Summer Jam, Watkins Glen July 1973

To recap:

Can't Get Any Bigger Than The Entire Front Page of the Voice

Coachella is this weekend again, but Summer Jam was the boss. In honor of this big one, I have made a super sized blog post.  Happy 44 years, Watkins Glen.

I was 14 and 1/2 and living up in Lewiston. Did I go? Did I run away from home and join the nearly billion hippie march? Nope, I probably watch the Sox lose to the Tigers 4-2 and hang with Jimmy Roux that night.  Wow, I could have hitched.

In the earliest poster I could find in the Village Voice, this is not mention of Summer Jam or Watkins Glen, it just says "Come Upstate to A Day of Music In the Country with Allmans, The Band and The Dead, with the Dead being last.

Village Voice poster from June yet to be called Summer Jam

Summer Jam, by far, got more media coverage than any event the Grateful Dead ever played at with the most exception of Woodstock.  Except this was the Dead's showcase and drew 600,000 it seems to Upstate. No wonder in the following years the crowds were so amazing upstate (77, 78, and 79 for example). Enter and enjoy any place you like

Soundcheck

July 28

Harvard Crimson

WOODSTOCK TO WATKINS GLEN: Four More Years?

Photographs by Robert Ely (1,2), and Stuart Bratesman (3,4)

By TIMOTHY CARLSON, July 31, 1973

0

BY 2 A.M. SATURDAY, ten hours before the scheduled start of the concert, anyone that arrived was already late. He or she needing a place to fall asleep, had to make do with a sleeping bag wedged in between thousands of white or yellow Port-O-Sans. Others, undaunted at the prospect of stepping on perhaps fifty heads in the last eight hundred yards to the stage, pressed on toward the dull glowing red stage lights. Land was gold and there was a rush but the only claim you could stake was with your body. As they were stepped on, sleepers yelled out that there was no more room up front. Weren't they leaning up against one another a hundred yards from the stage? Of course there was room, there was always room for someone who knew what they wanted in this free enterprise society. If the pressure built much more people would just have to sleep upright, stacked together like cords of wood. The steady murmuring of the stepped on was punctuated every now and then by the squeals of puppies curled up around the foot of their masters' bags. There were no cats to be found in the quarter mile wide three quarters of a mile long concert field because there was no one place where a cat could find a single space where he wouldn't be touched before he could lick himself clean. A cat's nightmare. One could imagine, say, 600,000 dogs snuggling up to a huge Gaines or Gravy Train bowl to lap up a few stray sounds while the cameras whirred away.

* * * * *

ON ONE of the scaffoldings which held spotlights there was a banner: Choate Freaks United. It was hard to imagine some alumni there. John Kennedy, for instance.

* * * * *

"Sleep is bogus!"

"This is a festival!" Nobody can sleep out here. I can't find my bag anymore anyway. I can't get into that bag anymore. For a while I was seein' stars (or was it arc lights?) and everything was real peaceful. Until this hopped up cokehead hopped on my head. This foot just gunches my jaw. I could a been into some sleep, but I just crossed over the line.Whoooeee! Parsons! Possuns! I want some coke! Course if somebody around here had some downers, some goofers, I could get down, but as long as I'm flyin' let's party. Let's boogie! Wake up, everybody! You are just crouching there with your sleeping bags over your heads hoping I'll shut up so you can pretend you're trying to go to sleep, but that's just bogus. Hey Mark, you and me are standing here and nobody's saying anything anymore. Either we've won 'em over or they're maybe fifty people gonna jump us any second."

"If they were on our side they would a been up and partyin' by now."

"Well, everybody's been on my ass all day now, bitin' my ass! I just wish everybody'd get off my case. I lost my goddamn bag, and who knows what's curled up in it now. Gimme a beer."

Mark throws Dennis a beer and it bounces off the shins of the one person who hasn't raised his head up from under his blanket during the shouting. The bottle of Genesee makes a dull clinking sound as it bounces off.

"Hey Mark, do you suppose that there's really a person under that blanket?"

"Not alive. Hey, wake up!"

"Aw, forget it. He's bogus."

* * * * *

WHEN THE CONCERT STARTED, the sun bore down on the field and the Grateful Dead played a four hour set. Normal Dead enthusiasm was diffused by the sun which scorched into brains which had much of their juices drained by various portions of beer, wine, liquor, LSD, THC, MDA, quaaludes, sopors -- and some horse tranquilizer was reported as well. THC and acid were being sold for $2 a hit in plastic prescription bottles. Someone said there wasn't much Drano around like there was at Woodstock.

* * * * *

There was a sheet hung on two sticks with "OWSLY" written on it. After an absence of about a year, during which time he was reportedly in jail, the famous Owlsley was back in touch with his old friends from the Haight Ashbury days, the Grateful Dead. Owlsley was the chemist in the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test who mixed up the best acid on the coast, and who personally mixed up the kool aid for the acid test for Kesey, the Dead, and the Merry Pranksters in 1967. Now Owsley the brilliant technician had helped design the sound system for the Grateful Dead, which had two innovations -- cross phasing and a digital delay unit. Cross phasing is the placing of two microphones aimed at the singer so that, after the sound comes out of the mixing unit, the voice of the singer would come out of a speaker purified of the music amplification. The digital delay unit compensates for the difference in the speed of electricity and the speed of sound. In past outdoor festivals, music from speakers a half mile away would wash back over the audience in weird waves of sound like an echo chamber. The digital delay unit let the music come out in total synchronization. But of course no one could hear a note in synchronization with the hand that struck it. There was a half second delay between ears and eyes.

* * * * *

DURING THE MIDDLE of the Band's set, there was a heavy summer thunder and lightning shower. The pianist got drenched, but after the tech crew put plastic sheets over all the electronic equipment, the Band played on. During one of their heavy rocker numbers, a skydiver plummetted. It seemed that his parachute opened a little early, and he drifted over the field. He seemed to be whirling curiously around on his straps, and he landed over a clump of trees behind the stage. Later, three skydivers jumped amidst the lightning with three red flares held in their hands. The next day, the newspapers reported one of the skydivers had been killed, burned to a crisp by his flare before he hit the ground. The only one who seemed out of control, like a dead weight, was the first diver. But by the time I saw him floating down, there was no flare. Also in the papers was the report that 8 people died in automobile crashes while en route to the festival. Fewer than 100 people were arrested, all on minor possession charges, and just over a hundred people were treated in hospitals. Only one seriously bad acid trip. The crowd was remarkably quiet. More Confederate flags than the red, blue, and yellow of the NLF which had become so familiar at mass gatherings of the young the past five years.

* * * * *

After the rains and the Band were through, the Allman brothers' technical crew took over two and a half hours to set up, and it was hard for the crowd to keep patient, there was no outlet for frustration, either. But a lot of people cheered when firecracker flares were aimed at the Allman brothers when they finally took the stage, without apology. Bill Graham introduced them as a rock band "with balls." The P.A. announcer had refined his routine so much that he underestimated the crowd size and refrained from commenting on the spirit of the whole enterprise until he introduced the Allman Brothers at 10:30 p.m. "As far as we're concerned, of all the outdoor festivals, this is THE ONE." Woodstock was never mentioned and the whole tone of that understatement was taken straight from the Campaign to ReElect the President. The Committee to ReElect the Outdoor Festival.

Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.

Little Lewiston Reaction to Watkin's Glen

I own this baby; it must be worth $10-$15, at least :)

Transferred by Noah Weiner

Notes

Here's the story of the road to the Digital Watkins Glen Tree.

This was supposed to happen two years ago in conjunction with the

25th Anniversary Watkins Glen Analog Tree. I won't bore you with the

details, but the digital end never happened. A few months ago, I

had decided that I would finally have my AUD Analog seeds from the

Analog Tree transferred to DAT so that the digital world could

finally get it's hands on the tree that was run back in 1998. In a

wonderful cosmic twist of fate, on the very day that I put my

precious seed tapes in the mail to go to a trusted A>D person, I got

word that the a digital copy of the Master Soundboard Reels from

7/28/73 was going to be headed in my direction. Wow!

I had a few conversations with Dick Latvala when I was organizing the

25th Anniversary Tree and he had told me that the SBDMR was filled

with gremlins and glitches, and would never be suitable for official

release, but it did exist and he had listened to it. Most of his

friends had told him the show sucked (FOOLS!) so he didn't pay much

attention when he did listen to it. It seemed that the SBD was

destined to gather dust in the Vault for good. So be it. As it was,

we had put together a very enjoyable copy of the complete show from

AUD and FM sources and treed out what went on to change people's

minds about a show that was always thought to be a true low point in

1973. All the folklore-ish rumors about how bad they played, and how

without life the show was were put to rest. I still believe that the

bad rap given to 7/28/73 in the past stemmed from the atrocious

partial AUD that had circulated for years.

The SBD arrived and blew my mind. The main problem was that a few

songs were missing entirely from the copy. But that would be

overcome by the sources I used for the first Watkins Tree (more in a

moment). The gremlins and glitches consist mainly of occasional pops

or clicks over both dates and a static noise over much of the

recording on 7/28. It is at times a slight distraction, while at

other times barely audible. It really isn't that distracting from

the music at all. Just a little crackling here and there. However,

there is a portion of glitching that does get a bit rough. The worst

of it comes during the He's Gone>Truckin' where there are some severe

buzzes and grounding noises. These get pretty bad for sure. It

sounds like some cables are loose and a soundman is trying to rectify

the problem time and time again. But when you compare these SBD

problems during the He's Gone>Truckin' to the AUD used on the first

tree where we get to listen to the taper's buddy ponder his need to

go to the bathroom against never finding his way back to his spot in

the crowd during the same stretch of songs, I'd say it becomes a bit

of a toss up. The severe glitches clear up at about the six minute

mark of Truckin' and it's relatively smooth sailing thereafter.

This, coupled with a few cuts here and there within a few songs (like

a small chunk of vocals missing from Eyes Of The World), rounds out

most all that is wrong with the SBD. Also worth noting is that you

will discern some recording level discrepancies from tape source to

tape source. This was confirmed with the person that I had create

the complete show seeds as unavoidable when he compiled the masters.

He dealt with them as best he could (Soundforge, etc..)

As for the songs that were missing entirely from the copy I received,

I will give you all the information I have. I contacted the person

who "held" the SBD out of the Vault to find out why these songs were

missing. He informed me that they were indeed on the MR, but

suffered from tremendous tape speed problem. So bad in fact, that he

opted not to transfer them to the copy that made its way into

circulation. This lead me to uncover and at the same time solve a

real mystery. The facts now seem to indicate that what was used on

the first tree as SBD, was in fact from the fabled FM broadcast of

the whole show.

As any of you who have copies of the show treed in 1998 know, the

first 40 minutes of the show came from a SBD/5 seed. Within this

first 40 minutes are two of the songs that could not be transferred

from the SBDMR due to speed troubles: Here Comes Sunshine and Looks

Like Rain. Neither of these songs exhibit any pitch problems at all,

and further, they exhibit none of the static noise that prevails over

what we have from the SBDMR. Thus, I can only surmise that this

chunk that was used on the first tree actually emanated from the

allusive FM broadcast made on 7/28/73; the tape for which we scoured

many a local radio station in search of, all in vain.

When I had in my hands all five of the different source tapes for the

first tree back in the summer of 1998, I transferred each one to DAT

with the help of a DAT taper buddy of mine. We made two complete DAT

copies of everything involved. One set was sent to the person who

was to assemble and edit together the Digital Tree, the other was

just packed away at my DAT friend's house. It was this second set of

DATs that I was able to pull out for use on this tree. Since no

fancy splicing and editing was going to be needed for this new tree,

we were able to go right to these DATs to fill the gaps in the SBDMR.

So everything used here that did not come from the SBDMR is actually

one generation cleaner that even the Seed tapes I made to run the old

tree. It should be noted that the Encores were not to be found on

the MR at all. In fact, E2 occurred some nine hours after the Dead's

show that day, so it makes sense that the Reels were not still

sitting there ready to roll.

The job of editing all of this together fell to a person who shall

remain nameless, but he needs to be thanked none the less. He shares

my incredibly overbearing sense of detail when it comes to doing this

sort of thing, and since I personally am not set up to do anything

digitally myself, I needed someone like that in my camp. First off,

his cross fade addition of the Bill Graham intro into Bertha sounds

even better than the one I did on the Analog Tree. I almost wept

tears of joy when I first got the discs back from him, and that was

just in the first thirty seconds of the show. I didn't even think

he'd go that extra mile with the discs, but he did. Every track ID

is pure perfection. This guy is nothing short of the best DAT>CD

person I've ever encountered. You will all be very pleased.

That pretty well rounds out the story of how this tree came to be.

If I think of more tidbits I'll toss them out to you all. Thanks for

listening.

Noah

--

Subject: Watkins Story pt2

Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 23:34:57 EDT

From: Nbw000@aol.com

To: dankstar@mediaone.net

Here is another post I made that gave the history of the first tree, and all

that went into the birth of this idea...

Noah

-------------------------------------------------------------

From: Noah Weiner 

Date: Thu Mar 9, 2000 11:58pm

Subject: More of the Watkins Tree Story

I went looking through old e-mails and I found a copy of a post I

sent to the Compendium mail list after being approached for more info

on the tapes used for the first tree.

I just copied the whole thing. I didn't feel like editing or

updating any of it. This will confirm that I am all and more of the

overly compulsive taper freak that many of you know me to be. After

reading it, I can honestly say I sound a bit "obsessed."

This comes from around August 1998:

------------------------------------------------

A member or two of the Compendium Mail List expressed some interest

in just how Gordon Gullahorn and I managed to get the tapes together

for the recent Watkins 25th Anniversary Tree. So, if you'll pardon a

bit of rambling on, here it is.

As many of you know, this show has only circulated in really bad Aud

quality. The tapes are always incomplete, and of unknown generation.

They have this horrendous wow and flutter all over the best parts of

set two, and really leave the listener saying "Is that a good show

under there? Well, I'll never know because I can't bear to listen to

it again!" If you have a copy, you know what I mean. If you don't

have a copy, you don't want one. Anyway, there was this discussion

going on at rmgd about this "rare gem" of a show back in February, I

think (I guess some people *had* listened again). I piped in because

I had just come across this show on some one's list who had the Aud

listed as a 2nd gen. I had NEVER seen a known gen at all, let alone

2nd. So having set up the trade, I told the folks in the thread at

rmgd that I'd be happy to spin it for anyone if it was any good once

I got it. Another person in the thread, Gordon Gullahorn, and I

started talking about doing a tree if it was really good. After all,

the 25th Anniversary was coming up, and the show hardly circulated.

It would be fun if the tapes merited doing a tree.

A little time passed and the tapes came and, yes, they were good.

Let's put a few qualifiers on this "good" here. The taper, at that

time still a mystery, was certainly near the stage, lending a nice

presence to the music. It wasn't the best 1973 Aud I had ever

gotten, but I was perfectly happy to give these tapes a fair amount

of latitude given the circumstances surrounding the recording

conditions, size of the crowd, and what else there was circulating on

tape from the show. Even with the various audience nuances -- every

kind you can think of from the guy yelling HELLO into the mic at the

start of Eyes, to the off time clapper and the off key singer -- the

tapes still left my jaw on the floor because the show was so

terrific, and when the band was jamming the crowd into silence, the

sound quality was truly quite fine. Gordon and I set about trying to

track up the gen line to the original taper, as well as dig up the

rest of the show. The Aud/3 I had was not the whole show, only the

end of set one, and most of set two. The first problem was that Andy

(the guy with the Aud/2) couldn't remember who he got the show from.

Gordon and I started posting around, but it felt like looking for a

needle in a haystack. After many fruitless posts at rmgd, DNC, etc.,

I was prodding Andy's memory some more and he said that he remembered

getting the show from the taper himself and that he thinks he met

this guy in one of the AOL Dead chat rooms. He said the guy was very

friendly and would probably come right out of the wood work for us if

we asked around. Well, the thought of sticking my head in AOL's 710

Ashbury chat room like some private detective held little charm for

me. For every good soul in there you have fifteen or twenty people

that make the experience more like drinking a warm beer at a high

school party. We seemed to be destined to come up empty. We also

found that more often than not, any time we thought we had a good

lead, it would fizzle away, or get off track. Gordon and I agreed

that there was some strange mystique shrouding this show.

I can't really recall just how the idea struck me, but I started

putting 2 and 2 and probably 7 together and thought it could be this

guy Bill Degen who I have been trading with for well over a year. He

was an East Coast taper at the time, and I had gotten a few of his

shows in the past. he did have an AOL address and the friendly

personality. He fit the bill (no pun intended). Bill couldn't

remember this Andy guy, but he identified all the unique crowd noises

on the tape as coming from the tapes he made at the show. Bingo!

And once I got his personal tapes (his original masters burned in a

house fire back in the 80's so these are copies he personally made

some time back, bless him!), the stuff sounded even better than my

copy that was 2 gens removed. So everything that goes MC>R>seed and

MC>C>seed is from him. he also provided the Mountain Jam and JBG

encore (unknown, low gen SBD).

Now Gordon and I were cooking. But because Bills tape recorder

suffered from a faulty battery cable, we were still short most all of

set one. Sure we had the crappy Audience that goes around, but that

wasn't worthy of comprising almost 40% or the treed tapes. We

thought maybe we'd just tree the stuff from Bill and leave it at

that. Then Gordon uncovered a SBD/6 copy of the first 40mins of the

show. Thanks to some still functioning brain cells, or at least good

note taking on Jeff Tiedrich's part, we were able to track another

generation off that tape. Eric Doherty happily sent me his SBD/5

copy for use on the tree. That was as far up the generational line

we could climb before the source of the next gen up had been

forgotten. We think this might be a bit of the fabled FM broadcast

that, despite many an e-mail and inquiry on Gordon's part to East

Coast radio stations, never surfaced for us. On the subject of the

SBD, I've had a few e-mail exchanges with Dick Latvala on the subject

of the tapes of 7/28/73 in the Vault since starting the tree last

week. He said he pulled out the reels some six months back, and due

to some technical problems with the tapes, they left him with a less

than glorious impression of the show itself. Though he said he's

willing to give them another listen, I wouldn't think they'd be

making it out of the Vault any time soon. The tunes that were not

seeded from Bill's or Eric's tapes come from the three or so copies

of the show Gordon and I kept trading for while looking for a good

copy. But having listened to them all to find the best one, I can

say for sure that all of these come from the same original, crappy

tapes.

The assembly of the seeds was a bear. And I don't envy Gordon's task

of doing it all over with his DATs. As it happened we decided to do

an Analog Only and a DAT Only tree for the show. Work, life and the

like kept us from meeting the actual anniversary of the show with

both trees. Since I had all the masters here, I thought it would be

nice to do a large tree that had no DATing in the generational line.

Kind of unique these days. Gordon's DAT tree will get rolling soon.

There are some half a dozen or more spots where Bills tapes were

missing things (the start of Big River, end of IKYR, the second verse

of Playin' etc, etc...). So I did a LOT of editing and pitch

adjustment. It took about three full days worth of time to get them

just right. I've got an old Nak deck that makes completely

undetectable splices, so it became a challenge to do it all well,

since no one would hear the edits, just the quality *of* the edits.

Now I didn't kill myself doing it. Some of the cuts are not

perfection on earth, but I'm just crazy enough to have done them over

and over enough to get everyone who listens to say "Ahhhhh...." And

when you start to think that each edit represents a point on the

originals where there was a bummer of a cut, you can't help but

smile. The Analog tree ended up with over 180 people on it, and most

of the ten first gen from seed tapes have been sent off already. So

if your on the tree, the show's a-comin'. And if you're not, it

shouldn't be too hard to track down in a few weeks time. Once the

DAT tree happens, it will spread all the more.

Here is how the show went down onto the seed tapes. The gens listed

are that of the seeds themselves:

Tape One:

Bertha thru LL Rain - sbd/6

Jack Straw, Deal - unknown aud

Row Jimmy, Playin' - master cassette>reel>cassette

Side A:

Bill Graham intro

Bertha

Beat It On Down The Line

Brown Eyed Women

Mexicali Blues

Box of Rain

Here Comes Sunshine

Looks Like Rain

(Bill Graham intro and start of Bertha

spliced from aud/?)

Side B:

Row Jimmy

Jack Straw

Deal

Playin' in the Band

(splice in Row Jimmy after

opening bars. First verse is missing.

Second verse thru third chorus of Playin'

spliced from aud/?.)

Tape Two:

Around, Lucy - unknown aud

Big River thru Sugar Mag - aud master cassette>cassette2

Side A:

Around and Around

Loose Lucy

Big River

He's Gone>

Truckin'>

Nobody's Jam>

El Paso

(start of Big River spliced

from aud/?)

Side B:

China Cat Sunflower>

I Know You Rider

Stella Blue

Eyes of the World>

Sugar Magnolia

(end of IKYR spliced

from aud/?)

Tape Three:

Encore One - aud master cassette>cassette2

Encore Two - unknown sbd

07/27/73 - aud master cassette>reel>cassette

Side A:

Encore One:

Sing Me Back Home(cut)

Encore Two:

Not Fade Away

Mountain Jam

Johnny Be Goode

(Encore Two with Allman Brothers Band

and The Band)

Side B:

Filler: 07/27/73 Aud

Watkins Glen Sound Check

Jam>

Wharf Rat

Me and My Uncle

(Jam is cut when taper is busted by

a roadie. Aud picks up again at the

start at Wharf Rat. The missing portion

is supplied by SBD>D>cass>seed)

Thanks for listening,

Noah Weiner (nbw000@a...)

plus-circle Add Review

comment Reviews

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2013/jul/26/summer-jam-woodstock-music-rock

https://archive.org/details/gd1973-07-28.sbd.weiner.181.shnf

http://www.deadlistening.com/2008/10/1973-july-27-watkins-glen.html

BONUS COVERAGE FROM 1970

Grateful Dead, Allman Bros. Band, Hampton Grease Band: Sports Arena, Atlanta

Miller Francis Jr., Great Speckled Bird, The, 16 May 1970

IF YOU WERE one of the few people who wasn't at the Sports Arena Sunday afternoon for the Grateful Dead concert, you've probably heard by now just what went down. Frankly, this was one of the greatest musical/sensual experiences the Atlanta hip community has ever had, rivalled only by another Dead offering in Piedmont Park after last year's Atlanta pop festival. Except that this year's big blow-out had more to do with where we are at now.

Imagine it: THE HAMPTON GREASE BAND, forever associated with Atlanta/Piedmont Park/Twelfth Gate/Sports Arena/everywhere we have needed their weird, hilarious brand of heavy Rock: THE GRATEFUL DEAD, the West Coast Rock band most closely associated with the spirit of community, a band that has most consistently served the needs of the people and helped to raise their political and sensual consciousness, evoker of high-powered acid and swirling colors and hair, good times and free music in the streets and parks from the old days of the Haight (before HARD DRUGS and media-induced EGO TRIPPING), come like Pied Pipers to our own Piedmont Park to spread the word of what community can mean, back again but this time with another Rock group to tie together the experiences of West and South — THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND, the folks who took a lot of the hype and bullshit out of "white blues" and put a lot of their own grace and dignity and soul into the music, more in love with Atlanta than ever after successful excursions into Fillmore territory, East and West, after a beautiful album of some of their best of last year (a new one waits around the corner and it'll be better, just you watch), back in Atlanta for an unannounced jam with the Dead... And who here in Atlanta will ever be the same? What we felt (and what other sense could you invoke to turn people on to the event?), inside and out, head and body, was the power and beauty of the many strains of our own community coming together, after another year of paying dues and fucking up, coming together in a few precious, explosive hours of what, for want of a better term, we will call Ecstasy!

SOME OF THE NICEST THINGS OF ALL:

• a big crowd — most of us back together again after a series of bummers.
• No chairs on the dance floor.
• No reserved seats.
• Pigs that you could count on the fingers of one hand and still have some fingers left.
• Total absence of uptightness and Atlanta paranoia.
• Down home, sweaty, funky, sleazy, good ole Atlanta Sports Arena where nobody gets busted.
• Announcement by Ed Shane that the Allman Brothers were present and would jam with the Grateful Dead.
• Outasight stage built by community people for the Community Benefit.
• Community staffed stage crew.
• New material by the Hampton Grease Band, including more trumpet than usual, and probably the strangest setting for 'Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey' we can imagine.
• 'Evans', as usual, bringing down the house — Jerry and Holbrook (drums and bass guitar) leading the group in a building Spanish progression while Hampton shouts "Evans! Evans! Evans!"
• Jerry Fields doing some fine singing.
• The Allman Brothers lending their equipment to replace the Dead equipment left behind in Boston by the airline.
• Dope and more dope and very good dope, too.
• Sam Cutler, former stage manager for the Rolling Stones (he is one of the individuals that the Stones and everybody else involved in the Altamont disaster, including you and me, are singling out to put the blame on instead of recognizing what Capitalism and Ego-tripping can do to crush the world we are trying to build), serving as stage manager for the Dead.
• Murray Silver, turned on to Kent State, and hinting that this "may be my last concert", shouting "Power to the People!"
• ACLU lawyers and freaks playing pickupsticks on the floor during breaks.
• Instant replay of the Atlanta International Frisbee Contest.
• Red fists on strike T-shirts worn by Sam Cutler and Dead stage crew.
• The music of the Grateful Dead.
• Vibrations that kept building and building until we moved on up to a whole other level.
• Jerry Garcia's twanging, singing guitar, and the look on his face, and on the faces of the rest of the Dead as total communication between music and people was established.
• 'Mama Tried' by Merle Haggard, one of the first straight C&W songs to be picked up on by Rock lovers.
• The first appearances on stage of Duane, Greg, Berry Oakley and Butch Trucks.
• The first soaring blue notes played by Duane Allman — and what it did to the crowd; the duo riffs he played with Garcia and how the jam turned on the musicians participating in it.
• Murray Silver in the crowd, wearing on his head a wreath of green, looking like a Bacchus figure from the Satyricon.
• An incredible, unbelievable, destroying Southern hymn played by The Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band: 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken?' Most accurate theme of what was happening.
• Brief burst of terror at the very end of the music as a firecracker exploded with an incredibly loud BAM!, a bright flash, and a cloud of smoke — a perfect audile exclamation mark for this most profound musical/community statement at the Sports Arena.

© Miller Francis Jr., 1970

Citation (Harvard format)

Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead, Hampton Grease Band/1970/Miller Francis Jr./Great Speckled Bird, The/Grateful Dead, Allman Bros. Band, Hampton Grease Band: Sports Arena, Atlanta/08/03/2017 22:22:54/http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/grateful-dead-allman-bros-band-hampton-grease-band-sports-arena-atlanta