November 1970. I was in my third year of studies at the University of Windsor, taking a major in English Literature, although in reality my major was working at the student radio station and going to as many concerts as I could afford. I'd heard the Grateful Dead, of course; their album, Workingman's Dead, had come out earlier that summer, and I had driven my parents crazy playing Uncle John's Band as loud as my cheap record player would permit (and getting told off for playing a song with "god damn" in the chorus).
I wouldn't have called myself a Deadhead at the time. I was much more into the Jefferson Airplane, having seen them twice in Detroit by that point. Friends of mine asked me if I wanted to go to Rochester, where some of them were from, to see the Dead at the University of Rochester on November 20th. I wasn't too keen on the idea, but it turned out that the Airplane were playing in Rochester the same night, and they told me the Airplane would probably come over and jam after their show was over. That was enough to get me to drive 300 miles to Rochester with four other people crammed into a Volkwagon Beetle.
The concert started with a set by the New Riders of the Purple Sage, a psychedelic country band, with Jerry Garcia sitting in on pedal steel. I remember little of their set, other than being blown away by Garcia's playing.
The Dead were something else. I wasn't a Deadhead when I walked into the gym, but I was after about five minutes of Cold Rain and Snow, their first song. That's all it took. I've heard of people becoming heroin addicts on their first shot. The Dead's music was like that. It hit your mind, your body, and your soul, and filled them all with joy.
I don't remember a lot of the concert, due to the mists of time and various substances consumed that night. I do remember being able to get right up close to the band as they were playing in a gym on a low, makeshift stage. I remember dancing - you could not sit still during a Grateful Dead concert. I remember the third set (or maybe an extended second set) with Jorma Kaukonen from the Airplane. It finally ended sometime around 2:00 a.m. Word was that the Airplane wanted to do a set, but the university security people shut them down. Considering the concert had started around 7:30 the previous evening, I can't really blame them.
(I am pretty sure this picture is from the Palestra concert-note the basketball hoop. Jorma is just to Bob Weir's left).
The Dead became a part of my life that night, and never left. I'm listening to an episode of the Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast as I type this, an episode about the recording of American Beauty which had just been released in November 1970. And I become a tape trader and amassed a sizeable collection of concert recordings. Their music became the soundtrack to my life.
I saw them eight times. Each concert was different and each was magic in its own way. Their July 4, 1986 concert in Buffalo was probably responsible for my current marriage, as Nancy was one of the group I drove down to Buffalo with, and it was the first time I really got to know her.
Thanks to the magic of Maxell (or maybe it was Ampex) and the bearded guy with the reel-to-reel tape deck in the middle of the floor, a tape of the concert survives and you can download or stream it from the Grateful Dead's section of the Internet Live Music Archive. By modern standards, it's not the greatest quality recording and there are cuts and dropouts, but it's good enough. There's a review of the show here that describes it as "raw and thrilling", which is pretty accurate. It probably won't change your life the way it changed mine, but you might get lucky.
"Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." - Grateful Dead - Scarlet Begonias
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