vaguely remember a lot of horses at different shows. but the jfk(last show there ever) i was feeling good and kept asking the pigs if i could pet the horses. got some nasty ass looks for sure, but did take some pictures of the poorly treated animals too. also, anyone do the further fests of 98 or after at MONTAGE MOUNTAIN. there was some bad shit there too. i think it was 99 or 2000, the horses were not happy to be there. pulled a young brother out from underneath one of them just in time. he was about to be trampled waiting for a shuttle down the mountain. not a good scene and i know a lot of heads dissed the place soon afterwards. it really gets GESTAPO there for most any show.

nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile

I believe it was the way we looked more than the way we acted in the 80's, but in the 90's, I believe we as a whole got way out of control. Gate crashers and so on started putting a damper on the whole Peace thing.

Yeah, we were certainly judged on our looks and our lifestyle in general. At least the trippy looking ones. I once had a cop say to me that he didn't understand why we had those little bags around our necks and friendship bracelets etc... as it was a dead give away that we were holding. He said he always knew he would find something on anyone who dressed like that.

The getting out of control thing is a bit complicated. Gatecrashing was mostly done by people who were not tourheads. As was littering. The increase in heroin use in the early nineties by tourheads was a big problem.

Gatecrashing seemed like a reaction to the constant harrassment by the authorities. Take Pittsburg in 92' as an example. There was big harassment of vendors all day before the show. The vendors feed the crowds etc... and were a big reason so many came to shows. Vendors (of all sorts) were a big and unacknowledged part of the success the Grateful Dead enjoyed during those days. When the locals come into a lot where there is police (or whoever) harrassing the tourheads they feel the vibe massively. When u see cops cracking heads of kind folks for selling a bag or whatever, u want to do something! It makes a bad scene and the vibe can easily turn into a rebellion of sorts with many going over the fence or breaking it down. Rebellion takes many forms. People want to feel free. We shouldn't be surprised when young people especially react in that way. Many of the less experienced heads even would have had the impression that the Dead would have given a wink towards gate crashing in the spirit of shared anarchy (as I heard many gatecrashers say at SPAC in 88'). Better communication might have helped.

Most of the harrassment from venue owners or cops etc.., was prejudice. Trying to make some big thing out of whatever. Irvine in 88' with the so called riot for example. There was no riot! I was there, right in the middle of the so called riot.

Banning camping didn't work. It was just an undeserved kick in the ass for tourheads and the locals still trashed shit. The Dead organisation should have been thinking big at this point. They should have organised their own series of festivals across the US every year where they controlled the venue. In a farmers fields, for instance. Lots of mini-Woodstocks across the US. Plus extra European tours, or world tours even. Plus the normal venues that were ok with the way things had previously been.

If Bill Graham was serious about keeping the scene clean I don't know why he didn't have someone from the scene who he gave thirty tickets to who organised a clean up crew. There were folks who did this but they were only given garbage bags to my knowledge. And from how I remember it the heads were behind that, not the band organisation.

The heroin use was weird. It destroyed the scene. The price in the Bronx went from ten a bag to five as the avaliability increased. It was a problem in the ghetto as well as the scene. A couple of shady characters popped up in the scene distributing that shit. I do wonder if the man was behind that. The timing was pretty strange. Just as there was a second flowering around the time of the anniversary of the summer of love.

Are you kind?

Fair enough Marye; but you can always watch The Stones' movie about Altamont if you want a history lesson on bad scenes. I think Jerry was even in it briefly describing the scene as having some sort of particulate matter in the air. Definitely a history lesson to be learned for sure, but I always thought hippies to be far more intelligent than to repeat the faux pas of their elders. I guess time has proven that theory to be invalid as well. Here's to learning from history, and not repeating it!

I got a chance to hit the east coast running in 92 and the show I saw in Burgettstown PA it was a logistical nightmare. (parking,security,vending,etc...) No more Burgettstown Shows

I was at Irvine 89 when 2 bikers got in to it and you can hear the ambulances on the aud tapes (2nd set ater d/s)(I think there was a knife involved) No more Irvine after that

I was also at the LA Forum in 89 and some poor spaced out kid died in the back of a patrol car.... No more LA forum shows

I was at Cal State Dominquez Hills in 1990 and some gal left the concert and took her life...No more CSDH shows..

I think the letter passed out (from GDP) at the CalExpo run in 88 or 89 said it all. "You created this sceene, you'll end this sceene." There were similiar letters that went around the parking lots before and after, but the oneI got around that time I still have in my collection somewhere and it rings true.

I saw some great shows but unfortunatly I saw them at the last times they band would play these great venues.