Sun, Sea Breezes, and the Grateful Dead. UC Santa Barbara May 20, 1973

 

 

I can readily say that the most enjoyable Dead show I ever attended took place 50 years ago this month (writing this in May 2023) outdoors on the UC Santa Barbara campus. After starting 1973 with a show at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, the band mounted a musically memorable and doubtless very chilly Midwest tour during the last half of February. Following a brief break, they swung through the eastern seaboard mostly playing basketball arenas and large auditoriums. Following a six-week hiatus, they started a May-June tour of outdoor stadiums comprising five shows at four venues which  have now been compiled as a 17 disc Rhino Box Set called Here Comes Sunshine. Oddly, the first show of this outing was in Des Moines Iowa, followed by two shows closer to home in Santa Barbara and San Francisco 

 

The stadium show marked the return of both the band and venue following mishaps in 1969. As documented by reporter Michael Lydon in a tour journal published  in Rolling Stone, The Dead’s performance at UCSB’s Robertson Gym was cut short when Jerry Garcia and Bear decided that the house sound system provided for the show was inadequate and should be replaced with their own equipment. However, the Dead’s sound system was ultimately not assembled, and the band slunk off without playing the second set that they had announced to the crowd. 

 

The last show held at UCSB’s stadium took place on November 9, 1969 and featured a bill comprising LA folk rockers Sweetwater, the Steve Miller Band (who ultimately did not perform), and headliners Crosby Stills Nash and Young. I also attended that show and a description is provided here. This popular billing led to many people without tickets crashing the gates and damaging the facilities, leading to a ban on concerts being held there until 1973. At the time, UCSB was a hotbed of student activism, which probably reached its peak with the February 1970 riots that culminated in the burning of the Bank of America branch in Isla Vista, the campus-serving community adjacent to UCSB. By 1973, with US participation in the Vietnam war coming to a close and violent student activism ebbing, the campus agreed to give both the Dead and concerts at the stadium another chance. 

 

A group of my UCSC friends and I drove down the coast on Friday afternoon after classes, getting to the Isla Vista apartment of the friends we stayed with in time for dinner. In the early evening, a group of us walked over to the campus to check out the situation at the stadium. Although we were unable to get into the venue, all of the lights were on, and the Dead were in the middle of a sound check. Actually, it was just Phil testing out the sound system, but we were treated to a good quarter hour or so of him soloing on his bass, with the sound reverberating through the stadium. It sounded like the sound was coming from different places on the stage, which seems entirely possible given that Lesh’s Alembic bass “Big Brown” had quadrophonic capabilities that had each string routed to a different set of speakers. 

Phil and McIntosh Amps 5/20/73 Photo M. Parrish

 

 

On Sunday morning, we took our time getting over to the stadium, probably arriving around 10 AM. It was a perfect day for an outdoor concert, sunny but not too hot, and tempered by gentle sea breezes. In contrast to general admission stadium concerts in subsequent years, there was no real ‘land rush’ for seating, and our group secured a comfortable outpost on the field about 100 feet from the stage. In contrast to the 1969 CSNY show, the venue was full but did not seem oversold, and there was plenty of space to spread out on the grass or in the stands. If there were any crowd control issues, I did not see them.  

 

  

Dave Torbert and Marmaduke 5/20/73
Photo: M. Parrish

     The show opened at noon with Dead family members New Riders of the Purple Sage. By 1973, the New Riders had established themselves as a strong headlining act, especially on the east coast. They opened the afternoon with an expansive set that split the vocal duties between principal songwriter John “Marmaduke” Dawson’s originals, lead guitarist David Nelson’s takes on “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Loud , Loud Music”  and “She’s No Angel.”  Bassist Dave Torbert sang lead on the majority of the tunes, including the Robert Hunter penned rocker “Kick In the Head” and rock and R&B classics including “Hello Mary Lou,” “School Days,”  and “I Don’t Need No Doctor.”

After a reasonable break, the Dead took the stage, starting off with a familiar opener, “Bertha.” This was only the second time I had seen the Dead in a large outdoor venue, and the improvement in the overall band sound between this and the previous summer’s show at the Hollywood Bowl was amazing. Since late 1972, a sound engineering brain trust convened by Ron Wickersham and comprising Bear, John Meyer, Sparky Razene, Dan Healy, John Cutler, Rick Turner, and John Curl had been working on tweaking the band’s stage setup leading towards 1974’s immense wall of sound. The UCSB stage setup was really a mini-wall of sound, with stacks of different types of family-built Hard Trucker speaker cases and McIntosh amplifiers arrayed behind the band along more familiar elements like Garcia’s twin reverb amp and the Courtney Pollack tie-dyed speaker cabinets. The most notable changes were the towering columns of speakers on either side of the stage that comprised the majority of the PA, with a wide variety of sizes and shapes of speakers transmitting different elements of the band’s sound. A large canvas shade was stretched between the enormous scaffolding that housed the PA stacks, keeping the majority of the sun off of the band. 

Garcia played the entire show using the Alembic-modified Stratocaster "Alligator" while Weir favored a similarly tweaked Gibson SG. Keith Godchaux used a full grand piano that, despite being covered by a reflective tarp, demanded repeated ministrations by a harried-looking piano tuner.

 

Photo: M. Parrish

The first set rolled along with familiar tunes for awhile, “Mama Tried,” a letter-perfect “Box of Rain,” a rousing “Deal,” “Looks Like Rain” and “Tennessee Jed.” Next up was Weir’s interpretation of Buck Owens’ “The Race Is On”. Previously sung by Weir a few times in in 1969-70,  either sitting in with the New Riders or by the Dead with Marmaduke guesting on vocals, the country chestnut had been dusted off during the winter tours and given a peppy new arrangement with great harmonies from Donna and Jerry. The “China Cat Sunflower”/”I Know You Rider” medley was a perfect complement to the sunny day, and featured an embryonic version of the transitional D-A-G-A passage that became a full blown feature of the medley up until the band’s hiatus at the end of 1974. 

 

Rather than concluding the set with China Cat>Rider, the band kept going with “Beat It On

5/20/73 Photo M. Parrish

Down the Line,” again showcasing Donna’s great harmony vocals, followed by the first ‘new’ song of the show, “They Love Each Other” in its early (and, to my ears, superior) up-tempo arrangement. The set then wrapped up with a gnarly, 19 minute excursion into the depths of “Playing In the Band.”

Following a generous break, the band came back with another set of single songs, starting with familiar opener “Promised Land” and including two more of the new-for-1973 tunes, “”Row Jimmy” and Here Comes Sunshine”  alongside relative newcomers “Brown-Eyed Women,” “Mexicali Blues,”  “Jack Straw” and “Greatest Story Ever Told,” wrapping up with a cheerful “Casey Jones.”  Mid-set, several of us were confused by the fact that the band had not launched into a typical second set medley/jam, and it was a surprise to all when Weir announced that they were going to take another short break. 

 

As the day progressed and shadows grew long, the Dead showed no signs of fatigue as they

5/20/73 Photo: M. Parrish

launched into their third set with a powerful “Truckin’” which led into a gritty instrumental take on “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” driven by Garcia’s gritty slide guitar and then which opened up into a free-form jam in the key of E that featured some fine ensemble playing before dropping into an athletic, jazz-inflected Kreutzmann drum solo that culminated with Lesh’s bass bomb that heralded the arrival of “The Other One.” After a powerful first verse, the band settled into a more plaintive late afternoon exploration and some rapid arpeggiated soloing by Garcia that erupted into a furious wah-wah driven “Tiger” passage that shortly dropped into the mellow intro to another of the unrecorded tunes, “Eyes of the World.” “Eyes,” along with the earlier renditions of “Here Comes Sunshine,” China Cat>Rider,” and “They Love Each Other,” were perfect complements to the lazy Sunday afternoon. The  brisk, jazzy outro to “Eyes” abruptly morphed something newly appended to “Eyes,” the repeated bass-and-guitar driven repeated minor key riff that ultimately emerged (in expanded and modified form) on record as “Stronger than Dirt or Milking the Turkey” on their 1975 album “Blues for Allah.” As the pace slackened and the volume crept downwards, Garcia and Hunter’s poignant “Stella Blue” emerged out of the previous instrumental chaos. By this time, the late spring afternoon was starting to ebb, and the Dead wrapped up their third set with “Sugar Magnolia.” Retuning for the encore, Garcia told the crowd "We had a pretty nice time today. Thank you all for coming." before sending the mellow crowd happily on their way with a no-frills “Johnny B. Goode.”

 

We all had school on Monday, so made the trek back to Santa Cruz Sunday night with happy memories of a glorious day of music on our minds. The Dead played a similarly ebullient outdoor show at Golden Gate Park’s Kezar Stadium the following Saturday which I did not attend because of a conflicting engagement in the Sierras.