Trip Report
First Grateful Dead Show

by Flip Flop
Saturday April 11, 2015 11:59pm
My First Show and my 18th Birthday.

05/09/87
Laguna Seca Raceway - Monterey, CA
Set 1:
Sugar Magnolia
Sugaree
Me And My Uncle
Mexicali Blues
When Push Comes To Shove
Tons Of Steel
My Brother Esau
Tennessee Jed
Let It Grow
Set 2:
Touch Of Grey
Looks Like Rain
He's Gone
Drums
The Wheel
The Other One
Wharf Rat
Around And Around
Sunshine Daydream
Encore:
Iko Iko
Download/Listen to this Show at Archive.org

Comments:

They filmed the Touch of Grey video later in the evening after this show. A whole bunch of people came to watch, and we all hoped (believed) they would do a mini-set in appreciation. (Local security led us to think that was the case). After take after take (we must have heard the recorded version of Touch 40 times), they finally called it a wrap and took off with a wave. Kind of a bummer, but a funny story in retrospect.
-Steve McConnell

I remember the fog rolling in off the bay that evening during the filming also the liquid on chips ahoy that day was a true out of body experience.The show itself was okay as I remember it but nothing to write home about. I think Rye Cooder and Bruce Hornsby opened the show.
-MBABIN (04/07/2007)

My first show and my 18th Birthday. Deserves a trip report.
-Brook (04/11/2015)

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Flip Flop 		About the Author
Flip Flop is a dad climber lost and found in the wilderness.

Comments
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
  Apr 12, 2015 - 12:15am PT

Hehe... an OT TR to look for...
Flip Flop

climber
Earth Planet, Universe
Author's Reply  Apr 12, 2015 - 10:08am PT
Pretty sure not. Hornsby, Ry Cooder, David Lindlay and El Rayo X( or not)

Dylan was with the dead at the Coliseum that year and loaded.


Edit : I'm wrong about David Lindley and El Rayo X. They were at Mountain Aire a couple of months later. Santana played with the Dead and that may have been my GD highlight.
crankster

Trad climber
No. Tahoe
  Apr 12, 2015 - 07:27am PT
Cool, flip. Mine was Golden Gate Park, 1968.
rand0M aXiS

Trad climber
Felipe Carrillo Puerto, QR, Mexico
  Apr 12, 2015 - 07:48am PT
Golden Gate Park 1969. Then the after show party on Happy Hill with a road trip to the Berkeley Hills.
Jaybro

Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
  Apr 12, 2015 - 07:49am PT
Lindly? Did he send Quarter of a man?
SC seagoat

Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, Bozeman, the ocean, or ?
  Apr 12, 2015 - 08:01am PT
Fillmore East in the Village.

Saw them there several times when I don't think tickets were even $5.

My dad used to kid me back then (late 60s early 70s) "Hair today, gone
Tomorrow" it even amazes me how enduring they all became. Gawd, I wish Janis and Hendrix would have made it.


Susan
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
  Apr 12, 2015 - 08:51am PT
My first was June 12th, 1980. The "Volcano" show!

There was ash falling out of the sky after the show, even though it was almost a month after the big eruption. Fire On The Mountain had extra meaning that night!!

It was a great show, but the woman I was with was being a Biiiiitch!! So that kinda tampered with the yummy vibes. I eventually wandered off and watched some beautiful twirlers for awhile just to get a break from Debbie Downer. She couldn't dampen the Dead though! Great Show!!

SET ONE
1)Alabama Getaway>
2)Promised Land
3)Peggy-O>
4)El-Paso
5)Brown Eyed Women
6)Cassidy
7)Far From Me
8)Althea>
9)Lost Sailor>
10)St. Of Circumstance>
11)Deal

SET TWO
12)Scarlet Begonias>
13)Fire On The Mountain
14)Estimated Prophet>
15)Drums>
16)Space>
17)Not Fade Away>
18)Black Peter>
19)Around and Around>
20)Good Lovin'
21)Johnny B. Goode
nita

Social climber
chica de chico, I don't claim to be a daisy.
  Apr 12, 2015 - 11:26am PT
*
Ahh, Laguna Seca, my favorite place to see the Dead. Dancing in the dirt and the sweet sound of Jerry's guitar echoing up the hill....

Edit for below...Skeptimistic..you are right, it was Los Lobos..but for some reason i thought David Lindley popped up on stage.. though i could have a false memory...
Hey TMJesse..what was the line-up?..
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
  Apr 12, 2015 - 08:56am PT
I'll watch the show later on today, likely. Thanks for posting the ways & means.
'Me & My Uncle" saw the first, and the one and only one at the old Fillmore, New Years' Bash in '66/'67.

Pre-acid, still a college frosh at St. Mary's of CA over next to Moraga, the home of the Warlocks.

I got to see the Warlocks there in the St. Mary's gym in a concert with the Jefferson Airplane, featuring Signe, sometime in November '66, however, so the New Years' Bash was not my first "experience" of the Dead.

I never did develop a devotional attitude to the Dead, but really appreciated the double album on 8-track driving my Econoline down the road to that limited devotion.

Blue cheers, Flip Trip!

Goin' to Chicago this year? I put the '81 Chicago Fest (Muddy) on the Flames this mornin', little schoolkids.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
  Apr 12, 2015 - 08:59am PT
Lucky Man Mouse. Lucky Man......
SC seagoat

Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, Bozeman, the ocean, or ?
  Apr 12, 2015 - 09:02am PT
How can you folks recall the set???!!!!
Amazing. I can barely remember who I was with. In fact I Dont!


Susan
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
  Apr 12, 2015 - 09:06am PT
That's funny Susan!!

I just looked it up online. Them internetz is amazing...
throwpie

Trad climber
Berkeley
  Apr 12, 2015 - 09:29am PT
First show, 1969 Merced fairgrounds. First dosed show, 1970 Sacramento...so I guess 1970.
Skeptimistic

Mountain climber
La Mancha
  Apr 12, 2015 - 09:38am PT
I think the 87 show was with Los Lobos. Had a blast blowing Winnebago sized bubbles over the crowd.

First show was '84 at Ventura. Just as the sun was setting, a sunbeam shot off of Jerry's guitar and hit me right on the forehead. I was never the same...
Flip Flop

climber
Earth Planet, Universe
Author's Reply  Apr 12, 2015 - 11:00am PT
Cool Crank,
In August of 68 I picked my parents. They were on Long's Peak and I thought that looked like a good lifestyle.

And Random,
In 69 I was messing my diapers in Massachusets asking myself wtf?

Jaybro,
Due to the Harmonic Convergence, Lindlay's Drummer and Santana's 3 hour set, no one rembers anything.

Susan,
I really want to see a picture of you at Fillmore East. I didn't expect this Trip Report to get so good so fast. You're awesome.


D2,
That's a great story. I forget that the dead were scary. I went to my first show to see Bruce Hornsby. Kinda weak, huh? That's just the way it is.

Survival,
I see Debbie around pretty often. I bet FOTM was really hot. TFPU

Nita,
I forgot about the Echo. You're right it was sweet. Right now, I'm camped with the bobcats and arrowheads about a mile from the venue. People have been here on the creek for a long time before it was called Toro Creek. Now I'm the last hideaway and I think that I hear the bulldozers driving up the road. My bare feet are in that dirt right this minute.

Mighty Mouse,
That is quite an impressive résumé. I'd like to hear those Trip Reports. I can only imagine what the seventies music scene must have been like. Did you get to see Led Zeppelin?
Flip Trippin


Skeptimistic,
The crystal ball says that Los Lobos/GD/Laguna Seca was in 88. Didn't see that show but did catch Pink Floys Lapse of Reason Tour twice. By 89 I was climbing and stopped having time or money for big groups. May 87-May-89 and then this hippy went hill walking. We had good hippy bands in Tahoe City so we still got down.
Risk

Mountain climber
Marooned, 855 miles from Tuolumne Meadows
  Apr 12, 2015 - 11:24am PT
Grateful Dead Live at Selland Arena (Fresno) on 1974-07-19

https://archive.org/details/gd1974-07-19.sbd.pre-dankfix.4596.sbeok.shnf

Set 1

Bertha
Mexicali Blues
Deal
Beat It On Down The Line
Row Jimmy
Me And Bobby McGee
Scarlet Begonias
El Paso
Tennessee Jed
Playing In The Band

Set 2

Seastones

Set 3

Brown Eyed Women
Me And My Uncle
It Must Have Been The Roses
Jack Straw
He's Gone ->
U.S. Blues
Weather Report Suite Prelude ->
Weather Report Suite Part ->
Let It Grow ->
Spanish Jam ->
Jam ->
Eyes Of The World ->
China Doll
One More Saturday Night
throwpie

Trad climber
Berkeley
  Apr 12, 2015 - 12:22pm PT
Then this happened.
rottingjohnny

Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
  Apr 12, 2015 - 12:43pm PT
75... Shrine Auditorium...These Jar-heads sitting behind us had big hard-ons for Casey Jones and kept shouting " Cocaine " thru the entire concert. .Pretty funny...83...Greek Theater...Dead had a Harley on stage and revved it up for added hearing damage...
SC seagoat

Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, Bozeman, the ocean, or ?
  Apr 12, 2015 - 02:51pm PT
Susan,
I really want to see a picture of you at Fillmore East. I didn't expect this Trip Report to get so good so fast. You're awesome.

Well I don't think I have one....no cell phones back then.

But this is probably on our way to Woodstock before the rain started.

I was very young once.

Susan
Flip Flop

climber
Earth Planet, Universe
Author's Reply  Apr 12, 2015 - 03:59pm PT
Sweet vision from heaven. Aren't you the cutest.
zBrown

Ice climber
  Apr 12, 2015 - 06:08pm PT
Susan, I had a shirt just like that but it had a turtle neck and wasn't as long. Post sixties, after almost cutting my hair.


I wonder if its out in the garage.


Panhandle (1966) - Had to come all the way from San Diego and stay with my buddy Robbie in Menlo Park. At the time I thought the Seeds and Love were pretty psycho-delic.


Thanks Bill


Human Be-in (Somebody got it on iPhone) and first paid show - Greek Theatre (1967).




[Click to View YouTube Video]

Bigger camera here

[Click to View YouTube Video]
throwpie

Trad climber
Berkeley
  Apr 12, 2015 - 05:35pm PT
throwpie

Trad climber
Berkeley
  Apr 12, 2015 - 05:47pm PT
It just ain't home without a mirror ball
cintune

climber
  Apr 12, 2015 - 08:43pm PT
THE SPECTRUM, PHILADELPHIA - APRIL 6, 1982

https://archive.org/details/gd82-04-06.aud.dipietro.16768.sbeok.shnf

Cold Rain and Snow
Promised Land
Candyman
C.C. Rider
Brown Eyed Women
Mama Tried
Mexicali Blues
Big Railroad Blues
Looks Like Rain
Jack-a-Roe
It's All Over Now
Might As Well

Shakedown Street
Lost Sailor
Saint of Circumstance
Terrapin Station
drums
Truckin'
The Other One
Morning Dew
Sugar Magnolia

Baby Blue
Go
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