I saw a lot of shows back in the day. No regrets.
We got the “Truckin’ Up to Buffalo” DVD from Netflix. My wife and I were at this concert (we were still dating) so it has special meaning to us.
So, I’ve generally been playing more Dead the past few weeks, and looking up shows on the internet. And I came across an interesting commentary on this show. It pretty much sums up the deadhead experience of thirty years ago.
One of the greatest shows ever. Really. …
… Been at the Grateful Dead concert two nights ago at the Red Rocks Amphitheater outside of Boulder, Colorado along with Mark, Peter Lemonjello, me, and 10,000 other crazed bozos.
But only a few of those had decided to take the long drive down to Texas -- 900 miles -- to see just one Dead show near Austin … The Grateful Dead play a completely different rock show every night, and a lot of folks look for clues … to help them pick which shows will be the hot ones.
I went to Texas because Mark had called this one. … the tickets were impregnated with little specks of silver sparkle, probably to make them harder to counterfeit, but Mark saw it as an omen.
"Look, over the years we've gone through hundreds of different theories on how to pick the hot shows,” Mark said. “Saturdays. Favorite concert halls. Cities where they played a hot show last year. Outdoor shows. We're never right. I'm averaging only one out of every 15 shows that I pick being the amazing performance that makes my jaw drop; that makes me scratch my head for weeks afterwards saying, 'What was that!' [emphasis added]
Read the whole thing.
I wasn’t at the show, but I got a tape of it way back in ‘82, and I found that commentary after listening to the “Scarlet > Fire” from that show. You can watch the whole thing here:
The video is very dark, but the sound is excellent.
Trivia: my very small business school (25 faculty*) in Mormon-as-it-gets Cedar City has, not one, but two faculty members who were deadheads. Both turned out to be conservatives. Go figure.
* Just a quick plug – we are the smallest business school that’s accredited at the top level (AACSB).
Comments