Don't Panic, this is the Movies, remember? Grateful Dead at Universal Amphitheatre 6/30/73

 Between the May/June stadium shows that were recently released on the Here Comes Sunshine box set and the huge Watkins Glen concert with the Allman Brothers and the Band, the Grateful Dead did a short west coast tour that included three more stadium shows in Vancouver, Portland and Stadium (all released on the Pacific Northwest: the Complete Recordings 73-74 box set), followed by a three-night stand at Universal City’s intimate new concert venue, the Universal Amphitheatre. The Amphitheater had been created as a  regular stop on the Universal City studio tours where western-style stunt performances were performed during the day. At 5200 seats, the venue was one of the smallest venue the band played that year (the Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln, Neb. was a tad smaller at 4800), but certainly the smallest place they played that summer of big stadium shows. The amphitheatre was well designed for music, with a wide arc of seats that was not deep so that the farthest seats from the stage were less than 150 feet. Although it was later enclosed, the venue was outdoors when the Dead played there. It also had quite a bit of LA glitz, with the ushers all in tuxes and the backdrop behind stage curtain showing the wild west décor that was the setting for the afternoon stunt shows. 

Although I had just seen the Dead in May at UCSB, another out of town show beckoned, and the fact that my friend David’s well-connected father got us primo seats for the Saturday show was an added incentive, so I took a cheap commuter flight down and joined David and my roommate Tim, also in LA for the summer, for another memorable 1973 Dead show. 

 

Despite the small venue, the Dead’s sound system was much the same as what they used at UCSB, with stacks of McIntosh amplifiers and hard trucker speakers behind the band and much taller columns of speakers on either side of the stage. Despite the enormity of the PA, the sound was not overwhelming, and, as the PA committee moved towards the wall of sound, all of the instruments and vocals were crystal clear. With trim body and his hair newly styled into a black halo around his face, Jerry Garcia was dashing in his trademark black t-shirt and jeans, and Weir, Lesh and Donna Godchaux were also a tad more dressed up than was the norm at the time. 

 

The first set was pretty standard, relying heavily on material from Garcia and Weir’s solo albums aamd Europe 72, long with newer tunes destined for Wake of the Flood. Weir opened with Promised Land while the sound was tweaked. Next up was a bright, letter perfect rendition of “They Love Each Other” followed by equally crisp renderings of “Mexicali Blues,” “Tennessee Jed” and “Looks Like Rain,” on which Keith Godchaux contributed some gorgeous, delicate piano. The set’s first extended excursion was “Bird Song,” on which Kreutzmann masterfully driving the bus with mostly cymbals and kick drum. Garcia, Weir and Lesh stretch out, especially during an extended coda, out of which they charged directly into a spry “Cumberland Blues,” with Garcia and Keith G. playfully jousting licks. As the song concluded, some smoke drifted across the stage, but was quickly dispersed, prompting Garcia to quip “Don’t panic folks. This is the movies, remember?” Weir came back with “Wait until they see the volcano.” 

 

Next up was “Row Jimmy,” with lush vocals by Garcia and Donna, Keith switching between electric and grand piano above Kreutzmann’s crisp martial drumming. After a fine “Jack Straw,” Keith shone again with barrelhouse licks on “Beat It On Down the Line,” after which things slowed down with a rare first set “Black Peter.” A long set-closing “Playing in the Band” found Garcia and Weir trading spicy chordal stabs while Keith kept the proceedings grounded on his electric piano. 

 

The second set opened with a bang with “Greatest Story Ever Told” followed by “Ramble On Rose” and a lively “El Paso.” We were lucky to catch the run’s “Dark Star” next. Medium in length, the introductory part was all about Garcia jousting with Lesh, until Keith asserted himself with some ambient electric piano about five minutes in, and getting a delicate near-solo passage starting at about 6:30, with the electric piano sounding eerily like an old toy music box. Garcia then re-inserted the Dark Star intro and went into the first verse. After the vocal interlude, the light, airy mood devolved into feedback and darker chaos for several minutes before stopping abruptly as the band shifted gears radically and dropped into “Eyes of the World.” “Eyes” was a long version played to perfection. The coda to “Eyes” featured two runs through the proto-“King Solomon’s Marbles” section with a lengthy instrumental interlude between them where Keith, back on the grand piano, played some virtuoso jazzy passages with Jerry. The post-marbles jam continued for a while, the volume decreasing and the pace slowing as the band shifted nimbly into a gorgeous, moody “Stella Blue.” After a tuning break, the set concluded with a double dose of Weir-sung rock and roll  with “Sugar Magnolia” and a “Saturday Night” encore

 

After a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, I headed back to northern California very satisfied with the weekend. The Universal Amphitheatre was a really special place to see the Dead, and a treat to see such an intimate show in a year of big arenas and stadiums. Although the Dead never played there after this run, Garcia appeared at the venue twice in 1989 and 1991, although it had been converted to an indoor hall by then. 

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. 

The Ducks and Friends in Santa Cruz – Summer of 1977

 My last summer in Santa Cruz before leaving for graduate school in Chicago was an eventful one in CSNY lore. Most notable was Neil Young’s summer-long residence in town, during which he played 18 shows with an ad-hoc supergroup called the Ducks, mostly in small, funky watering holes. Although unofficial tapes of a few of these shows have circulated for years, this month (April 2023) marks the first official release of the band’s music on a two-disc compilation entitled High Flyin’ that does a good job of providing an audio document of the band’s energetic live sound and its diverse catalog of original and cover material. 

In addition to Young, the Ducks comprised bassist Bob Mosley, guitarist Jeff Blackburn, and drummer Johnny Craviotto. All had deep musical roots that allowed them to easily stand toe-to-toe with Young creating a raw energy that blended their California roots with a bar band energy that paralleled the emerging ethos of punk rock (Indeed, Young and Blackburn crafted “Out of the Blue and Into the Black” either during the summer or shortly thereafter). 

 

Mosley was the bassist and the most commanding vocalist in the original lineup of legendary San Francisco group Moby Grape. After recording two albums with the group’s original lineup, they famously started to fragment with the defection and mental breakdown of Skip Spence, the band’s vibrant and  charismatic front man. Although they filled out their Columbia contract with two fine additional albums, they never recaptured the financial and critical success of their initial heyday in 1966-68. In 1971, the original band (plus cellist Gordon Stevens) relocated to Santa Cruz and recorded a fine album, 20 Granite Creek, named after the address of the sprawling mountain house they lived in at the time. The band did a few dates in support of the album, including an infamous gig at the Fillmore East, but Spence soon quit again and the group broke up once more. Most of the band members remained in the Santa Cruz mountains, and a new version of the group existed from about 1973-75, with original members Mosley, Peter Lewis, and Jerry Miller augmented by Blackburn on guitar and vocals and Craviotto on drums and vocals. This group was a live powerhouse on good nights, and Blackburn contributed quite a bit of original material, including the driving anthem “Silver Wings” which was later a mainstay of the Ducks shows, with two versions showcased on “High Flyin’.

 

Young knew both Mosley and Blackburn since the 60s, as the Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape connected early in their careers, and Blackburn, then partnered with vocalist Sherry Snow, was also part of the early SF Ballroom scene. Blackburn had moved to the Santa Cruz area in the late 1960s, and stayed there until his untimely passing earlier this year. 

 

As Ducks tour manager Frank Mazzeo recounted the band’s origins in an a 2002 interview with writer Ben Marcus, he was drawn to Santa Cruz when he heard that the Jeff Blackburn Band (which then comprised Blackburn,  Mosley, and Craviotto) had lost their lead guitarist, so the enigmatic Young decided that a summer in Santa Cruz playing in a superior bar band would be a great thing to do. Renting two bungalows on the cliff above Seabright Beach, Young and Mazzeo settled in for the summer.

 

Young was no stranger to Santa Cruz, having first performed at the Civic Auditorium in 1973, and subsequently made a few guerilla performances with Crazy Horse at county venues like Margarita’s and the Catalyst in 1975 and 1976 (a practice he continued into the 1990s). His first appearance of the Santa Cruz summer was not a Ducks show per se, but rather a guest shot at a birthday celebration for another Moby Grape member, lead guitarist Jerry Miller, at the Backroom, a concert space behind beloved but long-defunct Szechwan restaurant the New Riverside. Young only guested on a few songs near the show’s end, but the Ducks were revealed publicly a few days later through a cover article/interview in Santa Cruz weekly Good Times, announcing their debut at the Crossroads, a tiny watering hole that was located in the Sash Mill shopping center just north of downtown. 

 

In pre-Internet days, news of the band’s creation traveled slowly, so I was lucky enough to get into the packed Crossroads for their first show. I had seen Young several times previously, with CSNY, the Stray Gators, at the 1975 SNACK benefit, and a memorable 1976 Berkeley Community Theater show with Crazy Horse, but seeing him in such an intimate setting was an unexpected treat. A large equipment/recording truck outside was out of character for a small bar gig, and the number of roadies/technicians outnumbered the band members. Despite the front page Good Times article, it was a remarkably low-key gig, and the Crossroads was not oversold, nor did there seem to be a lot of people shut out from the show. 

 

Despite this being the first official Ducks gig, the two strong sets of music the band played indicated a lot of rehearsal had preceded the live show. Since Blackburn, Mosley, and Carviotto had been performing together for some time, they had already developed a strong onstage chemistry, particularly the rhythm section. In addition to being a commanding vocalist, Mosley remains one of the most powerful straight-ahead bass players to come out of the San Francisco ballroom scene, and he and Craviotto meshed powerfully with Blackburn’s chunky rhythm guitar, a synchrony that reflected the many hours they shared together on stage in Moby Grape and Blackburn’s band. Young’s sizzling lead guitar and raunchy harmonies fit right into the band’s well developed bar band persona.  

 

All four band members shared lead vocals, roughly alternating turns throughout the show. Young performed a rousing “Mr. Soul” at just about every gig, but otherwise focused on a relatively short list of mid-seventies originals each night, including versions of “Little Wing” (recorded the previous year for the only recently released Homegrown), “Human Highway,” “Are You Ready for the Country,” “Long May You Run,”  “Comes a Time,” “Cryin’ Eyes,” and “Sail Away” (the one Ducks song he apparently penned during his summer in Santa Cruz). On any given night, Young sang less than a quarter of the tunes performed over what was usually two sets. This reflected either his reluctance to hog the spotlight after joining an existing band or, equally probably, the fact that the band already had a strong repertoire of road-tested material featuring the other three musicians. 

 

Mosley’s vocals included a couple of mid to late period Grape Tunes: “Gypsy Wedding” from 20 Granite Creek and “Truckin’ Man” from Moby Grape 69. He also performed a number of other originals, most of which have not ended up on subsequent Moby Grape or Mosley solo albums. 

 

Craviotto’s vocal slots mostly comprised renditions of classic rock and country anthems like “I’m Ready,” “Honky Tonk Man,” and “Bye Bye Johnny.” A smooth, supple vocalist, he also took lead on a breakneck cover of Jack Nitzsche’s “Gone Dead Train.”  

 

The deepest catalog of Ducks tunes belonged to Blackburn, and they were a diverse bunch of tunes ranging from wistful country rockers like “This Old Car,”  the mystical anthem “Two Riders,” the surf-rock raveup “Hey Now, and the elegant instrumental “Windward Passage,” which they introduced at later Ducks shows. 

 

All in all, that first show was an amazingly energetic and entertaining night of music that belied the fact that the quartet had only been working together a few days. After another night at the Crossroads, the Ducks regularly played several times a week at watering holes throughout the Santa Cruz city limits. They would approach a venue in the afternoon, buy out the band scheduled to play there, and put out another night of high-energy rock and roll. As the word spread through Santa Cruz County and beyond, hunting for the elusive Ducks gigs became a pastime for more and more people. I was working in Palo Alto at the time and also preparing to move to Chicago for grad school in a few weeks, so I did not join the hunt, but a tip from a friend got me into a second gig at the Crossroads a few weeks later, which found the band in even finer form. That show, on August 5, is represented by seven tracks on “Flyin’ High.”

 

During prime Duck season, I also got to see a Moby Grape show on July 29 (I think) at the Crossroads, with the lineup that recorded the 1978 Live Grape album: Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, Skip Spence (back after a long absence), and newcomers Cornelius Bumpus, Christian Powell and, from the Rhythm Dukes, drummer “Fuzzy” John Oxendine. Spence was definitely in his own orbit, and the addition of Bumpus’ songs and vocals lend a new R&B flair to the band’s sound. Although the Ducks did not play that night, no band members were in attendance at the Grape show, and Mosley was not part of the band again until sometime in the 1980s. 

 

The other show I saw with Young in attendance that summer was a sublime acoustic benefit for the United Farmworkers at the SC Civic, billed as a David Crosby solo show. Following a great set by the original David Grisman Quintet (the first of many times I saw them), Crosby appeared alone for the first few songs, opening with a killer triptych of “The Lee Shore,” “Page 43,” and “Triad” after a few more songs, he brought out Graham Nash, and they performed five songs as a duo, most notably a gripping version of Nash’s “Cathedral.” After Crosby’s “Low Down Payment,” the duo were joined onstage by ‘local boy” Neil Young, who stayed for the remainder of the show, with the trio performing Young’s “Human Highway,” “New Mama” and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” along with CSN/CSNY favorites “Déjà vu,”  “Our House,” “Wooden Ships” and “Teach Your Children,” concluding the impromptu reunion with “Sugar Mountain.” This was a warm, intimate performance that showed the trio in good spirits and enjoying one another’s company. 

 

By the end of July, word had spread about the Ducks and all of the shows had lines of would-be patrons from the rest of the bay area and beyond that far exceeded the capacity of clubs like the Crossroads and the Backroom. The Ducks moved to playing larger venues like the Catalyst and the Santa Cruz Veteran’s Auditorium, but a lot of the magic had slipped away. Near the end of August, some of Young’s guitars were stolen from his summer rental, and the Ducks era ended with their biggest show, at the Santa Cruz Civic. Young returned to his ranch in the mountains and, although the remaining Ducks continued to perform for a while without Neil, the band lost much of its mojo, and soon disbanded. Blackburn continued to be an important part of the Santa Cruz music scene until his passing last year, whereas Craviotto switched gears and became a well-respected manufacturer of high-end wooden drums. Sadly, he also passed in 2016, leaving Young and Mosley (who seems to have retired from the music business) as the last Ducks standing. It’s been a long time coming, but High Flyin’ does a fine job of capturing the magic created during those few weeks in Santa Cruz nearly a half-century ago. 

The Dead Back on the Farm. February 9, 1973

 It’s hard to believe that it was 50 years ago today that I first heard the Grateful Dead in my hometown of Palo Alto (well, really in Stanford if you want to get technical). Although I had seen Jerry Garcia played in and around town with Merl Saunders and the New Riders a few times, the Dead had not played in town since the Midpeninsula Free University Be-In in 1967, and a temporary ban on rock concerts at Stanford’s Frost Amphitheater had kept them from the most obvious appropriately sized venue in the area. Thus it was a welcome surprise when the Dead announced that they would open their winter 1973 tour at Stanford University’s basketball stadium, Maples Pavilion.  The stadium, named after principal donor Roscoe Maples, had opened in 1969, but this only the fourth time the 7500-capacity venue had been used for a concert after evening shows were banned from Frost in fall of 1970. 

 

The show was memorable musically, but its artistic aesthetics were leavened with a number of physical challenges. The Wall of Sound made its official debut at the Cow Palace the following March, but the Maples show was the debut of the prototype of that system, which replaced the Dead’s traditional wall of amplifiers with stacks of hard truckers speakers and McIntosh amplifiers, creating a towering edifice behind the band for the first time. As has been famously recounted in several Dead histories, and recounted by sound man Dan Healy himself in a 1982 Interview with David Gans (published in Conversations with the Dead), the debut of the new system did not go as planned: “ We spent maybe $20,000 on amps, crossovers and stuff, started the show, and in the first two seconds of the song wiped out every brand-new tweeter. Smoked every single one. “Oh, okay, we learned about that!" you know? We went through all these changes to put these protection devices, and they never worked! They blow long after the speaker’s gone.” 

 

It was further into the opener, “Promised Land,” than two seconds into the song, and you can’t hear it on the edited soundboard tape, but the loud pop and screech as the speakers gave up the ghost was a signal to the audience that all was not going well. The band carried on regardless.

 

Meanwhile, down on the floor of the pavilion, the carefully arranged rows of folding chairs created both obstacles and hazards to the audience, who were used to stand and  flow organically like a giant amoeba since the early days at the Fillmore and Avalon. In relatively short order, the chairs were disassembled and stacked against the stands on the side of the pavilion, and things proceeded as usual for a general-admission Dead show. Speaking of the stands, my friends and I had (wisely, given the circumstances) positioned ourselves about midway back in the stands, away from the folding chair debacle. 

 

A unique feature of Maples Pavilion was its sprung floor, created by matrices of crossed wood under the playing floor that was designed by architect John Warnecke to prevent player injuries. In practice, the floor created greater risks of injuries for players, and it was removed during a $30M retrofit of the stadium in 2004. In the meantime, the combination of the sprung floor, a sea of dancing deadheads, and the towering speaker columns created another hazard, as the towers started to visibly sway back and forwards. Fortunately, the arc of movement of the towers was not sufficient to cause them to fall, but at the peak of their flexure I was glad to be in the stands and not on the floor. 

 

The physical challenges of the gig aside, the Maples show marked the debut of a raft of new material that would comprise the bulk of the Hunter-Garcia material on the band’s next two studio albums. Although both “Stella Blue” and “Half Step Mississippi Uptown Toodeloo” had been road-tested during the last half of 1972, an impressive seven compositions made their debut at the Stanford show. After Weir’s opener, the band moved right into “Row Jimmy,” which managed to blend the wistful balladry of “Stella Blue” with the choral cadences of tunes like “Tennessee Jed” and “Ramble on Rose.”

 

After solid versions of “Black-Throated Wind,” “Deal” and “Me and My Uncle” Weir apologized for the problems with the new sound system, commenting “This is sort of get the bugs out night – that’s why we’re here.” And “If it irritates you, tonight’s going to get you crazy. Lesh then asked “Is there anyone back there who can’t hear?” As the conversation dropped into mayhem, Garcia slid into “Sugaree.” After another relatively new Weir piece “Looks Like Rain,” the second Garcia-Hunter tune,  the uncharacteristically raunchy “Loose Lucy” was rolled out, its mid-tempo boogie accented by a lumbering, repetitive guitar and bass figure. 

 

Deep into the first set, the third new tune appeared, the sparkling “Here Comes Sunshine.” After the sometimes bleak pictures painted in most of the 1971-72 Hunter lyrics, the song’s breezy optimism, shared with “Eyes of the World and “They Love Each Other,” literally brought a warmer, sunnier face to the band that was also embodied in most of their performances during 1973.Lyrically and melodically,  “Here Comes Sunshine” remains one of the gems of the Garcia-Hunter songbook, although Garcia flubbed some of the lyrics in its maiden outing. The generous first set concluded with a 19 minute version of “Playing in the Band.”

 

The second set was preceded by a plea by Wavy Gravy for funding to help rebuild the recently demolished Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, after which the band opened with a strong “China Cat/I Know you Rider.” After “Jack Straw,” the next new tune was rolled out, “They Love Each Other.” Previously Hunter had veered away from love songs, other than melancholy remembrances of lost love like “Wharf Rat” and “Stella Blue,” but “TLEO” is a full-blown celebration of a couple’s palpable love for one another, coupled with a sprightly melody from Garcia. I confess to always preferring the up-tempo 1973 incarnation of the song with the bridge to the simplified, slower version that emerged on Reflections and in subsequent live performances.

 

If there is any complaint to be made about the Dead’s stellar run of performances overseas captured in the Europe 72 box set, it would be the repetitive choice of the tunes used to anchor the extended segments of the second sets, which mostly alternated between “Dark Star” and Truckin’ leading into “The Other One.” Although the extended segment of the Stanford second set started with “Truckin,” it led smoothly into the next of the band’s debuts, “Eyes of the World.” “Eyes,” with its jazzy chords and relatively sprightly tempo, was to become a second set mainstay during the rest of the band’s performing history, and a crowd favorite. Eyes wove its way into the debut of another of Hunter’s melancholy story songs, the sadly elegant “China Doll.” Later in the band’s career, the conclusion of the second set medley would usually herald the end of the show, but the Dead still had quite a bit of gas in their tank at this show. A trio of short tunes, Big River, “Ramble On Rose” and “Box of Rain” preceded the evening’s final debut, the quixotic “Wave That Flag.” Although this snappy tune persisted in the Dead’s repertoire through most of the year, its off-the-cuff lyrics were ultimately deemed not ready for prime time, and the song re-emerged Phoenix-like, as “US Blues” at the first Dead shows of 1974 at Winterland. 

 

With all of the new songs rolled out, the Dead returned to familiar territory to wrap up the marathon show with “Sugar Magnolia.” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Around and Around” and an encore of “Casey Jones.” 

 

Technical challenges and bouncing floors aside, the Dead put on a strong performance at home to prepare for their winter swing through the Midwest that would commence a week later in Madison, Wisconsin. Although Garcia, and later Weir, were regular visitors to mid-Peninsula clubs in the rest of the 1970s, the Dead would not return to their old stomping grounds until they began an annual tradition of shows back at Stanford, this time at Frost Amphitheater, in October, 1982.