• Alumni Stadium - May 12, 1979

setlist

  • Jack Straw
    They Love Each Other
    Me and My Uncle
    Big River
    Tennessee Jed
    New Minglewood Blues
    Stagger Lee
    Looks Like Rain
    Deal

    Don't Ease Me In
    Samson and Delilah
    Friend of the Devil
    Terrapin Station
    Playin' in the Band
    drums
    Not Fade Away
    Stella Blue
    Good Lovin'

    Shakedown Street
    One More Saturday Night

Ticket Stubs

Concert Photos

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    miamiferxn
    4 years 11 months ago
    He is a great person. I…

    He is a great person. I always admire his talent. https://www1.gmaillogin-wiki.com/gmail-sign-up

  • hockey_john
    9 years 6 months ago
    1st show 1st time
    This is my first show and seeing as it is it is the 1st time I saw Playing in the Band, counting the times I did see them perform Playin. Total times is 110. That is an awful lot of times to see 1 song. I sure had no idea this band would become a very important part of my life. Being a jock threw out my first 18 years of life never thought would be anything more then that.
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    petemx5
    10 years 9 months ago
    The Biker
    Me and a couple of friends made the drive from Ithaca and got there early enough to miss the gate crashing mayhem. I remember sitting up in the bleachers and watching a biker (who I thought had Hell’s Angel’s colors on) inching his bike through the infield all the way up to the stage. He just kept revving it to worn people to get out of the way. I was pretty worried that he was gonna run over a bunch of folks for a while there. It was a pretty crazy atmosphere at that show, kind of tense at times (but that could have just been my state of mind). The first set seemed a bit lax to me for some reason but then the second set they came out full tilt. The Samson and Delilah is one of the best ever. Also some real interesting space during the 2nd set. I have had a tape of it since a few months after the show.
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17 years
setlist
Jack Straw
They Love Each Other
Me and My Uncle
Big River
Tennessee Jed
New Minglewood Blues
Stagger Lee
Looks Like Rain
Deal

Don't Ease Me In
Samson and Delilah
Friend of the Devil
Terrapin Station
Playin' in the Band
drums
Not Fade Away
Stella Blue
Good Lovin'

Shakedown Street
One More Saturday Night
show date

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16 years 9 months
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many friends out at UMass,(ZooMass). Remember it fondly as a nice day spent with old friends
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16 years 9 months
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I'll leave it to others to review this show - I was at the wrong end of the stadium, didn't know half the songs, and couldn't understand how (why?) Friend of the Devil had morphed from a sweet little country ditty into a mournful reggae ballad (lol). Lucky for me, I went to Augusta ME several months later and saw the light ...
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Don't you love a riot? Ok, we've got about 12,000 people with tickets and about 25,000 people without, guess what's gonna happen? Right, people tripping their brains out start circling the stadium before the show starts and during Jack Straw the gate opens to let out an ambulance... Free Show!Can't remeber jack-all bout the rest except the two song encore at the end. Pioneer Valley is a cool, cool place.
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16 years 6 months
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zordan I remember the gate crashing- my buddies and i hitched rides from NYC in pairs and we all made it there and back i got lucky and rode in the yellow van,-nuff said. By the way it was a great show.
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16 years 8 months
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first of all,went on spur of moment notice.. friend bobby got into accident driving us to nyc,then we werent allowed on bus to amherst because we were burning a jay when it pulled up in 178th st and broadway,gwb bus terminal.. headed over to penn station and jumped on an amtrack train to make the show.. jerry in ponytail under very heavy gray skies...looks like rain burned into memory banks.....saw friend chimpo there,who has also sinced passed away.......""" nothing left to do but,SMILE
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16 years 2 months
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And about an hour after the show ended it poured buckets. I was actually a student at UMass for this show, and managed to scrape up over 50 tickets. Boy did I have a lot of friends the night before! One of the bands I was in set up behind my dorm and jammed for hours for hundreds of people hanging out in the orchard. Later I helped to dissipate over 4 lbs of fresh shrooms in less than an hour. Got to the show reeeeeal early so I missed all the crowd control fun but did score a great spot left center stage on the 10 yard line. Fun time.
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15 years 8 months
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Actually it was Roy Ayers, not NRBQ, who opened.
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16 years 9 months
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I remember a hedge maze that we spent a good deal of time wandering around. That is, until the Angels decided to try it with their hogs.
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15 years 2 months
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My first of 50+ Dead Shows. I was a freshman at UMass Opening Act = Roy Ayers Ubiquity, funk band Second Act = Patti Smith, very rocking set Pretty sl-o-o-o-o-w FOTD and Stella Blue. The closer you got to the stage the weirder and more aggressive the vibe was, and way far away there were a lot of messed-up people. You sort of had to find the right place to chill.
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15 years 8 months
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I couldn’t believe this was our “Free Student Concert” ……….The Dead???? I remember walking to the stadium and seeing the public buses with “Terrapin Station” and “Shakedown Street” posted in the destination windows. …………a group of people wearing rubber frog heads for the entire show. …………we managed to get close to the front of the stage for a while and got some great pictures (I need to find those) …………….talking to Patti Smith near the backstage barrier, she was wrecked…..couldn’t understand a word she was saying, but she preformed pretty well. ………..Terrapin sounded awesome. ............going throuh the "Maze" and trying to run "The Wall" on the way bck to the dorm.
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14 years 11 months
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Sorry folks, I still get nightmares from Patti Smith's set at Alumni Stadium that day. . . her endless "improv" on clarinet while seated cross legged on the stage pretty much killed the buzz . . .mind you Patti Smith does not play the clarinet. Not a lick. She just honked and squealed tunelessly for minutes. Scary stuff. I could not bring myself to see the Dead again for years . . .lucky for me, I plugged back in about ten years later and saw some great shows in 89-90. Just like I never left.
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14 years 10 months
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My friend Kevin Fitzgerald invited Mike and I to ZooMass.I think they had Allman Brothers the year before. Patti Smith told of watching the Dead perform, ".. the microphone was so.... accessible..." Mostly memories of the huge crowd. We were very high up on the side and could see everything from that vantage point. A guy with an Uncle Sam hat... A pretty girl with brown hair and eyes... A guy who walked almost the entire outer wall of the stadium .. it was only 2 foot thick and several stories high.. A group unrolled a 4 foot by 20 foot roll of cellophane and a dozen or so held it over head and danced on the ground level A poster in the Student Hall saying something about "Jerry's Kids" Pot brownies One of Jerry's Kids
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16 years 8 months
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I remember the gates being opened for everyone when they realized people were pulling their vans and buses up to the gates and climbing over. I was stuck sitting next to some college kids who were only there to catch alcohol buzzes and were smashing styrophone coolers over their heads and eating the remnants. Terrapin was definately the highlight of the show Tammy "We live very close together. So, our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." ~ 14th Dalai Lama
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12 years 9 months
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Hot day in the sun. No cans or bottles, but we all had a plastic jug of "punch" Lots of fun! Hitched there from Gloucester. Unforgettable
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12 years 3 months
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Oh so frustrating what show was I at in massachuetts, this does not sound right, I think it was winter, and our ride's, car broke down, yet again, we said cover the car and hitch hike with us. Please don;t miss the show. But our driver would not leave his car and we were sorry he could not choose his priorities in alignment with ours. Burn the damn car I thought.. We arrived somewhere and were stressed out because we were worried about our friend, who I can;t remember not having come with us. But I think I may already have been on the West coast and saw an earlier new england show, man this is a blurr. Does anyone know which meadowlands show one of the three bands was a no show? That place is a vortex of bad ju ju.
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Too Funny! Scarred so bad by Patti Smith you couldn't see the Grateful Dead again for ten years? They were a pretty weird pairing for the Dead. Come to think of it, I can't think of anything weirder! Was the counseling expensive? I imagine watching Patti Smith not play the clarinet for hours on stage cross-legged must have been traumatic!
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And there was a riot outside and a lot of people got in free. Yes, this was 1979. There were unruly deadheads prior to 1980 -- don't let anybody fool you!
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16 years 8 months
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Ahhh the grey day in Amherst. We were at the show the night before in Billerica. Didn't sleep and met up with friends in Amherst for the show. Remember this was 1979. No bottles but I walked right in with a half gallon plastic bottle full of wine. No problem. They were selling beer from kegs inside the stadium. We had ample Green Dragon we had acquired the day before. I remember the grey sky looked like a dome over Alumni Stadium. Patti Smith wasn't too bad. I remember her singing the Beatles tune "Birthday". Did that happen? It was a long time ago. I remember when "Looks Like Rain" was played you could *feel* tension in the audience but the sky cooperated anyway. At one point I looked down under my feet and I realized that there was this enormous 30 painted on the ground. Not surprising considering that we were in a football stadium. For whatever reason I thought it was the funnies thing I had ever seen. As we were leaving the show I noticed that little drops of rain were hitting the puddles outside of the venue blip, blip, blip, blip ... fascinating. At least the rain held off until the end of the show. The parties in the Southwest dorms nearby were epic that night. As for the "commotion" at the back of the stadium. I had heard that someone had bolt cutters and they cut the lock off the fence at the back of the stadium. A rush of people came in and caused a "great squash" toward the front. I remember some sort of squash but the bolt cutters were just a rumor.
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16 years 4 months
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Actualy I thought I already posted this but I guess not. WE sat about 2/3 of the way back in the stands to the right side of the stage. On the other side of the stadium up close to the stage somebody was making those jiant bubbles with those big rings and they would float out over the crowd.One of these bubbles hovered over the crowd up by the stage and over the center of the stadium and slowly toward our side and in our direction. Slowly towards us in the still air. We were watching it for minutes as it got closer and closer until it was about 3 feet infront of me. Then POOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFFFF it popped right in my face. I was high as hell but it realy happened. I have witnesses.
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my very first show and it did not take long to go hook line and sinker. Before I knew it I was faw from home and no plan on returning till the faithfull daw in fall of 89 that I got sober. AMAZING run in between I too dont remember to much of this one. Are also a few after this that I can't remember If I attended so I left them as unattended. I think there are manybe 4 or 5 other shows I went to before the real fun began. As wavy gravy always said " these are the good old days " same as today these are the good old days . anyday above ground is a good one
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Me and a couple of friends made the drive from Ithaca and got there early enough to miss the gate crashing mayhem. I remember sitting up in the bleachers and watching a biker (who I thought had Hell’s Angel’s colors on) inching his bike through the infield all the way up to the stage. He just kept revving it to worn people to get out of the way. I was pretty worried that he was gonna run over a bunch of folks for a while there. It was a pretty crazy atmosphere at that show, kind of tense at times (but that could have just been my state of mind). The first set seemed a bit lax to me for some reason but then the second set they came out full tilt. The Samson and Delilah is one of the best ever. Also some real interesting space during the 2nd set. I have had a tape of it since a few months after the show.
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12 years 3 months
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Me and a couple of friends made the drive from Ithaca and got there early enough to miss the gate crashing mayhem. I remember sitting up in the bleachers and watching a biker (who I thought had Hell’s Angel’s colors on) inching his bike through the infield all the way up to the stage. He just kept revving it to worn people to get out of the way. I was pretty worried that he was gonna run over a bunch of folks for a while there. It was a pretty crazy atmosphere at that show, kind of tense at times (but that could have just been my state of mind). The first set seemed a bit lax to me for some reason but then the second set they came out full tilt. The Samson and Delilah is one of the best ever. Also some real interesting space during the 2nd set. I have had a tape of it since a few months after the show.
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11 years 6 months
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This is my first show and seeing as it is it is the 1st time I saw Playing in the Band, counting the times I did see them perform Playin. Total times is 110. That is an awful lot of times to see 1 song. I sure had no idea this band would become a very important part of my life. Being a jock threw out my first 18 years of life never thought would be anything more then that.