Friend of the Devils: Virginia, 4/78

Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast

Season 10, Episode 4

Friend of the Devils: Virginia, 4/78

 

Archival interviews:

- Jerry Garcia, by Jon Sievert, Guitar Player, 12/77.

- Jerry Garcia, by Jon Sievert, Guitar Player, 6/78.

- Jerry Garcia, by Jon Sievert, Guitar Player, 7/78.

- Jerry Garcia, by Ray White, WLIR, 1/11/79.

- Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, The Arista Years, 1996.

 

AUDIO: “Big River” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (1:35-1:49) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: After the Grateful Dead levitated Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium on April 12th, 1978, their spring tour lingered in the mid-Atlantic region. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: You kind of expect the Dead to play well at the Garden or the Spectrum or the Fillmore. But the Dead also seem to play really well in the places you'd least expect. This tour, they were hitting the Southern college campuses, things like that, and they would play these incredible shows. To this day, the number of Dead Heads I've met who saw their first shows around this time, in ‘76, ‘77, and ‘78… the Dead would come to your town, Blacksburg, Virginia — they’d play your college, and they would knock your socks off.

 

AUDIO: “The Other One” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (4:23-4:42) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: For the band’s two shows in Virginia, they headed to a college campus they’d never visited before, in Blacksburg, and returned to one where—like Duke—they were beloved, Williamsburg’s William and Mary.

 

AUDIO: “Passenger” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (1:16-1:36) 

 

JESSE: The William and Mary gig was previously released as Dave’s Picks 37. This came up a few episodes ago, but it bears repeating.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: We did get a little antsy a couple of years ago. April 15 has already come out as part of Dave’s Picks. There were 25,000 of those, so hopefully everybody who gets this box has that Dave's Picks and can kind of complete the run of shows.

 

AUDIO: “Let It Grow” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (11:33-12:00) 

 

JESSE: These were small-town shows. Everybody from both the towns of Williamsburg and Blacksburg could’ve attended the Dead’s Englishtown concert the previous September and they all could’ve brought at least +1s.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: People would go see whoever came to town. If you liked them, you’d go see them — it's five bucks, what do you have to lose, you’ve got five bucks. So you’d go see them. You’d go see whoever it was, and it would be great. They would be good, you'd have a great memory, that was the end of it. But the Dead were playing at such a high level at this time—I think at all times, but at this time—and playing these places, that anybody who went to see them, whether they were huge fans or [it] was out of mild curiosity because you liked Workingman's Dead, American Beauty… you were so blown away that [you became] a fan for life. And I think it was that simple.

 

AUDIO: “The Other One” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (6:07-6:39) - [dead.net]

 

Current Jams

 

JESSE: Any Dead Head going from Duke to the next show on the tour would have had to take a fairly winding drive, so we, too, are going to take the scenic route to Blacksburg. In our episode about the Atlanta shows, we delved into some of the new wave and punk music that was swirling around the Dead in 1978. Today, we’re jumping back into Jon Sievert’s extraordinary interviews with Jerry Garcia from that spring, where he discussed music that he was listening during the period of the Friend of the Devils box.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I really like Warren Zevon’s band. I like Warren Zevon, I think he's great. Great writer. We just played a gig with him down in Santa Barbara. Yeah, we like him a lot. 

 

AUDIO: “Accidentally Like a Martyr” [Jerry Garcia, All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions] (1:00-1:24)

 

JESSE: Garcia had played around with Warren Zevon’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr” in the studio in the summer of ‘77, now released on the All Good Things box set. And in the spring of ‘78, just eight days after the final show on Friend of the Devils, the Dead introduced their own Warren Zevon cover.

 

AUDIO: “Werewolves of London” [Dave’s Picks 7, 4/24/78] (3:19-3:39)

 

JESSE: That was the Dead playing “Werewolves of London” in, where else, Normal, Illinois, now on Dave’s Picks 7; sending that out to Ward Q. Normal.

 

JON SIEVERT [6/78]: I heard Elvis Costello say on the radio that he really liked your playing yesterday.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Oh, yeah? Too much. How flattering.

 

JON SIEVERT [6/78]: He's pretty good. 

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Yeah, he is good. I like him. I like him a lot, too.

 

AUDIO: “Mystery Dance” [Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True] (0:11-0:22) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: As we well know around these parts, Elvis Costello was and is a champion Dead fan. If you’d like to hear about that from his perspective, set your course for the Bickershaw ‘72 episode.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I like that, new wave stuff. It's obvious, as they pass by, who's there for keeps and who isn’t. Some people really have something to say and it gets to you, no matter really what you believe or what you think or what you like. I keep an open mind. I like disco music a lot. All that stuff is interesting to me. Hell, it's all music.

 

AUDIO: “Mighty High” [Mighty Clouds of Joy, Kickin’] (0:01-0:27) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: That was the Mighty Clouds of Joy with “Mighty High,” their 1975 disco-gospel smash, picked up the next year by the Jerry Garcia Band, here from GarciaLive vol. 7.

 

AUDIO: “Mighty High” [Jerry Garcia Band, GarciaLive 7, 11/8/76] (0:09-0:33) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: By the spring of 1978, disco was inescapable. Close Encounters of the Third Kind may’ve been Jerry Garcia’s favorite film of the 1977 holiday season (and, no, he doesn’t make a cameo), and he quoted the theme a few times in early 1978, including on the first show of this box set. But there was another film that had an inescapable impact on the Dead and their world.

 

AUDIO: “Stayin’ Alive” [Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever OST] (0:00-0:17) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: Released in December 1977, Saturday Night Fever was a blockbuster. Its accompanying soundtrack sold so well that, even almost 20 years into the vinyl revival, you can still score used copies for around $1 plus shipping from Discogs. 

 

AUDIO: “Stayin’ Alive” [Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever OST] (0:23-0:56) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: The Dead had brought the modern sound into their own music with their rearrangement of “Dancing in the Street.” Here’s some of the Blacksburg, Virginia version from the new box.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (0:50-1:22) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: This next story takes place just after the end of the new box, exactly a week after the April 14th Blacksburg show, on April 21st. Here’s how drummer Mickey Hart and guitarist Bob Weir remembered it in 1996 in an interview with the Album Network. You can hear Phil Lesh interjecting occasionally, too.

 

MICKEY HART [1996]: We were on the road and I took them to the movie. But it took us, like, about 200 miles to get to the movie theater. Over 100 miles. The guy didn’t say it was, you know,150 miles down the road.

 

BOB WEIR [1996]: This was Saturday Night Fever? I can even tell you what town that was in, Mick. It was in Lexington — Lexington, Kentucky.

 

MICKEY HART [1996]: We came back and we all did a little, if you remember, our little dance in the room. We all grabbed each other and we did a little disco dance.

 

JESSE: Just hold onto that image of the Grateful Dead doing the Saturday Night Fever dances backstage before the Lexington, Kentucky show. Here’s how the jam out of Rhythm Devils sounded that night.

 

AUDIO: “Jam” [4/21/78] (1:47-2:00)

 

JESSE: Listener Scott White attended the Lexington show and left us this story at stories.dead.net.

 

SCOTT WHITE: It's interesting about the Mickey Hart anecdote about how him and Jerry and some of the crew went to see Saturday Night Fever the night before the Lexington show, because during the show, during the jam, there was definitely a riff or an influence from “Stayin’ Alive.” Everyone recognized it, as it was literally ubiquitous on AM/FM radio then. Plus, we'd all been to see it because it was the perfect “date movie,” whether you like disco or not. We didn't like disco, although our girlfriends did, and we all felt that the Dead had completely sold out to the disco phenomena with the “Dancing in the Streets” arrangement on Terrapin [Station]. What the hell did we know about it? Shit.

 

JESSE: And a few days later, in Normal, Illinois, on April 24th, 1978, it became a little more clear during “Me and My Uncle.” 

 

AUDIO: “Ramble On Rose” [Dave’s Picks 7, 4/24/78] (7:51-8:07)

 

AUDIO: “Me and My Uncle” [Dave’s Picks 7, 4/24/78] (0:00-0:30)

 

JESSE: But more significantly, sometime in the next month or so, or maybe in the very early summer, Jerry Garcia wrote a new song that would bring the new sound into the Dead’s world fully. Hopefully we’ll get to dive into this lo-fi demo recording sometime down the line.

 

AUDIO: “Shakedown Street” (demo) [Jerry Garcia] (0:02-0:37)

 

BOB WEIR [1996]: We did “Stayin’ Alive.” We did a couple of disco tunes, “Dancing in the Streets.” “Shakedown Street” was our attempt at disco.

 

MICKEY HART [1996]: We failed at that, too.

 

BOB WEIR [1996]: You wouldn’t know it, by listening to it.

 

MICKEY HART [1996]: We couldn't even do disco, what we thought was disco —

 

PHIL LESH [1996]: — was something different. 

 

AUDIO: “Shakedown Street” [Shakedown Street] (1:10-1:27) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

JESSE: Here’s Garcia speaking with Ray White on WLIR in January 1979, two months after the album’s release.

 

JERRY GARCIA [1/11/79]: Obviously, stylistically, that's where it's at. It's a style. The Grateful Dead has always done that. We just absorb styles. 

 

JESSE: Steve Silberman.

 

STEVE SILBERMAN: And that was another demonstration of Jerry's big ears. It's like, ‘Oh, disco! Oh my god!’ All the homophobes out there, burning disco records. Jerry was digging it.

 

JESSE: The racist and homophobic reactions were an underlying tension under popular music in the late 1970s, culminating in the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago in July 1979.

 

AUDIO: “Disco Demolition Night” (0:17-0:45) [YouTube]

 

NEWSCASTER [1979]: Between games, as planned, a huge box containing thousands of disco records was blown up. [cheers] The rest was unplanned. Fans stormed out onto the field in the thousands. Disco records were hurled like Frisbees. Bonfires were set. Bottles were thrown. The batting cage was torn down and destroyed. Fistfights broke out. White Sox players had to be locked in their clubhouse for their own protection.

 

JESSE: But disco was hardly the only thing in Jerry Garcia’s ears in 1978. We’ll let Garcia do the talking here.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I go through these little fevers. There was one little fever where I got as much Duke Ellington material as I could. I suddenly got really excited about orchestration.

 

AUDIO: “Take The ‘A’ Train” [Duke Ellington] (0:00-0:17) - [Spotify]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: And I went through a period where I—I’m still going through it, I guess, really— I listened a lot, for example, to Art Tatum.

 

AUDIO: “Tea For Two” [Art Tatum] (0:00-0:18) - [Spotify]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: There’s so much great music that's already happened that catching up is a hell of a job. And then there's so much new stuff that goes on that’s so impressive. I really like Al Di Meola. I think he's a really excellent guitar player.

 

AUDIO: “The Wizard” [Al Di Meola, Land of the Midnight Sun] (4:56-5:26) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: Growing up in suburban New Jersey, Al Di Meola did at least a little time with a Dead cover band, as we heard in our “Playing Dead” episode a few years ago.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: As far as new [music], I like George Benson.

 

AUDIO: “White Rabbit” [George Benson, White Rabbit] (2:28-2:53) - [Spotify]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: There's a young flamenco guitarist that really knocks me out. I've only seen a couple of his records, which are imports —

 

JON SIEVERT [6/78]: Paco?

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Yeah, Paco. He's incredible. He has this beautiful flow to his playing. It's just really rare, a rare thing in guitarists.

 

JESSE: That’d be Paco De Lucia.

 

AUDIO: “Caminto De Totana” [Paco De Lucia, El Camaron de la Isla] (0:16-0:37) - [Spotify]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I like that guy from Philadelphia, too, a lot. Pat Martino. He's one of my favorites. He's one of the most… rhythmically, I think he's really neat. 

 

AUDIO: “Joyous Lake” [Pat Martino, Joyous Lake] (1:32-2:00) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: Steve Silberman.

 

STEVE SILBERMAN: He was hip to people like Pat Martino, this fantastic jazz guitarist who was also a huge influence—I only a couple of years ago found out—on Trey Anastasio of Phish. Pat Martino is one of the most underrated guitarists in jazz history, in part because he had, like Jerry, a catastrophic medical event, and he had to relearn how to play the guitar.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I think that guitar playing is in an incredible state right now. I think there's more good guitar players alive than have ever existed.

 

STEVE SILBERMAN: It's clear that Garcia had the biggest ears of anyone you could name, really. So he was drawing inspiration from all of these deep and sometimes very obscure sources, yet turning it into a sound that was distinctively and unmistakably his own.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (4:57-5:25) - [dead.net]

 

Taping with Kathy Sublette

 

JESSE: By 1978, the Grateful Dead no longer logged tons of regular hours rehearsing together, but their entire creative practice had set them up for constant change that kept audiences coming back and hanging on every note, and we’ve got much more that Garcia interview to come. We’ve focused on the band’s infamous fan recordists, the tapers, and today we’ve got one more. There were very few women tapers back in the day, and on this episode we’re delighted to welcome Kathy Sublette.

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: ‘76, that's when I started seeing them. I was in college, so I would go all along the East Coast. I would do the tour.

 

JESSE: As a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, where possibly she had my grandmother as a professor, Kathy cut her teeth at the marathon Palladium ‘77 gigs.

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: And the Palladium. They would play until like 3:30 in the morning. It was like: was that as good as I thought, or was that the drugs? [laughs]

 

JESSE: Tapes were a way of confirming that. 

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: I got tired of waiting for my buddies to give me a tape. So I thought to myself, Well, I'm just going to buy my own equipment. That way I can just do my own thing. I saw how they did it, and I thought, Well, I'm capable of doing this myself. So I bought myself a [Sony TC-]D5, and then I bought Shures.

 

JESSE: With her Shure microphones, Kathy caught some of the classic Dead shows of the late ‘70s. We’ll be soundtracking this next bit with her recording of the Palladium, May 4th, 1977, which you can find wherever you find your audience tapes.

 

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [5/4/77, Sublette tape] (0:00-0:13)

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: And then I got a pair of freakin’ crutches to tape the mics on, to hold up. In the early days, it wasn't legal to take the equipment in. So, then I had a wheelchair to get the equipment in. 

 

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [5/4/77, Sublette tape] (1:40-2:01)

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: When I looked around, I was the only girl. I was the only woman doing it. All the guys would just look back at me like, ‘What's she doing here? She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’ That was okay, because most of the girls were dancing, which was just fine. But it would crack me up, because all the guys would get really wasted. I was getting wasted, too, but not to the point where… you had to know what you were doing, to set the levels and everything. I could tell they weren't making as good as the tape as I was because, with every song, they were moving their levels. To each his own, you know what I mean? But it was a better idea to, like, just set your levels.

 

JESSE: This is what we call a pro tip.

 

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [5/4/77, Sublette tape] (2:02-2:24)

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: At that time, in ‘77, your car didn't come with a tape deck. You had to install the best tape deck you could with the best speakers that you had. At the time in ‘77 it was the Pioneer deck, with the great speakers in the back. That was the beauty of the whole thing: tape the show, and then listen to it. Or listen to the previous or the one before, your favorite, or whichever.

 

AUDIO: “Brown-Eyed Women” [5/4/77, Sublette tape] (2:47-3:07)

 

April 14th - Blacksburg

 

JESSE: In the spring of 1978, Kathy hit the road with her crew, making it down to the Jacksonville show that’s now on this box set. But—like many tours—it got better as it went.

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: For me, the most fun was stopping at the colleges in the spring, because it was pretty. It was pretty at some of the colleges in the spring.

 

JESSE: After the Duke show, Kathy and her friends made it to the tiny town of Blacksburg where the Dead were playing at Virginia Tech or, more properly, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: It's very mountainous. It's a very tiny little town. It felt like: Wow, I can't believe they're playing here. Let’s go, bring it on. I mean, bring it on! We’ll go anywhere to see ya… let’s go. We'll go hither and yawn, it was spring and it was beautiful. The mountains were nice and beautiful. 

 

JESSE: Kathy was part of the seasonal migration of Dead Heads rambling the nation’s interstates. We’ve come across a few different groups from New York converging on Virginia for these next few shows, and I can only assume it’s a representative sampling. You may know Bob Minkin for his excellent on-the-scene photography. He’d missed seeing his first Dead show in 1974 when he got rained out of seeing the Wall of Sound at Roosevelt Stadium, but made up for lost time when they returned to the road. 

 

BOB MINKIN: San Francisco was the first best place. I grew up in the second-best place. That's another reason why I never really went to Midwest shows, and I never really went on tour, so to speak. Because I already saw like eight shows in New York, Philly, Connecticut, upstate. That scratched the itch.

 

JESSE: If you were a Dead freak in the New York area, you could have spent much of your time seeing music by the Dead family, the Allmans family, or the Jefferson Airplane family. Bob’s got the receipts. 

 

BOB MINKIN: As a teenager, a young person, I kept a list of every show I went to. 

 

JESSE: He saw a bunch of great shows in the weeks before the Dead’s spring tour opened.

 

BOB MINKIN: March, we got Bob Weir Band. So Bob Weir with his new band came through town. Bobby Cochran on lead guitar and a young, fairly unknown Brent Mydland on keyboards. And then Garcia Band came through around the same time. They did that frequently — it would be like Bob Weir or Kingfish, Jerry Garcia Band. So, for like two weeks, it was heaven. Seeing them in colleges like Seton Hall University, Queens College, Hofstra University, which were basically college gyms. Stony Brook. But in this case, Jerry came through with the lineup that had Maria Muldaur in it. So they played a bunch of shows. 

 

JESSE: Also, Robert Hunter made his East Coast debut with his band Comfort, doing a live radio hookup from My Father’s Place on Long Island.

 

AUDIO: “That Train” [Robert Hunter & Comfort, 3/10/78] (0:51-1:11)

 

BOB MINKIN: I was there.

 

JESSE: And a marathon Sunday night show featuring Hunter and Comfort, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the Jerry Garcia Band on Long Island in Commack. 

 

BOB MINKIN: That was at Suffolk Forum. I was at that show. That was easy, because I lived in Brooklyn, so driving out… Suffolk was a little far, but not hundreds of miles far. An hour far. But that was a big night — to see all three bands in one night was pretty cool. 

 

JESSE: So many jams.

 

BOB MINKIN: I saw Dickey Betts the night after I saw Garcia at the Capitol. The Garcia show was, I think, 3/17/78, and when I was back there the next night to see Dickey Betts. I was like, Really, I did that?

 

AUDIO: “Leaving Me Again” [Dickey Betts, 3/18/78] (2:14-2:28)

 

BOB MINKIN: So at that point, I hadn't seen the Dead since the Winterland New Year show, December ‘77.

 

JESSE: And a whole four months without the Dead can make a Dead freak really straighten out. Bob obviously needed to get on that.

 

BOB MINKIN: Two people in my neighborhood. Barry and Steven, they had this idea that to charter a bus, because my neighborhood had a lot of Dead Heads, a lot of freaks. So, to charter a bus that would take us down, would leave the morning of the Blacksburg show. It was a Friday or Saturday. I was in my first year of school, I was a few months shy of 19, and so I only had to miss one day, because we left Friday morning, real early. It was like an all-inclusive thing; the fee included the bus travel to and from, tickets for both nights, and a hotel.

 

JESSE: These were the years before the Dead instituted a full-on mail order ticketing operation, which didn’t happen until 1983, but there was obviously demand among Dead Heads, and fans had started to organize among themselves.

 

BOB MINKIN: I think we met up on King Plaza and Flatbush Avenue. It was dark out.

 

JESSE: Bob had recently started taking photos of the band, and occasionally slinging them in the emerging parking lot scene. You can see some of his work inside the new Friend of the Devils box we’ve been talking about.

 

BOB MINKIN: I was shooting for Relix, basically. I did not have any sort of official access through the Grateful Dead. I was selling my photos before and after the show. Some places you were able to bring a camera in, and other places you weren't, and you didn't really know which until you got up to the door. So in some cases I had to do something with my camera if I couldn't bring it in. Other times they couldn't care less, and I could bring everything in. Other times, I had to sneak in and take the lens off, give it to my friends, stick it down his pants. The standard operating procedure.

 

JESSE: Kathy Sublette knew all about standard operating procedures.

 

KATHY SUBLETTE: We’d get out of the wheelchair and station that somewhere. The wheelchair folded up. That was just a prop.

 

JESSE: Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: The number of people I've met who went to see the Dead at this time, in places like Blacksburg or wherever — the shows were so good [that] they were like, ‘I was instantly a Dead Head. I ended up going to the next night, and the next night, and then I couldn't get enough. Then, before you know it, I saw 18 shows that year.’ I think Blacksburg is a good example of one of these. I had to look it up on a map — that's where Blacksburg is… In my mind, I know where Atlanta is, and I know where Pembroke Pines is because the Dead had played there. Jacksonville, places like that. But I didn't know where Blacksburg, Virginia was. I had to look it up.

 

JESSE: Blacksburg is in Virginia’s far west. The Dead hadn’t been there previously, and wouldn’t return, but that didn’t mean the place wasn’t full of Dead Heads. Last episode, we heard about the epic campout by Duke students who wanted Dead tickets. Two weeks later, students at Virginia Tech did the same, starting their campout even earlier, with some students showing up as many as 12 days before the April 3rd on-sale date, according to coverage in the Roanoke Times. If you’re out there Tom Jenkins, much respect. According to the student newspaper, it made the college rethink the way it sold concert tickets. Some of the Duke gang who’d camped out for tickets made it to Blacksburg, too. Nick Morgan.

 

NICK MORGAN: I think we fit five or six or seven people in one Volkswagen Beetle, then maybe two or three cars followed along. About eight or nine of us traveled along.

 

JESSE: Jon Lerner left us this story at stories.dead.net.

 

JON LERNER: April of 1978: first time going on the road to see the Dead multiple nights in a row. Had a friend drive down from Pennsylvania, picked me up in DC for the long trip to Blacksburg. Thought it was a lot closer than it was, but we just kept driving and driving. 

 

JESSE: Dr. Bob Wagner, who we spoke with in our first episode, made the trek to Blacksburg.

 

BOB WAGNER: I went there myself. The rest of the entourage was skipping that one and going to William and Mary. Very few people went to the Blacksburg shows at Virginia Tech. I think I did classes that day and then headed off on my own. I was so tired — I have not a lot of memory of Blacksburg. I know I drove up there and found the venue kind of at the last minute, just in time to get in for the show.

 

JESSE: Cassell Coliseum opened in 1962, holding around 10,000 fans.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: It's a party night, it's a Friday night on a college campus. 

 

JESSE: Nick Morgan, who we spoke with a bunch in our Duke episode, made the road trip from Durham with some of his classmates and experienced a bit of culture clash.

 

NICK MORGAN: There's all of us Dead Heads there, two days later, and everybody who looked like they were headed off to the military or the war. They did not look like Dead Heads. It was like two different worlds of young people, all mixing it up around this campus in the middle of Virginia.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: One thing I remember hearing the first time, when we started working on it again like 18 months ago: “Tennessee Jed” was always a song that usually came a little bit later in the first set. Usually [it was played] when they're all warmed up, they could build it up and hit these huge peaks. This one [at Blacksburg], comes as the second song of the show. And it's those little tiny differences — a fan of any other band isn't going to pick up on that, but Dead Heads were used to seeing “Tennessee Jed” later in the set. 

 

AUDIO: “Tennessee Jed” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (6:15-6:49) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: Every show we've gone through has had—not one, not two—many interesting and unique moments unique to that show. And this one is another one, where you get a “Dupree’s Diamond Blues.” This is the Dead; it's not like, ‘Oh, every second show, we’ve got to do ‘Dupree’s Diamond Blues,’ give the fans what they want.’ It’s the Dead feeling inspired: ‘Let’s do ‘Dupree’s Diamond Blues.’’ And they did it here, and it's really good. 

 

JESSE: It’s the end of an era — the last of a half-dozen versions in its 1977-1978 revival, played for the first time since 1970, and then retired again until 1982. It’s the final version with Keith and Donna Godchaux.

 

AUDIO: “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (1:49-2:10) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: We've talked about the “Scarlet [Begonias]”/“Fire [On the Mountain]”s, we've talked about the “Estimated [Prophet]”/“Eyes [of the World]”s, the “Estimated”/“He’s Gone,” things like that. This one, again, [is] messing with these preconceived notions of what the ‘78 format was like. They do “Dancing in the Street” as the jam.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (0:50-1:22) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: The shoutout to the mid-Atlantic cities gets a cheer.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (2:26-2:44) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Thanks to Deadcast correspondent James Adams for pointing us towards this next very regional story. A few years ago, James published a really cool edition of his Virginia Music History Zine series about the Dead at Cassell. Please welcome to the Deadcast, Del Ward.

 

DEL WARD: In 1978, I was a sophomore at Old Dominion University and played on the baseball team. We were on a road trip, and we were up there to play Tech on the 15th of April. We pulled in late the night before. After we put our stuff away, some of us went walking around the campus. On the way back, you could tell something was going on in the Coliseum, so I asked the security guard what it was, and he said the Dead were playing. Well, that excited me, being a rock and roll fan, and I knew a little of the Dead’s stuff. I talked him into letting me step inside and see a few minutes of the show, and they were playing “Dancing in the Street.”

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (2:45-3:07) - [dead.net]

 

DEL WARD: I was just absolutely mesmerized. I'd never heard a guitar like that. Jerry's guitar was just incredible. So I watched “Dancing in the Street,” and then I had to run around outside and get to the team room. 

 

Practicin’

 

JESSE: As a ballplayer, Del had a curfew. The team room, where he and his teammates were staying, turned out to be below the floor of Cassell Coliseum, where they weren’t exactly lulled to sleep by the Grateful Dead’s disco jams.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (3:08-3:36) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: We discussed the Dead and disco and Jerry Garcia’s listening habits earlier. We’re going to get back into the Jon Sievert interviews from Guitar Player and use this “Dancing in the Street” to get into the nuts and bolts of how Garcia put new ideas into play with the band’s improvisation. There used to be a magazine called Guitar For the Practicing Musician, and Jerry Garcia was a practicing musician in both senses — he was out there putting ideas into practice, and he also practiced, like, a lot. 

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I would say that I spend no less than an average of two hours a day, at the absolute worst. And that's, like, really screwing around. I think four is more normal for me. Then, on the road, it goes up to about six, including the show. Once I'm warmed up, then I tend to just play — not really a tune, but just chords, and find things. Random guitar playing, in the interest of just being able to think of something and play it. It's kind of like testing myself. Sometimes I work on a tune with difficult intervals, for example — an actual melody or some weird song, something that's fun to play or difficult to play, or a challenge, something like that. 

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (4:20-4:50) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Jerry Garcia spent a few years as a music teacher in the early 1960s. If you poke around on the ol’ computer, there’s a tape of him giving a banjo lesson in the pre-Dead days. Garcia’s playing was made from thousands of techniques and understandings that he continued to refine as a matter of craft. Here are some guitar practicing techniques from the forever student.

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/78]: A very simple and important exercise is just the thing of starting a pattern with a downstroke, and alternate picking the whole pattern; then starting with an upstroke and alternate picking the whole pattern — to get an understanding of where the rhythmic bias is. And all that gives you the best opportunity for having a consistent flow in your playing, no matter what you want to do. And then how you draw things out of it is your own business. It opens up tremendous stuff.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (4:57-5:25) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: For me, most of the flow is in the actual playing. And that's another kind of thing I practice, dynamic picking. So, for example, a common thing for me to do is turn my guitar all the way up, say with a practice amp, and then start doing arpeggios, playing very quietly at the beginning and then getting louder as a function of touch. So that makes it so that you have a kind of smoothness from your loudest, hardest pick into your softest picking. It makes it so you can keep the same hand, so to speak. So, for me, the thing is continually making those conversions back and forth from quiet to loud picking. That's indispensable to me. It’s something I think about a lot, is the dynamics of a solo: for example, this passage is quiet, this passage is loud. That means a lot to me about music, generally. Dynamics. 

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (5:27-5:55) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: I think of myself really as a guitar student as much as a performer, a player. Because there's just so much being developed, so much that's been done, that there's just a huge amount to deal with. And I'd like to think of the guitar as a total instrument. Once every other year, I go out and buy everything that's been published in the last two years of guitar instruction stuff, to see whether there's anything really exciting that has appeared. The state of the art of teaching the guitar has really improved incredibly in the last 15 years. You can find out virtually anything nowadays. It's helpful, then, to have that as a horizon, to have something to deal with. Also, I’ve had a lot of luck with clarinet books, piano books. 

 

JESSE: Steve Silberman.

 

STEVE SILBERMAN: He's a working musician. People always think, like, Oh, Signpost to New Space, you know? Yeah, sure, he’s a heavy cat. But, as he almost infamously said, his ambition was to become a competent guitarist. So he had a very, I would say, working class attitude towards his role as the guitarist, where he was putting in the practice hours, buying the playing books, listening to the new guys that he'd hear about. He was very grounded in the craft. He was not just some mystical avatar; he was very, very grounded in the practical elements of his craft, and was constantly challenging himself. 

 

JERRY GARCIA [12/77]: There are a whole bunch of exercises. Better than that, source material. In other words, I get my stuff from places, and I regularly browse books. Since I used to teach some, the idea of what's involved in learning is something that I've dealt with. And I know it because I deal with it on my own tilt. In other words, I go out, buy books and see if I can learn by going through them, just without any other input. So, some books communicate successfully to me. Some don't.

 

JON SIEVERT [12/77]: Ah. You still do that? 

 

JERRY GARCIA [12/77]: Oh, sure. I do that every year or so, because there's a whole new flash about every two to three years. 

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (5:58-6:30) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [12/77]: Also, it's nice to know somebody else's handle on it, because it's possible there's a whole way of looking at the instrument and music, or anything, that you haven't haven't flashed on, that's a recent development or any number of other things. And a lot of people are making serious attempts to communicate. Howard Roberts — as far as I'm concerned, he communicates more lucidly than any other teacher sort of guy. And his playing is so great.

 

JESSE: Jerry Garcia remained an extremely serious guitar nerd.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Guitar Player is one of my favorite magazines, man. I'm a religious reader of it. I love it, I’m into it.

 

JERRY GARCIA [12/77]: I read these things religiously. I mean, there's certain things I don’t, but the jazz things, I always read.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (6:31-6:57) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Lots of guitarists over the past few decades have spent tons of time trying to figure out how to play like Jerry Garcia. Here’s how Jerry Garcia kept up his Jerry Garcia chops.

 

JERRY GARCIA [6/78]: Mostly, what I do is standard scale intervals, working out in each of the various positions. I do a lot of arpeggios, chord arpeggios. Two-octave arpeggios. And I do a couple of things that are odd, one or two, really, but they’re all designed fundamentally for the thing of moving from any position to any other position — playing any note to any other note on the guitar. Some of them, for example, emphasize interval spread, interval jumping. Most of them have to do with alternate picking. I’m a strict alternate picker. That alternate picking, which has a few difficult moves in it — especially when you’re concerned with jumping intervals, there's a few things that are difficult there. So I work on those areas more than anything else.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Streets” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (7:00-7:30) - [dead.net]

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/78]: I've been working on things that are basically two-string scales. 

 

JON SIEVERT [7/78]: So you’re working very much on —

 

JERRY GARCIA [7/78]: Right, crossways, downways. Finally, the whole complete pattern of the fingerboard, is starting to – I’m forcing it into shape — in my own psyche. My own way of seeing it, feeling it. Working on my technique is what it boils down to. Books, theory, fingerboard harmony. What I’m trying to do is rebuild myself. I feel like it’s time for me to do that, in my playing, in my life and all that. I don’t know if it’ll amount to anything. But, in six months, I’ll know. It's that kind of… I’m sort of in a two-year plan right now, the first phase of it.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (7:59-8:20) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Someone get the time sheath and check in with 1980 Garcia. We’ll return to ‘78 Garcia’s brain momentarily. But right now, we’re going to head back to Blacksburg.

 

And back into

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (14:09-14:31) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Bob Minkin.

 

BOB MINKIN: The only really unusual shot I got was of Jerry, Bobby and Donna, who at one point sang together at the same microphone. I saw Jim Anderson's photo of that, too, from a different angle. We both got it at the same time, from a different angle. I'm trying to remember what song that would have been — I'm wondering if that was during “Dancing in the Street”? I’m just guessing this, like at the end when it’s slowing down, and they’re just doing… I wonder if they came to the mic together. I’m just guessing there.

 

AUDIO: “Dancing in the Street” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (15:05-15:22) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: It's a long version of “Dancing in the Street” before they head into Rhythm Devils. So they're clearly having a good time playing. This is 35 minutes taken up by one song, and a drum solo, which is a drum duet — which is actually more like a drum quintet, because you’ve got everybody coming up and bashing around.

 

BOB MINKIN: Probably the most unusual and interesting part of that show, for me, was the “Drums”/“Space”/“[The] Other One.” To me, I think that was the meat of the show, because the “Drums” were nothing like I'd ever seen before or since. It was something really unusual because they were all in on it, even Keith. And the crew, too, Parrish and other people. I couldn't really make out who they were.

 

JESSE: Jon Lerner.

 

JON LERNER: Had a blast. Jerry banging on the steel drums. Keith, wandering around the stage aimlessly, until Donna elbowed him and knocked him backwards, which was quite an event that didn't get a lot of attention back in the day.

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (8:03-8:26) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: This is another night where photos and newspaper reports confirm that Jerry Garcia, Steve Parish, Keith Godchaux, and others, were up making Rhythmic Devil-ry. The student newspaper describes one of the roadies holding a chair over his head and then playing it with a hammer. 

 

BOB MINKIN: They were hitting stuff: anything that was around, whatever. The seat, the chairs they were sitting on.

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (12:13-12:36) - [dead.net]

 

BOB MINKIN: And then Mickey had—I guess it was Mickey—some device making otherworldly sounds. I guess it was some kind of synthesizer. It's “Drums,” and then it’s something like from an old science fiction movie. That’s what it reminded me of. That was the only time I’d ever seen him do anything like that.

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (15:34-15:55) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Down below the floor of Cassell Coliseum, the Old Dominion Monarchs were trying to sleep. Del Ward.

 

DEL WARD: When the lights went out and we were all laying there trying to go to sleep, all you could hear was this constant thumping. And everybody was like: What the hell is that? I said, “Well, it's got to be the bass. I mean, we're right under the stage.”

 

AUDIO: “Space” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (3:38-3:50) - [dead.net]

 

DEL WARD: So we were sitting there just listening to this thumping, and now, all of a sudden, it just intensified and increased.

 

AUDIO: “Space” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (4:37-4:52) - [dead.net]

 

DEL WARD: Years later, I come to find out that that was Phil in “The Other One.” 

 

AUDIO: “The Other One” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (0:00-0:20) - [dead.net]

 

DEL WARD: Everybody was laughing, having a big time. But that was my intro to the Dead and Phil bombs.

 

AUDIO: “The Other One” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (0:41-1:06) - [dead.net]

 

DEL WARD: I saw the Dead about 35 more times, in front of the stage and not under the stage. And by the way, we lost a doubleheader to Tech the next day, because no one had any sleep.

 

JESSE: The Monarchs got soundly trounced, 12 to 7 and 6 to nothing. But, on the other hand…

 

AUDIO: “The Other One” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (4:08-4:23) - [dead.net]

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: It's got a really good “Other One,” whereas the other “Other One” on the tour, a little spacier, a little longer. This one is a little more intense; it clocks in at a more normal seven or eight minutes.

 

AUDIO: “The Other One” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (5:08-5:34) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: Since we’re tracking this tour as the beginning of the “Drums”/“Space” segments, I’ll note that this particular set in Blacksburg is the first second set to follow one version of the formula for a great deal of the shows to follow — some heady jam songs flowing into “Drums,” then “Space,” then a Jerry Garcia ballad, then a rockin’ Bob Weir song. Dr. Bob Wagner.

 

BOB WAGNER: I don't remember what I did or where I spent the night. Might’ve even slept in the car. That was done before. When I was trying to do tours throughout my time in medical school, I was a starving college student, and there were times that I slept in the car if I didn't have other people to share a hotel room with.

 

JESSE: Nick Morgan and the Duke crew found… local lodging.

 

NICK MORGAN: We crashed in the library or some dorm. There was no other place to find to sleep after the show. I think someone let us into the lounge area of some dorm, and they're like, “Yeah, sure, you guys are fine.” We just crashed on the floor in some building on campus, and no one seemed to bother us. But it did feel like we were oil and water — in two different worlds, all trying to mix it up, which was good enough for that night.

 

JESSE: Jon Lerner and crew headed to the next show.

 

JON LERNER: After the show, we drove from Blacksburg to Williamsburg, through the mountains of West Virginia. Literally had a—don't know if it was a state trooper or local cop—but definitely a cherry on top of the vehicle that was tailing us for at least an hour, driving through the mountains of western Virginia. We did not choose the interstate, we chose the backcountry roads. And an hour later, when that car turned off and we were on our way, we literally pulled over on the road and just exhaled. 

 

JESSE: The bus from Brooklyn had a plan, sort of. Bob Minkin.

 

BOB MINKIN: We stayed in a hotel and they didn't get enough rooms. So we all have to triple, quadruple up in these rooms. Having to sleep on a floor or something, something uncomfortable. It was a Motel 6 kind of place.

 

April 15th - Williamsburg

 

JESSE: The whole tour—equipment trucks, band, and Dead Heads—headed across the easternmost Blue Ridge Mountains and through the Shenandoah Valley, a four-hour or so drive to Williamsburg and one of the band’s favored mid-Atlantic stops. They’d played two legendary shows at William and Mary in 1973 and one in 1976. April 15th, 1978 is now Dave’s Picks 37.

 

AUDIO: “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (0:21-0:45)

 

JESSE: That was recording engineer Betty Cantor Jackson, adjusting Garcia’s voice on the tape mix, like we discussed in our Duke episode, different than what the crowd was hearing in the room. Dave of the Picks.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: We had an idea to do a box set from this thing, but it wasn't happening then. And it wasn't happening imminently. We, I think, got a little impatient and antsy. It’s like, you know what? Now's the time. We haven't done a ‘78 release in a while — now's the time to do one, and it's going to be this one. It didn't bother me that we took a show from a nine-night run that we might have otherwise done something. So, now, we have an eight-night run, with the absence of that one show, which is fine. Again, 25,000 people presumably have that on CD; hopefully they can just kind of insert that on their shelf with this one, so they get the complete run. But it's a magnificent show.

 

JESSE: We certainly can’t ignore the show. For one thing, it’s awesome. For another, we’ve got a few really great stories to go with it, so—if you haven’t—track down Dave’s Picks 37. One pal of the Deadcast who attended the show is the wonderful Rob Bleetstein, who you perhaps know from the Sirius XM Grateful Dead or Pearl Jam channels, or maybe as the vault keeper for the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Please welcome back, Rob Bleetstein.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: My first show was a month before my 12th birthday at Nassau Coliseum in 1973. It was the first day of junior high school, and everybody's older brothers and sisters were going. A bunch of my friends were going. My older brother was going. So, we all wound up going.

 

JESSE: When we talk about Long Island as a hotbed of Dead freakdom, we’re talking about Rob Bleetstein and his crew in Roslyn, New York. None of them knew it, but Ned Lagin had grown up there a decade earlier. Rob kept seeing the Dead, but got fully hit by the lightning bolt at Winterland on December 29th, 1977, now Dick’s Picks 10, which we’ll use to soundtrack this next little bit.

 

AUDIO: “Jack Straw” [Dick’s Picks 10, 12/29/77] (0:00-0:04) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

BOB WEIR [12/29/77]: Good evening, and welcome to Thursday night at Winterland.

 

JESSE: When spring tour came around, William and Mary was in striking distance. Like Bob Minkin and the Brooklyn gang, who they didn’t know, they chartered a vehicle.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: My late friend Malcolm Kaplan decided to organize this chartered bus trip. We were heads. There was a group of maybe five or six of us that got these… Mouse [and Kelley] and the Monster Corporation [of America] had these patches, Skull and Roses patches, that we got at PosterMat in Greenwich Village. We had them all sewn onto our denim jackets. We were like the Grateful Dead gang in high school. It's what Dead Heads do — you spread the faith. We were turning people onto the Dead left and right. And then it just got to the point where Malcolm got this bus trip together. 

 

AUDIO: “Jack Straw” [Dick’s Picks 10, 12/29/77] (0:53-1:23) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: The bus left at like three in the morning. And this is another thing: the bus left from our high school parking lot, which I found out from Malcolm just a few years ago. When we got back and they found out, they had no clue about it. When they found out about it, they were not happy at all.

 

AUDIO: “Mama Tried” [Dick’s Picks 10, 12/29/77] (0:39-0:58) - [Spotify] [YouTube]

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: There were a ton of friends and people who got on the Bus, who had never been on the Bus before and hadn't seen the Dead before, hadn't gotten their brains psychedelicized yet. I want to say, of the 50 kids on that bus, probably a good 30 of them had their first experience at that show, on that trip. It was just an unbelievable thing. The only adult in the whole picture was the bus driver! There was no chaperone or nothing. It was just kind of bedlam. Organized bedlam.

 

JESSE: Emphasis on the bedlam.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: My friend Al Winick had a brand-new TEAC PC-10, which was TEAC’S portable recorder, which was the equivalent of a Sony-158 or a Nak[amichi]-550. William and Mary was going to be the first show he was recording on his brand new TEAC PC-10. And it also had a speaker on it — the bus, it was the kind where the bus driver had the microphone, where he could grab that microphone and talk into the little thing. So we taped that microphone to the speaker on the tape deck, and we're cranking music the whole way. One of my greatest visions of this bus: by the time we hit Maryland, coming down from New York, with the music cranking… okay, it's unlimited alcohol and pot on this bus, and it's just a cloud. By the time we got to Maryland, we were playing the Miami ‘74 “Dark Star” into “U.S. Blues.”

 

AUDIO: “Spanish Jam” [6/23/74, Jerry Moore tape] (3:07-3:28)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: Which is now on a Dave’s Picks. And it's just rolling. I'll never forget this, looking up: the bus driver, who was a pretty big dude, too, he is just rocking in his seat, driving, cruising down the freeway, taking us to Virginia and listening to Miami ‘74. He had to have gotten a contact high — sort of inescapable.

 

AUDIO: “U.S. Blues” [6/23/74, Jerry Moore tape] (5:41-6:03)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: I remember we pulled into the hotel, which was a little old Howard Johnson's that some of us wound up treating like we were The Who. But I do remember it wasn't too far from the campus. I remember going to the campus earlier in the day. We were walking around and seeing people who were at Duke a few days before, and telling us all about it, and Blacksburg as well. 

 

JESSE: Sometime that morning, the chartered bus from Brooklyn pulled into Williamsburg. Bob Minkin.

 

BOB MINKIN: We got to William and Mary. We got there so early that there was also a parents’ weekend that day. It’s a real clean-cut, beautiful campus.

 

JESSE: Would be a shame if a horde of hippies descended on it. Bob had started documenting the Dead by then and sometimes selling his shots in the parking lot before the show. 

 

BOB MINKIN: I really hit the jackpot just recently, when I came back from seeing the Dead at Winterland, the 12/29, 12/30, 12/31/77 [shows]. Those are the best shots I had ever taken. They still stand up well today. And so I had a whole plethora of new shots of the Dead from Winterland, which made it on the East Coast. It was like ‘San Francisco, New Years Eve’! So, those were the latest and the greatest in the spring of ‘78.

 

JESSE: He was out and about outside the William and Mary show.

 

BOB MINKIN: [I’m] hanging out all day — Phil Lesh comes walking out, walking around. Hanging out. He's wearing a Duke University shirt.

 

JESSE: We told a story last episode about an anonymous member of the Dead who wanted to acquire a Duke shirt but wasn’t recognized by a Dead Head on campus. I’ve seen a few people speculating about who that might’ve been, and I’ll throw in the fact that I think all members of the Grateful Dead besides Garcia and Donna Jean were photographed in Duke gear at various times. Anyway, back to Bob in the lot in Williamsburg.

 

BOB MINKIN: You've probably seen that photo I took of Phil in the parking lot, where he's looking at me with that Duke shirt. But I also have these shots of him while walking towards me, and then these kids had this banner that they had painted. They were going to hang it at the show, and asked Phil to sign it. So Phil actually sat down—this is behind the place, where the loading area is—and chatted with us all for a bit, and signed the kids’ banner. I have that all [photographed]: click, click, click, click, click, click. To see a Dead member just walking around the lot back then was pretty cool.

 

JESSE: We’ve posted a link to Bob’s photos.

 

AUDIO: “The Music Never Stopped” [Friend of the Devils: April 1978, 4/14/78] (0:56-1:21) - [dead.net]

 

JESSE: The Williamsburg ‘78 Dead show is fascinating because the audience included two future collaborators with Jerry Garcia. One was the piano player Bruce Hornsby, who’d seen the Dead’s ‘73 appearances and fallen deeply in love with the band. For our next guest, though, the Williamsburg ‘78 gig was some of his first exposure to life in the United States. 

 

AUDIO: “Nocturne/Evening Chant” [Sanjay Mishra feat. Jerry Garcia, Blue Incantation] (0:25-0:54) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: In late 1994, Jerry Garcia would play on several tracks on the album Blue Incantation by guitarist Sanjay Mishra, now available as part of Front Street Outtakes. That was a bit of “Nocturne.” We spoke with Sanjay during our “Playing Dead” episodes because, in the mid-1970s, he played in Maha Maja, perhaps Calcutta’s only Dead cover band.

 

SANJAY MISHRA: Our setlist would go like this: it would be Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Doobie Brothers; Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix; Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers.

 

AUDIO: “Nocturne/Evening Chant” [Sanjay Mishra feat. Jerry Garcia, Blue Incantation] (3:28-3:54) - [Spotify]

 

JESSE: For more of the story of Maja Maha, check out “Playing Dead.” (part 1part 2) By late 1977, Sanjay moved to the Washington DC area to study.

 

SANJAY MISHRA: The first thing I did when I came to the States [was] I went and I saw the Grateful Dead. I was like, “Oh shit, the Grateful Dead are playing in Williamsburg, Virginia! Where the hell is Williamsburg, Virginia?” And somebody said, “Well, it's about 300 miles away.” And I said, “Okay, so how do I get there?” That was my first exposure to life in America. I had just arrived, and the whole road from Richmond to Williamsburg is like a little back road, like a two-lane road. And I was stunned, because the whole road was Dead fans. It was all VW buses, choppers, and people passing joints around. I was like, “This is awesome. I can't believe this is actually, this is actually America. This is what I always thought America was. This is great.” All the way down [to] Williamsburg [from] Richmond, it was only people going to the Dead show. That's it.

 

AUDIO: “Monsoon” [Sanjay Mishra feat. Jerry Garcia, Blue Incantation] (0:10-0:30) - [Spotify]

 

SANJAY MISHRA: I had a friend who was studying at William and Mary. I said, “Can I crash out with you guys in the dorm?” And he said, “Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we're all going to the show. You can come over, we’ve got a whole bunch of goodies that we can partake of.”.And I remember because it really upset all the sorority types that the Grateful Dead were playing there, that these hippies had taken over the ground. So they were, like, throwing firecrackers from their residence hall roofs at the people standing on the lawn and stuff.

 

JESSE: While there were certainly plenty of Dead Heads around causing a ruckus on parents’ weekend, it wasn’t like the full-on Shakedown Street hordes that built steam over the late 1980s. Bob Minkin.

 

BOB MINKIN: There was a lot of homemade kind of stuff, definitely some t-shirts. It was more people selling acid and things like that.

 

JESSE: Bob ran into a certain someone from that world that he knew.

 

BOB MINKIN: There was this fellow… I mean, I can talk about it, because he's dead. His moniker was the Jester, like a court jester. Peter — Peter Jester. He was a pretty well-known figure in the day, and I ran into him before the William and Mary show. I was kind of slow on going in; a lot of people had already gone in, and I ran into him outside. He asked me if I wanted to get high. And I said, “Yeah, sure.” And—this is the kick—he says, “Lay down, lay down on the grass.” I was like, “Why?” And he's taking his dropper out, the liquid, and he goes: “Open your eye.” And I was like, “Is this okay?” He goes, “Yeah, don't worry about it, it's fine.” So he dropped the acid in my eye as a way of ingesting it, and I was kind of like… [makes groaning sounds] But I just went along with it, and it worked! So, that's a bona fide way of doing acid.

 

JESSE: Rob Bleetstein and his crew were in for a surprise when they got inside.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: We hadn't seen any shows or heard the tapes, anything like that. When you went into the venue and saw the stage and saw the setup, you're like: Wow, the kitchen sink is up there. You saw the steel drums.

 

JESSE: Full-time Grateful Dead mail order tickets were still a few years away, but they’d managed to score seats together.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: I think he was either able to buy a group of tickets, either through the Dead office or they set him up with someone at the campus. I don't know exactly, but it's one of those two. They were fine seats on the side section. We were all together, and it was just crazy. The shows that I had really amazing acid trips at are sort of like videotapes in my brain, at least parts of them are. And I'll never forget where we were, who I was with, babysitting one of my best friends through his first acid trip, sitting right next to me. It's like, ‘When's it gonna happen? When's the guy gonna…?’ ‘Don't worry, man, it's gonna happen.’

 

JESSE: Oh, it’s gonna happen.

 

AUDIO: “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (8:16-8:46)

 

JESSE: Dr. Bob Wagner had caught the Dead at William and Mary on both of their previous visits to campus, with the horn section in 1973 where they’d tacked on a bonus night, and their 1976 return.

 

BOB WAGNER: I would say William and Mary kind of stood out for me, even though the recording isn't one of the best from the tour. That was one of the ones I listened to frequently.

 

AUDIO: “Passenger” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (1:15-1:35)

 

BOB WAGNER: On that tour, I was with tapers that were more experienced than I was, so I relied on their judgment. And it's a different situation at every show. Lke at William and Mary, for example, they had seats on the floor, so it was not general admission. We started out toward the back of the floor, and then somebody found some seats further up, and we moved about midway [through the] first set. And you can hear that the tape gets noticeably better at that point.

 

JESSE: For young guitarist Sanjay Mishra, the show was a three-alarm mindmelter.

 

SANJAY MISHRA: I'd never seen a show that good. The only other band in the West I'd seen before them was a band called Yes, who I really liked. So I'd seen Yes, because I knew their music. So I was like, Wow, that they're actually able to play with the play on the records is pretty amazing.

 

AUDIO: “Roundabout” [Yes, 10/28/78] (4:04-4:16)

 

SANJAY MISHRA: Then I saw the Grateful Dead, it was a completely different energy. Yes were more like prog rock, more technical, just a little bit different. Grateful Dead was just very organic and very earthy. And I knew their music, so to actually see them play it live, the way they were able to just take the whole show through different levels of euphoria, was amazing. I saw them every chance I got. I saw them three months later in DC.

 

AUDIO: “Let It Grow” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (7:27-7:42)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: One of the hottest “Let It Grow”s. Jerry's lead, both his breaks on “Let It Grow” at William and Mary are just astounding.

 

AUDIO: “Let It Grow” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (12:06-12:35)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: That whole second set… that “Bertha”/“Good Lovin’” opener, is just another scorcher.

 

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (0:13-0:42)

 

JESSE: The “Bertha” leans into the early, more straight-ahead feel, I think thanks to Mickey Hart.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: They varied from night to night, and the William and Mary one is full-on arena rock.

 

AUDIO: “Bertha” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (3:40-4:06)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: The William and Mary “Candyman” will always be my favorite “Candyman.” It's so heartfelt, so great. 

 

AUDIO: “Candyman” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (2:59-3:36)

 

JESSE: The heart of the Williamsburg second set hinges on a 14-minute version of “Playing in the Band,” which gradually tilts.

 

AUDIO: “Playing in the Band” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (9:44-10:33)

 

JESSE: And tilts some more, moving towards the Rhythm Devils shotlight. 

 

AUDIO: “Playing in the Band” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (11:30-11:56)

 

JESSE: It’s one of the more compact Rhythm Devils sequences, a mere 12 minutes. I’m not sure who’s making the synth noise here.

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (7:17-7:40)

 

JESSE: Rob Bleetstein.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: ‘78… my tapes, all my tapes that I hand-labeled and stuff, say “Percussion Space Madness.” Because that's what it was — it was just so wild. And especially when you're out there on your own other plane, and you're hearing this… some of those things are just completely nuts, and they were fun. 

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (9:53-10:19)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: They were completely goofing around and having a blast, and that was the best part of it. Seeing Jerry up there on a steel drum, even if it was for two minutes or whatever. it was just like, wow, they're all having fun.

 

AUDIO: “Rhythm Devils” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (11:06-11:28)

 

JESSE: There’s a hot “Not Fade Away,” too.

 

AUDIO: “Not Fade Away” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (6:32-7:06)

 

JESSE: But the post-Rhythm Devils sequence has an especially big highlight. John Wehrle left us this message at stories.dead.net.

 

JOHN WEHRLE: I was in high school and hitchhiked from Long Island with my best friend Pat to Williamsburg, Virginia for the 4/15/78 show. We met so many nice people along the way, and one of them, when we got to Williamsburg, was a guy by the name of Douglas Michael Bade, who was a student at William and Mary and let us crash in his dorm. He told us that there had been a car accident the evening before, and another student, a Dead Head, had passed away, which was so sad. It was a beautiful spring day. We spent most of the day, the afternoon, playing Frisbee in the parking lot and drinking beer. Doug had waited by the backstage area and passed a letter on to the Dead, explaining what had happened to his friend and that one of his favorite songs was “Morning Dew.”

 

AUDIO: “Morning Dew” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (0:00-0:25)

 

JESSE: Rob Bleetstein.

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: After the “Drums” and madness, they break into the only “Morning Dew” of 1978 — which was, for all of us, it was our first “Morning Dew.” And after seeing The [Grateful] Dead Movie for, like, a solid year, and living with that 10/18/74, too.

 

AUDIO: “Morning Dew” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (0:37-1:04)

 

JESSE: Bob Minkin.

 

BOB MINKIN: “Morning Dew” is one of my favorite songs, and they did it that night, which was rare, because they hadn't done it in a while. I think it was only one of the few, or only, times they did it in ‘78.

 

JESSE: David Lemieux.

 

DAVID LEMIEUX: This is the classic Grateful Dead: they hadn't done it in a year, and they wouldn't do it for another year-and-a-half. And yet, they're doing it here. This band is endlessly fascinating to me. Comes out of nowhere. It's just amazing.

 

AUDIO: “Morning Dew” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (6:35-6:58)

 

JESSE: The only “Morning Dew” of 1978 was the first since Winterland in June 1977, and the last until November 1979, which makes it the final version performed by the late piano player Keith Godchaux. 

 

AUDIO: “Morning Dew” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (9:18-9:46)

 

JESSE: John Wehrle.

 

JOHN WEHRLE: When they played “Morning Dew,” it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Afterwards, we were walking around backstage, in the backstage parking lot area, and there's a limousine with tinted windows. We could see people in the back, and we knock on the window, and the window rolls down, and it’s Jerry and Bob. Jerry was so kind to us. He was laughing at our stories, and when we asked him about “Morning Dew,” he said, “Oh, that came from the heart.”

 

AUDIO: “Morning Dew” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (10:02-10:35)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: And then we had the whole after-show experience of corralling all these first-time tripping young heads back, somehow, onto this bus, to go back to the hotel. And I believe my friend Stu Barr was doing the roll call. Then, of course, one person is nowhere to be found. So it was then, like, another hour of searching for our friend Dave Fuller — who we found, I think, maybe up a tree or something. But, we found him. [laughs]

 

AUDIO: “One More Saturday Night” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (3:52-4:04)

 

ROB BLEETSTEIN: I don't think sleep was in anybody's plan or possibility. It was teenage debauchery from start to finish, pretty much, with a break for the show.

 

JESSE: The Brooklyn bus headed right home.

 

BOB MINKIN: The bus driver drove us home through the night after the show.

 

JESSE: They only had to wait a few more weeks for the Dead to make it to the Northeast. The Dead, meanwhile, were headed back slightly west again, which is where we’ll point next episode. As the great Baby Jane from the band Oneida says, happy Saturday night y’all. 

 

AUDIO: “One More Saturday Night” [Dave’s Picks 37, 4/15/78] (4:22-4:44)