Dead On Ice
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Huh I just came across this story about my first show Billerica 1979. That show was a complete cluster fuck and I mean that in the best way possible. Tiny hockey rink that had no idea how to handle a dead show. GA show and a couple thousand people were crammed up against the doors. The staff had no idea this was happening so they just casually opened the doors from the inside only to unleash a torrent of people into the arena. That was the only time my feet were off the ground in a crowd. Falling would have been fatal.
Anyway this probably explains why they didn't do an encore. I remember at the time people saying Brent was sick. Why the fuck do I remember that.
THE DEAD ON ICE
Writer, historian and former Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, author of “A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead,” knows well the reputation of the Dead’s performance at the Forum in May 1979. Not their best. In Dead lore, a show that was a bit … shaky.
The venue was not designed for concerts—it was home ice for the university’s hockey team in addition to year-round community skating—but it would do for the university-sponsored show.
“So when the band came to play, the ice was covered,” says McNally from San Francisco. “Apparently, not very well. And certainly not effectively.”
Typically, lighting is hung from the ceiling of concert venues.
“For whatever reason they did not do that in Billerica,” says McNally, “I don’t know.”
The lights were stacked on a truss that sat on the plywood covering the ice.
“And as the show progressed,” says McNally, “the ice under the truss melted. They were playing a rock and roll concert and the lights began to sway. And when the lights are glaring down at you when they aren’t supposed to be, this creates some anxiety. So there was considerable concern onstage that night. That may be what people heard in the music.”
https://www.uml.edu/Magazine/Fall-2016/Rock-Roll.aspx
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>>>1979
>>>1979
>>>That was the only time my feet were off the ground in a crowd
had the same experience during that era,
and in Dec '79 there was the tragedy at the Who concert
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Wife was there. She still has
Wife was there. She still has the un-torn ticket; I imaging she got swept inside without it being ripped.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Alan R
It was crowded and it got hot
It was crowded and it got hot and sweaty in there quick.
So some enterprising souls on the floor pried up the plywood sheets protecting the hockey rink underneath, thinking the exposed ice would cool things down.
Well, that was a lamebrain idea...
Once a giant sheet of 1/2 inch plywood was raised, there was no place to put it, so people had to pass it around above their heads. To where? Who knows. These heavy things circulated above the crowd for a long while.
And worse, it was too cold to stand on the ice, so the people who were previously standing on wood had to move away and squeeze into even less space.
Looking down from the grandstands, one could see "holes" in the crowd and people dancing with outstretched arms (protecting themselves from plywood overhead).
Good times.
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https://archive.org/details
https://archive.org/details/gd79-05-11.sony.gustin.314.sbeok.shnf
So how was the shoe?
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The next day they played
The next day they played UMass - my second show ...
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We had just finished the
We had just finished the school year a couple weeks before and were ready to tour!
It was a mess getting in the building. Crazy east coast people all jacked up. Capacity for this hockey rink was 3500, but there had to be close to double that crammed in there. A GA show so it was mayhem, especially on the floor.
That audience tape does capture some of the crowd energy in that place. Try these ones, too -- they might have a little more clarity.
https://archive.org/details/gd79-05-11.gato.vernon.19268.sbeok.shnf/gd79...
https://archive.org/details/gd79-05-11.sony.gustin.314.sbeok.shnf/gd79-0...
Supposedly, these were the last shows they "allowed" taping in front of the board as the tapers were starting to get offensive (and a mic rig fell on Healy, or something).
The show starts a little tentative but the band feeds off the crowd - a 10 minute Mississippi minute opener followed by a 15 minute Franklin's! Followed by an unusually short Mama tried - less than 3 minutes. Right into Mexicali. It seemed like Weir and Jerry were on different drugs that night.
Jerry slows things down again with Peggy-O. Bobby does another 10 minute song (It's All Over Now). But I wouldn't call all these long songs exploratory or stretching out or anything.. they were just playing.
I remember at the time we knew Lazy Lightning > Supplication was rare.
Shakedown was relatively new for us (released Nov 78) though we had been to Springfield, New Haven and Providence in Jan and Hampton and Baltimore the week before. It clocks in at 15 min.
So we had heard the band twice before with the new guy (Brent). But we did miss Donna -- the screeching didn't really bother us....she was part of the band. But we knew Keith was on his way out after we saw him nod off in Springfield (even with the piano moved toward center stage).
Estimated > Eyes was not unusual -- I think this was before it got too overplayed. Both about 12 minutes each and Jerry flies during Eyes.
I think the drummers were working on Apocalypse Now soundtrack about then... so lots of Rhythm Devils type stuff.
Black Peter could get dirge-like and suck all the momentum out of a second set (for spunky college kids just getting into energy enhancers) back then -- the Drums > Space > Peter felt like an eternity (1/2 hour).
Miracle > Bertha > Good Lovin was anything but dirge-like.
Yeah - no encore -- what was up with that we wondered?
But what I remember most was that I had taken off a prized jean jacket because it was so hot in that place, and tied the sleeves in triple knots up in the grandstand. At the end of the show it was gone. Major bummer. It had the Skeletons from the Closet graphics on the back and I had that jacket since high school...
The next day, a quick jaunt across Massachusetts to a stadium show. Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, New Rhythm and Blues Quartet.
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The Internet provides.....
The Internet provides..... Check out the speaker stacks
https://jranderson.photoshelter.com/gallery/Grateful-Dead-1979-05-11-Bil...
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Cool to hear these stories. I
Cool to hear these stories. I was a freshman in high school. There were no deadheads in my town in NH. The music scene was all Aerosmith, Led Zepelin, The Eagles, KISS, and ACDC. If it didn’t get played on WBCN or WAAF it didn’t exist, and that was before BCN started playing things other than rock. I didn’t own a Grateful Dead album but I knew Truckin and Casey Jones because they got played on the radio. I had been to a few concerts at that point. Aerosmith and ELP.
This show was added to the tour at the last minute and it was U Lowell show. How I ended up at this show is an only in the 70’s kind of thing. One of the English teachers at my high school was a U Lowell graduate and apparently a Dead Head. She bought a bunch of tickets and resold them to her students. She sold them to seniors and somehow one trickled down to me. There must have been about 15 kids from my high school that went to show, and I’m pretty sure it was everyone’s first dead show. I remember my friend told his mom that we had to get there early in order to get in, and his mom called the arena to find out if that was true. Somehow she got a hold of someone who told her if that if her son showed up in the parking lot four hours before the show he would be so messed up by the time the show started that he wouldn’t remember any of it. She told him he couldn’t go and he went anyway. We dropped him off back at home around midnight and the guy on the phone was right. What is funny to me now is how underground the Dead were in 79. His mom wasn’t concerned that her 15 year old son was going to a Grateful Dead concert she was only concerned when he told her he had to get there early. The regular world at that point including the cops really had no idea what was going on at shows.
Of the 15 kids who went to the show only two of us went all in. Fall 79 Cape Cod was my second show and by summer of 82 I was at Red Rocks and then the New Years run at Kaiser that year which directly led to me eventually moving to SF. Thanks high school teacher whose name I can’t remember.
I have no memory at all about the plywood being lifted up. I do remember that after almost dying on the way in there was no way I was going to stand on the floor. My friend who ended up being the other one who toured with me got caught on the door jam on the way in and was smashed up against it for at least ten minutes before he could get himself off. The only song I remember being played was Franklins and then it was just a blur from then on. I also remember how different the energy was at the show compared to the other shows I had been to. How everyone stood and danced the whole show. I also remember meeting my first dead heads after the show and them explaining to us that they just followed the band around the country and made money selling stickers. No one was doing that at the Aerosmith show I went to.
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I like this one:
I like this one:
Something else I think I remember... this was a "stealth" show - in that the show was announced after all the other shows were put on sale that spring and tickets were only available in town and maybe thru the university (this was a spring fling show), not thru regular ticket outlets. Maybe we found out about it thru the local radio station. Luckily, one of our roommates was from Lowell or Lawrence or somewhere near there, and hooked us up.
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The line early..it became
The line early..it became pandemonium as the line disintegrated into a crowd trying to funnel into a small doorway all at once, as the doors opened late.
I also remember that the glass partitions were still in place from the hockey game.. I have a vague memory of spending some time in the penalty box seats