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- [00:02]
A
Step into the sunshine with the latest collab from Dogfish Head and the Grateful Dead. Citrus Daydream Lager this refreshing American Lager is brewed with sustainable fonio grain and kissed with citrus and floral notes. It's easy drinking, refreshing and brewed for good vibes only. It joins their fan favorite Juicy Pale Ale for a duo that hits all the right notes. Find these brews near you@dogfish.com Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly. 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 13 of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. I am your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we continue our Time Machine trip to summer 1985 and head east to catch the shows in Saratoga Springs as chronicled in the just announced Summer Magic 1985 box set. That's right, this is the new forthcoming big box from the Grateful dead. Summer Magic 1985 features shows from the band's 20 Years so Far anniversary tour and includes all three Greek Theatre shows on June 14th, 15th and 16th, Saratoga Performing Arts center on 627, Hershey Park Stadium on 628 and two shows at Meriwether Post Pavilion on June 30th and July 1st. Recorded by Dan Healy and mastered by David Glasser at Air Show Mastering Summer Magic 85 is limited to 10,000 individually numbered copies and is available at exclusively@dead.net Preorder your copy today folks. It's going fast. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons 1 through 12. You can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how, where and when 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, very, very much. We have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Head over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. Hey folks, don't forget to record your tour stories, especially any tour stories from summer 1985 over@stories.dead.net and you just may hear yourself on a future episode of the Deadcast. And while you're cruising around dead.net make sure to drop in on the brand spanking new Playing in the band app@dead.net playingintheband where you can make your own mix from Master Tracks on the recently released edition of Steal youl Face Musicians. You can mute whichever instrument you like to jam along with the Grateful Dead. Be your own Bobby or Jerry or or Phil. You get the picture? But make sure you get it@dead.net playingintheband how many of you out there caught your first shows in 1985? I know I did. It was a great time to be a Deadhead and become a Deadhead. And there were shows aplenty to be caught. The new Summer Magic 1985 box set captures a bunch of these shows and today we're setting up our tent outside spacious the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Here's Jesse Jarno to help you get yourself together before you go into the show.
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B
Last episode we went through the first three performances on the new Summer Magic 1985 box the Grateful Dead season openers on June 14th, 15th and 16th at the Greek Theatre in the People's Republic of Berkeley. Today we followed the Summer 85 Tour cross country to the Saratoga Performing Arts center in New York near Albany on June 27 for a concert going experience that by all accounts was thoroughly unhinged. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David
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C
Lemieux many, many times. Whenever we've kind of looked at the mid-80s for a Grateful Dead release, SPAC has always been a show that has been very, very high up on the list.
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B
I'll repeat it one more time because inevitably everybody is going to abbreviate the name of the Saratoga Performing Arts center as spac.
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C
I got the first set of this show very early on, probably in 86, 87, and I heard a lot of tapes by then, but this was so unique. Every single song in this set blows me.
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B
It was one of those nights where if you heard the tape, it was easy to tell wild things were happening in the venue.
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C
All the banter, the don't hang from the balcony, Yo Butch, all of that stuff, I mean it, it blew me away.
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D
Seriously now. Yo Butch, you see those guys hanging
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E
on off the balcony?
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D
Get back in the seat, would you? There's 50,000 people waiting for you to get back in your seat, man.
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B
Our friend Mr. Completely uses the word gonzo to describe the dead's energy in this era. And there was a gonzo energy in the air that summer on stage and on tour, if our field reporters are to be believed. When we last left David Leopold. He'd turned down a summer job because they wanted him to cut his hair. Didn't happen.
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D
Almost cut my hair. It happened just the other day.
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B
Welcome back, Dave Leopold.
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E
I had been on summer tour the year before. I did the whole summer that year as well. And I had done the whole summer in 83 as well. When I say the whole summer, you know, the east coast, into the Midwest.
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B
At the Greek, he'd been convinced to do it again. It helped that he had a ride ready to go.
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E
My friends had driven across the country in a driveway, and the plan was we'd get another driveway to drive back.
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B
A driveway service offers ways to get cars from point A to point B and provide the drivers. And sometimes, turns out those drivers might take that driveway car. On Dead tour, life was looser in the old country.
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E
And so we got a red Toyota Tercel without air conditioning, and we didn't have a choice. You know, it wasn't like, oh, we're going to hold out for another country. And they only give you so many days to cross the country. And when we saw that it wouldn't be enough days we had, we went to him and said, we can't do that. It's going to take us. They wanted it, like, nine days and was like, oh, no, it's going to be 13 days. And they went for it. You know, it's just another day, you know, another time when you could just do these little things. And there was no Internet to check up on anybody. It was a lot of take. People at their word.
- [08:10]
B
The Dead had three stops and four shows between the Greek and Saratoga, Alpine Valley in Wisconsin, Riverbend in Cincinnati, and the Blossom Music center outside Cleveland. The Riverbend show is now in the 30 trips box. So we're going to soundtrack these next segments until we pull into SPAC with pieces of that gig.
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E
So we got this red Toyota Tercel and boogied out to Alpine Valley. I'm 19 years old. I'm crossing the country with in a car full of three other heads. We're listening to music. We're, you know, I'm working on my Torah book where, you know, we're getting high. We're looking out the window and seeing America pass us by. I'm like, what else did I want to be doing? This is the best.
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B
David Lemieux.
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C
I think there was a rejuvenation of the Grateful dead scene in 85. There are certain times in the Dead's history where huge amounts of people got on the bus and you can think of the Wall of Sound. A lot of. Because they were playing bigger places. So a lot of people would go see them at Dillon Stadium or Roosevelt Stadium or places like that. Summer 76, when they came back, and you've got all these hungry people who had not seen the Dead. And then the spring 78 tour, when they were playing a lot of colleges and cool cities, a lot of people came on board then. 85 was another time when a lot of people came on board.
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B
Dave Leopold had been seeing the Dead for a few years by then, but was in the full throes of Dead freakdom. Lots of other people were getting on the bus for the first time.
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C
The number of people I know who their first shows were, summer of 1985, it's a huge amount of people. It might have been the 20th. It might have been a bit of the vibe. Wow. These guys have actually been around for quite some time.
- [10:31]
B
Last episode, we heard pieces of the 20th anniversary press conference the band held before the opening night at the Greek, A story widely reported in national newspapers. When the Dead rolled into town in the summer of 85, newspaper articles had a friendly angle. For a band that hadn't released a studio album in a half decade, there was a building energy.
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E
Dave Leopold, Years before, you'd roll into a town, they'd have no idea who the Grateful Dead were. Deadheads. Now, you would roll into a town there and be like, oh, yeah, we've heard of this thing called the Grateful Dead. They seem to have a very sort of exciting energy. You know, it's almost. Sometimes it sort of spills over too much and they sort of get ahead of them or, you know, or they're not up to it. But for the most part, it was very exciting. I spent that summer with two brothers, Lewis and Barry, and a friend, Ronnie Potter. And, I mean, Lewis and Barry were insane. But I talked to Barry last night and he's like, oh, summer tour 85. Greatest tour I was ever on. Just, you know, total feeling of freedom. And that's really what it felt like.
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B
Nicholas Meriwether is the founder of the Grateful Dead Studies association and wrote the liner notes for the new Summer Magic Box. He's one of those that started seeing the Dead in 1985, though wasn't at any of the gigs on this box. Please welcome back Nick Meriwether.
- [12:46]
F
It seems like what happens during 1985 and especially during the summer tour is more and more of a sense of this is the advent of Reagan's second term, and that tends to throw the Deads project into increasingly sharp relief. Reagan had always been their doppelganger in the 1960s, and representing a kind of a contrary impulse in the American experiment from the Deads.
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E
There's nothing grown up or sophisticated in taking an LSD trip at all. They're just being completely fools. Anyone that would engage in this or indulge in this is just a plain fool.
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F
And so I don't see a particular overt political valence to what the Dead did that summer. But there the subtext there is that celebrating a 20 year anniversary in the face of a very contrary cultural instinct or political cast mattered and mattered a great deal not only to the band, but also to their listeners, to their fans.
- [14:00]
B
Through the entirety of the summer tour, the band took to the stage in front of a giant backdrop with a new work by legendary underground artist Rick Griffin, who'd done the COVID of Oxa Moxoa, among other Dead related art. It featured a Revolutionary War Minuteman posed in front of a giant American flag, gripping Jerry Garcia's tiger guitar.
- [14:20]
F
To focus on the massive wonderful backdrop is. That's a real statement by Griffin. A that sort of his now, you know, metaphoric, artistic, graphic reach is extending back to, you know, the dawn of the country, but also deliberately recasting that in the age of Reagan and saying, no, there's this contrary theme. The counterculture is every bit as patriotic and every bit as much a part of the tapestry of American history and experience and culture as anything that passed for the Reagan 80s mainstream deprecation and dismissal of the 60s. So I think that's absolutely essential and critical. And the idea of a Minuteman holding a guitar, that's also a deliberate statement that in fact the Minuteman is a symbol of national spirit, but it's also defiance and it's also militaristic. Having a guitar as what the Minuteman is holding is nothing more than a statement of, yeah, well, music and art are their own statements. And that is the Dead last episode
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B
we heard about how David Leopold had reacted negatively to the Minuteman art at first, until an older head had reminded him that even in 1985, the stars and Stripes could still be a freak flag too. An attitude that every generation of American freaks probably has to discover for themselves.
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F
If you went to college in the early 80s, the 60s colored everything and Reagan comes to power because he is inveighing against the 60s. And yet every. All of the evidence around you, especially if you went to a Dead show, suggests the opposite, suggests that the 60s were in fact pretty wonderful. In a lot of ways, they certainly were empowering and they certainly pointed to a narrative that the mainstream was actively ignoring or suppressing or distorting. So you go to a Dead show and then Shakedown street is kind of that idea reified and writ large.
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E
Dave Leopold it was the Reagan 80s, and that was all the more reason you had to do as much, you know, sort of Grateful Dead things as possible. You know, that was rebellion. The lot was all about doing whatever you wanted to do. As long as you didn't hurt anybody else, it was totally fine. And I mean, like, I remember at Alpine Valley that year, I think it was that year all these people setting off fireworks and it was really freaking people out. And it was just like you, you're staying in a lot. You don't get to say, I want it exactly perfect here. You know, it's just going to be whoever shows up.
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B
After the last Berkeley show on June 16th, the gang pointed east for two shows at Alpine Valley on June 21st and 22nd, the proper beginning of the summer. They next steered the driveway around 400 miles southeast from Wisconsin to southern Ohio. We've got a story here that'll stand in for life on tour for Deadheads in 1985. For reasons that will be obvious, we're going to soundtrack the next segment with some 1985 dead music. We talked about last episode, some of the three part suite from the new Twilight Zone soundtrack featuring Jerry Garcia on pedal steel called Kentucky Rye.
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E
We got to Cincinnati the night before the show, and for some reason it was late and we were looking for a place to stay and couldn't find a place to stay. And we, we thought we were going to just go to the lot and sleep there, but they wouldn't open the gates. And a guy told us, oh, if you go down that road, there's a hotel. And so we go down this road and we end up in Kentucky, because you're right there at the border.
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B
In a broader sense, much of the next story falls under the heading of Deadhead Problems. And it's a pretty good depiction of tor life in 1985, with a looming possibility that things might suddenly get very, very real.
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E
And we're about 10 miles into Kentucky and we see some hotel, but it's like, this isn't for us. And at an intersection, we made a completely legal U turn. And as we made the U turn, we saw a cop. He was literally behind a billboard. Okay? It was so stereotypical. And someone said in the car, oh, lucky, that was a legal U turn. And as soon as he said that, the lights go on in this police car and he pulls us over. Now, my friend Barry was driving. Now, with a driveway, there's only allowed to be one driver, and that was his brother Louis. And Lewis was like 21, 22. But Barry was 18. So when the cop comes over to ask for his license, Barry gives him a license that says he's Lewis. Because when Lewis's driver's license renewal came up, he was out of the country. So Barry took it, and he went down to the DMV and got his picture on Lewis's license, because now he had a real ID that he could take to any bar and get drinks. And so he had that with him. So he gave his that ID to the police officer because that's the only person who was allowed to drive the car.
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B
Well, I suppose that's fortuitous.
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E
The police officer had never heard of a drive away. So we pulled out the contract and everything.
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B
They went to call in for more information about driveway cars.
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E
And then he says, and I'm going to now need to see all your other IDs. Well, Louis couldn't give his ID because there couldn't be two Lewis's in the car. Okay, so Louis had to say he lost his wallet.
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B
And you, sir, what's your story?
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E
I haven't cut my hair since I was 18. I'm 60 years old now. There was one day in my life that I ever wore my hair in pigtails. And it happened to be the day that I went to the California DMV to get a driver's license. So I give this police officer a California driver's license with me and pigtails in Kentucky. I thought, they're going to put us in jail just for this.
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B
To be fair, at least Dave had his license.
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E
Then he asked for Ronnie's id. Ronnie had actually lost his wallet at Alpine Valley. So we had two people in the car who didn't have id.
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B
The good news is that the cops hadn't sussed out anything about our four travelers being deadheads. The bad news is they called for backup.
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E
Five other police cars show up. Guns are drawn and dogs are out. And I'm like, we're going to jail. I mean, this is obviously we're going to jail. And my friend Ronnie, he's a little nervous, as he should be. We're all carrying something, and if they get into the car, there's even more there. And Ronnie started rocking back and forth on his feet. And this cop looks at him and says, son, if you don't stop dancing, I'm gonna sic my dog on you. And I've got a bunch of MDMA in my pocket, and it's like, oh, shit, I have like heroin in my pocket.
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B
It was late into the night of June 23, 1985. In exactly one week and one day, MDMA would become illegal federally. But that was not a matter up for discussion on this particular night, near the Ohio, Kentucky born.
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E
They finally come back and the drive away is checked out. But they're like, there's only supposed to be three people in the car. So I turned to my friends because I knew the longer that we were there, the more chance we had to get arrested. So I turned to my friends and I said, listen, I saw a hotel back there. I'm gonna walk. It's late and I want to get to sleep because this is now like one o' clock in the morning. So I start walking away and this cop says, son, I'm gonna do you a favor. And I turned around, he's like, if you leave now and promise never to come back, I'll let all four of you leave. I said, deal. We got into the car. Like I said, we were probably 8 to 10 miles from the border. We get into the car, we start to drive away, and the five police cars follow us, either right behind us or right next to us. I'd never had a police escort before. And we had a police escort to the border of Ohio. And when we got to Ohio, it was just like, oh, now we can breathe again. That wasn't even the end of the night because we still needed a place to stay. We had been to Alpine Valley for two days. We hadn't showered. And we see this real fly by night hotel. I mean, the kind that charges by the hour. And we saw a couple of heads out front. So we stopped there and they said, oh, yeah, they've got a room here. And there's like 16 people in the room. And Lewis and Barry tell us that they're going to stay in the room there. They're going to sleep under the bed. I said, no, I'm not doing, you know, I have a little bit of dignity left. I said, me and Ronnie are going to go sleep in the car. And indeed we went to the. And we, you know, we laid down the seats and we slept there. And. And it's six o' clock in the morning. There's a fervent knock at the window. It's our friends here. The cops had come and, like turning on a light and the cockroaches scattering. That's exactly what this scene was. They had come in and there were like 16, 20 people in this room. And they were all scattering. And the people are like, you know, the owners were like sputtering all these things. They couldn't believe there were all these people in the room. And of course, Lewis and Barry got in the car and we sped out of there and we went to the show. And of course the show was fantastic, you know, but it all seemed part of that sort of crazy energy. Everything that we did seemed to have that crazy energy. And I mean, obviously our age had something to do with it, but it was just what was going on. And I think it all fed into each other. Like our craziness fed into how the shows were, and the shows fed into our craziness.
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B
There were all kinds of ways to map yourself across Dead Tour in the summer of 1985, Ken Schneider left us this story.
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G
After my second year of college in Berkeley, I decided to take off on my 68 Harley Davidson and see the country, including all the Dead shows on summer tour. As I had mail ordered for a tour book and had one ticket to each of the shows over the course of the summer, I ended up traveling 13,000 miles on that motorcycle, going through 30 states and four provinces over three months. But the Grateful Dead part of the trip I met up with a friend from college outside Chicago. We caught both Alpine Valley shows. That was awesome. I made it down to Cincinnati for another amazing show.
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B
I love the Cincinnati version of Let It Grow a whole lot. From Cincinnati, the tour headed north to Cleveland on June 25 and then eastward across western upstate New York to Saratoga Springs.
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C
Remember when Remember when Saratoga was a
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E
sleepy little town 30 years ago? It was one of the most romantic towns of America through the years, but through those years the pace accelerated until today the leisure seems to have departed.
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B
The springs in Saratoga became a tourist destination in the 19th century. With the advent of horse racing and gambling, Saratoga became a resort town. But it was money from Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration that produced the grand Spa complex adjacent to where the Saratoga Performing Arts center was built in the mid-1960s as the Summer home for the New York Philharmonic. The Dead were supposed to open their East Coast 1972 tour at SPAC on September 15th and 16th, but the town pulled the plug at the last minute, afraid of the influx of heads, and the Dead relocated to the Boston Music hall shows now on the Enjoying the Ride box. This story is from the great comedy writer and producer Donic Carey. You may remember him from such projects as the Simpsons, Late Night with David Letterman, Parks and Rec, and the recent ish documentary have a Good Trip Adventures in Psychedelics. This definitely qualifies.
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H
A good friend of mine and I drove up from Nantucket island, where we lived and borrowed my mother's new used Chevette car. And we parked about five minutes outside the venue at a gas station to load up and be ready for the next morning. We're gonna sleep in the car and took our mushrooms there, thinking we could roll in as they kicked in perfectly. But the car wouldn't start after we filled up. And so we were stuck at this gas station and for 45 minutes we're trying to get the car to start. And a mechanic came out and opened the hood and he was doing like a magic show where he pulled a giant nest out of the engine and then he pulled a wrench and then he pulled like other tools, a hammer and a bag. It was very strange. And I finally plugged in my seatbelt, which was a safety feature on the car, and the car started and we quickly pulled out, the mechanic looking at us like, what the hell's going on? And navigated the complicated signage that you would have to do to get through this concert venue. Got to the venue just in time for in the midnight hour. But I highly recommend do not drive on mushrooms. This is a plea. Do not drive on mushrooms, people.
- [30:28]
B
Then as now, there was a sprawling and varied parking situation at the Saratoga Performing Arts center located inside the Saratoga Spa State park, with multiple lots including one on the far side of Route 50 connected to the venue by a bridge. As we got into during the exploring the ride season, people didn't really call the parking lot Shakedown street probably until 1989 or 1990. There were over 40,000 people at SPAC in 1985. The dead were getting more popular each year. Please welcome back Dupree's diamond news editor, Johnny Dwork.
- [31:03]
I
I remember getting out of the car, maybe even before getting out of the car, and just we're all looking at each other like, whoa. Like this Seems like before we even got in the place, it seemed like the they were oversold.
- [31:17]
B
The place Johnny came to the show with some co workers from his job.
- [31:20]
I
That summer I was working at a world famous new age retreat center in upstate New York, recording all the lectures. And that was a really great experience for me. I got to meet a lot of people from different walks of life while most of the staff working there were already in the whole new Age, alternative lifestyle, health, new spiritual practices, movements. There were occasionally people who came to that scene who knew nothing about any of that. And there was a really sweet man from upstate New York. I think he was the son of old school farmers in upstate New York. And he took a job for the summer as either a groundskeeper or working in the kitchen, washing dishes. And he knew nothing of alternative spirituality, Eastern philosophy, alternative health practices, the new age, nothing of that. He was completely green. He also was very limited in his exposure to different types of music. And he also never had any experience with drug use except for alcohol. And we gave him a ride to the show, and when we got out of the car, we agreed to meet back at the car after the show. And immediately up walks some guy selling blotter acid and this green kid. When I say kid, he was probably around 20. He bought four hits, and unbeknownst to us at that time, he popped all four hits in his mouth, never having done psychedelics. And then we parted ways.
- [33:43]
B
We'll leave that one hanging for now as the parties of the car disperse and drift towards the show. On one hand, it might have seemed like just another date on the tour, but every show could be a big deal if you wanted it to be, especially in the age when camping was allowed in the parking lots. DNA had been seeing the dead since Giant Stadium 78.
- [34:02]
E
I took my nephew and we grew up like brothers in Jersey. And he was starting college. So I'm going to grad school, he's starting college. It really felt like the beginning of something new, you know. And so energies were up. And, you know, I'd seen a bunch of shows and I loved Brent. He was my guy. And so we landed at spac.
- [34:26]
B
DNA is a comic and writer from Santa Cruz. We've posted a link to his work@dead.net deadcast. It was a tenth of the size. But some of the stories from spac85 remind me of Watkins Glenn a dozen years before.
- [34:40]
E
We took the oldsMobile, the Delta 88 up there, and we found a patch of grass that we were going to set up our tent that we got from my sister. And my sister had got the tent from World War II. So it was just all this green, thick burlap canvas stuff and poles with no instructions and a big mallet and stakes. And we, you know, we lumbered it up and then we took our vitamin A. So I just loved how just sprawling SPAC was. What a wild something wicked this way comes kind of like environment all around
- [35:19]
B
for the next little bit we're gonna get lost in the crowds and imagine what you might find roaming the vast lot scene in Saratoga. One thing you might find, for example, is Dave Leopold, whose first task was to find a ticket for the show.
- [35:32]
E
I had no tickets to any show. I had decided to go on tour like two. Like a day or two before we went on tour. You know, I literally threw things in a bag and jumped into the car.
- [35:42]
B
Tickets weren't too hard to come by in the summer of 1985, and not every show sold out. Dave had some merch to sling, too. The carefully laid out Year at a Glance set list sheets he produced with his brother John as printknot.
- [35:56]
E
I could do all this not because I was born into wealth or anything like that. We had the set list the Year at a glances, and we sold those not to make money. We sold them not to lose money, in the sense that we could pay for tickets, food, gas and whatever from the money we made that night at the show. I wouldn't have to work so hard. We were selling them for a dollar a piece, and you can make 50 or $60 without much effort. And once we sort of made what I thought was the nut, once I made that, I was like, okay, I don't have to do anything else.
- [36:30]
B
The print not tour sheets are gorgeous. We've posted some examples@dead.net Deadcast the first Dead based wasn't published until 1987, and up to date, set list sheets would be hot commodities. 1985 is perhaps the start of the peak age of the Deadhead underground publishing scene.
- [36:47]
E
By 1985, we'd been doing it for three or four years and they had started to get an audience. And the first show, any year that I went to, I went to the soundboard and I'd give them a stack. And the first year they were like, whatever. But by 1985, when we brought them the stack of them, they were like, oh, yeah. Oh, looking forward to this. It was great.
- [37:11]
B
We've talked about the flourishing Xerox Age and the early Dead zines in more detail in other episodes, which we've linked back to@dead.net deadcast dead in words was the first Grateful dead fanzine in 1973, with dead relics following a year later. But in the early 1980s, relics pivoted away from the Dead for a few years, aiming for a more mainstream audience. Hampshire College sported a smaller circulation but no less important Dead scene. Johnny Dwark.
- [37:40]
E
I started the Hampshire College Grateful Dead Historical Society, and we started to produce Deadbeat Magazine, which was more of a zine than a magazine. But it was one of those earliest Grateful Dead newsletters that was focused on trying to figure out, like, what Grateful Dead shows are actually available in what quality tape, soundboard, or audience. And how do you actually connect with tapers before the Internet.
- [38:09]
B
Peace to all the Hampshire College freaks out there. Deadbeat started around 1981, and a year or so after that, Michael Linna started publishing his very DIY tour one sheet called Michael in 1982, which I think is the first publication to regularly publish new set lists. Blair Jackson and Regan McMahon took up with their sumptuous quarterly the Golden Road zine in early 1984. Changes were afoot in the Dead Freak mediascape in the mid-1980s, though Michael stopped publishing earlier in 1985, when Michael Linna grew sick.
- [38:42]
I
I think the last Deadbeat magazine from the Hampshire College Grateful Dead Historical Society happened sometime around 1984 when I graduated and shortly thereafter when I moved back to New York, I connected with a guy named Peter Martin who was doing Terrapin Flyer, and he needed some help. And so I quickly came on board and partnered with him.
- [39:09]
B
I think this was all picking up. During the summer of 85, Terrapin Flyer launched in 84, a tightly packed one sheet of tour dates, set list, Dead News, reviews and classifieds. I'm missing issue number 11, but Johnny's name appears on the masthead starting with number 12 from November. 85.
- [39:28]
I
We were hippies. We were hippies who were just trying to make sense of a lot of information.
- [39:33]
B
In 1987, Johnny would found Dupri's Diamond News both a magazine and a tour flyer. All of which is to say there was robust Deadhead media in the zine age, and dedicated heads could track down set lists in news. But here's the wild if you could get yourself onto the Internet in June 1985, you could get the setlists for nearly every show the Dead played within hours of them finishing. All you had to do was figure out how to port into the Usenet and point yourselves to Net Music gded, which had launched that spring. Later that year, it would become the more familiar Rec Music gdead. Some days there were only one or two posts, and other days small flurries. One of the going threads in June 1985 is a debate about whether the Dead even deserve their own news group in the Usenet hierarchy, or if the conversation about them should be included in the broader netdot music. But getting onto the Usenet was no simple thing in 1985, at just $1 each, the Printknot set lists were rightly popular.
- [40:35]
E
By the end the last year that we did it, we sold 16,000. And that was me and a bunch of friends who were going to shows. It gave something for all my friends to sell shows that everyone liked, and it was a dollar. Nobody thought too much about it. They ended up being like a quarter apiece. And we sold them for a dollar. And my friends who sold them, they bought them for 50 cents. And. But they could only sell them for a dollar. I said, that's the whole thing here. It only goes for a dollar. It was never about, like, how much can we take money from people? Was like. It was really a social construct as much as anything else. It was a reason to talk to people. It was a reason to interact with people. It was. You could trade your stuff with other people's stuff. That's what the lot meant for me, you know, in the sense of selling things.
- [41:25]
B
Dave Leopold and his friends were quite literally neck deep in what scholars call material culture. There was a thick exchange of goods.
- [41:33]
E
Oh, T shirts, other, like, little posters, stickers. There was nothing that expensive in the lot.
- [41:41]
B
DNA and his nephew encountered a pretty good lot hustle, or it could have just been a coincidence.
- [41:46]
E
We started playing Frisbee on the lawn outside Spack, and this dog jumps up, grabs a Frisbee, runs off. And I find the owner. I'm like, yo, bro. He calls his dog back, and his dog had chewed up the entire Frisbee. And then he goes, come here. And he goes to his trunk and opens it, and it's full of Frisbees. He's selling Grateful Dead Dancing Skeleton Frisbees. And I'm like, what a scam, man. Your dog chews up my Frisbee and then I gotta buy one from you? And he's like, well, they're regularly 20, but I'll just talk to you for 10. I'm like, oh, man, I bought. I definitely got one. We got two. Dave Leopold, my friend Lewis and Barry were selling these bracelets that they got in Greece for, like, nothing. And they would sell them for a couple of dollars, like maybe $5 at a show. Now, for them, this was their job. This is what they did.
- [42:40]
B
And their friend Ronnie Potter was a Grateful that T shirt artist.
- [42:43]
E
And then Ronnie was making T shirts on the road. He went on the road with a bunch of T shirts that he'd already made and a bunch that he hadn't screened yet, and the screens for them. So, you know, we'd be stopped someplace and he would be screening on the side of the road. And I mean, it seems so insane now, but it was very normal at the time.
- [43:04]
B
Ronnie represented a line of Grateful Dead T shirt artists. We discussed a bit in our Friend of the Devils episode about West Virginia, April 1978. People who took the Dead's vibe and iconography and used it to create something in their own voice, like the late, great Ed Donahue. Like Deadhead communication, Deadhead style was evolving rapidly in the 1980s as well. Please welcome back founder of the Deadhead Style Archive and part time lecturer at Parsons School of Design in New York, Annabel Walsh.
- [43:33]
J
By 85, the vending scene has grown substantially, which has in turn kind of given rise to a more discernible or distinct group aesthetic that's very much shaped by what's made available or what's sold in the lot at that time. And something that I'm really interested in is the idea that as the group aesthetic becomes more coherent or discernible, it then also becomes codified.
- [44:07]
B
In the mid-1980s, the dead scene was starting to feed back on itself in some surprising ways.
- [44:13]
J
In 85, we're celebrating the Dead's 20th anniversary, and we're seeing at this time a lot of coverage on the 20th anniversary and kind of a rise in nostalgia discourse. So within that media coverage, there are some accusations or at least questions being raised as to whether the Dead is a nostalgia act.
- [44:36]
B
And alongside the 20th anniversary coverage, something else was emerging. An image of a stereotypical Deadhead.
- [44:43]
J
I'm thinking in particular about the Time magazine article. I think it was a review of the Dead's New Year's Eve shows at the San Francisco Civic Center. The author is John Scoe, or John Scow, but in it he writes that in their pot fuzzed peacefulness and in their costumes, tie dyed T shirts, headbands out at the knee, jeans, granny dresses, Deadheads resemble a lost battalion of hippies.
- [45:11]
B
But along with the mainstream's image of Deadheads, Deadheads were starting to voice an image of themselves.
- [45:17]
J
There's an article published in the October 1985 issue of Relics titled A Deadhead's Guide to Fashion. In it, the author is sort of speaking to the idea that adhering to the tacit Deadhead dress code is really integral to helping make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. So in other words, it speaks to this idea that fashion and dress really do play a critical role in group identity formation and belonging. But what I really love about that article, and it goes Back to my previous point about kind of the codification of Deadhead style is that the article concludes with this sort of semi facetious list of what's cool for Deadheads to wear in 1985. And perhaps more importantly, what's not cool for Deadheads. So what's considered cool are Mexican ponchos, tie dyes, Grateful Dead T shirts, clothing imported from India, pretty standard. And then what seemed uncool, pink polyester golf shoes, neckties, Barry Manilow T shirts, and anything from Kmart.
- [46:28]
B
There were homemade Dead shirts as far back as 1971, but they really picked up with the band's return to the road in the later 1970s. By the early 1980s, shirts were an embedded part of the Deadhead world, with maybe the first inklings that they were more than just ephemera.
- [46:43]
E
Dave Leopold the summer before in alpine valley in 1984, I had told my friends that you could sell anything in a lot. You could sell old T shirts. And they laughed at me. And so after a show one night, I got up on top of a car and I said, I've got a. A tour shirt here from Summer Tour 82. You know, who wants it? And we were all shocked at how many people were like, oh, I'll buy it, I'll buy it. And they weren't buying it because, oh, it was some historical artifact. It's like, oh, I had one of those and I lost it. So this will be great.
- [47:19]
B
Amid all of this, it was easy to miss the bigger picture of the Grateful Dead parking lot scene, not only developing its own sense of style, but becoming a powerful node for commerce.
- [47:29]
J
85 is also a time where the lot scene is sort of imbued with a more entrepreneurial spirit. And in many cases, it's people who don't necessarily set out to become entrepreneurs or business owners, but they almost inadvertently use the vending scene, the Dead scene, as a catalyst to then form these pretty successful businesses.
- [47:53]
B
People traveled from across the country for shows, making the Deadlot a distribution point for handmade Deadhead goods. But it was also a genuine, if probably untaxed, end name for international wares.
- [48:05]
J
That's an important piece to consider as well. Is like the culture of importing and how sort of globalization is reflected in the offerings in the parking lot. As you're seeing the Indian cotton gauze skirts, you have the Gita of India shirts, which were these sort of block printed, almost kind of boxy T shirts. Then you also had the Guatemalan Wapils, who were really popular. And so you had Deadheads traveling down to Panahechel in Guatemala and having stuff made by the local artisans and indigenous women for fairly cheap. And then they were bringing these, these goods back to the States and selling them on tour. So I mean, it was a lot of emphasis on really well made garments too, like natural fibers, things that were durable.
- [49:09]
B
When we spoke with Annabel in our Friend of the Devils West Virginia episode, we discussed Deadhead style circa 1978, the tail end of the denim and leather era. The early Dead T shirt artists like Ed Donahue used the Dead's iconography to find their voices. Dave Leopold's friend Ronnie Potter made shirts in this tradition.
- [49:28]
E
Ronnie's sort of encapsulated the Grateful Dead experience within his mindset. They were art related to the Grateful Dead. He would use all the tropes, but they were usually some design of some sort. They weren't joke T shirts. They weren't the Calvin and Hobbes T shirts and things like that.
- [49:46]
B
We've posted some of Ronnie potter's work@dead.net
- [49:49]
E
deadcast I know he did a centerfold for the Golden Road. He may have done a cover for them as well. He would eventually get the job of the groundskeeper at Camden Yards. And he was the first guy to cut the lawn into like, designs at baseball stadiums. And so he pioneered that in like the early 90s. Unfortunately, he passed away about, oh, I don't know, 10 years ago from cancer. But we have all this incredible work
- [50:24]
B
that he did in 1985. The dead scene was still a few years away from Calvin and Hobbs mashups, but there was change afoot. We've posted a link to the Deadhead style archive@dead.net deadcast but as far as I know, the only effort to chronologically date a large mass of Dead T shirts is the very out of print and very expensive 2006 Japanese publication My Freedam 4. The dates might not always be correct, but it's the only guide there is, really. It might reflect the collections they had access to, but an explosion of fan shirts seems to happen in 1983 or 1984 and is followed by a few changes in Deadhead T shirt style.
- [51:04]
J
Yeah, I think there is sort of a memeification happening, if you will. One example of that is the kind of Camel cigarette parody T shirt. I don't know who the original maker was of that shirt, but the first example I've seen was either from 84 or 85.
- [51:25]
B
The version I've seen is a pack of Camel cigarettes and reads 20 years on the bottom, putting it in 1985. A transition happens too. Where some of the earlier shirts felt like extensions of underground psychedelic art, some of the T shirts from the mid-1980s feel more like folk art, with more direct messages aided by song lyrics and increasingly pop culture references. Another big design of the era was Tom Stack's evolving series of Club Dead shirts, which he'd started the previous year parodying ads for Club med resorts. The mid-1980s also saw a rise in more rough and ready dead shirts.
- [52:01]
J
You had people who were literally making things on the road as they went from show to show. And I think that's where you also see maybe more of the lo fi, more gritty design work, more vernacular. The word I've used before.
- [52:18]
B
Just past our horizon in these episodes is another milestone in Deadhead style, which is worth mentioning, happening around the Hampton shows in spring 1986.
- [52:27]
J
This is the time at which the dancing bear we start to see on merch as well. And that's largely credited to Jonathan Marks of Grateful Graphics. He's credited as being kind of the first to take the bears off of Bears choice and then arrange them into the line of fives and silkscreen them onto T shirts.
- [52:49]
B
I suspect the fact that the bears were originally from printers slugs made them a welcome new piece of the underground style vocabulary, easy to literally stamp out. So that locates us style wise in 1985. Lots of homemade shirts, only a few parodies, lots of tie dye. And just before the bears marched and or danced over everything into perpetual ubiquity. If everybody's properly situated in the time track and can maintain proper verisimilitude such that we don't disturb the chrono locals, it's time to head into the show. DNA.
- [53:22]
E
It was East Coasty, it was wet, it felt damp, and we're starting to come on. And I just remember in the entranceway before we got to the gate, there was a flagpole and there was these three heavy metal kids in front of me who are also probably on Vitamin A, who were licking the flagpole. And I'm like, this is going to
- [53:43]
B
be a weird show for maximum Gonzo. We're going to tune into the OD Brothers audience tape to catch some room tone before the music begins. Ticketed Start time was 8:15 and Dave Leopold was almost certainly inside. Well before then.
- [54:07]
E
I always got into the show early because I was one of those people that I didn't want to miss a note. I didn't want to be waiting in line. And the first notes are starting. I wanted to be in there, you know, scout out the place. As much as we loved all the outdoor scene, the traveling, we had such incredible experiences traveling around. It was all about the show and what they were going to do that night and how they were going to do it. That was still the most important part and the most exciting part. It was thrilling, and this was a thrilling time. We were very anxious to hear what they played at a show because it was like it was evolving every day.
- [54:46]
B
SPAC was and is pretty humongous.
- [54:49]
E
I remember a lot of people there. A lot of people.
- [55:10]
I
Johnny dwork I have this recollection that the SPAC shows got more and more crowded each year, even before the success of the Dead's album in 87.
- [55:26]
B
In 1983, the Dead drew 31,587 people, just failing to break the who's previous record of 33,000 attendees. But because of the way SPAC is situated on the grounds of the spa, the size of the venue is actually variable. In 1984, the Dead set a new record at the venue, 37,751 attendees. And in 1985, they set the record again. 40,231 people.
- [55:55]
E
I saw the Dead there in 83, 84 and 84. And those were all like incredible shows. Like shows that are some of my favorites. You know, 83, they do this incredible Scarlet Fire playing in the band as a morning dew. And it was the first time we were hearing things like Hell in the Bucket, which we didn't even know what was called. And in 84, they break out dancing in the streets.
- [56:22]
I
I seem to recall also the SPAC 85 show was humid in general. I love that venue. I tend to love sheds, particularly because they've got that outdoor area that's really yummy for summer shows.
- [56:37]
B
Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux.
- [56:39]
C
These were huge crowds. I think SPAC 85 had close to 40,000 people. It was a massive crowd at SPAC.
- [56:46]
B
He was there the next and final time the Dead played SPAC in 1988.
- [56:51]
C
I don't know if this happened in 85, but in 80, and it was sold out. And a lot of people showed up without tickets. And the Crush at the door was so busy, they didn't even rip tickets. It wasn't a gate crashing situation. I didn't do this, but I know a lot of people who did. You go in, they didn't rip your ticket. You'd walk 10ft, slip it through the portable chain link fence to your buddy. An Unused unrip ticket, and they just loop their way back in. So. And then maybe they got their ticket ripped or not, but it was. That was fact for you. And then after 88, it was not the place for them.
- [57:25]
B
And frankly, after some of the reports from this 1985 show we're about to get into, I'm surprised they were even let back three years later. The Golden Road noted in 85 that SPAC was usually the biggest and some say the wildest place the band plays.
- [57:54]
E
Grateful Dead concerts were so unlike any other show because nobody really went to their seats. I mean, the good seats, of course, but all the other seats were in play. People went everywhere. So I was looking through my tour book last night, and I'm looking at the ticket stubs and I'm like, oh, yeah, I sat at that seat. And then I would look at some ticket subs. I'm like, I have no idea where this is because I don't even think I ever went to the seat. It was a ticket to get in.
- [58:20]
B
Dava Lemieux discovered one of the great wonders of spac. It's a very green place to see live music.
- [58:27]
C
It was very foresty. Like, it was not quite a forest, but there were trees everywhere.
- [58:31]
B
He also discovered why the maximum venue size could vary by more than 7,000 people.
- [58:36]
C
I saw the Dediths back in 88, the final time they played there had the sloped seating and the balcony, and then it had the sloped lawn, which isn't very big, and then the flat lawn, which goes on forever. I think they just kept extending the fence around it. It was a portable fence, so they just kept making the venue bigger. There was no defined venue, and by just. If you move that fence another hundred feet, you can get another 3,000 people in. I think I saw the band because I was. I couldn't get down to the sloped lawn, and I certainly didn't have reserved seats. And I remember all over the place, they put delay towers. So I remember everybody's got their blankets put out like a picnic with this giant delay tower right in front of you.
- [59:23]
B
The 1983 and 1984 shows at SPAC are remembered for their chaotic weather. So pavilion tickets were cherished. And if the venue size was variable, the pavilion wasn't, which, at least in 1985, held 5,100 people. Access to the venue's balcony comes from massive bridges that extend out and above the venue's lawn, surprisingly accessible for a venue built in the mid-1960s.
- [59:47]
E
I got a seat inside the pavilion I think those shows seem to have so much energy because there was so much energy in the crowd. Like my age, people were all there and everybody was just like, it's the Dead, man, it's the Dead. And they get so excited. And of course, it was in the New York area, so it had that level of intensity.
- [60:11]
B
According to a Usenet report, about an hour before the show was also the infamous Marshmallow War of Saratoga 85, which, based on other marshmallow wars I've served in, was just a gooey outdoor food fight. But this particular skirmish was apparently so large that when the band returned in 88, there were reportedly no marshmallow signs above the gates. We'll have to wait for some other time to discover if marshmallow peace was achieved, but all that gonzo energy is palpable the moment the Dead step on stage. There are some reports of Head setting off fireworks inside the pavilion, and that may or may not be metaphoric. One report on dead.net from a concert goer reads in part, midnight hour started, and I swear to God I saw 10,000 roses fall from somewhere just in front of the stage. There's a balcony on the inside of the pavilion, as I mentioned, and I believe both the balcony and pavilion itself have been expanded a bit too since the 80s dead shows. During the first songs, people crowded onto the bridges that led from the lawn into the balcony, and several waves of people crashed in. Cory Arnold is the proprietor of Lost Live Dead, Hooterolin, Chicken on a Unicycle, and other world wide Webby endeavors that we use as sources all the time. This story pertains to SPAC in 83, but it catches the vibe pretty well.
- [61:57]
K
In 1983, I visited New York City. I had a good friend in Manhattan whom I met through mutual friends in Berkeley, and Bobby said, well, you're here, let's go to Spacious. So we went to spac, which was my first and only East coast dead show. By 1983, I'd seen the dead 50 times, almost all in the Bay Area, plus a few around California. And Deadheads were enthusiastic when a song started. Then we all quieted down and listened, and you could hold a normal conversation while the Dead were playing. And in fact, you had to be careful not to speak too much or too loud because it irritated the people around you. And that was what made it a Grateful Dead concert. The Dead come on. They launch into Bertha, and while Bertha is playing, the crowd is just completely insane. They're yelling, they're dancing around, they're Shouting. It doesn't stop. It wasn't a beginning of song thing. They're all nuts. So I nudge my friend and I say, bobby, everybody's completely lost their mind. They're totally insane. He looks at me with cheerful disdain. He goes, oh, this is nothing. You should see Philly.
- [63:40]
B
It's a vibe so lawless that Garcia even gets away with forgetting the why don't you arrest me verse in Bertha entirely,
- [63:51]
E
Sam.
- [64:17]
B
On either side of the amphitheater, between the balcony and stage, there are narrow catwalks. And I think some of the next stories pertain to the action that occurred there. Numerous online accounts remember a naked dude dancing on one of the big bridges that led over the lawn to the balcony during Little Red Rooster. Specifically, Tapes are only residue of what happened on a given night, but on this particular tape, the energy goes from palpable to almost tactile.
- [65:08]
D
Hey, y'. All.
- [65:10]
E
Up on the balcony, the management has requested that you kindly don't hang off there.
- [65:16]
D
You want.
- [65:17]
B
You gotta realize that first step's a
- [65:19]
E
real doozy, and so kind of cool
- [65:22]
B
it and don't hang off the balcony.
- [65:27]
E
And of course, that show is when Phil and Bobby are telling these people to stop hanging off of the balcony.
- [65:34]
D
Seriously now. Yo, Butch, you see those guys? You there? Get back in his seat, would you? There's 50,000 people waiting for you to get back in your seat, man. You got any friends up there?
- [65:49]
B
There are some accounts online of the person dangling their legs off the balcony, including a named name for the balcony hangar. What's up, Pat Kelly? I hope you're proud of what you've done. Yo, Butch is a pretty subtly quotable piece of dead banter.
- [66:02]
E
It all seemed to fit because that's what it felt like. People were hanging off of everywhere.
- [66:08]
B
Somehow, for reasons not clear to me, it leads Weir to set up Phil for an old bit of stage patter.
- [66:13]
D
I say, phil, my dog has no nose. No nose?
- [66:18]
B
How does he smell? Bloomin awful. I believe that qualifies as a bust ad of sorts. The first version since Dusseldorf 72. Unless I'm missing any.
- [66:29]
E
For those of us who listen to tapes, to hear them doing that joke, it's like, oh, yeah, this too.
- [66:36]
D
Sorry, man. That goes for you too, over here, man. Hey, get back in, man.
- [66:41]
E
We don't want you falling on somebody else.
- [66:43]
B
Andy Preen left us this story up
- [66:45]
L
at Spac up in New York. It was, you know, all the crazy, intense New York fans, you know, the New York electricity and. But, you know, there's kind of a menace. Phil especially, and Bobby too. They both got super annoyed at all the people, especially up in the balcony during the first set. It was the first time at a show that I'd seen the band get really activated, you know, kind of annoyed about what was happening in the audience. And so it created this really weird vibe when you're there for fun and you've got your head on. That kind of scary, dangerous feeling was weird. But I grew up in New York, so I knew what the vibe was.
- [67:25]
B
I'm not sure where this might have happened, but we'll place it here in the set amid all the other chaos we've been talking about. Johnny Dwork.
- [67:32]
I
At a certain point in the first set, turning around, I was mid orchestra, right in front of the soundboard. I turned around just in time to see someone naked, a muscular man who was naked, leap off of the balcony and land on his feet right next to Dan Healy at the mixing board. And my jaw dropped, my breath got taken away, mostly because the guy landed on his feet.
- [68:11]
B
Many thoughts raced through my mind as
- [68:13]
D
I stepped there, ever one chance that was to run.
- [68:19]
I
And I remember this as clear as day. Decades later, Dan Healy takes a look at him. And as somebody on security immediately grabs the guy, Dan just as quickly looks back at the soundboard and keeps mixing the show while security wrestles this naked guy off of the soundboard.
- [68:50]
D
Now through the back of roses, I ran where the horses were tied.
- [69:06]
I
And I just remember looking at Dan Healy and having this sense of deep respect that Dan was clearly far more interested in making sure the sound was just exactly perfect than to be concerned for his safety with some wild eyed tripper having just leaped 40ft and landed bare ass naked next to him.
- [69:36]
B
A second wave of shock came later. Remember that rando that came down in the car with Johnny and unbeknownst to his fellow travelers, gobbled down a four way of LSD blotter. Perhaps the Gooney Birds especially popular that tour him.
- [69:50]
I
It turned out that that leaper was that guy. Not long after we parted ways, the four hits hit him and he took off his clothes, including everything that was in his clothes, his wallet, his id, his money, all of that. And he proceeded to have a
- [70:20]
F
not
- [70:20]
I
quite an ego death experience, but definitely an experience that one should have in a different set and setting. The type of experience that one should have with a sitter in a controlled, safe environment, not at an oversold festival style Grateful Dead concert without your friends to hold your hand.
- [70:48]
B
It's amazing he didn't hurt himself. But as the Golden Road report from the show noted, after his safe landing, the venue security promptly roughed him up. Things happen fast inside a Dead show, but I also feel obligated to note that neither the Golden Road nor the various online memories of this incident mention nudity, but certainly it's not an unknown style under such conditions. I will of course shout it out to Naked pole guy from Vanita 72. Gary Jensen, who as history's eye records in the bigger picture, was truly a trained professional, hit up part two of our Sunshine Daydream episode for more about that.
- [71:25]
I
After the show, we had to spend quite a lot of time in the parking lot wondering where he was, like maybe hours before we figured out that we could drive home. And I don't think he made it home for another day or two back to the retreat center with quite a story to tell and his tail between his legs.
- [72:09]
B
The set list surprises continued in Saratoga.
- [72:12]
E
They're doing Crazy Fingers in the first set. It just felt like is on that tour all the time. Like oh, you think you know how we do this? Oh, we're doing it a different way tonight.
- [72:33]
D
See how it feels in the end. My lady, lovely for you love sweet and true.
- [72:57]
B
Crazy Fingers gets to a mysterious corner. And from the Crazy Fingers, another surprise. David Lemieux.
- [73:29]
C
There's a Crazy Fingers in the middle of the first set. There's a full blown supplication gem.
- [73:48]
B
Workshop by Weir at the aces sessions in 1975. Recorded on Kingfish's debut and played by the Dead starting in 1976, Lazy Lightning Supplication was a two part suite in 74 with the song Just maybe, at least in part reverse engineered to get to the musical space of the jam. In 1984, Weir jettisoned lazy Lightning but looked for a way to keep Supplication in action.
- [74:13]
C
In the spring of 85 they started experimenting with using the Supplication jam and it was all was really good and the nice thing was it was sort of like a playing in the band jam, but one that didn't resolve. So you're not getting the ending of the song.
- [74:31]
D
Sa.
- [74:57]
C
Love the supplication jam. They build on it like it's a regular supplication coming out of Lazy Lightning and it's very 1985 ish. They weren't doing it in 87 onward.
- [75:08]
B
In a funny way, it's a little flash of that 1975 Grateful Dead energy that we love so much on the Dead Cast. Not only was it first developed in that year, but a decade later, it briefly reverted to its role as a source of chaos and creativity. And if you think about Crazy Fingers as a piece of 1975 as well, then it's possible to hear this pairing as connected to the modular experimentation they did as they assembled Luz for Allah.
- [76:03]
C
Playing in, the band generally had a few places to go. It had Uncle John's band. It had Terrapin Station, China Doll. Occasionally the Supplication Jam could go anywhere, and this one falls into High Time.
- [76:18]
D
Sam,
- [77:07]
E
Dave Leopold, the Saratoga show so there's the Crazy Fingers Supplication Jam. High Time. Like, oh my God, that's a score right there.
- [77:41]
B
There are numerous reports about this show from concertgoers with a wide range of chaos and star peace occurring across Spak's vast lawn. One person tripping too hard got separated from his friends, but thankfully ran into his cousin, who'd watched over him until he recovered his brain and eventually his friends. Though when he tried to clarify the story many years later, his cousin insisted they'd never seen the Dead. One scene report mentions seeing a couple having sex on the lawn. Another mentions coming across a large meditation circle with all participants directing their eyes and energy towards a single candle flame, which stood perfectly still for a moment, at least until it blew out. The second set upped the energy. Johnny Dwark is going to articulate one of the great paradoxes of the 1985 Grateful Dead, somehow both devastating and joyous.
- [78:50]
I
Those of us that knew what was going on, we were still very, very concerned. Jerry was looking haggard, he was looking unwashed, his hair was greasy. He had gained a tremendous amount of weight. But the music is amazing. You know, Jerry's voice was getting raspier and the sets were getting shorter, but the jams were extraordinary, just absolutely extraordinary. One of the highlights of 1985 was the way in which we could see that the music was still growing. Specifically in regard to the tone of Jerry's guitar. I would argue for the whole post 1977 era that my favorite Garcia tone guitar tone was his tone. In 1985, it sounded like electricity was
- [80:26]
B
making music feel like a stranger gets into jam territory. Doesn't usually find. The band's approach to Eyes of the World could vary pretty wildly in this era. For example, here's how it sounded later in the year in November at the Kaiser, now on the Enjoying the Ride box at a speedy 140 beats per minute.
- [81:10]
D
Right outside. This lazy summer Ain't got time to get your soul and ignored.
- [81:24]
B
But in the summer of 85 they rein the song back to its earlier 70s tempo here around 111 beats per minute.
- [81:37]
D
Of winter summer. Means a mile long Just carry the bird away. Wake up to find out that you are the
- [82:04]
B
the jam isn't too long, but Garcia unspools it into a lovely little place. Another small surprise, and certainly a welcome one was back to back Jerry Garcia songs.
- [82:54]
D
Going down the road feeling red going down the road feeling red.
- [83:10]
B
Dave Leopold.
- [83:12]
E
The second set has the stranger eyes Going down the road. I mean, you didn't hear that every day and certainly not in that order. It was thrilling. These were all like. I felt like they were all amusement park rides. You'd zing around the corner and something else would be going on. It could have been the chemicals, but it was definitely my experience.
- [83:33]
B
Up on the lawn, David Moran was having a grand time. He left us this story@stories.dead.net 6 hours,
- [83:40]
M
27 minutes and 85 seconds @spack was a life changing show for me. I'd seen the Dead about a dozen times prior to this, but this was the first time I was seeing them on psychedelics and it was simply amazing. I had a great time with my friends. We're dancing and then near the end of Women Are Smarter, we decided to make our way to the back up of the hill, into the woods, the forest where the trees were.
- [84:06]
D
Let us put men and women together, see which one is smarter they know. That's right women are smarter that's right the women are smarter that's right the women are smarter the women are smarter.
- [84:36]
M
It felt like Peanuts cartoon where everyone's dancing and dust is flying everywhere Smiles on everybody's faces and it was simply pure joy. I remember when the tune ended, we wanted to head back towards the band and we literally couldn't remember, find out which way to walk. We had literally lost the band inside the venue.
- [84:55]
B
Like David and his friends. Man smart, woman Smarter lost its way into drums in space to flag a few pieces in the night's excursion into space. It begins with Mickey Hart droning on the beam and Dan Healy panning it in the stereo field as Garcia joins in. At the Greek Theater. Garcia quoted the Twilight Zone theme in one of the space segments and does it again even more subtly in Saratoga.
- [85:59]
I
Johnny Dwork the Rhythm Devils were employing all sorts of unusual sounds and dramatically expanding their weapons of choice. And I was always amazed in the 1980s how people would head to the bathrooms during the Rhythm Devils because for me, that was as much an embodiment of the thing that attracted me to the Grateful Dead experience in the first place, which was improvisation, risk taking, exploring the unknown.
- [86:33]
B
I'm not sure who the spaced out voices are, but they don't sound like Dan Healy's sampler. I assume it's the drummers. Space recombobulates into pretty much everybody's happy place.
- [87:42]
C
David Lemieux it's got a truck and spoonful. That's a cool thing in 85. It wasn't uncommon in the kind of 85 to 95 era for truckin to either go into smokestack or spoonful, but it was rare enough that it was a cool thing. In this box there's a couple of those. There's a truck and smokestack at the Greek. There's a truck and spoonful here. And I love that
- [88:03]
D
spoonful of diamonds could have been a spoonful of tea Just a little spoon of your precious love Good enough for me.
- [88:18]
B
For David Moran, who eventually found his way back to the band, Black Peter is what did it.
- [88:23]
M
But it was during Black Peter that my life changed. And it was during the bridge when Jerry sang See Here how everything lead up to this day. And from that point to the next
- [88:34]
E
minute until he finished that last verse
- [88:36]
M
with let's Go Run and See. It went from seeing a band when they came to town to I am following these guys to wherever they go and woke up the next morning and hitchhiked in the rain two and a half hours to Hershey park and I was on the golden road to unlimited devotion.
- [89:11]
B
Bobby Weir revived Turn on youn Love Light in 1981, but didn't really add it to his regular repertoire until fall 84, when it again became a frequent show closer. So when he played it at SPAC in June 1985, most heads in the crowd probably wouldn't have heard him do it before. It wasn't quite at or really anywhere near the epic lengths as the Pig Pen era, but that was okay too. One measure of the band's tightness on this particular night is the way this next moment unfolds.
- [90:14]
D
Push back. Push back. That's right. Wait a minute.
- [90:31]
B
Not even Pigpen could get the band to stop on his command every time he tried it. And sometimes they even made fun of him for it.
- [90:37]
C
They were a very tight band in 85, whereas some years I think they would have been loose enough that they would like you say. Most times Bobby does wait a minute and he's playing behind a band that just wants to keep jamming. So they didn't this one. They stop.
- [91:05]
B
DNA. Enjoy the duality of the rare double encore.
- [91:09]
E
Johnny B. Goode is like the sugar coating. You could just be a Johnny B. Goode Deadhead. And you got the colors and the bracelets and you put on the patchouli and you have all the trappings, but then the coating comes off and it's baby blue, which is a song that, as a guy who was about to leave on a cross country trip to follow the dead and move to California, really spoke to me.
- [91:42]
D
You left. They will not follow you.
- [91:47]
E
And next thing, we're outside the SPAC and we have no idea where we are. I mean, hopelessly, immediately lost. Like as soon as we step outside that, I'm like, I don't know what side of the spec we're on, I don't know what field, I don't know how far. And we found a Hacky Sack circle. And I was terrible at Hacky Sack. But that night it was like with the Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher who pitched the
- [92:14]
B
perfect game, now pitching for the Pirates, Doc Ellis.
- [92:19]
E
I felt like Doc Ellis, bro. If I was a Doc Ellis of Hacky Sack, like, I would kick it. And I see every seam on that Hacky Sack going over my head.
- [92:28]
D
Boom.
- [92:28]
E
Double rainbow.
- [92:29]
B
With the help of a friend, they eventually found their tent, though it wasn't quite as they left it.
- [92:34]
E
And we go back to our tent and it's crushed into the ground. And I at first thought it was our poor, lame survival skills that we can't set up a tent. But I looked at everybody. A lot of other people's tents were crushed too. And I think the horseback, the Spatchcocks, they, they trampled some tents while we were inside the show.
- [92:57]
B
They'd had an earlier, not terribly pleasant encounter with the SPAC cops, not to
- [93:01]
E
be confused with spatchcock, that's a different word.
- [93:05]
B
They got the tent back up.
- [93:06]
E
We spent the night inside that tent. And it got, you know, it was like the batteries on our boombox were dying. And I told my nephew this like, you know, acid kind of woo, woo. I'm like, bro, our tent is shaped like a pyramid. We just concentrate our powers. We can recharge these batteries. And batteries last all the way till dawn. And then we got in the car and drove to Hershey Park.
- [93:34]
B
It would be the last time Saratoga Springs allowed camping in a Dead show. David Lemieux.
- [93:39]
C
It was also a good time to see them and say, whoa, I gotta go tomorrow. And the next day you had a high likelihood of seeing a life changing show. On any given night, you Go to a show and it was so good, you cannot miss the next night, you can't miss the next tour. Could go to Spac and then find out that, oh, Hershey's only six hours away, I gotta go to that one.
- [94:01]
B
We know a few people who are planning to do just that. Like David Lemieux. I wasn't at SPAC 85, but I've been there a few times and I can confirm everything he says about egress.
- [94:11]
C
So you're parked at the venue, you walk along this tree lined two lane road.
- [94:16]
B
I've made this walk and just learned that it's got a properly majestic name, Avenue of the Pines. It makes for quite a striking and symbolic re entry to consensus reality.
- [94:27]
M
The owls are not what they seem.
- [94:31]
C
It's a canopy of trees and it's like a three mile walk and then you're in downtown Saratoga.
- [94:37]
B
From what I understand, in 1985 the venue allowed for camping at the venue's exit onto South Broadway, which pushed non consensual reality, or at least loud concertgoers, right to the town's border. Another way to exit the venue is like in this next story, which we don't endorse, but is how we're going to exit today as well.
- [94:54]
C
I remember in 98 for the other ones, I was driving out with my buddy and we had a 1975 Volkswagen van and at the back of those little grills where the air comes in for the air cooling at the back and I remember this guy on a skateboard says, hey man, can I hop a ride? And so I remember he grabbed onto the grill where the air vents and on a skateboard and we pulled him out of the venue for like two or three miles. And I remember thinking, I was like, this ain't safe. But he was okay.
- [95:46]
A
Thanks very much for tuning in to this episode of the good old Grateful Dead cast Friends. We'd like to thank our special guests in this episode. David Lemieux, David Leopold, Johnny Dwork, DNA, Ken Schneider, Andy Perrine, David Morin, Corey Arnold, Nicholas Merriweather, Annabelle Walsh and Donnic Carey. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. 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 and Doran Tyson. All rights reserved.