This was a great show to attend at the old Wohlman rink concert venue. We sat outside the venue on the rocks in Central Park and enjoyed the weather as a cool breeze came through after a storm earlier that day. From that vantage point we could see part of the movie screen above the stage and hear it really well. We took a walk and could still hear the music on the famous old bridge that crosses the pond.
I was a freshman at Ithaca College and I pretty quickly found a bunch of cool people and serious GD heads.
Even during the summer orientation I become friendly with someone who was tied in as a tape trader, and right when we got back up to school he let me pick six tapes from his collection. I had listened to GD tapes before, including some reel to reels that a friend’s brother had recorded at the Fillmore East, but I had no copies of those, and I don’t think I had heard much at all that took place after 1971 other than shows that had been broadcast live on the radio. In that week before this show I got my first copies of 6-16-74, parts of the classic April 71 Fillmore East run, a classic Avalon Ballroom tape, and the Binghamton show from 5-15-70. My mind was blown by hearing them for the first time and I will never forget what it was like when I first popped a crystal-clear soundboard of the second set of 6-16-74 in my tape player.
My new friends invited me to head down to Giants Stadium for this show. One of them was a Sophomore who had a car and was as psyched to go as was I.
The Dead were on their way to Egypt to play at the Great Pyramid and this was kind of an unusual stand-alone show before that excursion. They had to watch the time, and someone in the band motioned to their watch during the jam.
I remember that when I heard that Willie Nelson was opening. It was the first time I had ever (like, ever) heard of him.
Few good tapes surfaced for a long time, and until recently I don’t think I ever heard any soundboards of this show. Nowadays I hear stuff like the Looks Like Rain from this show played on The Grateful Dead channel in soundboard form. Fun to hear, unexpectedly, while driving in the car, for the first time in 40 years.
I had become a Little Feat fan in High School after learning about them from a friend's sister who was attending College at the time in Maryland, and really got into them after taping a replay of the classic 1974 Ultrasonic Recording Studios performance on WLIR. So I was very happy when I learned that the Feat were going to play on my own college campus during my first semester at school.
What really surprised me is what I saw when I walked down from my dorm on the hill to my first class that day - lots of fans camping out in front of the gym early in the morning, to get the best seats inside for the show that night.
Before the show started, the fire marshals spent lots of time clearing the aisles, insisting that the show wouldn't start until the aisles were completely clear and everyone was in a seat.
When the band took the stage, Lowell George immediately said something to this effect: "You don't need to listen to them, feel free to come on up closer to the stage." For a moment, nobody moved. Lowell then repeated himself, saying, "hey, I'm serious, just come on up if ya want to." At that point, tons of fans all at once broke free of their seats, raced up toward the stage, and filled the aisles, and much to the chagrin of the marshals the show started - Little Feat on what would be considered a classic 1978 tour, burning through another hot performance.
During this show, Paul Barrere was wearing a NY Yankees jersey bearing the number 9 - as worn by Graig Nettles that year. I got a chance to meet Paul at the Jamaica Little Feat excursion in 2016, and I mentioned this recollection to him. He proceeded to tell me what a huge Baseball fan he is (he’s a SF Giants fan) and told me how a friend of his brother had gotten the jerseys. (The 1978 world series had taken place just a few weeks before the show, NY sports fans were still thrilled by the Yankees' performance in the series, including several amazing defensive plays by Nettles that perhaps saved many runs and made the difference in the Yankees' triumph over their rivals, the LA Dodgers.)
Sadly, Lowell George passed away only a short time later, at only 34 years old.
Below: 1979 Relix magazine article about the 1978 tour.
This is another of the great shows I saw at the Palladium before it was demolished. Jorma sat on a chair and played solo acoustic during the first set, then played an electric set with only a drummer accompanying him. We had excellent seats in the first section of the Orchestra which cost only $8.50.
This was the very first show ever played by the Dead at MSG .... the shows had been rescheduled from the Fall of 1978 when Jerry was ill.
I sat in the row directly behind the soundboard and - very coincidentally - met members of the Dead's crew, including Dan Healy, before the show and at the break. I say “coincidentally” because it was a particularly bad night for them as they had some bad sound problems that caused a lot of aggravation to the crew. In the second set an awful loud screeching feedback suddenly came from the PA - and provoked a mad scramble by everyone at the soundboard to try to find the source of the problem; they were running around and checking all of the wire connections that ran along the floors even. They were just frantically scrambling, trying to find the problem, as the Dead played on through NFA and then Black Peter. I am not sure what the culprit was but it was a level 1 emergency for the sound crew that night.
The Spring Concert my first year at school. I arrived in the early afternoon after returning from Syracuse where had my broken left thumb set in a splint by a hand specialist up there.
{Photos to be posted}
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.
Another outdoor summer's end concert on the first weekend of September. This was the last time I slept over in a lot for a show, and the only time I did so to gain priority in admittance to a (general admission) show.... We drove up from Ithaca the night before. The friendly folks in the parking lot kept us up late and someone thought they would let everyone know, loudly, when the clock struck 6 am. So we were among the first hundred people to bolt onto the field when the gates opened, and stake out our spot. But the trade-off was that we were mostly sitting in the sun all day on what ending up being a brutally hot day. The Dead's equipment truck was late and by the time we sat through two opening bands, and the equipment delay, it was a longgggg day.
Fans of the Good Rats - a LI club-scene band, screamed "rats!" in excitement as black rubber rats were thrown from the stage to the audience toward the end of their set. The sun was still blazing late in the afternoon when the Dead came on, and by that time I was wearing a yellow towel on my head to reduce the sun stroke I felt in my sleep-deprived head. I could see the band real well during the show from about 30 or 40 yards back, on Jerry's side. At one point Jerry looked straight at the towel on my head and literally made a goofy face at me, like hey, "it cant be that bad that you need to wear that thing on your head."
It was my second show with Brent on keyboards, and interesting to really see him up close this time - right up front with his long hair, energetically playing hammond organ and electric piano. I was pleased to see him playing a Fender Rhodes, as I had bought one just a couple of years back in time, inspired a lot by Keith Godchaux's playing, although Keith played it mostly in 74 and 75 and had migrated from an acoustic grand to the Yamaha electric in 1977. In those early shows with Brent he just killed it on electric piano and organ, changing the Dead's entire sound, playing unique rocking and funky percussive styles on the Rhodes (and adding grand piano by the time they did the acoustic sets in 1980).
When Brent was hired and started playing with the band in early 1979 there was no publicity about him - no announcements or anything that I ever saw - a stark contrast to today’s over-hyped world. My appreciation for all of what Brent brought to the band and his songs has only grown and grown over the years.
The show is written up in Deadbase and tapes of this show rate very highly among fans; a wonderful recording is available on the Archive.
At the end, all the hassles of driving up the day before, trying to sleep in a parking lot with people screaming, and then sitting through the good rats on an excruciatingly hot day.... was worth it.
For me and for many all over the world, Bob Marley and the Wailers were right at the core of the music I loved, and right there on levels beyond music, expressing so many timeless and important things poetically and beautifully.
This show was a Halloween spectacle, but no one in the band donned a costume, only some of the audience members.
We drove the back roads of NY from Ithaca to Colgate, one small town after another with its civil war monument, each with the children out trick or treating. On the way home we were happy to get a healthy dose of a Led Zeppelin's recently released "In Through the Out Door" on FM radio.
I was amazed at how LOUD the show was; it seemed to peak during the guitar solo of "Heathen."
I had been a fan for years, listening to Marley and reggae and listening to Carribean radio in NYC , but my exposure to and appreciation for reggae would only expand during the next few years.
The concert committee at IC was known for doing a great job - and this was another big event at our school.
Not many people will remember this show, with a member of the Grateful Dead playing at the long-gone-but-not-forgetten Ritz in NYC. I went to see Bill Kreutzman’s band at the Ritz, where I saw some other great shows in its day.
The date is uncertain, and I could find nothing online about the tour or tour dates. They hand-wrote the band name on a generic Ritz stub for this event.
In an excited state on the day of this show I sprained my ankle running down the stairs of my friend’s dorm. Later I hobbled into the Landmark Theatre with an ace bandage on my ankle after driving up from Ithaca.
The cover of the Program from the show has a nice illustration by Bob Zanmarchi.
I don’t know if there are any tapes of this, it would be cool to check it out.
Robert Hunter opened.
(From local newspaper coverage.)
From the time the album was released and the shows announced, everything involving The Wall had that aura of rock history in the making. And at the concerts, it felt that way from the start of the shows. These shows were among the few actual live performances of The Wall by Pink Floyd in early 1980 shortly after the album was released. Due to the complexity of the stage props (which included giant puppets and mechanical arms adding bricks to the Wall as the concert progressed), the American shows involved only two venues, with a run of shows in LA and then in NY. (The first London performance took place later that year.) This was the first NY performance, on a Saturday night.
I was lucky to have excellent floor seats for N1. A friend managed to get a home movie camera in on some nights, and took some good footage of the performances, including the infamous flower sequence.
A fan video of this entire show, with both video and audio recordings from the audience, recently surfaced and although it is of somewhat dubious quality in spots, it is very amazing to see and hear so much of the actual show, in sequence. There’s also a fairly high quality version of the London (Earl’s Court) shows that came later, which are very cool to see.
There were a number of theatrical aspects of the show, starting with the voice of an MC who came on before the show, which played into the themes of the album and the delusional state of the main character. During the performance, a "surrogate band" appeared during certain parts of the show (following the storyline of the album), sometimes playing alongside with the members of Pink Floyd. The Wall was constructed, brick by brick on an ongoing basis, from the song "Another Brick in the Wall" onward, during the first set.
During the intermission and when the performance continued with side 3 of the album, the Wall stood in its entirety, in between the stage and the audience. During "Hey You" we could see the stage lights flashing above and behind the wall, but that's all. The sequence of songs from side 3 of the original album culminated in Comfortably Numb with Gilmour playing a classic guitar solo while standing on a platform high above the wall, with Waters playing Doctor while he sang in a white coat way below.
These live performances contained a song that was omitted from the album, but which can be heard on the bootlegs and in the movie version, as discussed in this wikipedia page. The animated "flower sequence" discussed in the aforementioned article appeared on the round screen used for years for Floyd’s video sequences. During the performance of "Young Lust," Waters joined Gilmour at his mic to sing vocals together, rock and roll style a la Mick and Keith.
During "Nobody Home," Waters sat in a chair with a television on, in what looked like a college dorm room, carved out of one area of the wall. He flipped channels and, as far as it appeared, he was actually viewing live television.
At the conclusion, after the wall came down, the band members came out and played the final tune with acoustic instruments, Rick Wright playing the accordian.
The fact that the shows were only done this way by Pink Floyd several times, as limited-run, big multi-media performances, made it a real tragedy that the films of the shows were destroyed. I could barely watch The Wall movie when it came out, remembering the shows I saw and knowing all the while that the concerts themselves were supposed to serve as the raw material for the movie.
With the previous album, Animals (see my posts about the two 1977 shows at which Pink Floyd played that album in its entirety), this album pushed further into existentialism, and also the psychology of war, and totalitarianism. In the fan video of this show you can see Waters refer to the giant Piggy, which made a renewed appearance at the Wall shows, and he makes a similar introduction as he did in 1977, noting that there’s sometimes more to a Piggy than meets the eye. True, no?
Below: Publicity for the film’s release.
During the Nassau run, I saw two shows; these were among the few actual live performances of The Wall by Pink Floyd, soon after the album was released. See the previous post for 2/24/80.
Below: Early 1980 Grateful Dead newsletter mentioning the upcoming release of “Go To Heaven.”
This was the first of two Grateful Dead shows that I saw at Cornell while I attended Ithaca College. The concept of springtime tours through smaller cities and college towns - especially on the east coast - seemed a big part of what the Grateful Dead was to us in those days. Ithaca College had a community of serious Dead fans and as soon as school started I met several. A depth and variety of music permeated that community of people.
As it was the year before, there were some Grateful Dead shows we could get to at both the beginning and end of the school year, but the Dead were coming right to us this time in the Spring. Even for IC students, (Cornell's) Collegetown was a fun place to eat and drink, see some live bands and even buy some records at Collegetown Records. We often went to the Chariot and the Nines for drinks and for live music (and, according to my discriminating Brooklyn friend, for the “best pizza anywhere”. Sadly, the Nines closed in 2018.) Barton Hall is just a few blocks from there. It was really nice to have that feeling that the Dead and all things emanating therefrom were right there in your own small college town. Jerry even noodled around with the Cornell song on this night.
When I started school in the fall of 1978, “Shakedown Street” was the new Grateful Dead album…. and now "Go to Heaven" had just been released and for a couple of weeks we listened to it in the dorm. We scrawled “Sure Don’t Know What I’m Going For…” in chalk inside the stairway of the dorm; we imagined what Saint of Circumstance would sound like live with the big Timpanis. The Go to Heaven material would indeed fall heavily into the rotation for this year and the next. Feel Like a Stranger - all laid back and funky, with Brent’s new keyboard sounds, was played in classic form at both Ithaca shows, in addition to really classic Shakedowns and Altheas at both shows.
On the afternoon of this show I drove up and headed over to catch the soundcheck. As I sat there on the lawn outside Barton Hall the Dead ran through Playin' in the Band with some starts and stops, and strangely, in that song, I heard the lyrics being altered by Weir to "Playin in the Barn." They played it in the second set that night, and he went ahead and sang it that way at one point. Years later, some of the comments on archive.org may have misunderstood his reference.... Barton Hall is the Cornell campus' old track and field building - and it has a long rectangular shape with a ceiling that made it look like a gigantic barn inside. "Playin’ in the Barn" ... just hearing that outside made it seem like the Dead felt at home at this place.
This show was three years and one day after the first time they played in the same building, a show that would be chosen as the favorite concert tape among fans (as polled by "Deadbase") from all of the Dead's shows, first on cassette and then digitally, although the Deadbase reviews by the serious tapers talk about how the show is actually overrated, an inevitable conclusion for anyone that knows the overall catalog of Grateful Dead performances and appreciates the band’s long history. In addition, due weight must be given to Bob Weir’s more recent disclosure that the 1977 show never actually took place.
In 1980, and for some time thereafter, that now-famous 1977 show wasn't famous at all - as many fans know, the original tapes of that show were among the ones recorded by Betty Cantor and left in a storage locker until the late 1980s. Its just funny because in retrospect I can say pretty confidently that at this show in 1980, most of us knew nothing at all about that 1977 show … In those days, setlists of previous shows weren't even available in any medium, and the only 1977 shows in most of our tape collections at the time consisted of the Chicago, Capitol Theatre (NJ) and Englishtown shows - all shows that had been broadcast over the radio.
Some fine soundboard tapes of the 1980 and '81 Ithaca shows surfaced in later years and forever confirm how good these shows were.... both are among the strongest sets played in two of the most productive years for the band. This 1980 performance would showcase them in fine form, playing funky, bluesy, spacey and all things in between, earning its release as part of the Road Trips collection of Grateful Dead live shows.
Take note, Senator Al Franken (since you have such a keen interest in comparing versions), that two beautiful Altheas were played here in Ithaca, and this one is worth your consideration, for sure. (A week later I would see the Dead play the Honorable Senator’s favorite version in Nassau.)
I admit I do have a historical bias for shows in May of any given year ( especially in the peak eras, like the spring tours during 1972 and 1977). I also love listening to the 1977 Barton show, especially after seeing the band in that building twice. But I do have to cringe every time I read or hear the silliness about how the 1977 Ithaca show was “the greatest” GD concert. I appreciate it as part of ‘the trilogy,” comprised by Betty Cantor’s great tapes of that 3 night run on the road in Boston, Ithaca and then Buffalo. From the time I had first heard the Betty Boards of those 3 shows, it was pretty much a game changer all the way around - for me, none is head and shoulders above the rest (but the Buffalo show satisfies me just fine as the closer, with its perfect renditions of so many great tunes, and with Come a Time in set 2 and then the Uncle John’s encore). The Deadbase reviews (published in the 90s) had cut Buffalo down a notch but raised up the Boston show a notch.
I think that one reason the 5/8/77 got such rave reviews from cassette traders was there was something special about the sound on that particular tape from Betty - not just punchy and clear but it sounded like a matrix recording at a time before people created those. And perhaps the reason for the quality of the sound on those tapes had to do with Barton Hall's acoustics and the kind of hall reverb that was present when the Dead were "Playin' in the Barn."
The 1981 Barton Hall show would bear some interesting similarities to this one and would take it all a step further.
Below: From a 1981 Relix magazine - a nice article on Betty.
Grateful Dead at Nassau Coliseum, May 14, 1980
Three months after seeing Pink Floyd play The Wall at Nassau Coliseum, and a week after the Ithaca GD show, I was there when the Dead rolled back into the Coliseum. These ended up being considered classic shows in that time period, a great one for the Dead. Selections were played on the radio (King Biscuit) and taped by fans like moi. The "Feel Like a Stranger" on that tape was a favorite.
I was really glad to hear Comes a Time. This one was a beautiful version, and incredibly great soundboard tapes now are available.
I had my telephoto in at these shows and got some nice shots right from the seats.
Jerry playing the Tiger guitar at Nassau Coliseum, May 1980
These were classic shows in that time period - and this one smoked from the great Jack Straw opener right through. Also see my post for the night before.
This night and the following are memorilaized on the Dead’s “Go to Nassau” CD release, and excellent alternative recordings are available on archive.org, such as Matthew Vernon’s matrix sound version of this show. https://archive.org/details/gd1980-05-15.126692.mtx.dusborne.flac16/gd80-05-15s1t03.flac
I had floor seats this night, everyone stood on their chairs. I walked up to the front section of the floor towards the end and took some shots of Jerry.
Jerry and Bob, Rochester War Memorial, 9/2/1980
Bobby flanked by the drummers
Slideshow below.
Another school year for me upstate began with a Rochester show by the Grateful Dead during the first week of September, this one downtown at the War Memorial, a big general admission arena. In the back of the arena there were some plaques and memorials. I guess being able to get in to the Nassau Coliseum shows with my camera and telephoto lense back in the Spring gave me the idea I could do it here again. I had a hard time shooting over the crowd but managed to get right up close to to the stage for a while. I remember being right up there for “Lost Sailor,” when it was a little quieter for awhile. The song was played at all three of the Rochester shows I attended.
Some of the photos I took are above; I picked one with Jerry and Bob from a few rows back, and other samples of the ones I took from up close are in the slideshow.
Like some of my other Dead shows, this performance was later the subject of a soundboard release by Charlie Miller, who seems to pick the same shows I like the most (although that’s many hundreds of shows). The second set packs in so many tunes, plus interesting and beautifully melodic jams with string synths in the Space section, a fine Morning Dew and a rockin Sugar Magnolia set closer.
Another example of the Dead playing with great energy at a really high level and another top notch show in this era. In the following month they would do the classic acoustic shows in NY and SF.
There was so much great music to listen to in 1980 and the new Bob Marley album, Uprising!, was high among our favorite choices.
The show listed here was to have been been part of the balance of the 1980 tour, which was cancelled after the Pittsburgh show when Bob Marley fell ill. It was of course a huge disappointment at the time, but not nearly as much of a disappointment as when we learned how sick he was, and ultimately in the following year, when we learned of his passing.
Uprising! remains a timeless reggae classic.
36 years later, I visited Nine Miles, JA, Bob's childhood home and his final resting place.... photos in the gallery below show the school built by Bob’s Mother there, a window on the outside of the Mausoleum, Bob’s childhood home. It was interesting to see the area after reading about it and seeing photos of the funeral procession and the Nine Miles area, e.g. in the Marley books “Catch a Fire” and “Reggae King of the World”.
Bob Marley’s framed gold record for the 1980 album Uprising!, on display in Nine Miles, JA
This was a live Simulcast of the Radio City Halloween show that included Al Franken and Tom Davis as MCs. Ticket demand for the shows far outpaced available seats, thus the idea of a simulcast from Radio City where fans could see and hear the show in real time. Its included here because I have the ticket stub (and because they did it at at the Calderone, where I and am sure a few others had seen both Jerry and Bob play in 1976).
