37 Dead related events. What a blessing...

It became apparent that there was something ELSE going on in addition to "rock and roll/show business". Some times I would not bother to buy a ticket to the concert but was happy to play music in the parking lot. Many people DID NOT attend the concerts. They went to experience the scene that surrounded the DEAD. There was a philosophy that the band was not the center of attention. A gathering of the tribes. The Rainbow Gathering is the logical outgrowth of this feeling. The people from the audience meet in a National Forest and have a wonderful camping trip. At this level, the band does not even attend at all.

During the late 1970s the band had become unpopular with the general public and I got to see them in smaller places... The baby boomer generation seemed to be embarrased by their hippie behavior during their youth and those were lean years for the band. Then tastes changed and they started selling out huge football stadiums.

here is a little space at the bottom of the webpage to admire the lovely background.

The
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OF THE BUS
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NEVER-NEVER LAND

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