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- [00:05]
Rich Mahan
The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the official Podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season 10 of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. Well, in this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we travel a little bit further north through the new Grateful Dead box set Friend of the devils to investigate two shows from Virginia on that famed Spring 78 tour. This new limited edition Friend of the Devil's box set is selling quick, getting down to the last of it folks. It's selling with good reason. The band was playing great in spring 78 and as the name suggests, this 19 CD box set presents eight unreleased concerts that feature the rise of drums and space as second set traditions. Friend of the Devils, April 1978 includes complete shows from Curtis Hickson Convention Hall, Tampa, Florida for 678 the Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines, Florida for 778 Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Jacksonville on 4878 two shows at the Fox in Atlanta on 410 and 411 Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University on 4 hours 1278 Castle Coliseum at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg on 414 and the Huntington Civic center in Huntington, West Virginia on 4:16:78. The concert at Duke is the breakout show from this box and has been released separately and is available now. Duke 78 is available as a 3 CD set, a 4LP set, and digitally. Both Duke 78 and the limited edition Friend of the Devils are out now. More info and orders are happening@dead.net while you're@dead.net pop on over to our special site dead.net deadcast. Check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons one through nine and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing, sharing us with your friends on social media, hitting that like button and if the Spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you very much. It helps more than you realize. Were any of you heads at any of the shows in spring 78 up and down that east coast? Well, we want to hear from you. We need your stories to illustrate just how wonderful these shows were. Record your tour story@stories.dead.net and you may hear yourself on a few future episode of the dead cast. Spring 78 was a great time to see the Grateful Dead. Well, when wasn't. And in this episode, we catch up with some friends who were on the bus for these shows, quite literally, and give us some excellent first hand accounts of the crazy osity that ensued. Yes, I said crazy osity. We also dive into some of the musical influences of that era that influenced Garcia and company. The doorman's about to unhook the velvet rope in front of you and let you in. And look, there's Jesse Jarno.
- [03:48]
David Lemieux
After the Grateful Dead levitated Duke University's Cameron indoor Stadium on April 12, 1978, their spring tour lingered in the Mid Atlantic region. Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
- [04:01]
Jesse Jarno
You kind of expect the Dead to play well at the Garden or the Spectrum or, you know, the Fillmore, whatever. But the Dead also seem to play really well in the places you'd least expect this tour. They were hitting southern college campuses and things like that, and they would play these incredible shows and, you know, to this day, the number of Deadheads I've met who saw their first shows around this time or in 76, 77, 78. And the dead would come to your town, Blacksburg, Virginia. They'd play your college, and they would knock your socks off.
- [04:57]
David Lemieux
For the band's two shows in Virginia, they headed to a college campus they'd never visited before in Blacksburg, and returned to one where, like Duke, they were beloved. Williamsburg's William and Mary.
- [05:22]
Rich Mahan
Boy.
- [05:23]
David Lemieux
The only game in town. The William and Mary gig was previously released as Dave's picks 37. This came up a few episodes ago, but it bears repeating.
- [05:38]
Jesse Jarno
We did get a little antsy a couple of years ago, and April 15th has already come out as part of the Dave's picks. There were 25,000 of those. So hopefully everybody who gets this box has that Dave's Picks and can kind of complete the run of shows.
- [05:54]
Rich Mahan
Listen to the thunder shout.
- [06:21]
David Lemieux
These were small town shows. Everybody from both the towns of Williamsburg and Blacksburg could have attended the Dead's English Town concert the previous September. And they all could have brought at least plus ones.
- [06:32]
Jesse Jarno
People would go see whoever came to town. If you like them, you'd go see them. You know, it's five bucks. What do you have to lose? You got five bucks and you go see whoever it was and it would be great and that was good. And you'd have a great memory and that was the end of it. But the Dead were playing at such a high level at this time. I mean, I think at all times, but at this time and playing these places that anybody who went to see them, you know, whether they were huge fans or it was out of mild curiosity because you kind of liked Working Man's Dead, American Beauty. You were so blown away that you were a fan for life. And I think it was that simple.
- [07:23]
Rich Mahan
By an. I got on. That's when it all began coming, coming, coming around, coming around, around.
- [07:40]
David Lemieux
Any Deadhead going from Duke to the next show on the tour would have had to take a fairly winding drive. So we too are going to take the scenic route to Blacksburg. In our episode about the Atlanta shows, we delved into some of the new wave in punk music that was swirling around the Dead in 1978. Today we're jumping back into John Sievert's extraordinary interviews with Jerry Garcia from that spring, where he discussed music that he was listening to during the period of the Friend of the Devil's Box.
- [08:06]
Kathy Sublette
I really like Warren Zevon's band. I like Warren Zevon. I think he's great. Great writer. We just played a gig with him down in Santa Barbara. We like him a lot.
- [08:14]
Rich Mahan
We made Mad Love, Shadow Love, Random Love and Abandoned Love.
- [08:25]
Kathy Sublette
Accidentally Like a Martyr.
- [08:32]
Rich Mahan
The hurt gets.
- [08:33]
Kathy Sublette
Worse and the heart gets harder.
- [08:37]
David Lemieux
Garcia had played around with Warren Zevon's Accidentally Like a Martyr in the studio in The Summer of 77, now released on the All Good Things box set. And in the spring of 78, just eight days after the final show on Friend of the Devils, the Dead introduced their own Warren Zevon cover. That was the Dead playing Werewolves of London in. Where else? Normal, Illinois. Now on Dave's Pick seven, sending that out to Ward Q. Normal.
- [09:23]
Kathy Sublette
I heard Elvis Costello say on the radio that he really liked your playing yesterday. Oh, yeah. Too much. How flattering.
- [09:29]
Rich Mahan
He's pretty good.
- [09:29]
Kathy Sublette
Yeah, he is good. I like him. I like him a lot, too.
- [09:44]
David Lemieux
As we well know around these parts, Elvis Costello was and is a champion Dead fan. If you'd like to hear about that from his perspective, set your course for the bickershaw72 episode.
- [09:56]
Kathy Sublette
I like that. The new wave stuff, it's obvious. Kind of like as they pass by, who's there for keeps and who isn't. Some people really have something to say and it gets to you. No matter really what you believe or what you think or what you like. I keep an open mind. I like disco music a lot. All that stuff is interesting to me, you know. Hell, it's all music.
- [10:28]
Rich Mahan
Listen to my story. Ride mighty high Take the Lord off your mind Ride mighty glory Listen to My story, Ride Mighty High.
- [10:40]
David Lemieux
That was the mighty clouds of joy with Mighty High, their 1975 disco gospel smash, picked up the next year by the Jerry Garcia Band. Hear from Garcia Live, Volume 7.
- [11:00]
Rich Mahan
Take a look.
- [11:15]
David Lemieux
By the spring of 1978, disco was inescapable. Close Encounters of the Third Kind may have been Jerry Garcia's favorite film of the 1977 holiday season. And no, he doesn't make a cameo, and he quoted the theme a few times in early 1978, including on the first show of this box set. But there was another film that had an inescapable impact on the Dead and their world.
- [11:51]
Rich Mahan
Well, you can't tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's.
- [11:54]
Kathy Sublette
Man no Time to talk.
- [11:56]
David Lemieux
Released in December 1977, Saturday Night Fever was a blockbuster. Its accompanying soundtrack sold so well that even 20 years into the vinyl revival, you can still score used copies for around a dollar plus shipping from discog. The Dead had brought the modern sound into their own music with their rearrangement of Dancing in the Street. Here's some of the Blacksburg, Virginia version from the new box.
- [13:14]
Rich Mahan
Dancing in the streets Calling out around the world Are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer's here and the time is right for Dancing in the Streets.
- [13:30]
David Lemieux
This next story takes place just after the end of the new box, exactly a week after the April 14 Blacksburg show on April 21. Here's how drummer Mickey Hart and guitarist Bob Weir remembered it in a 1996 interview with the Album Network. You can hear Phil Lesh interjecting occasionally, too.
- [13:48]
Kathy Sublette
We were on a road and I wanted. I took him to the movie, but it took us like about 200 miles to get to the movie theater. Over 100 miles. The guy didn't say it was, you know, 150 miles down the.
- [14:00]
Rich Mahan
Down the road. This was Saturday Night Fever. I can even tell you what, what town that was in. It was in Lexington. Lexington, Kentucky.
- [14:09]
Kathy Sublette
We came back and we all did a little, if you remember our little dance in the room and we all grabbed each other and we did a little disco dance.
- [14:17]
David Lemieux
Just hold on to that image of the Grateful Dead doing the Saturday Night Fever dances backstage before the Lexington, Kentucky show. Here's how the jam out of Rhythm Neville sounded that night. Listener Scott White attended the Lexington show and left us this story@stories.dead.net it's interesting.
- [14:51]
Rich Mahan
About the Mickey Hart anecdote about how him and Jerry and some of the crew went to see Saturday Night Fever the night before the Lexington show. Because during the show, during the jam, there was definitely a riff or an influence from Staying Alive. Everyone recognized it as it was literally ubiquitous on AM FM radio then. Plus, we'd all been to see it because it was the perfect quote, date movie, whether you like disco or not. And we didn't like disco, although our girlfriends did. And we all felt that the Dead had completely sold out to the disco phenomena with the Dancing in the Streets arrangement in Terrapin. What the hell did we know about it? Shit.
- [15:42]
David Lemieux
And a few days later, in normal, Illinois, on April 24, 1978, it became a little more clear during me and my uncle.
- [16:13]
Rich Mahan
Me and my uncle went riding down South Colorado, West Texas bound. We stopped over in Santa Fe right there in the fall, just about halfway. And, you know, it was the hottest part of the day.
- [16:37]
David Lemieux
But more significantly, sometime in the next month or so, or maybe in the very early summer, Jerry Garcia wrote a new song that would bring the new sound into the Dead's world. Fully. Hopefully we'll get to dive into this lo fi demo recording sometime down the line.
- [17:26]
Rich Mahan
We did Staying Alive. We. Yeah, we did a couple of disco tunes, Dan. In the Streets. Shakedown street was our. Our attempt at disco. Yeah, right. You know, you wouldn't know it. You wouldn't know it by listening to it.
- [17:39]
Kathy Sublette
You know, we couldn't even do disco.
- [17:42]
Rich Mahan
What we thought was disco was something different.
- [18:04]
David Lemieux
Here's Garcia speaking with Ray White on WLIR in January 1979, two months after the album's release.
- [18:12]
Kathy Sublette
Obviously, it's. Stylistically, that's where it's at. It's a style. The Grateful Dead has always done that. You know, we just absorb styles.
- [18:19]
David Lemieux
Steve Silberman.
- [18:21]
Jesse Jarno
And that was another demonstration of Jerry's big ears.
- [18:24]
Rich Mahan
You know, it's like, oh, disco. Oh, my God. You know, all the homophobes out there, you know, burning disco records. Jerry was digging it.
- [18:33]
David Lemieux
The racist and homophobic reactions were an underlying tension under popular music in the late 1970s, culminating in the infamous Disco Demolition night at Comiskey park in Chicago in July 1979.
- [18:45]
Rich Mahan
Between games, as planned, a huge box containing thousands of disco records was blown up real good. The rest was unplanned. Fans stormed out onto the field in the thousands.
- [19:03]
David Lemieux
Disco records were hurled like Frisbees.
- [19:05]
Rich Mahan
Bonfires were set. Bottles were thrown.
- [19:08]
Kathy Sublette
The batting cage was torn down and destroyed.
- [19:10]
Rich Mahan
Fist fights broke out. White Sox players had to be locked.
- [19:13]
Kathy Sublette
In their clubhouse for their own protection.
- [19:16]
David Lemieux
But disco was hardly the only thing in Jerry Garcia's ears in 1978. We'll let Garcia do the talking here. We've posted more track info for the samples@dead.net deadcast I go through these little.
- [19:28]
Kathy Sublette
Fevers, you know, there was one little fever where I got all as much Duke Ellington material as I could. I suddenly got really excited about orchestration. And I went through a period where I was. And still I'm going through it, I guess, really, where I listened a lot. For example, the Art Tatum. There's so much great music that's already happened that catching up is a hell of a job. And then there's so much new stuff that comes on, and it's so impressive. I really like Aldi Miola. I think he's a really excellent guitar player.
- [20:29]
David Lemieux
It's growing up in suburban New Jersey, Al dimiola did at least a little time with a Dead cover band, as we heard in our Playing Dead episode a few years ago.
- [21:11]
Kathy Sublette
As far as new, I like George Benson. There's a flamenco. Young flamenco guitarist that really knocks me out. I've only seen a couple of his records, which are imports from. Yeah, yeah, he's incredible. He has this beautiful flow to his playing. It's just really rare. A rare thing in Guards.
- [21:52]
David Lemieux
That'd be Paco di Lucia.
- [22:14]
Kathy Sublette
I like that guy from Philadelphia, too, a lot. Pat Martino. Yeah, he's one of my favorites. He's one of the most rhythmically, I think he's really neat.
- [22:48]
David Lemieux
Steve Silberman.
- [22:50]
Rich Mahan
He was hip to people like Pat Martino, who. You know, this fantastic jazz guitarist who is also a huge influence. I, only a couple of years ago, found out Andre Anastasio of Phish. Pat Martino is one of the most underrated guitarists in jazz history, in part because he had a. He like Jerry, had a catastrophic medical event, and they had to relearn how to play the guitar.
- [23:21]
Kathy Sublette
I think the guitar playing is in an incredible state right now. I think there are more good guitar players alive that have ever existed.
- [23:27]
Rich Mahan
And, you know, it's clear that Garcia had the biggest ears of anyone you could name, really.
- [23:33]
Jesse Jarno
And so he was drawing inspiration from.
- [23:38]
Rich Mahan
All of these deep and sometimes very obscure sources, and yet turning it into a sound that was distinctively and unmistakably his own.
- [24:18]
David Lemieux
By 1978, the Grateful Dead no longer logged tons of regular hours rehearsing together, but their entire creative practice had set them up for constant change that kept audiences coming back and hanging on every note. And we've got much more of that Garcia interview to come. We've focused on the band's infamous fan Recordists, the Tapers. And today we've got one more. There were very few women Tapers back in the day. And on this episode, we're delighted to welcome Kathy Sublette, 76.
- [24:47]
Rich Mahan
That's when I started seeing. I was in college, so I would go, like, all along the East Coast. I would do the tour as a.
- [24:56]
David Lemieux
Student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. Or possibly she had my grandmother as a professor. Kathy cut her teeth at the Marathon Palladium.
- [25:04]
Rich Mahan
77 gigs and the Palladium, they would play till like 3:30 in the morning. It was like, was that as good as I thought, or was that the drugs?
- [25:17]
David Lemieux
Tapes were a way of confirming that.
- [25:19]
Rich Mahan
I got tired of, like, waiting for my buddies to give me a tape. So I thought to myself, well, I'm just gonna buy my own equipment. That way I can just do my own thing. I saw how they did it and I thought, well, I'm capable of doing this myself. So I bought myself a D5 and then I bought Shure's.
- [25:43]
David Lemieux
With her Shure microphones, Kathy caught some of the classic dead shows of the late 70s. We'll be soundtracking this next bit with her recording of the palladium May 4, 1977, which you can find wherever you find your audience tapes.
- [26:10]
Rich Mahan
And then I got a pair of freaking crutches to tape the mics on to hold up. And then in the early days, it wasn't. Wasn't legal to take the equipment in. So then I had a wheelchair to get the equipment in. When I looked around, I. I was the only girl. I was the only woman doing it. All the guys just looked back at me like, what's she doing here? Or she doesn't know what she was doing. That was okay because most of the girls were dancing, which is fine, but it was cracking me up because all the guys were, like, getting really wasted, which I was getting wasted too, but not to the point where you had to, like, know what you were doing, you know, set the levels and everything. I could tell they weren't making as good as a tape as I was because with every song they were like, moving their levels. Each his own, you know what I mean? But it was a better idea to, like, just set your levels.
- [27:32]
David Lemieux
This is what we call a pro tip.
- [27:57]
Rich Mahan
At that time. In 77, your card didn't come with a tape deck. You had installed the best tape deck you could with the best speakers that you had at the time. In 77, it was a pioneer, pioneer deck with the great speakers in the back that Was the beauty of the whole thing. Tape it and then take the show and then listen to it or listen to the. The previous or the one before or your favorite or whichever. The rain and it looks like you.
- [28:47]
David Lemieux
In the spring of 1978, Kathy hit the road with her crew, making it down to the Jacksonville show that's now on this box set. But like many tours, it got better as it went.
- [28:57]
Rich Mahan
For me, the most fun was stopping at the colleges in the spring because it was pretty. It was pretty at some of the colleges in the spring.
- [29:07]
David Lemieux
After the Duke show, Kathy and her friends made it to the tiny town of Blacksburg, where the Dead were playing at Virginia Tech, or more properly, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
- [29:18]
Rich Mahan
It's very mountainous. It's a very tiny little town. It felt like, wow, I can't believe they're playing here. Let's go, you know, bring it on. I mean, bring it on. We'll go anywhere to see you. Let's go. We'll go hither and yon. It was spring and it was beautiful. The mountains were nice and beautiful.
- [29:44]
David Lemieux
Kathy was part of the seasonal migration of Deadheads rambling the nation's interstates. We've come across a few different groups from New York converging on Virginia for these next few shows, and I can only assume it's a representative sampling. You may know Bob Mincken for his excellent on the scene photography. He'd missed seeing his first Dead show in 1974 when he got rained out of seeing the wall of sound at Roosevelt Stadium, but made up for lost time when they returned to the road.
- [30:11]
Bob Minkin
San Francisco was the best place. I grew up in the second best place. That's another reason why I never really went. I never went to Midwest shows and I never really went on tour, so to speak, because I already saw like eight shows, like in New York, Philly, Connecticut, upstate. That scratched the itch.
- [30:30]
David Lemieux
If you were a Dead freak in the New York area, you could have spent much of your time seeing music by the Dead family, the Almonds family, or the Jefferson Airplane family. Bob's got the receipts.
- [30:40]
Bob Minkin
As a teenager, a young person, I kept list of every show I went to.
- [30:45]
David Lemieux
He saw a bunch of great shows. In the weeks before the Dead spring.
- [30:48]
Bob Minkin
Tour opened in March, we got Bob Weirband. So Bob Weirband with his new band came through town. Bobby Cochran and lead guitar and a. And a young unknown, fairly unknown, Brent Midland on keyboards. And then Garcia band came through around the same time. You know, they did that frequently. It would be like Bob Weir or Kingfish Jerry Garcia band so for like two weeks, it was heaven, you know, seeing them in colleges like Seton Hall University, Queens College, you know, Hofstra University, which are basically college gyms, or Stony Brook. But in this case, Jerry came through with the lineup that had Maria Muldauer in it. So they played a bunch of shows.
- [31:27]
David Lemieux
Also, Robert Hunter made his east coast debut with his band Comfort, doing a live radio hookup for my father's place on Long Island Waiting for the midnight.
- [31:36]
Rich Mahan
Train to land Recall I sent a valentine to tell you what you may.
- [31:44]
Kathy Sublette
Have guessed before.
- [31:47]
Rich Mahan
But just in case you're still uncertain My train don't run here anymore I train don't run here.
- [31:57]
Bob Minkin
Anymore I was there.
- [32:00]
David Lemieux
And a marathon Sunday night show featuring Hunter and Comfort, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the Jerry Garcia Band on Long island in Comac.
- [32:09]
Bob Minkin
That was a Suffolk forum. I was at that show. Well, that was easy because I lived in Brooklyn, so driving out, you know, Suffolk was a little far, but, you know, hundreds of miles far an hour. But that was a big night. To see all three bands in one night was pretty cool.
- [32:25]
David Lemieux
So many jams.
- [32:26]
Bob Minkin
I saw Dicky Betts the night after. I saw Garcia at the Capitol. Like the Garcia shows, I think three, 1778. And when I was back there the next night to see Dicky Betts, I was like, really? I did that at that point. I hadn't seen the Dead since the Winterland New Year Show, December 77.
- [32:59]
David Lemieux
And a whole four months without the Dead can make a Dead freak really straighten out. Bob obviously needed to get on that.
- [33:05]
Bob Minkin
Two people in my neighborhood, Barry and Steven, they had this idea to charter a bus. Because my neighborhood had a lot of Deadheads in it, you know, a lot of freaks. So to charter a bus that would take us down, it would leave the morning of the Blacksburg show. Friday. It was a Friday Saturday. Well, I was in my first year of school. I was a few months shy of 19. I only had to miss one day because we left Friday morning, like real early. It's like an all inclusive thing. The fee included the bus travel to and from tickets for both nights and a hotel.
- [33:37]
David Lemieux
These were the years before the Dead instituted a full on mail order ticketing operation, which didn't happen until 1983. But there was obviously demand among Deadheads and fans had started to organize among themselves.
- [33:49]
Bob Minkin
I think we met up on King's Plaza and Flappish Avenue, like it was dark out.
- [33:53]
David Lemieux
Bob had recently started taking photos of the band and occasionally slinging them in the emerging Parking lot scene. You can see some of his work inside the new friend of the Devils box we've been talking about.
- [34:03]
Bob Minkin
I was shooting for relics. Basically. I did not have any sort of official access through the Grateful Dead. I was selling my photos before and after the show. Some places you were able to bring a camera in, and other places you weren't, and you didn't really know which until you got up to the door. So in some cases, I had to, like, do something with my camera if I couldn't bring it in. Other times, they couldn't care less, and I could bring everything in. Other times, I had to sneak it and take the lens off, give it to my friends to get down his pants. You know, the standard operating procedure.
- [34:35]
David Lemieux
Kathy Sublette knew all about standard operating procedures.
- [34:38]
Rich Mahan
We get out of the wheelchair and station that somewhere. The wheelchair folded up. That was just a prop.
- [34:45]
David Lemieux
Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux.
- [34:47]
Jesse Jarno
The number of people I've met who went to see the Dead at this time in places like Blacksburg or wherever, and the shows were so good. They were like, I was instantly a Deadhead. I ended up going to the next night and the next night, and then I couldn't get enough. And then before you know it, I saw 18 shows that year. And so I think Blacksburg's a good example of that. I had to look it up on a map.
- [35:11]
Bob Minkin
That's.
- [35:12]
Jesse Jarno
That's where Blacksburg is in my mind, because I know where. I know where Atlanta is and I know where Pembroke Pines is, because the Dead have played there and Jacksonville and places like that. But I didn't know where Blacksburg, Virginia, was. I had to look it up.
- [35:24]
David Lemieux
Blacksburg is in Virginia's far west. The Dead hadn't been there previously and wouldn't return, but that didn't mean the place wasn't full of Deadheads. Last episode, we heard about the epic campout by Duke students who wanted Dead tickets. Two weeks later, students at Virginia Tech did the same, starting their campout even earlier, with some students showing up as many as 12 days before the April 3 on sale date, according to coverage in the Roanoke Times. If you're out there, Tom Jenkins, much respect. According to the student newspaper, it made the college rethink the way it sold concert tickets. Some of the Duke gang who'd camped out for tickets made it to Blacksburg, too. Nick Morgan.
- [36:04]
Rich Mahan
I think we could have five or six or seven people in one Volkswagen Beetle, and then maybe two or three cars followed along. So about eight or nine of us traveled along.
- [36:13]
David Lemieux
John Lerner left us this story@stories.dead.net April of 1978.
- [36:20]
Rich Mahan
First time going on the road to see the Dead. Multiple nights in a row. Friend drive down from Pennsylvania, picked me up in D.C. for the long trip to Blacksburg. Thought it was a lot closer than it was, but we just kept driving and driving.
- [36:33]
David Lemieux
Dr. Bob Wagner, who he spoke with in our first episode, made the trek to Blacksburg.
- [36:38]
Rich Mahan
I went there myself. The rest of the entourage was skipping that one and going to William and Mary. Very few people went to the Blacksburg shows. Virginia Tech, and I think I did classes that day and then headed off on my own. I was so tired. I have not a lot of memory of Blogsburg, so I know I drove up there and found the venue kind of at the last minute, just in time to get in for the show.
- [37:11]
David Lemieux
Castle Coliseum opened in 1962, holding around 10,000 fans.
- [37:16]
Jesse Jarno
It's a party night. It's a Friday night on a college campus.
- [37:19]
David Lemieux
Nick Morgan, who we spoke with a bunch in our Duke episode, made the road trip from Durham with some of his classmates and experienced a bit of culture clash.
- [37:28]
Rich Mahan
There was all of us dead ends there two nights later, and everybody who looked like they were headed off to the military or the war looked like they did not look like a dead end. It was like two different worlds of young people all mixing it up around this campus in the middle of Virginia.
- [37:45]
Jesse Jarno
One thing, I remember hearing this the first time when we started working on it again, like 18 months ago. And Tennessee Jed was always a song usually came a little bit later in the first set. Usually they're all warmed up and they kind of. That way they could build it up and it would kind of hit these huge peaks. This one comes as the second song of the show, and it's those little tiny differences that, you know, a fan of any other band isn't going to pick up on that. But Deadheads, who are used to seeing Tennessee Jed later in the. Every show we've gone through has had, not one, not two, many interesting and unique moments unique to that show. And this one is another one where you get a Dupree's Diamond Blues. Like, you know, this is the Dead. It's not like, oh, every second show we got to do Dupree's Diamond Blues, give the fans what they want. It's the Dead feeling inspired. Let's do Dupree's Diamond Blues. And they did it here, and it's really good.
- [39:10]
David Lemieux
It's the end of an era. The last of a half dozen versions in its 1977, 1978 revival. Played for the first time since 1970, then retired again until 1982. It's the final version with Keith and Donna. God show.
- [39:24]
Rich Mahan
Well, you know, son, you just can't figure.
- [39:29]
Kathy Sublette
First thing you know you're gonna pull that trigger.
- [39:35]
Rich Mahan
And it's no wonder your reason goes bad.
- [39:40]
Kathy Sublette
Chili Roll Travis.
- [39:45]
Jesse Jarno
We've talked about, you know, the Scarlet Fires. We've talked about the Estimated Eyes, the Estimated he's gone, things like that. This one again, messing with these preconceived notions of what the 78 format was like. They do Dancing in the street as the jam.
- [40:22]
Rich Mahan
Around the world Are you.
- [40:24]
David Lemieux
Ready for a brand new be?
- [40:28]
Rich Mahan
Summer's here and the time is right.
- [40:31]
David Lemieux
We'Re dancing in the streets the shout out to the mid Atlantic cities gets a cheer.
- [40:37]
Rich Mahan
Philadelphia palace.
- [40:56]
David Lemieux
Thanks to Deadcast correspondent James Adams for pointing us towards this next very regional story. A few years ago, James published a really cool edition of his Virginia Music history zine series about the Dead at Castle. We've posted a link@dead.net deadcast Please welcome to the Dead Cast Del Ward.
- [41:15]
Rich Mahan
In 1978, I was a sophomore at Old Dominion University and played on the baseball team. We were on a road trip and we were up there to play tech on the 15th of April. We pulled in late the night before. After we put our stuff away, some of us went walking around the campus. On the way back, you could tell something was going on in the Coliseum. So I asked the security guard what it was and he said the Dead were playing. Well, that excited me, being a rock and roll fan, and I knew a little of that stuff. I talked him into letting me step inside and see a few minutes of the show. And they were playing Dancing in the Street. But you will just as long as you are there. So come on every girl everywhere around the world. And I was just absolutely mesmerized. I'd never heard a guitar like that. Jerry's guitar was just incredible. So watched Dancing the Streets and then I had to run around outside and.
- [42:30]
David Lemieux
Get to the team room as a ball player. Del had a curfew. The team room where he and his teammates were staying turned out to be below the floor of Castle Coliseum, where they weren't exactly lulled to sleep by the Dead's disco jams. We discussed the Dead in disco and Jerry Garcia's listening habits earlier. We're going to get back into the John Seaver interviews from Guitar Player and use this dancing in the street to get into the nuts and Bolts of how Garcia put new ideas into play with the band's improvisation. There used to be a magazine called Guitar for the practicing musician. And Jerry Garcia was a practicing musician in both senses. He was out there putting ideas into practice. And he also practiced, like, a lot.
- [43:42]
Kathy Sublette
I would say that I spent no less than an average of 2 hours a day at the absolute worst. That's, you know, like really screwing around. I think four is more normal for me then on the road. It goes up to about six, including the show. Once I'm warmed up, then I tend to just play. Not really a tune, you know, but just chords, you know, and find things. And random guitar playing, you know, in the interest of just being able to think of something and play it, you know, it's kind of like testing myself. Sometimes I work on a tune with difficult intervals. For example, on actual melody or an actual, you know, some weird song, you know, some, you know, something that's fun to play or difficult to play or a challenge or something like that.
- [45:00]
David Lemieux
Jerry Garcia spent a few years as a music teacher in the early 1960s. If you poke around on the old computer, there's a tape of him giving a banjo lesson in the pre dead days. Garcia's playing was made from thousands of techniques and understandings that he continued to refine as a matter of craft. Here are some guitar practicing techniques from the forever student.
- [45:20]
Kathy Sublette
A very simple and important exercise. Just the thing of starting a pattern with a downstroke and alternate picking the whole pattern and starting with an upstroke and alternate picking the whole pattern to get an understanding of where the rhythmic bias falls and all that. It gives you the best opportunity for having a consistent flow in your playing, no matter what you want to do. And then how you draw things out of it is your own business. It opens up tremendous stuff. For me, most of the flow is in the actual playing. That's another. Another kind of thing I practice is dynamic picking. So, for example, a common thing for me to do is turn my guitar all the way up, say, with a practice amp, and then start doing arpeggios, playing very quietly at the beginning and then getting louder as a function of touch. So that makes it so that you have a kind of smoothness from your loudest, hardest picking to your softest picking. And it makes it so that you can keep the same hand, so to speak. So for me, the thing is continually making those conversions back and forth from quiet to loud picking. And that's a thing that's indispensable to me. It's Something I think about a lot is the dynamics of a solo. For example, this passage is quiet, this passage is loud. This. That means a lot to me about music generally, dynamics. I think of myself really as a guitar student as much as a guitar, as a performer or a player, because there's just so much being developed and so much that's been done, you know, that really there's just a huge amount to deal with. And I'd like to think of the guitar as a total instrument. Once every other year, I go out and buy everything that's been published in the last two years of guitar instruction stuff to see whether there's anything really exciting that has appeared. And the state of the art of teaching the guitar has really improved incredibly in the last 15 years. You can find out virtually anything nowadays. It's helpful then to have that as a horizon, something to deal with. Also, I had a lot of luck with clarinet books, piano books.
- [48:18]
David Lemieux
Steve Silberman, he's a working musician.
- [48:21]
Rich Mahan
Like people always think, like, oh, signpost to new space, you know. Yeah, sure. Like, he's. He's a heavy cat, you know, but he. But he, you know, as he almost infamously said, you know, his ambition was to become a competent guitarist. And so he had a very, I would say, working class attitude towards his role as a guitarist where he was. He was, you know, he was putting in the. Putting in the practice hours, buying the playing books, listening to the new guys that he'd hear about, you know, and he was very grounded in the craft.
- [48:59]
Jesse Jarno
Like he was not some. Not just some mystical avatar. He was very, very grounded in the.
- [49:05]
Rich Mahan
Practical elements of his craft and was constantly challenging himself.
- [49:11]
Kathy Sublette
There are a whole bunch of exercises better than that source material. In other words. I get my stuff from places, you know, and I reg. Browse books since I used to teach. The idea of what's involved in learning is something that I've dealt with, and I know it because I deal with it on my own tilt. In other words, I go out and buy books and see if I can learn by going through them just without any other input. So some books communicate successfully to me, some don't. Ah, you still do that? Oh, sure. I do it every year. Every. Every year or so because I. There's a whole new flash about every two or three. Also, it's nice to know somebody else's handle on it because it's possible that there's a whole way of looking at the instrument, music or anything that you haven't. Haven't flashed on or that's a recent development or any number of other things. And a lot of people are making serious attempts to communicate. Howard Roberts, I think, really is. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, he. He communicates more lucidly than any other teacher sort of guy, you know, and his play is so great.
- [50:49]
David Lemieux
Jerry Garcia remained an extremely serious guitar nerd.
- [50:52]
Kathy Sublette
Oh, Guitar Player is one of my favorite magazines, man. I'm a religious reader of it. I love it, I'm into it. I read these things religiously. I mean, there's certain things I don't, but. But the jazz things, I always read it.
- [51:30]
David Lemieux
Lots of guitarists over the past few decades have spent tons of time trying to figure out how to play like Jerry Garcia. Here's how Jerry Garcia kept up his Jerry Garcia chops.
- [51:40]
Kathy Sublette
Mostly I do. What I do is, you know, standard scale intervals working out of each of the various positions. I do a lot of arpeggios, chord arpeggios, you know, like two octave arpeggios. And I do a couple of things that are odd, one or two really. But they're all designed fundamentally for the thing of moving from any position to any other position, playing any note to any other note on the guitar. Some of them, for example, emphasize interval spread, interval jumping. Some of them, most of them have to do with alternate picking, which I'm a strict alternate picker. So that alternate picking, which has a few difficult moves in it, especially when you're concerned with jumping intervals, there's a few things that are difficult there. So I work on those areas more than anything else. I've been working on things that are like basically two string scales.
- [53:02]
Rich Mahan
So you're working very, very much on.
- [53:04]
Kathy Sublette
Right and crossways down ways for me now finally a whole. The complete pattern of the fingerboard is starting to. I'm forcing it into shape, you know what I mean? In my own psyche, you know, my own way of seeing and feeling and just working on my technique is what it boils down to. Books, theory, fingerboard harmony, all that. What I'm trying to do is remake, rebuild myself, you know, I just, I feel like it's time for me to do that in my playing, you know, in my life and all that. I don't know whether it'll amount to anything, but in six months I'll know. You know, it's. It's that kind. It's a long. I'm sort of in a two year plan right now in the first phase of it.
- [54:00]
David Lemieux
Someone get the time sheath and check in with 1980 Garcia. We'll return to 78 Garcia's brain momentarily. But right now, we're going to head back to Blacksburg. Bob Minkin.
- [54:33]
Bob Minkin
The only really unusual shot I got was Jerry, Bobby and Donna, at one point, sang together at the same microphone. I saw Jim Anderson's photo of that, too, from a different angle. Like, we both got it at the same time from a different angle. And I'm trying to remember what song that would have been. I'm wondering if that was during Dancing in the Streets. Like, I'm just guessing this. Like, at the end when they're. You know, when it's slowing down and they're just doing that dancing. And I wonder if they came to the mic together. That's just. I'm being guessing there.
- [55:21]
David Lemieux
David Lemieux.
- [55:23]
Jesse Jarno
It's a long version of Dancing in the street before they head in to Rhythm Devils. They're clearly having a good time playing. This is 35 minutes taken up by one song and a drum solo, which is a drum duet, which is actually more like a drum quintet, because you got everybody coming up and bashing around.
- [55:41]
Bob Minkin
Probably the most unusual and interesting part of that show for me was the. The drum space. Other one, to me, I think that was like, the meat of the show, because the drums were nothing like I'd ever seen before or since. You know, it was something really unusual because they were all in on it. Even Keith, you know, and Crew, too. Parrish and other people. I wasn't. Couldn't really make out who they were.
- [56:06]
David Lemieux
John Lerner had a blast.
- [56:09]
Rich Mahan
Jerry banging on the steel drums. Keith wandering around the stage aimlessly and. Until Donna elbowed him and knocked him backwards, which was quite an event that didn't get a lot of attention back in the day.
- [56:45]
David Lemieux
This is another night where photos and newspaper reports confirm that Jerry Garcia, Steve Parish, Keith Godshow and others were up making rhythmic devilry. The student newspaper describes one of the roadies holding a chair over his head and then playing it with a hammer.
- [56:59]
Bob Minkin
They were hitting stuff, like, anything that was around, like. Like whatever. Like the seat, like the chairs they were sitting on. And then Mickey had. I guess it was Mickey. There was this some device making some otherworldly sounds. I guess it was some kind of synthesizer because it's drums. Drums and all. It's like something from an old science fiction movie. That's what it kind of reminded me of. But that was the only time I'd ever seen them do anything like that.
- [58:06]
David Lemieux
Down below the floor of Castle Coliseum, the Old Dominion Monarchs were trying to sleep. Del Ward.
- [58:13]
Rich Mahan
When the Lights went out and we were all laying there trying to go to sleep. All you could hear was this constant thumping and everybody was like, what the hell is that? I said, well, it's got to be the base. I mean, we're right under the stage. So we were sitting there just listening to this thumping and then all of a sudden it just intensified and increased. Years later, later, I come to find out that that was Phil in the other one. Everybody was laughing. How a big time. But that was my intro to the Dead and fill bombs. And I saw the dead about 35 more times in front of the stage and not under the stage. And by the way, we lost a double header detect the next day because no one had any sleep.
- [60:08]
David Lemieux
The Monarchs got soundly trounced. 12 to 7 and 6 to nothing. But on the other hand.
- [60:30]
Jesse Jarno
It'S got a really good other one. Whereas the the other other one on the tour, a little more spaceier, longer. This one is a little more intense. It clocks in a more normal seven or eight minutes.
- [61:10]
David Lemieux
Since we're tracking this tour as the beginning of the drum space segments, I'll note that this particular set in Blacksburg is the first second set to follow one version of the formula for a great deal of the shows to follow. Some heady jam songs flowing into drums, then space, then a Jerry Garcia ballad, then a rockin Bob Weir song, Dr. Bob Wagner.
- [61:30]
Rich Mahan
I don't remember what I did or where I spent the night. Might have even slept in the car. That was done before when I was trying to do tours throughout my time in medical school. I was a starving college student and there. There were times that I slept in the car if I didn't have other people to share a hotel room with.
- [61:49]
David Lemieux
Nick Morgan and the Duke crew found local lodging.
- [61:53]
Rich Mahan
We crashed in like the library or some dorm where there's no other place to find and sleep after the show. So I think someone let us into like the lounge area of some dorm and they're like, yeah, sure, you guys are fine. And we just crashed out on the floor of some. Some building on campus and no one seemed to bother us, but it did feel like we were oil and water in two different worlds, all trying to mix it up, which was good enough for that night.
- [62:21]
David Lemieux
John Lerner and crew headed to the next show.
- [62:23]
Rich Mahan
After the show, we drove from Blacksburg to Williamsburg through the mountains of West Virginia. Literally had a.
- [62:29]
David Lemieux
Don't know if it was a state.
- [62:30]
Rich Mahan
Trooper or a local cop, but definitely a cherry on top of the vehicle that was tailing us for at least an hour driving through the mountains of western Virginia. We did not choose the interstate, we chose the backcountry roads. And you know, an hour later, you know, when that cop car turned off and we were on our way, we literally pulled over the road and, you know, just exhaled.
- [62:56]
David Lemieux
The bus from Brooklyn had a plan, sort of.
- [62:59]
Bob Minkin
Bob Minkin we stayed in a hotel and they didn't get enough rooms so we all had to triple, quadruple up in these rooms. Having to sleep on a floor or something, something uncomfortable, you know. It was like a Motel 6 kind of place.
- [63:13]
David Lemieux
The whole tour, equipment, trucks, band and Deadheads headed across the easternmost Blue Ridge Mountains and through the Shenandoah Valley, A four hour or so drive to Williamsburg and one of the band's favored mid Atlantic stops. They'd played two legendary shows at William and Mary in 1973 and won in 1976. April 15, 1978 is now Dave's picks 37.
- [63:57]
Kathy Sublette
Could not be enough.
- [64:01]
David Lemieux
That was recording engineer Betty Kanter Jackson adjusting Garcia's voice on the tape mix like we discussed in our Duke episode, different than what the crowd was hearing in the room. Dave of the Pics we had an.
- [64:12]
Jesse Jarno
Idea to do a box set from this thing, but it wasn't happening then and it wasn't happening imminently. And we I think got a little impatient and antsy and he's like, you know what? Now's the time. We haven't done a 78 release in a while. Now's the time to do one one and it's going to be this one. And it didn't bother me that, you know, we took a show from a nine night run that we might have otherwise done something. So now we have an eight night run with the absence of that one show, which is fine. Again, 25,000 people presumably have that on CD. Hopefully they can just kind of insert that on their shelf with this one so they get the complete run. But it is a magnificent show.
- [64:52]
David Lemieux
We certainly can't ignore the show. For one thing, it's awesome. For another, we've got a few really great stories to go with it. So if you haven't track down Dave's picks 371 pal of the Dead cast who attended the show is the wonderful Rob Bleatstein, who you perhaps know from the SiriusXM Grateful Dead or Pearl Jam channels, or maybe is the vault keeper for the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Please welcome back Rob Leetstein.
- [65:18]
Rich Mahan
My first show was a month before my 12th birthday at Nassau Coliseum in 1973. And it was the first day of junior high school and everybody's older brothers and sisters were going. A bunch of my friends were going. My older brother was going, you know, so we all wound up going.
- [65:35]
David Lemieux
When we talk about Long island as a hotbed of Dead freakdom, we're talking about Rob Blitzstein and his crew in Rosslyn, New York. None of them knew it, but Ned Lagent had grown up there a decade earlier. Rob kept seeing the Dead and got fully hit by the lightning bolt at Winterland on December 29, 1977. Now Dix picks 10, which we'll use to soundtrack this next little bit.
- [65:57]
Rich Mahan
Good evening and welcome to Thursday Night at Wonderland.
- [66:00]
David Lemieux
When spring tour came around, William and Mary was in striking distance. Like Bob Minkin and the Brooklyn Gang, who they didn't know, they chartered a vehicle.
- [66:09]
Rich Mahan
My late friend Malcolm Kaplan decided to organize this chartered bus trip. And we were heads. There was a group of maybe like five or six of us that we got these. Mouse had the Monster Corporation, had those patches, skull and Roses patches that we got at Poster Mat in Greenwich Village. And we had them all sewn onto our denim jackets. And we were like the Grateful Dead gang in high school. It's what Deadheads do. You spread the faith. We were turning people onto the Dead left and right. And then it just got to the point where Malcolm got this bus trip. The bus left at like three in the morning. And this is another thing. The bus left from our high school parking lot, which I found out from Malcolm just a few years ago, that when we got back and they found out, they had no clue about it. When they found out about it, they were not happy at all. There were a ton of friends and people who got on the bus who had never been on the bus before and hadn't seen the Dead before and hadn't gotten their brains psychedelicized yet. And I want to say of the 50 kids on that bus, probably good, 30 of them had their first experience at that show on that trip. It was just an unbelievable thing. And the only adult in the whole picture was the bus driver. Like, there was no chaperone or nothing. It was just kind of bedlam.
- [68:22]
David Lemieux
Organized bedlam, emphasis on the bedlam.
- [68:25]
Rich Mahan
So my friend Al Winick had a brand new tac PC 10, which was tx portable recorder, which was the equivalent of a Sony 158 or a knock 550. And William and Mary was going to be the first show he was recording on his brand new PCTX PC 10. And it also, it had A speaker on it. The bus had the kind, you know, it's a torch, where the bus driver had the microphone, where he could grab that microphone and talk into the little thing. So we taped that microphone to the speaker on the tape deck and we're cranking music the whole way. And one of my greatest visions of this bus, by the time we hit Maryland, coming down from New York with the music cranking, okay? And it's unlimited alcohol and pot on this bus. And it's just a cloud. By the time we got to Maryland and we were playing the Miami 74 Dark Star in the US blues, which is now on a Dave's Picks. And it's just rolling. And I'll never forget this looking up. And the bus driver, who is a pretty big dude too. He is just rocking in his seat, driving, cruising down the freeway, taking us to Virginia, listening to Miami 74. And he had to have gotten a contact high, sort of inescapable. I remember we pulled into the hotel, which was a little old Howard Johnson's that, you know, some of us wound up treating like we were the whole. But I do remember, like, it wasn't too far from the campus. I remember going to the campus earlier in the day. We were walking around and seeing people from who were at Duke a few days before and telling us all about it and Blacksburg as well.
- [71:07]
David Lemieux
Sometime that morning, the chartered bus from Brooklyn pulled into Williamsburg. Bob Menken.
- [71:12]
Bob Minkin
We got to William and Mary. We got there so early that it was also like a parents weekend. I think that weekend tweak it that day. It was real. It's a real clean cut, beautiful campus.
- [71:22]
David Lemieux
Would be a shame if a horde of hippies descended on it. Bob had started documenting the dead by then and sometimes selling his shots in the lot before the show.
- [71:31]
Bob Minkin
I really hit the jackpot when just recently to that when I came back from seeing the dead at Winterland. The 12, 29, 30, 31, 77. Those are like the best shots like I had ever taken. They still stand up well today. So I had a whole plethora of new shots of the dead from Winterland, which mean I made it on the East Coast. It was like San Francisco New Year's Eve, you know, something. So those were the latest and the greatest. In the spring of 78, he was.
- [72:04]
David Lemieux
Wandering around outside the William and Mary.
- [72:06]
Bob Minkin
Show, hanging out all day. Bill Lesh comes walking out, walking around, you know, like hanging out. He's wearing a Duke University shirt.
- [72:14]
David Lemieux
We told a story last episode about an anonymous member of the Dead. Who wanted to acquire a Duke shirt but wasn't recognized by a Deadhead on campus. I've seen a few people speculating about who that might have been. And I'll throw in the fact that I think all members of the Grateful Dead, besides Garcia and Donna Jean, were photographed in Duke gear at various times. Anyway, back to Bob in the lot in Williamsburg.
- [72:35]
Bob Minkin
You've probably seen that photo. I took a fill in the parking lot where he's looking at me with that Duke shirt. But I also have the shots of him walking towards me. And then these kids have this banner that they had painted they're going to hang at the show and they asked Phil to sign it. So Phil actually sat down, you know, this is behind the place where the load in area is, and sat down and chatted with us all for a bit and signed those kids banner. I have that all. Click, click, click, click, click, click. So, you know, to see a Dead member just walking around the lot back then was pretty cool.
- [73:07]
David Lemieux
We've posted a link to Bob's photos@dead.net deadcast the Williamsburg 78 show is fascinating because the audience included two future collaborators with Jerry Garcia. One was the piano player Bruce Hornsby, who'd seen the Dead's 73 appearances and fallen deeply in love with the band. For our next guest, though, the Williamsburg 78 gig was some of his first exposure to life in the United States.
- [73:57]
Rich Mahan
Plates.
- [74:27]
David Lemieux
In late 1994, Jerry Garcia would play on several tracks on the album Blue Incantation by guitarist Sanjay Mishra, now available as part of Front Street Outtakes. That was a bit of nocturne. We've Posted links@dead.net deadcast we spoke with Sanjay during our Playing Dead episodes because in the mid-70s, he played in Mahe Maha, perhaps Calcutta's only Dead cover band.
- [74:51]
Rich Mahan
Our set list would go like this. You know, it would be Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Doobie Brothers, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead, Grateful that, Allman Brothers, Grateful that, Grateful that, Allman Brothers.
- [75:36]
David Lemieux
For more of the story of Mahamaha, check out Playing Dead. We've posted links to that and sanjay's music@dead.net Deadcast by late 1977, Sanjay moved to the Washington, D.C. area to study.
- [75:49]
Rich Mahan
The first thing I did when I came to the States was the way I saw the Grateful Dead. I was like, oh, shit, the Grateful Dead are playing in Williamsburg, Virginia. I was like, where the hell is Williamsburg, Virginia? And somebody said, well, it's about 300 miles away. I said, okay, so how do I get there? And that was my first exposure to life in America because I just arrived and the whole road from Richmond to Williamsburg, which is like a little back road, so it was like a two lane road. And I was stunned because the whole road was dead fans. It was all VW buses, choppers, and people passing joints around. And I was like, this is awesome. Yeah, I can't believe. This is actually. This is America. Like, this is where I always thought America was. This is great. And. And all the way down from Williamsburg to Richmond, it was only people going to the Deadshot. That's it. And I had a friend who was studying at William and Mary, so I said, can I crash out with you guys in the dorm?
- [77:09]
Kathy Sublette
And he said, yeah, absolutely.
- [77:10]
Rich Mahan
In fact, we're all going to the show and you can come over and, you know, we've got a whole bunch of goodies that we can, you know, partake of. And I remember because it really upset all the sorority types that the Grateful Dead were playing there. So all these hippies had taken over the town. So they were like throwing firecrackers from their residence hall roofs at the people standing in lawn and stuff.
- [77:35]
David Lemieux
While there were certainly plenty of Deadheads around causing a ruckus on Parents Weekend, it wasn't like the full on shakedown street hordes that built steam over the late 1980s. Bob Mincken.
- [77:46]
Bob Minkin
There was a lot of homemade kind of stuff, definitely some T shirts, more people selling, you know, acid and things like that.
- [77:52]
David Lemieux
Bob ran into a certain someone from that world that he knew.
- [77:55]
Bob Minkin
There was this fella. I mean, I could talk about him because he's dead. His moniker was the Jester, like Court Jester kind of thing. Peter. Peter Jester. It was a pretty well known figure in the day. And I ran into him before the William and Mary show. I was kind of slow and going in. You know, a lot of people already had gone in. And I ran into him outside and he asked me if I wanted to get high. And I said, yeah, sure.
- [78:22]
Rich Mahan
And.
- [78:22]
Bob Minkin
But this is the kick. He says, lay down. Lay down on the grass. I was like, why? And he's taking his drop, his dropper out the liquid and he goes, open your eye. And I was like, is this okay? He goes, yeah, don't worry about it. It's fine. So he dropped the acid in my eye as a way of ingesting it. And I was kind of like. But I just went along with it and. And it worked. So that's a bonafide way of doing.
- [78:51]
David Lemieux
Acid Rob Blitzstein and his friends were in for a surprise when they got inside.
- [78:55]
Rich Mahan
We hadn't seen any shows or heard any tapes or anything like that. When you went into the venue and saw the stage and saw the setup, you're like, wow, the kitchen sink is up there. You saw the steel drum full time.
- [79:10]
David Lemieux
Grateful Dead mail order tickets were still a few years away, but they'd managed to score seats together.
- [79:15]
Rich Mahan
I think he was either able to buy group tick, buy a group of tickets either through the Dead office, or they set him up with someone at the. At the campus. I don't know exactly, but it's one of those two. They were fine seats on the side section. We were all together and it was just crazy. The shows that I had really amazing acid trips at are sort of like videotapes in my brain. At least parts of them are. I'll never forget where we were, who I was with. Babysitting one of my best friends through his first acid trip, sitting right next to me. It's like, you know, when's it going to happen? When's the guy go, don't worry, man, it's going to happen.
- [79:53]
David Lemieux
Oh, it's going to happen. Dr. Bob Wagner had caught the Dead at William and Mary on both of their previous visits to campus with the horn section in 1973, when they tacked on a bonus night and their 1976 return.
- [80:37]
Rich Mahan
I would say William and Mary kind of stood out for me. Even though the recording isn't one of the best from that tour. That was one of the ones I listened to frequently.
- [80:58]
Kathy Sublette
Game in Town.
- [81:01]
Rich Mahan
The only game in town on that tour, it was with Tapers that were more experienced than I was, so I relied on their judgment. And. And it's a different situation that at every show, like at William and Mary, for example, they had seats on the floor, so it was not general admission. And about halfway through the. We started out toward the back of the floor and then somebody found some seats further up and we moved about midway, first set. And you can hear that the tape gets noticeably better at that point.
- [81:42]
David Lemieux
For young guitarist Sanjay Mishra, the show is a three alarm mind melter.
- [81:47]
Rich Mahan
I've never seen a show that good. The only other band in the West I'd seen before them was a band called yes, who I really liked. So I'd seen Yes, and I said, because I knew their music.
- [81:58]
Kathy Sublette
So I was like, wow, they're actually.
- [82:00]
Rich Mahan
Able to play what they play on their records. It's pretty amazing. And then I saw the Grateful Dead and it was A completely different energy. Because, yes, we're more kind of like prog rock, more technical and more, I don't know, a little bit different. Grateful Dead was just like very organic and very earthy, you know. And I knew their music, so actually to see them play it live and the way they were able to just take the whole show through different levels of, you know, euphoria was amazing. I saw them every chance I got. So I saw them three months later in D.C. one of the hottest Let it Grows. Jerry's leads, both his breaks on the Let It Grow and William and Mary are just astounding. That whole second set, that Birth of Good Lovin opener is just another scorcher. I had a hard running.
- [84:26]
David Lemieux
The Bertha Leans and the early, more straight ahead feel. I think thanks to Mickey Hart, they.
- [84:31]
Rich Mahan
Varied from night to night. And you know, the William and Mary one is full on arena rock. The William and Mary Candyman will always be my favorite Candyman. It's so heartfelt, so great. To the king, Amen. Here he comes again. Pretty lady Anger, no friend Tilda Candyman comes around again.
- [85:47]
David Lemieux
The heart of the Williamsburg second set hinges on a 14 minute version of playing in the band, which gradually tilts and tilt some more, moving towards the rhythm devil spotlight. It's one of the more compact rhythm devil sequences. A mere 12 minutes. I'm not sure who's making the synth noise here. Rob Leatstein.
- [87:48]
Rich Mahan
Then 78. My tapes, all my audience, all my tapes that I hand labeled and stuff say percussion, space, madness. Because to me that's what. Because that's what it was. It was just so wild. And especially when you're out there on your own other plane and you're hearing this, some of those things are just completely nuts. And they were fun. They were completely goofing around and having a blast. And that was the best part of it. Seeing Jerry up there on a steel drum, even if it was for two minutes or whatever, it was just like, wow, they're all having. They're having fun.
- [89:14]
David Lemieux
There's a hot not fade away too. But the post rhythm devil sequence has an especially big highlight. John Worley left us this message@stories.dead.net I.
- [90:00]
Rich Mahan
Was in high school and hitchhiked from Long island with my best friend pat to Williamsburg, Virginia for the 4:15:78 show. So we met so many nice people along the way. And one of them was when we got to Winsburg was a guy by the name of Douglas Michael Bade, who was a student at William and Mary and he let us crash in his dorm. He told us that there had been a car accident the evening before and another student, a Deadhead, had passed away, which was so sad. It was a beautiful spring day and we spent most of the day afternoon playing Frisbee in the parking lot and drinking beer. And Doug had waited by the backstage area and passed a letter on to the Dead explaining that what had happened to his friend and that one of his favorite songs was Morning Dew. Rob Leatstein after the drums and madness, they break into the only morning dew of 1978, which was for all of us. It was our first Morning Dew. And after seeing the Dead movie for like a solid year and living with that 10, 1874 Deuce Morning.
- [92:10]
David Lemieux
Bob Minkin.
- [92:12]
Bob Minkin
Morning Dew is one of my favorite songs. And they did it that night, which was rare because they hadn't done it in a while. And I don't think they. I think it was only one of the few or only times they did it in like 78.
- [92:23]
Jesse Jarno
David Lemieux this is the classic Grateful Dead. They hadn't done it in a year and they wouldn't do it for another year and a half. And yet they're doing it here. And I just, I mean, this band is endlessly fascinating to me. Comes out of nowhere. It's just amazing.
- [92:39]
Kathy Sublette
Yes, it does matter.
- [93:02]
David Lemieux
The only Morning Dew of 1978 was the first since Winterland in June 1977, and the last until November 1979, which makes it the final version performed by the late piano player Keith Godshow.
- [93:43]
Rich Mahan
John Worley when they played Mourn do.
- [93:45]
Kathy Sublette
It just hit me like a ton of bricks.
- [93:47]
Rich Mahan
Afterwards, we were walking around backstage and in the backstage parking lot area and there's a limousine with tinted windows and we could see people in the back. And we knock on the window and the window rose down and it's Jerry and Bob. Jerry was so kind to us. He was laughing at our stories. And when we asked him about Morning Dew, he said, oh, that came from the heart. And then we had the whole after show experience of corralling all these first time tripping young heads back somehow onto this bus to go back to the hotel. And somehow I believe my friend Stu Barr was doing the roll call. And then of course, one person is nowhere to be found. So it was then like another hour of searching for our friend Dave Fuller, who we found, I think maybe up a tree or something, but we found him. I don't think sleep was in anybody's plan or possibility. It was teenage debauchery. From start to finish pretty much with with a break for the show, the.
- [95:43]
David Lemieux
Brooklyn bus headed right home.
- [95:45]
Bob Minkin
The bus driver drove us home through the night.
- [95:47]
David Lemieux
After the show, they only had to wait a few more weeks for the Dead to make it to the northeast. The Dead, meanwhile, were headed back slightly west again, which is where we'll point next episode. As the great Baby Jane from the band Oneida says, happy Saturday night, y'all.
- [96:29]
Rich Mahan
Thank you very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. Friends, we'd like to thank our guests in this episode, Sanjay Mishra, Kathy Sublette, Rob Bleatstein, Bob Minkin, Del Ward, Bob Wagner, Nick Morgan, John Lerner, John Worley, Scott White, David Lemieux and Steve Silberman. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. Take care and we'll see you next episode. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Doron Tyson. All rights reserved.