The Deadcast visits one of the Dead’s most legendary hometown shows with the band, crew, & Bay Area Dead freaks, featuring 3 sets in the Golden Gate Park sunshine, technological innovations, & an important paper by the Haight Street Free Medical Clinic.
by Jesse Jarnow
The Bay Area music scholar Corry Arnold has explored the circumstances around the Grateful Dead’s appearance at Kezar Stadium in May 1973 through the filter of the surrounding canceled shows at the Cow Palace and the Ontario Motor Speedway. A touching post about the Kezar show by a friend of Pigpen’s younger brother Kevin.
The archives of local Bay Area station KRON include a minute of silent footage from the Dead’s Kezar Stadium show, where one can see both the Haight Street Free Medical Clinic’s tent at the rear of the field, as well as the delay towers designed by Alembic.
The medical tent was largely organized by the late Dr. Skip Gay, and was the first iteration of what became RockMed. The subsequent paper, “A Dash of M*A*S*H, The Zep and the Dead: Head to Head,” is behind a scholarly paywall, but is viewable from many public and university libraries.
Dennis McNally’s Jerry On Jerry is available is an audiobook. Thanks to David Gans for the excellent clip of Jerry Garcia and Steve Parish talking about their encounter with Waylon Jennings and crew. The rest is available in David’s Conversations With the Dead.
very good