Broome County Arena
I got my ticket from a close friend - my freshman pal who got a bad infection in the days before the show. A junior at school (who we hung out and listened to the Dead with) had the wheels and he drove down from Ithaca. We got there with time to spare and as we walked into what was a fully GA arena, we were free to choose wherever we wanted to be in the arena. We decided to sit in the stands up on the left side, where we would be close but still comfortable for the show. My roommate from school wanted to tough it out on the floor - and he got right in front of the stage. He later told us all about how people were passing out due to the heat - during the show some some of those folks were lifted up over the crowd to security at the stage in front.
The 1970 Binghamton (Harpur College) show with its great acoustic set was one of the first Dead tapes I got at school earlier in my first school year. I would also find over the next few years that the upstate Dead shows had a slightly less hectic and more intimate feeling than city arenas. When you came in and looked at the stage all set up with the Dead’s own equipment and the double drums, it seemed more like some of the good old days. Phil Lesh displayed his flannel shirt and Bobby remarked that the shirt had belonged to Pigpen (you can hear this on the tape).
Opening the second set, China Cat was pulled out from what seemed, at the time, like a permanent retirement, to an arena filled with frenzied fans. It was played in the midwest in February before Brent joined, but most of us had no idea, really - there were few mechanisms at the time to find out about setlists.
The audience recording of this show is a real classic; on this tape you can hear the reaction of the crowd at the beginning of the second set… like, are they really playing this? its a really energetic and unique version, with Brent’s percussive Fender Rhodes very prominent, only to be outdone by the Truckin jam that came later in the set.
“Blazing” is the word (and its a good one) they use on Dead.net to describe the Spring tour in 1979. It was certainly a very focused, energetic performance on this night. The energy and excitement that came with hiring Brent and having a new configuration was obvious in those early Brent days. And as noted below, the tape is a classic, but honestly fails to fully reveal the sonic eruptions from the various instruments that we experienced live that night.
Soon after the show we got a copy of that classic audience recording - the same one that has circulated for years. It was written up with great praise in Deadbase, and has gotten tons of listens since then. (References herein to Deadbase are to my 1994 version, Deadbase VIII). The fan comments on Archive.org for this particular show are a sort of classic collection of fun posts mostly from people who attended.
Below: One of my all-time favorite editions of Relics magazine from that year, with coverage not only of the Dead’s trip to Egypt but also the 1978 Little Feat tour and David Gilmour’s first solo album.
