"The Music Never Stopped"
The infamous and incredible "Denver 'Pig Roast'" August 14, 1979
McNichols Arena, August 14, 1979. This is the first Grateful Dead show I remember, and, technically it was my first Grateful Dead show, as I had been to Dead venues before only to find out it had been sold out and had to settle for trying to hear what I could while tailgating outside.
I was in the Air Force at the time and had recently returned from a tour in Germany. It happened that five of us working on the same shift were Deadheads, and when we saw that the concert date, which was originally scheduled for Red Rocks Ampitheatre, was on a day that fell within our three day weekend--we were on a 12 day rotating schedule, 9 days on and 3 days off--we had to go. It was my first concert of any kind since my return stateside, and the last Red Rocks show I had been to had been before I joined the Air Force, in 1975, and I believe it was a David Bromberg show.
Due to heavy rain in the area around Colorado--mid-August is monsoon season in Colorado--and more rain in the forecast, the venue was moved to McNichols Arena in Denver, an announcement made by the on-the-ball promoters the day before the scheduled date. That meant more tickets were available, but, since we already had our tickets all we had to do was exchange them at the box office for the new seating. But the show at McNichols can be seen as the only time the same show date was sold out twice. There were conspiracy stories that the promotor had the venue change planned all along in order to sell more tickets, which was partially true, because the arena was booked way ahead of time as a rain date. Another theory was that the City of Denver changed the venue because Big Mac would be easier for the Denver Police to patrol than Red Rocks would have been. In retrospect, there seems like there may have been some truth to that, but to be realistic, it was probably all because of the rain.
If I'm not mistaken, the McNichols show was part of the first Dead tour featuring "the new kid," Brett Midland, on keyboards and vocals.
The first thing I noticed upon arrival at the Big Mac was the general absence of the show that tours with the show. Certainly the rain had something to do with this, but one would expect some showing of the venders, ticket scalpers and panhandlers that followed the Dead across the nation. Rain or not, there was a ban on tailgating at this event, and that ban was enforced. The was always a love-hate relationship between the Dead and Denver. There was never any problem booking a show in Denver or the surrounding area. Denver loved the Dead but hated the Deadheads.
Inside the Denver police made their presence known, patrolling the arena in groups of four uniformed personel. If this had been any show other than the Grateful Dead it would have put a damper on the festivities. What happened was just the opposite. The energy of a crowd in protest of the situation led to a very intense and very satisfying show.
The boys in the band did their best to help us overcome the bad vibes due to the presence of the Law and played with an intensity we did not expect. Phil opened the show with his ballad "Jack Straw," a personal favorite of mine, and a completely unexpected opening selection. I can't think of any other show that I have attended or heard that began with a song sung by anyone other than Bobby or Jerry. (For those who may be unfamiliar with "Jack Straw" the lead vocals are traded off between Jerry, Bobby, and Phil) The guys were clearly calling audibles as the lights dimmed to a faint blue, and the band could be seen conversing with each other, then followed the opening song with Jack-a-Roe > Mama Tried > Mexicali Blues. The lights dimmed again, and the shadowy figures on stage conversed again, then came back with the classic "Tennessee Jed."
That was followed by a couple of songs featuring Brett on vocals, first his own composition, the easy-going "Easy to Love You," that somehow segued into the hard rocking "Passenger." The Dead were definitely hot, and so was the music. Following another short confab, the set ended with "Stagger Lee" and "The Music Never Stopped."
The first set seemed uncharacteristically short, lasting a little less than fifty minutes, but anybody who has ever attended or listened to a Grateful Dead show knows that the first set is just a warm up for the second set. The Dead and the crowd were definitely warmed up.
The second set began with an energetic rendition of "The Promised Land," followed by "Ship of Fools." The Grateful Dead had a special talent of speaking to the subconscious and getting the crowd totally on their side, and if they hadn't done it yet, an incredibly intense rendering of "Samson and Delilah " took care of that. If the emotional intensity Bobby put into the singing of that song were a physical thing, it really could have torn "this whole building down." That was what I feel turned the concert into the party it was supposed to be. The cops were left alone, and nobody, as far as we could tell was arrested.
Nothing could have followed that except for "Terapin Station," which led into the one of the best sessions of "Playing In The Band" I have ever heard. The jam that follows the vocal portion of the song can only be described as incredible. Jerry's guitar takes us on a trip away from our surroundings, and the band seems to float high above the crowd in a sphere of blue and purple light. That is my memory of it, and it does not involve drugs. The group I was with were all active duty Air Force at the time, and our jobs and sense of duty required complete abstinance from illicit substances. But the spiritual trip was there, and drugs were not required to partake in it. That kind of goes against the unbelievers' stereotype of the Dead and their followers doesn't it? Believe me, that experience was real. I remember it that way to this very day.
And it wasn't over yet. Playing in the band went directly into the drums session, which featured remarkable call and response excercises between Bill and Mickey on their respective traps and percussion arrays. About nine minutes into the drums segment, Mickey gets up and goes to the front of the stage with what looks like a huge borang. A borang, if the spelling is correct, is the flat hand held drum used in Celtic music and resembles a tamborine without the bells. The instrument Mickey is playing is much larger, and he holds it up in front of the microphone and wails on it. He continues playing it well into the Space segment, which starts out with Phil's bass magic and resounding thunder from Mickey's instrument as he hits it square in the center. You can't hear it so well on the recording, but when he hit that thing in the center, it echoed throughout the arena, and it seemed as though the band was jamming on that echo.
"Space" turns into "Not Fade Away," which fades into "Stella Blue," and the set ends with "Good Lovin' " The message was delivered, and I like to think that there were some cops in Denver who became Deadheads, like the guy on Nash Bridges, that night.
Message delivered, but the show wasn't over yet. For the oncore, "US Blues" celebrated the event, and "Johnny B. Goode" left us all dancing. Once again, the Dead had overcome a tough audience and gotten them on the right track. And once again, they left us wanting more.
I have added "Jack Straw," "Easy To Love You,"" Passenger,""Stagger Lee," "Sampson and Delilah," and "Playing in the Band" to the music player on the home page of Eclectic Jammys, but these are only tidbits. The entire show needs to be heard, and is available for listening at Archive.org.
I was in the Air Force at the time and had recently returned from a tour in Germany. It happened that five of us working on the same shift were Deadheads, and when we saw that the concert date, which was originally scheduled for Red Rocks Ampitheatre, was on a day that fell within our three day weekend--we were on a 12 day rotating schedule, 9 days on and 3 days off--we had to go. It was my first concert of any kind since my return stateside, and the last Red Rocks show I had been to had been before I joined the Air Force, in 1975, and I believe it was a David Bromberg show.
Due to heavy rain in the area around Colorado--mid-August is monsoon season in Colorado--and more rain in the forecast, the venue was moved to McNichols Arena in Denver, an announcement made by the on-the-ball promoters the day before the scheduled date. That meant more tickets were available, but, since we already had our tickets all we had to do was exchange them at the box office for the new seating. But the show at McNichols can be seen as the only time the same show date was sold out twice. There were conspiracy stories that the promotor had the venue change planned all along in order to sell more tickets, which was partially true, because the arena was booked way ahead of time as a rain date. Another theory was that the City of Denver changed the venue because Big Mac would be easier for the Denver Police to patrol than Red Rocks would have been. In retrospect, there seems like there may have been some truth to that, but to be realistic, it was probably all because of the rain.
If I'm not mistaken, the McNichols show was part of the first Dead tour featuring "the new kid," Brett Midland, on keyboards and vocals.
The first thing I noticed upon arrival at the Big Mac was the general absence of the show that tours with the show. Certainly the rain had something to do with this, but one would expect some showing of the venders, ticket scalpers and panhandlers that followed the Dead across the nation. Rain or not, there was a ban on tailgating at this event, and that ban was enforced. The was always a love-hate relationship between the Dead and Denver. There was never any problem booking a show in Denver or the surrounding area. Denver loved the Dead but hated the Deadheads.
Inside the Denver police made their presence known, patrolling the arena in groups of four uniformed personel. If this had been any show other than the Grateful Dead it would have put a damper on the festivities. What happened was just the opposite. The energy of a crowd in protest of the situation led to a very intense and very satisfying show.
The boys in the band did their best to help us overcome the bad vibes due to the presence of the Law and played with an intensity we did not expect. Phil opened the show with his ballad "Jack Straw," a personal favorite of mine, and a completely unexpected opening selection. I can't think of any other show that I have attended or heard that began with a song sung by anyone other than Bobby or Jerry. (For those who may be unfamiliar with "Jack Straw" the lead vocals are traded off between Jerry, Bobby, and Phil) The guys were clearly calling audibles as the lights dimmed to a faint blue, and the band could be seen conversing with each other, then followed the opening song with Jack-a-Roe > Mama Tried > Mexicali Blues. The lights dimmed again, and the shadowy figures on stage conversed again, then came back with the classic "Tennessee Jed."
That was followed by a couple of songs featuring Brett on vocals, first his own composition, the easy-going "Easy to Love You," that somehow segued into the hard rocking "Passenger." The Dead were definitely hot, and so was the music. Following another short confab, the set ended with "Stagger Lee" and "The Music Never Stopped."
The first set seemed uncharacteristically short, lasting a little less than fifty minutes, but anybody who has ever attended or listened to a Grateful Dead show knows that the first set is just a warm up for the second set. The Dead and the crowd were definitely warmed up.
The second set began with an energetic rendition of "The Promised Land," followed by "Ship of Fools." The Grateful Dead had a special talent of speaking to the subconscious and getting the crowd totally on their side, and if they hadn't done it yet, an incredibly intense rendering of "Samson and Delilah " took care of that. If the emotional intensity Bobby put into the singing of that song were a physical thing, it really could have torn "this whole building down." That was what I feel turned the concert into the party it was supposed to be. The cops were left alone, and nobody, as far as we could tell was arrested.
Nothing could have followed that except for "Terapin Station," which led into the one of the best sessions of "Playing In The Band" I have ever heard. The jam that follows the vocal portion of the song can only be described as incredible. Jerry's guitar takes us on a trip away from our surroundings, and the band seems to float high above the crowd in a sphere of blue and purple light. That is my memory of it, and it does not involve drugs. The group I was with were all active duty Air Force at the time, and our jobs and sense of duty required complete abstinance from illicit substances. But the spiritual trip was there, and drugs were not required to partake in it. That kind of goes against the unbelievers' stereotype of the Dead and their followers doesn't it? Believe me, that experience was real. I remember it that way to this very day.
And it wasn't over yet. Playing in the band went directly into the drums session, which featured remarkable call and response excercises between Bill and Mickey on their respective traps and percussion arrays. About nine minutes into the drums segment, Mickey gets up and goes to the front of the stage with what looks like a huge borang. A borang, if the spelling is correct, is the flat hand held drum used in Celtic music and resembles a tamborine without the bells. The instrument Mickey is playing is much larger, and he holds it up in front of the microphone and wails on it. He continues playing it well into the Space segment, which starts out with Phil's bass magic and resounding thunder from Mickey's instrument as he hits it square in the center. You can't hear it so well on the recording, but when he hit that thing in the center, it echoed throughout the arena, and it seemed as though the band was jamming on that echo.
"Space" turns into "Not Fade Away," which fades into "Stella Blue," and the set ends with "Good Lovin' " The message was delivered, and I like to think that there were some cops in Denver who became Deadheads, like the guy on Nash Bridges, that night.
Message delivered, but the show wasn't over yet. For the oncore, "US Blues" celebrated the event, and "Johnny B. Goode" left us all dancing. Once again, the Dead had overcome a tough audience and gotten them on the right track. And once again, they left us wanting more.
I have added "Jack Straw," "Easy To Love You,"" Passenger,""Stagger Lee," "Sampson and Delilah," and "Playing in the Band" to the music player on the home page of Eclectic Jammys, but these are only tidbits. The entire show needs to be heard, and is available for listening at Archive.org.
Comment
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Comment by Revvin Jim G on November 8, 2008 at 2:10pm - Still more errors. Jack Straw was written by Robert Hunter and Bob Wier, and also opened a show I saw in Boulder in 1981. Apparently Phil Lesh does not sing any lead vocals in that song, though the verse "We used to play for silver..." sure does sound more like him than Bobby, and I swear I saw him at the mike. Oh well, you know how deadheads are supposed to have addled minds
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Comment by Revvin Jim G on August 26, 2008 at 4:13pm
- I fixed a couple of errors in the post, after more flashbacking.
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