The Dead were playing at the Cow Palace soon- it was now
March of 1974. I had no ticket, but figured that I would get one when I got up
there. After looking at the situation in the refrigerator (one slice of ham for
a sandwich was about all there was in ready-made food- the side of bacon from
the construction contractor last Christmas was still basically untouched)- I
made one, stuck it in the pocket of my surplus field jacket, and hitchiked up
there.
I ran into Donohue in line. He had also come up from
Pacifica via Geneva Avenue, and we were both pretty jazzed to be catching the
Dead again. Inside, there was a real change in the way things looked up on
stage. It seemed there were now hundreds, literally, of speakers lined up in
tall stacks behind the band. Well, there had also been a lot of them at that
concert at Kezar, but now, we were talking twice as many and stacked twice as
high.
This then was the premiere of the famous Wall of Sound- a PA
system unparalleled, unrivaled, and heretofore, unprecedented in the annals of
music history. Each stack of speakers was set for one instrument, one only,
with the exception of the bass, which got four.
(Or two, but separated into four channels.) The midrange vocals were
hanging in a configuration a lot like a rounded halfdome set on its side, at
the center of the stage, and hanging from a scaffold. There was Keith’s grand
piano, and everyone had those Macintosh power amps with the little glowing blue
dials. I think there was even an oscilloscope hooked up to Lesh’s amp stack. In
any case, it was a marvelous impression all that gear made, and the sound- when
it happened- was absolutely spectacular.
The PA had been tuned for the hall, this would be its first
shakedown cruise, but in general, the way they worked was they would
acoustically test each hall while setting up, and figure out the exactly best
angles for the different columns. The propaganda they sent us through the Dead
Heads newletters said this was so that {“each seat and each person in the hall
could have a pristine field of hearing up to 100 yards”}*
There was no opening band- from the start, when they came
out playing US Blues, one got the
feeling this would be a very, very special night. Kevin dropped half a hit of
acid he had got from one of the ‘Bini Brothers back on the coast that day, I
had just a few joints in my pocket, but I had a lovely time. Acid was never
that neccesary for a good Dead show experience, it just happened I was not in
the mood for it that night.
The center of the hall made a good place to begin the show,
and I was there for most of it.
Once the second set began, (with a long “Playing in the Band-Uncle Johns Band-Morning
Dew-and back out again” sandwich), I was really feeling upbeat. Getting to
the midpoint of Morning Dew, everything so quiet, you might have heard a pin
drop. I listened to audience tapes of the night
later with Scott Wiseman and discovered that my clapping along (in time, and
rather loud!) seemed to dominate that part of the tape.
Oh well, I said, I’m
not in this world to help you make pristine Dead tapes, I am at a Dead show to party!
Kev went for a walk back into the area behind the arena and ran
into a guy he said looked “just like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot’. Ramblin’ Jack had
blown our minds, discovering one little song on a tape in Charlie’s
collection, his “912 Greens” song about
the folks down in New Orleans he met one year, and his line:
Did you ever stand and
shiver-
Just because you were
looking at a river…
Well, we did learn later, it actually had been Ramblin Jack. And the song was truly iconic for both of
us, opening us up to all kinds of hopeful future situations…
While Kevin was out there in the lobby beginning to feel
like he was Dante exploring the outer regions of the circles of Hell, I was in
the arena, toward the back, beginning to get my own snapshots from Hades.
A
young woman about my age, perhaps a year or two older, was dancing barefooted
in front of me.
I noticed there was a broken quart beer bottle right there
underneath her feet, and I tried pulling her away, toward where she wouldn’t
need step on any of the shards. She kept pulling back from me and going on with
her dancing. After three or four such attempts and screaming each time into her
ear “There’s broken glass down there!” I finally gave up. There’s only so much
you can do, for people unwilling (or too high) to receive help, I suppose.
Kevin and I linked up again right at the end of the show,
and we hitched ourselves a lift back down the coast highway to the Marine
Boulevard house. The driver looked a lot like Jerry Garcia, himself, but he was
a welder and lived farther down the coastside from us, and Moss Beach was no
trouble. The spooky rocks and cliffs of Devil’s slide in the dark, let us know
were were, indeed, exiting Hades and coming back to more familiar territory.
Debbie, Suzanne and a Half Moon Bay kid named Mike Watson
were up at the house, wide awake, drunk, and offering us more. I had a little of the
beer, smoked what was left of my pot,
and Watson wandered off into one of the corners and puked. I guess it had been
a good party! In the morning I got up, showered and hitchiked back over the
hill.
