Grateful Dead

dead.net the official site

I was 15yo and we made our way there from Davenport. Had only been to a few pop star type concerts before this show. Dead started playing and the the place filled up with smoke. I was watching these hippies smoking the evil weed waiting for them to start doing crazy things. After no one started jumping from the balconies or anything like that, I realized I had been lied to in these videos they made us watch in JR high. Made me want to try this evil weed. The wooden chairs is the most memorable part. They were originally occupied by straight laced privileged looking types and were the best seats in the house. I recall everything else was general admission. New Riders of the Purple Sage played first. When the lights went down and the Dead came out is when the real Dead Heads took over the floor and piled the chairs up out of the way. You can download the concert and hear this. At one point, you hear Jerry asking the crowd to help move the chairs out of the way. That is what I remember the most. Everyone obliged and there was a sea of chairs being passed over head to the sides of the Field House floor. In the download, you can hear the clacking of the chairs. I remember Jerry just staring at all this and seemed to have a look of amazement on his face.

Truckin', Loser, Hard To Handle, Playing In The Band > Bertha, Deal, Me & My Uncle, Next Time You See Me, Me and Bobby McGee, Cumberland Blues, Big Boss Man, Good Lovin' Casey Jones, Sugar Magnolia, Around and Around, Uncle John's Band, Lovelight

Ya, so we went to the concert in 1971 at the Field House at the University of Iowa, three of us drove down from Cedar Rapids, 20 miles away, stoned on pot, we were 17 years old. My two friends had cubed me at a coffee shop in CR and I didn't start to realize anything till about two hours in when I ran into another highschool buddy and I asked who the hell was this country band cause I was tired of wait'n for the Dead. Of course I had never encountered LSD before or any Dead music, so was surprized to hear that this country shit was the Dead! At intermission all the straight laced folding chairs were taken down by the hippie college crowd and Dead Heads and through the haz of pot smoke there were frizbees and all kinds of other shit happening. The fans took over the media platforms that sat high up above the floor of the coloseum. But when the Dead came out for the second set it was beautiful, two more hours of clasic Greatful Dead