Here it is folks….my 1st show!!! Yes, this is where I got on the bus! And after this night it was full steam ahead!! I was still in high school at the time and there was a buzz going around earlier that summer about how good the JFK shows were that the Dead did with Dylan and many of the remnants from that scene were still lingering around keeping the vibe fresh in the city.
1987 was a banner year for the Dead and Philly. They played the city 7 times that year. Three Spectrum shows in March, the JFK Stadium show in July and then three more Spectrum shows in September.
I can remember the parking lot scene was still in the days when you could set up camp for three days and not be hassled. We had taken the L train to the stadium complex and when we came out of the subway and out onto the street all you saw was oceans of tye dye flags in every parking lot and the smell of burgers and dogs cooking everywhere. As we began walking through the scene I knew immediately that I was home!
We spent a few hours circling the arena parking lot tasting, smoking and ingesting everything that there was to be offered and believe me - there was A LOT!!! As twilight approached the crowd began to filter towards the doors. Hundreds of conversations mingling together as we collectively squeezed our ways through the birth canals of the front doors and into the show!
Upon bursting into entrance we were surrounded by the echoed chaos of the concourse of the good ole Spectrum. With a steady flow of tye-dyed traffic and twirling dead heads at every glance, somehow we found our way to the beer stand and at 17 years old also somehow were able to buy several beers without any problem. Ah, the good ole days. Now you can’t even buy booze or cigarettes in your 50’s without I.D. in many places!
Anyway, back to 1987. I can remember thinking that I wouldn’t remember any of that night due to the alchemistic mix of hallucinogenics I had taken on all of those several trips around the arena in the parking lot a few hours earlier thinking everything I had taken was fake! (Ha, I guess the joke was on me)! But now, ALL that I had ingested was rushing into my being all at once like a freight train! Then the house lights went out!!!
The crowd roared and I immediately forgot where I even was!!! When the band started and the stage lights came on I was amazed at how silvery silver Garcia’s hair was. I know that may sound strange but that’s what I remember. It was probably the way the light was hitting his hair and how the “HITS” were hitting me!!!
As the band launched into it’s first set I was frozen in place reassembling the fragments of what was left of my cognitive understanding of the meaning of reality. I think I stood frozen in place at the entrance-way of the upper section for the first several songs as I observed the crowd below swaying to the music like a sea of joyful humanity being steered by a hypnotic musical force!
As each song went on I was being enveloped into a tribal family of peaceful unity that was not present in my “regular” world! As I looked around the place I can remember thinking “ now these are my type of people”!!! Everyone was accenting each part of the music in unified gestures and there were no boundaries between stage and the crowd. I suddenly understood what the famed Acid Tests must have been like that I had read so much about! And now here I was grooving with the Acid Tests house band!!! Somebody pinch me!
That is when the girl came floating by in a long white glittering gown and asked for a hit of our joint to which we gladly obliged and then she went floating off on her way… leaving us to wonder if we had imagined the whole thing?
During the intermission I sat in the upper level analyzing the dancing shadows of all of the people that were being cast onto the ceiling of the Spectrum, (
a.k.a. the basement). The Spectrum had comfortable soft plush seats spaced generously apart from each other with a low ceiling that gave it that “stoner basement” feel. Is it any wonder the Dead played there 53 times!?
As the second set rumbled on I kept thinking the ceiling was going to cave in as the band kept screaming that they were going to “tear this old building down”!!! I was greatly relieved that they reconsidered and instead steered the vibe into a dramatic toned tale of a terrapin powered train ride that was struggling to get it’s brakes to work!
By the time the show had progressed to the Drums>Space segment I’m most certain that I had journeyed into deep dimensions of altered conscienceness that simply can’t be explained into words. I do, however, remember that when the smoke cleared from the Space jam and The Wheel came dripping it’s way in, that I began to remember that I was on earth and that I think I have even heard this song before!
But when Truckin’ kicked in, then I remembered….YES, I’m at a DEAD show!!! I may not know my own name right now, but I do know that I am at a Dead show!!! In fact, I think I even sung some of the lyrics! (and giggled the rest)!
A roaring Sugar Mag was also a familiar song to me at that tender age and it was then that I may have actually danced my first dance steps at a Dead show. After what seemed like several eons of musical journeys the band finally declared that “it was all over now baby blue”, whoever she is?
The band finished, the lights came on, people began leaving and I sat there wondering….how am I ever going to get home from here…, when….I am already home!!!?