This week's Saturday Sounds post is something that is personally special because I was there. The concert was the Grateful Dead (as the opening act) and Bob Dylan with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at Rich Stadium in Orchard Park, NY, just outside Buffalo on July 4, 1986. The concert was part of Farm Aid and hence there are decent videos circulating.
I went to the concert with four other people, one of whom was Nancy Vindum, the wonderful woman who is now my wife. We consider it to be our first date.
This was the fifth time I'd seen the Dead and it wasn't the best of the shows I'd seen. We were far enough back that I couldn't really see the band, there were no video screeens, and the sound was rather distant, though clean. At the time, the Dead's performance felt perfunctory, though listening to it now, it was certainly energetic enough.
This is a video of the second set, upgraded to 1080p from VHS, with soundboard audio. The "Cold Rain and Snow" opener was appropriate as a small shower passed over us right then. Note that there is no sound until the Dead's set starts about 4 minutes in. There is a video of the first set on YouTube, but it's for completists only.
The second video is of Bob Dylan with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I enjoyed it more than the Dead's set and more than some of my friends who were more into Dylan's folk period. The video doesn't include the last six songs, which is unfortunate, as we left about halfway through the set because we had a two-hour drive back to Toronto. The video and audio quality aren't quite as good as the Dead's video but it is watchable. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in 1986.
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