Grateful Dead

Fare Thee Well – Chicago 2015

It’s been a week since I got home from Chicago and I’m still processing the experience of attending the Fare Thee Well shows. Herein, I shall relate the story of my weekend and, hopefully suss out a few things that I learned along the way.

We set off early on Thursday morning from Washington D.C. I and two of my oldest friends, Andy and Modi, with whom I’ve seen countless shows over the past twenty-plus years of friendship. This would be a big one. We were going to Soldier Field in Chicago for the final shows to feature the remaining “core four” members of the Grateful Dead. Two days earlier, Modi and I had marked the 20th anniversary of our last Grateful Dead shows. Now we were flying down the highway towards a great unknown. Having heard the Santa Clara Fare Thee Well shows, our expectations were tempered, at best. In fact, you could say that we were a bit dubious about what Chicago would bring. But, we were also excited. We’d been waiting months for this day to come, and finally, we were Chicago-bound. Continue reading →

20 Years Later: RFK ’95

I was going to write a pair of posts, much in the vein of my recent Phish anniversary posts, describing my adventures at the final Grateful Dead shows at Washington, D.C.’s RFK Stadium. But I can’t think on those shows without peeling back a scab that, somehow, isn’t quite healed. These two shows were not my last Grateful Dead shows. That one is chronicled here: All The Years Combine. I think that it’s been difficult to write about these shows because of what the annual tradition of the Grateful Dead at RFK Stadium meant and, how the void has never been filled.

I attended my first concert at RFK Stadium. Not just my first Grateful Dead show; my first concert. I became instantly hooked on Grateful Dead. The magic that they and the audience injected into the mundane urban stadium was equally intoxicating. The stadium itself resonated with energy. Even though, objectively, the first show I attended was the best overall performance I’d ever see from the Dead, I returned to RFK each year. In between, I went to as many other shows, in as many other cities, as seemed reasonable. Btu I always went back. My batteries recharged in that stadium. Continue reading →

My First Grateful Dead Show: 24 Years Ago

It’s been 24 years since my first Grateful Dead show. This piece, describing that day, first appeared on my website fourteen years ago. I have revised it somewhat but it’s mostly unaltered.

RFK 1991-06-14

It began, actually, as most any other day in my high school career. But, as I lay in bed, ignoring my alarm clock and blinking the sleep from my eyes; an unsettling thought crossed my mind. It entered, echoed and hung there a bit like an early-morning winter fog.

“The Grateful Dead are playing tonight.”

This alone was not too remarkable as they played on quite a few nights of the year, even in 1991. On this particular night, however, they were playing in my town and I was not going.

I’d never been to a Dead show before; nor any concerts, in fact. This was due to various parental reasons and the fact that I had never found anything so worth rebellion that I’d test my parents crazed midnight curfew. So, on this day, I knew the Dead were in town and I shrugged it off and let it go. Clamoring downstairs, I threw Workingman’s Dead on the record player and commenced my pre-school ritual. June 14 marked the last day of school for my Junior year. I ate my daily frozen-waffle breakfast, hopped into my (Dad’s) Camry and headed to school. Continue reading →

20 Years Ago: Unbroken Chain

Keeping the clock wound back to twenty years ago, I could be found, in the early morning hours of March 19, 1995, collecting my friend Joel and my girlfriend from their homes and aiming my ’83 Datsun Sentra toward Philadelphia. Several of our friends had gone up two days earlier for the Grateful Dead shows but, due to wanting to keep my job (as mentioned in a previous post), I had stayed behind to work. But, not on Sunday. We aimed to arrive early and scour the lots for tickets to that weekend’s third (and ultimately final) show at the Spectrum. It would be only the second time I’d gone to a Grateful Dead show without a ticket in-hand. It would also be the last.

It was still dark when we left Northern Virginia. I don’t like to be late for anything. The air was chilly with few clouds as we crossed the Susquehanna River Bridge in Maryland at sunrise. It didn’t warm up too much. We arrived in Philly for breakfast, laid back in a nearby park, and waited for the masses to arrive so that we could begin the process of asking each and every one of them for their extra tickets. This is a process that I never enjoyed and always sought to avoid. Walking through rows of parking lots with a handmade sign, shouting my hope to purchase or barter an exchange for an extra ticket. We met up with our friends. Only one of the three had gotten into a show so far. None of them had tickets for this Sunday show. Things were looking grim but I kept looking. Continue reading →

All The Years Combine

Twenty years ago, I was a twenty-year-old Deadhead with no worries beyond growing my small record collection and obtaining tickets for the next Grateful Dead shows. I’d been seeing them for nearly four years, listening for maybe eight, and I’d just come home from the Mardi Gras run in Oakland, California. My t-shirts were strictly music-related, my trousers corduroy, and my hair was a disaster. I had a girlfriend and a 1983 Datsun Sentra. Both were good enough. My life plans involved seeing any and every amazing concert possible; primarily, but not exclusively, Grateful Dead and Phish; and writing about them for any audience that might have eyes for such things. What could go wrong?

I only managed one show on the Grateful Dead’s East Coast Spring Tour that year. Money was tight after my California trip and I was disinclined to quit my record store job, so work took a degree of precedence. After all, Summer Tour mail-order would come around soon enough. But, I had the fortune to be inside the Philly Spectrum when they played the first live “Unbroken Chain”. That’s the way things went. You never knew which show would be the show. You went when you could and enjoyed what you found.

Dance. Wash¹. Repeat.

June rolled around and we caught some Phish shows, followed by the annual Dead shows at RFK Stadium and a one-nighter in Pittsburgh. We mail-ordered for Grateful Dead Fall Tour. My 21st birthday coincided with the scheduled Boston run and GDTS set us up with decent seats. Phish mail order soon followed for what was to become a legendary tour. Life was good. Even when it wasn’t. Who could complain about such riches? Continue reading →

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