40 years ago today

A very memorable night, but not the most memorable show, although it was different and had some good moments, with Airto Moreita sitting in the entire set, the Boz Scaggs sit-in, and the first US Lovelight played in over ten years.

The downtown venue was just a huge underground hanger, very uncomfortable, very packed and poor sound, a TERRIBLE place for a show; to my knowledge there's never been another one there since.

The main thing about that night for me was that my friend had gotten a little cocky about how much LSD he could handle and took TO MUCH that night. He was just starting to come on while we were in line a couple of hours before doors, and he wandered off looking for a bathroom.

He disappeared for over an hour after that, and when he showed back up he was melting and couldn't tell us where he'd gone, only able to repeat over & over ,"There was a man in the wall!", which we later discovered was a homeless guy babbling in a BART station my friend had wandered into.

He was a trooper though and he hung in during the GD set, but after their set we moved out of the crush and my other friends & I spent the rest of the show and most of that night keeping him from losing his mind. He was fine once he came down a bit, but he's never imbibed again since that night. We're still friends and we often have a laugh invoking "The man in the wall!!" It was him who called me earlier today to remind me of the date.

I didn't take many photos that night because I was more focused on keeping him from wandering off during the set, but I did get one that I love and a couple of others I like.

https://archive.org/details/gd1982-05-28.mtx.tobin.130201.flac16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LePPDUvPJxk