When my son Zane was young enough to be strapped in a car seat in the back of my dad sedan, I played a cassette tape of the Grateful Dead singing Scarlet Begonias. It was the first time he had ever heard the band, and he listened for about 30 seconds.
“This is good music,” he said, “you can dance to it.”
That pretty much summed it up.
I never was a Deadhead—the uber-fan who would follow the band across multiple shows, where no songs were ever played the same way twice—but like anyone alive in the 60s and beyond, the Dead provided a soundtrack to my life through FM radio and their artful record albums, which I played on the air as a DJ on my college radio station. My first show was just across campus at Cornell University’s Barton Hall on May 8th, 1977. Astute fans consider that date one of the top ten live shows of more than 2,300 the group performed, the highlight of a great tour when every member of the band was firing on all cylinders, when everything just worked.
The cassette I played in the car came from that show, copied from a source with tape wrinkles that messed up a couple of key passages, and I was pleased when it got released on CD a few decades later without them. But those were analog days, when fans could order tickets by mail, and when taping sections were provided at concerts so shows could be recorded by fans: “When we’re done with it, they can have it,” said guitarist Jerry Garcia, capturing the ethos of the band as well as the times. Cassettes would be decorated by hand, and kind tape traders would copy and swap tapes with each other.
That was then. My last Dead show was at the Los Angeles Sports Arena on December 9th, 1993. Tickets were arranged through the TV network where I worked, and it wasn’t until I arrived with a friend that we realized there were yellow stickers—backstage passes—in the envelope with our tickets. We made our way through the freewheeling parking lot scene, where balloons full of nitrous oxide bumped up against outnumbered members of law enforcement, and by the time we got in, the place was already jammed. The venue was cavernous and corporate, quickly dispelling the notion that we’d be hanging out with members of the band. But we did take up positions with a small crowd just off stage which gave me a unique perspective on the scene from the band’s point of view. The usual cast of tie-dyed characters stretched out to infinity, with the spinners in front of the stage waiting to spin.
As I watched Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann walk out and mount their drum kits, I got the feeling they were bull riders saddling up on this enormous beast of an audience about to come flailing out of a rodeo gate. When molecules of air started moving to the downbeat of “Touch of Grey,” the place lit up, the spinners started spinning and the band started to ride. The energy was absolutely enormous. In keeping with the band’s alchemistic bent, the show featured Brazilian jazz singer Flora Purim and percussionist Airto Moreira along with trailblazing jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. But it was short— lasting only two and a half hours.
Garcia died less than two years later.
A public tribute was announced, and I flew to San Francisco to check it out, joining a zillion other people coming to terms of with end of something big, magical and familiar. It was August 13th, 1995, at Golden Gate Park's Polo Field. In January, 1967 the Dead had headlined the first “Human Be-In” there, joining Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alan Watts and others in announcing the arrival of the counterculture. The whole country descended on Height-Ashbury, the “Summer of Love” followed, and the rest is history.
This time the city was very much in shock, with a shroud hanging off the railing of the Grateful Dead house at 710 Ashbury Street, and makeshift shrines rising on corners around town. In Golden Gate Park I joined a New Orleans-style funeral procession, with a Chinese dragon, drums and chants of “Not Fade Away.” The remaining members of the band were there along with Garcia’s widow, the Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner, and Wavy Gravy, who declared it was a day for “good grief” and read a eulogy by Hunter that included these words:
If some part of that music
is heard in deepest dream,
or on some breeze of Summer
a snatch of golden theme,
we'll know you live inside us
with love that never parts
our good old Jack O'Diamonds
become the King of Hearts.
For a little while afterwards, Hunter opened himself up to the public with an email address that must have drawn notes from countless fans, including me. I asked him what music he’d recommend: “The New Lost City Ramblers,” he replied, “and follow their sources.” I did, and that’s how I wound up studying Folklore in North Carolina.
I took these photos in San Francisco that day. None of the really good ones are here—I sent all of those to people who swapped tapes with me.
I was done with them, and they could have them.
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
© 2022 David Potorti
I was just going to write what Eddie A said, “beautifully captured.” So I’ll add that I remember seeing the Dead at a concert at my school, American University, in the 70s. It was the largest concert I think I’ve been to and I still remember the feeling of the mellow crowd and the almost hypnotic, relaxing sound. I would have really liked the Brazilian jazz you saw with them.
Beautifully captured.