“A Day In The Life… Times Three”
July 2nd has given me and groups of my friends ranging 6 to 60,000 a day to remember.
For every person fortunate enough to get out on their own in their teens there are countless moments, both good and bad, that stay with you for eternity. Some might be life changing; your first love and the first death of a loved one are the types of moments no one can ever forget or deny comes to mind. There are highs that one cherishes and lows one wishes they could forget forever, but rarely ever can.
And then there are moments that are just flat out fun. And those moments can be just as defining. For me some of those moments were seeing Grateful Dead shows and I saw three great ones on this date: July 2nd.
In 1987 I had just finished what should have been my sophomore year at Niagara University but after a disastrously ill-fated first semester at Umass Amherst summer school was in order. I was initially dreading being away from my hometown pals. Going to the beach, working a shitty job, drinking in the bars of Providence and seeing the Red Sox at Fenway long before some marketing firm christened it, “America’s Most Beloved Ballpark.”
But, I settled in a routine that I found unexpectedly fantastic. There were fewer students in Niagara Falls and the friendships established there meant something in a way that the first friend you make freshman year is unlikely ever destined to be. It also provided my first experience seeing Grateful Dead with my college friends.
Silver Stadium in Rochester, NY was a dump of a Minor League baseball park that only a Rochester Red Wings fan could love… a Red Wings fan or a 20 year-old college kid on the cleanest acid trip of his life who was with a friend who had a connection at the stadium for free Genesee beer! It was before “In The Dark” was released and though the career changing single, “Touch of Grey” had been in the band’s repertoire for nearly five years this show was definitely not the beast that “Dead Tour” became.
There were 20,000 people there, a third of the number that would fill Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro, MA to capacity on July 2nd three years later. The show was General Admission, people came and went from the field freely and at will with zero hassle. It rained on and off and nobody minded. I must have seen twenty fellow Niagara students over the course of the day and when I went to sleep that night I had no regrets about doing so in Niagara Falls.
They played this… and it was splendid. July 2, 1987, Silver Stadium, Rochester, NY: First Set: Hell in a Bucket, Berth, Walkin’ Blue, Dire Wolf, “Take A Step Back,” My Brother Esau, When Push Comes to Shove, Tons of Steel, Me and My Uncle, Mexicali Blues, Brown Eyed Women, Cassidy, Deal.
Second Set: “Mexican Hat Dance” tuning, China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider>Samson and Delilah>Looks Like Rain>He's Gone>Drums/Space>Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad>All Along the Watchtower>Stella Blue>Sugar Magnolia.
Encore: Black Muddy River.
Twelve songs in the first set, by the end there were nights they sometimes only played six. Also the first East Coast performance of “All Along The Watchtower.” Two days later on “Independence Day” in Foxboro they did the first “Dylan and the Dead” show backing Bob Dylan and two days later, “In The Dark,” was released. Ironically they opened the Dylan set with, “The Times They Are A-Changin.’” Prescient doesn’t even begin to describe that choice.
The following summer I was back at Silver Stadium, this year on June 30th when the boys played a smoker and on the drive back to Niagara Falls my friend Darren was the first to suggest that if we were to leave by noon the next day we could be in Oxford Plains, ME by 10 that night. It was a Friday and the band was playing at a racetrack there on Saturday and Sunday.
That is the kind of decision that only a 21 year-old living away from home for the summer can respond to affirmatively with zero hesitation. This was long before the World Wide Web gave the world Google Maps and this kind of spontaneous decision doesn’t even allow for AAA “triptick” (which I would later utilize frequently in my travels, both Dead and non-Dead related). We borrowed a road atlas from the Niagara library (and when I say “borrowed,” I mean I threw it out a window and retrieved it from a bush since it wasn’t available to be checked out. In my defense I did return it when we got back) and were off. Four college boys in a Volkswagen Jetta with two tents, an ounce of weed, a shoebox full of bootleg tapes (not just Dead, there was Neil Young and Bob Dylan and I snuck in a couple of R.E.M. selections) and no fear.
And, as it turned out, we really didn’t have anything to fear. Sure, we smoked our first joint before were out of Niagara Falls and our last one when both tents were set up (I am sure you insightful readers can fill in the blanks between Niagara Falls and Oxford Plains which included the obligatory stop at the New Hampshire State Liquor Store as well as beer purchases in both New York and once we had entered Maine, both at gas stations) but we stayed around the speed limit and our car’s owner/driver didn’t enjoy a drink until the keys were out of the ignition.
Scouting out the Oxford Plains Speedway was our first indication of what we were in for, a true stock car track complete with wooden high school football stadium style bleachers and located, literally, on Main Street. Twenty-two years later I was hired to be the onsite correspondent for the one and only, “Nateva Festival” in… you guessed it Oxford Plains, ME.
Being back there, with founding Grateful Dead members, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh and their band, Furthur, on the bill was admittedly surreal. I’d never have imagined that I’d be seeing those two in Oxford Plains, ME again and driving past the Speedway -which looked completely unchanged since 1988 and probably hadn’t looked much different at its construction in 1950- I had not so much a sense of deja vu as a sense of a weird inevitability.
Those Oxford shows, particularly since they were the end of that summer’s East Coast tour, have obtained legendary status and they are deserving of that. But for me it meant more. The old schoolers, the heads who’d been on the bus since the early days, were there and a few told me why. In the midst of “Touch of Grey” being in regular MTV rotation they all felt like this might be their last touchstone to a time when they could see two nights of Grateful Dead in a totally off the beaten track rural setting. The abundance of available tickets for both days was proof that the curiosity seekers had all sat this one out, so was the plethora of clean and reasonably-priced drugs.
I saw Grateful Dead over a hundred times and I don’t remember two shows where I saw as many people smiling as I did on those days at Oxford Plains Speedway in July of 1988. And it didn’t hurt that the band kept up their end.
This was night one, July 2, 1988, Oxford Plains Speedway, Oxford, ME: First Set: Iko Iko, Jack Straw, West L.A. Fadeaway, “Mexican Hat Dance Tuning,”Stuck Inside of Mobile (With The Memphis Blues Again), Row Jimmy, Blow Away, Victim or the Crime, Foolish Heart
Second Set: Crazy Fingers>Playin' in the Band>Uncle John's Band>Terrapin Station>Drums/Space>The Wheel>Gimme Some Lovin'>All Along the Watchtower, Morning Dew>Sugar Magnolia
Encore: Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)
Here is night two, July 3, 1988, Oxford Plains Speedway, Oxford, ME: First Set: Hell In A Bucket-> Sugaree, Walkin Blues, Tennessee Jed, Queen Jane Approximately, Bird Song
Second Set: Touch Of Gray, Hey Pocky Way, Looks Like Rain, Estimated Prophet-> Eyes Of The World-> I Will Take You Home-> Drums-> Space-> Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad-> I Need A Miracle-> Mr. Dear Mr. Fantasy-> Hey Jude
Encore: Not Fade Away
So many memories of that weekend have never left me. Making out with the beautiful sister of a Niagara lax teammate from “Terrapin” through Drums/Space and until the end of “The Wheel” when we decided to move closer to the stage, a fact he never knew unless she told him. The rumors circulating everywhere between sets on the second night that they were going to play an unannounced show on the 4th of July (“Why do you think they didn’t play, ‘U.S. Blues,’ tonight, dude?”). But, mostly it was that feeling that I got a glimpse of what it had once been like in the face of the often ugly thing it would eventually become. I cherish that.
In 1989 July 2nd was a home game for me and whereas Rochester had been a first Dead experience with college friends, Foxboro was home. My high school pals, my brothers, and all of our friends gathered at my childhood home. My parents looked on with patient bemusement as the masses assembled on the front lawn. Ellen churned out pancakes and the Kahuna warned the males that the septic tank had made anything other than “number two” inconceivable and would have to be performed either behind the garage or at a fast food restaurant on the way to the stadium.
The two lane Route One had not been widened the way it eventually was for the mammoth Gillette Stadium that replaced Sullivan (which was still “Schaefer Stadium” when the Dylan & the Dead tour played there in ’87) so a rolling caravan snaked its way to the dirt parking lots at a parade’s pace. Kids riding in the open trunks of cars, swigging beers and passing joints, every car playing a different show on a bootleg tape of equally different qualities.
The parking lot party was everything, for better or worse, that Grateful Dead shows had become by the end of the 80’s, their last full decade in existence. There were a healthy percentage of friends from my high school who were there for the party, with no interest in the show. Even thinking about it now makes me more thankful for my experience in Maine. Foxboro in ’89 was the first East Coast summer tour and that made the difference with Oxford even more glaring.
The show itself didn’t disappoint. The uninitiated had no clue when the normally non-speaking Garcia began the proceedings by asking, “How ya’ll doing?” it was BIG new in “Dead World” as was starting the show with two traditional second set songs. They did also get both “Truckin’” and “Sugar Magnolia,” though so anybody with a modicum of “Classic Rock” radio experience wasn’t totally lost.
Have a listen for yourself. July 2, 1989, Foxboro Stadium, Foxboro, MA: First Set: Playin' In The Band-> Crazy Fingers-> Wang Dang Doodle, We Can Run But We Can't Hide, Tennessee Jed, Queen Jane Approximately, To Lay Me Down, Cassidy, Don't Ease Me In
Second Set: Friend Of The Devil, Truckin'-> He's Gone-> Eyes Of The World-> Drums-> Jam-> The Wheel-> Dear Mr. Fantasy-> Hey Jude Reprise-> Sugar Magnolia,
Encore: The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo)
I saw most of the shows that summer. Buffalo on July 4th which was always a “Deadhead Holiday,” the last show at JFK Stadium in Philly and enjoyed the history but Giants Stadium and RKF in DC were more of the worst kind of suburban audiences and things like gatecrashing were starting. Seeing guys shooting up in the lot in DC was a dealbreaker, I went home.
After that I went to fewer stadium shows and focused on catching up on some of the great music I’d missed while being so “Deadcentric,” but I got hooked again when they stopped playing stadiums in New England (I did give the first year that they played Highgate, VT a try looking for that Maine vibe but by now 80,000 people weren’t scared of getting off the beaten path anymore. I came home and saw R.E.M. on the “Monster” tour and enjoyed it so much more). Then they started doing six night runs at the old Boston Garden and I didn’t miss a night. I guess a hockey rink in the middle of the city on a Tuesday night wasn’t alluring as a football stadium parking lot on a weekend to the curious. These were “For the Faithful.” Those smaller venues ended up being my last favorite shows.
But, I will always have my varied July 2nd’s, and for that I remain eternally grateful!
