setlist
New Minglewood Blues
Dire Wolf
Me and My Uncle
Big River
They Love Each Other
Looks Like Rain
Brown Eyed Women
Beat it on Down the Line
Stagger Lee
Dancin' in the Streets
Deal
Scarlet Begonias
Fire on the Mountain
Samson and Delilah
He's Gone
drums
Black Peter
Truckin'
U.S. Blues
show date
Venue
dead comment
The bus came by and I got on...
My first show and I had no clue what I was hearing that night, but when I listen now to the post-drumz section of the second set, I'm blown away by the ferociousness of the jams, which seem to have left their mark on my DNA.
Mine too....
Just a kid, and all I'd heard was 'American Beauty' and 'Skeletons'. I did not know what was coming! And the band still with the dust of Egypt on their shoes. First time trippin' and mesmerized.
My buddy and I couldn't figure out if the show was over at the break. The lights were on but noone left! From way up there in the balcony(from out *unique* prerspective) it looked like Middle Earth on the main floor....Long beards and huge wooden pipes, everywhere.
~I was concealed
Now I am stirring
And I will lay my love around you...~
Errrrrr.......
That would be 'perspective'...
~I was concealed
Now I am stirring
And I will lay my love around you...~
... and mine, too
Entering the Uptown on my first night at a Dead show was like entering a different universe. A guy in a top hat; a girl running up with roses for Jerry; the vibe was kind of scary, kind of wonderful, all at the same time.
A month or so earlier, I'd never even heard the music. I was a lonely, alienated freshman feeling out of place in a dorm where all the other girls seemed to belong to sororities. I heard that people said I was "a hippie," which startled me, since I didn't even know there still WERE hippies in 1978, let alone that I somehow might be seen as one.
One day I'd spotted a long-haired guy in the cafeteria, sitting alone and also looking out of place, and we started talking. He asked if I'd ever heard the Grateful Dead. Well, no, I hadn't. He played some albums for me (Aoxomoxoa and Anthem of the Sun: good choices) and a few weeks later, he and some people he knew were going to these shows and had spare tickets, and ... there I was, in this gorgeous, glittering theater, with amazing music all around and an intense communal vibe and an unstoppable urge to dance or float or both.
I actually remember thinking at one point during this run that I wish I had discovered this band earlier, and that I must have missed so much, since gosh, it was already ... 1978!!!
I feel privileged to have gotten on the bus at the "late date" of '78. It was one of the last shows with Keith and Donna, and I remember them vividly. There were many good years to come, and the music never stops.