September of '72, right before I went in to the Army. I'm dating this girl who's a stone Deadhead, and, although I am NOT a fan of the band, I get tickets and we go. Along with a shitload of Pagan Pink and a few rather spectacular pharmaceuticals, we're hanging out on the playing field far back from the stage.
More than a coupla bones and a jug of wine later, I pass out during one of their interminable, dreadfully long jams. Out like a top. Anyway, I somehow come out of the coma about 45 minutes later (that's how long Nancy said I was out) and fuck if they weren't still playing the same fuckin' song!
We left a while later, but my buds who hung out for the full show told me the next day that the band played for five friggin' hours. Reason number 12 why I wasn't a Deadhead like the rest of my friends...
This video is (sound only) from that concert. It's 3 1/2 hours long, and I swear it's all just one song. Enjoy if you can...
If you're feelin' the groove, click on the flag...
At Roosevelt Stadium my high school played its football games. My uncle's St. Peter's College graduation ceremony was at that stadium. Years before those events Dad took me there to see two or three drum-&-bugle corps' competitions, several years of 4th of July fireworks, minor league baseball games, and an unforgettable brilliant performance by the King (softball ace Eddie Feigner) & His Court. Used to pedal my bicycle around that stadium and nearby at Newark Bay waterside stood the Jersey City Fire Department training school (Dad was a JC fireman). Also, from the Roosevelt Stadium marina, together with my Dad and brother, I thrilled in my first flight, in a Cessna 180 seaplane that cruised north to just south of the George Washington Bridge then turned south along the Hudson, then, just before the Narrows, banked back over the Kill Van Kull and past Bayonne to land in Newark Bay and taxi up to its marina moorings.
ReplyDeleteThis band has always been shit. And I am tired of everyone pretending they were gods....
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on the Dead, never understood the appeal, or had the patience for their never-ending monotonous jams of a single song. That's not music, it's the antithesis of music. Then I watched the Amazon Prime documentary on them and it all became clear: They were stoned and high on LSD 24/7. Their fans at least went home and sobered up. For them, the party never ended.
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