June 15, 1973 Nippert Stadium, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH: Grateful Dead (canceled)

The Grateful Dead's scheduled show at Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium, planned for June 15, 1973, was canceled the day before. Nice to see Pigpen with the boys, even if he wasn't going to play with them.

One of the pleasures of being a Grateful Dead fan is considering the difference between listening to the tapes of great shows versus actually attending them. Some shows have more depth every time you listen to them again, whereas others had their most magical moment in the very instant of creation. Yet some shows stand even above those comparisons, epically memorable shows for whom the tapes revealed extraordinarily powerful music that stood out on its own. During the Spring and Summer of 1973, the Grateful Dead played five huge outdoor dates in Iowa, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Washington, DC, all of them memorable moments for everyone who attended. The tapes, too, circulated widely, and the Grateful Dead Archive released all five shows in their entirety in the Summer of 2023. Here Comes Sunshine, a 17-cd set box set, was released to great acclaim, and Grateful Dead fans can't get enough of the music or the memories. 

Season 7 of Deadcast, the Grateful Dead's official podcast, tells the whole story of the Spring and Summer of 1973. Jesse Jarnow and Rich Mahan wrote and produced the saga of the great concerts, the great music, and all the events surrounding the Spring tour. Jarnow ends the final episode, however, with a tantalizing remark. After the stadium tour ended at RFK in DC on June 10, 1973, there was another concert scheduled for Nippert Stadium at the University of Cincinnati, just five days later. The Dead's crew were there, the sound system was being constructed, but technical problems caused the show to be canceled the day before the planned event. 

So the Grateful Dead world almost had one more June '73 stadium show, two or three sets in the summer sun, epic jamming on new material on an 80-degree Ohio afternoon. At 3 pm on June 15, the Cincinnati airport reported 85 degrees and a 10 mph breeze. It would have been perfect weather, right about when the boys (and one girl) would have been cranking up a second set.

There have been lots of projected Grateful Dead shows that didn't happen. But once the band became headliners by 1970, there were very few where tickets were sold, the crew was in place and the show still didn't happen. Now, sure the Grateful Dead had canceled a huge outdoor show at Ontario Motor Speedway just the month before (originally scheduled for Sunday, May 27 with the Allman Brothers) but that was canceled on May 21, with a week to go. But nobody was camped out in the parking lot, and the crew hadn't rolled any semis. Cincinnati was different. It nearly happened. This post will try and unpack how the June 15, 1973 show at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati nearly made landfall, but didn't, and what it tells us about the history of Grateful Dead touring.

Cincinnati Enquirer, May 31, 1973

Risk And Reward
Enormous amounts of talk and writing about the Grateful Dead phenomenon have been proffered to the world, and I am as culpable as anyone for contributing to the huge volume of words. One aspect of the Dead's history that that receives less attention than it should, however, is the band's appetite for risk. Jerry Garcia himself had a higher risk tolerance than anyone in the band, but all members of the Grateful Dead organization had to sign on to a career of high-risk propositions. The Grateful Dead's constantly improvisational music was a moment-to-moment risk, and the commitment to it over the repetition of formally arranged songs was another inherent layer of risk. Even when the Grateful Dead had a popular song, if not a hit, they would not always play it, nor ever play it the same. Hardly a logical approach to success in popular music. 

The Grateful Dead's tolerance for risk extended to their business practices. The Grateful Dead were regularly the first out-of-town band to play many of the new psychedelic ballrooms than sprung up around the country in 19l67 and '68. These new ballrooms were modeled, however vaguely, on the Fillmore and Avalon. Almost all of the proprietors of these establishments were inexperienced hippies who had little or no business experience. In most cases, they also didn't know anyone directly associated with the Dead, but just sounded persuasive over the phone. The Dead flew to these cities with no real guarantee of a payday, or a way to afford to get home if they didn't get paid. Yet the band took chances on new promoters nearly every month in the late 60s.

Other decisions by the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia also depended on  extraordinary risk tolerance, particularly in the early 1970s. Touring Europe, starting their own record company, starting a second record company (Round Records) for less popular material, spending their touring profits on a better, sound system and starting a travel agency (all of which is explored by Jesse Jarnow in Deadcast 7:4), just to name a few things, were each by themselves not a risk most bands would take. The Grateful Dead took all of them, in the space of two years. The band took chances. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they didn't.

As Jarnow documents in Deadcast Season 7, the Grateful Dead's audience was expanding quickly, and in order to capture the crowds, the Dead moved their shows to places even larger than the indoor basketball arenas that had been rock music's top tier up until that time. Also, the Dead did not hesitate to work with inexperienced promoters if they felt that they "understood" the needs of the band. Most of the Spring '73 shows had a large degree of new promoters, new venues or both. 

• The Iowa State Fair Grandstand show (May 13, 1973: Des Moines, IA) was produced by some Iowa Record Store owners who had almost no concert promotion experience. Yes, they were ably assisted by Bill Graham and Barry Fey (from Denver), but the show was put on by rookies. The Iowa State Fair Grandstand, mainly a stock car track, had been used for country music concerts since 1970, but never for a rock concert on the scale of the Dead show.
• The Harder Stadium show at UC Santa Barbara (May 20, 1973) was put on by college students. They were supported by Sepp Donahower and the Pacific Presentations team, so there was professional involvement, but it was still a college show. Harder Stadium had been built in '67 for football, but UCSB had stopped playing football in 1971. There had been one rock show in the stadium (CSNY in '69) and it went poorly. So the Dead played an outdoor show run mostly by college students in an all-but-untried venue.  
• The show at San Francisco's Kezar Stadium (May 26, 1973) was put on by Bill Graham Presents, of course, so there was no lack of professionalism on hand. Kezar, however, had lost its major sports tenant when the San Francisco 49ers had moved to Candlestick Park in 1971. There had been one peace rally/rock show in April, 1967, but in reality Kezar Stadium was totally untried as a rock venue for a big crowd. After a Led Zeppelin show a week later (June 1), Bill Graham would move big rock shows to the more modern Oakland Coliseum. 
• The canceled show with the Allman Brothers at Ontario Motor Speedway in Southern California (May 27, 1973) was proposed by Bill Graham Presents. It would have been the first rock show at Ontario Motor Speedway. The next year, other promoters held the California Jam at OMS, on April 6, 1974, and it had the highest paid attendance of any rock concert up to that time (168,000-plus). So the idea was sound, but the Dead/Allmans show was just a little too soon. 
• The twin shows at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC (June 9-10, 1973) were put on by the Electric Factory, Philadelphia promoters who had booked the Grateful Dead since 1968. The Electric Factory had used RFK before, as well, for the Rolling Stones (July 4, 1972), so there was some precedent for the event. 

We don't have Jesse Jarnow and a Deadcast episode to query the Cincinnati event, more's the pity. But from what we know, the Nippert Stadium presentation was another attempt by the Dead to expand their concert footprint. A venue never before used for a rock show and inexperienced promoters sounds like a risky proposition, and indeed it was. But that was how the 1973 Grateful Dead rolled. If it sounded like a good time, and might make for good music and a good day, the band was down. Mostly it worked, so why not?

Some Geography
The Grateful Dead had constructed a bespoke sound system for outdoor stadiums on their 1973 tour. That gargantuan PA had to be trucked across the country, so it was not a coincidence that the touring schedule  had gaps of at least one week between every show. The haul from San Francisco (after May 26) to Washington, DC (by June 9) was substantial. It makes sense to have tried to book a show on the way back. Even if the Cincinnati show might have turned out to be as profitable as some of the other shows, it would still make sense to have a payday on the way home.  

Also, by 1973 the Grateful Dead were catching on to the fact that their big outdoor shows were drawing a regional audience. The Washington, DC concerts, for example, drew plenty of Deadheads from New York and Philadelphia. Cincinnati was 500 miles from DC and nearly 600 from Iowa. So a huge contingent of Midwestern Grateful Dead fans were going to see themselves as within traveling range. The Cincinnati location made sense just by looking at a map. The Grateful Dead had already played Cincinnati four times (six shows, in 1968, '69, 71 and '72). They had also played Cleveland three times. Cincinnati and Ohio seemed like a logical choice.

The Cincinnati Comets of the American Soccer League opened their 1973 season with an exhibition game on May 20 at their home field, Nippert Stadium. They played (then 2nd Division) Bristol City, who beat them pretty handily, apparently.

Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati, OH
Nippert Stadium was the home stadium for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats football team, and had been throughout the century. The Bearcats had first played on the grounds in 1915, when it was called Carson Field. The stadium seats were constructed in 1925, and expanded in 1928 and again in 1954. The football capacity was 28,000. Nippert Stadium had been home to the AFL Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 and '69, until they moved into the new Riverfront Stadium in 1970.

In 1973, rock concerts in stadiums was still a new concept. Stadiums that hosted major league baseball were unwilling to put their playing fields at risk, so that left football stadiums. In the early 1970s, however, the rage was publicly-owned "multi-use" stadiums, so many cities had a facility that hosted both NFL and MLB teams. Thus there were fewer stadiums willing to try on big rock concerts. In the case of the Grateful Dead's spring '73 tour, neither Harder Stadium in Santa Barbara nor Kezar had major sports tenants. RFK had lost its baseball team (the Washington Senators had become the Texas Rangers after the 1971 season). 

The Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival bill, held on June 13, 1970 at Crosley Field. Promoted by Mike Quattro and Russ Gibb from Detroit. The Reds had just moved to Riverfront Stadium.

Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati hosted the baseball Reds, so it would not have made itself available. There had been one stadium concert in Cincinnati, at the old Crosley Field in Summer 1970. Crosley Field had been the home of the Reds for many years, but the Reds had moved to Riverfront mid-season. The Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival on June 13, 1970, an all-day event with numerous acts headlined by Grand Funk Railroad was hard rock madness at its 1970 worst. Iggy and The Stooges stamped their legend when Ig surf-walked into the waiting arms of the packed crowd. No one wanted a repeat.

Still, the University had signed up for a slate of six concerts in the Summer of 1970, of which the Grateful Dead would be the first. In 1970, the University had replaced the natural grass with astroturf. Cincinnati was not a public school, so they probably felt the revenue would help their bottom line. There was some risk, sure, but on the scale of things it wasn't much different than the UC Santa Barbara scenario. There was even a precedent in Ohio--sort of.

Belkin Productions, Cleveland's principal rock promoters since 1966, had booked a series of concerts at the Akron Rubber Bowl for the summer of 1972. Akron is 40 miles South of Cleveland. Jules and Mike Belkin had rented the Rubber Bowl from the University Of Akron for the summer, for about $40,000. The stadium had been built as a civic facility in 1940, but the University of Akron had purchased it for $1 from the city in 1971. Belkin put on 9 concerts at the football stadium. Most of the shows drew about 20,000, but the sold-out Rolling Stones show drew as many as 50,000 (for a list of the shows, see below).

At the end of the Summer of '72, the University of Akron chose not to renew the contract with Belkin Productions. The shows had been profitable, but there had been tension between the city and the promoters, and rock concerts still made communities nervous. The Rubber Bowl would replace the natural grass with astroturf in 1973, too, but I don't know if that figured into the decision not to renew. In any case, the Grateful Dead had played for Belkin in Cleveland before, but there was no chance they could play for them at the Rubber Bowl in '73.

Cincinnati Post June 7, 1973

 

Cincinnati Post, June 7, 1973 (cont)

The June 7, 1973 Cincinnati Post reported on the upcoming show:

THE GRATEFUL DEAD, which comes to the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium at 7 pm, June 15, to kickoff a series of concerts, will initiate a new method of staging quite different than anything ever seen in this area.

Producers of the concert said that although Nippert Stadium seats approximately 30,000 persons, the stadium is being set-up for the Grateful Dead concert to handle a limited number of patrons.

Physically, the stage will be set-up between the 35 and 50-yard lines, playing into the horseshoe configuration of seats at Nippert Stadium. The astroturf immediately in front of the stage will be covered with a special new material to enable festival seating in front of the stage. Patrons in all locations will have an excellent view of the stage and a specially adapted sound system will provide stereo-type sound reproduction.

Although tickets to the concert are available on a general admission basis, producers of the concert said that since seating will be limited, patrons would be wise to purchase tickets in advance--once the supply of printed tickets is depleted, no more seats will be available.

I don't have any details about how Sam Cutler and the Grateful Dead made the connection to the University of Cincinnati. The show was promoted by the University itself  (the UC Office Of Programs and Cultural Affairs), a similar arrangement to Santa Barbara. Maybe there was an experienced concert promoter in the background. I don't know who had promoted the Dead's prior 1970s shows in Cincinnati, but Belkin Productions would  the Dead's next show in Cincinnati (on December 4, 1973) so I wouldn't be surprised if they had some involvement. In Santa Barbara, although the Dead were working with inexperienced young promoters, the (relatively) veteran promoter Sepp Donahower was assisting them. Probably there was a comparable arrangement in Cincinnati, with Belkin or someone. 

The Grateful Dead had a five-day break between RFK (ending June 10) and Cincinnati. The band members probably flew home, anticipating a return to Cincinnati a few days later. It was probably cheaper for the band to fly home than pay for hotel rooms. In any case, the Dead had their own travel agency, so they could find a bargain on tickets. In Jerry Garcia's case, he actually had a bluegrass gig in Warrenton, VA on the afternoon of June 11, so I assume he flew home a day later than the rest of the band. 

The crew, meanwhile, would have torn down the sound system at RFK, loaded it up and driven to Ohio. Figure it took a full day to deconstruct the sound system and load it up, and another full day to drive there. So the crew would have arrived in Ohio on Tuesday night, and would have begun setting up on Wednesday. That seems to be when trouble set in.

 

Cincinnati Enquirer, Thursday, June 14, 1973

 The June 14, 1973 Enquirer had the mournful headline "Grateful Dead Off At Nippert." 

The Grateful Dead concert, set for Friday at UC's Nippert Stadium, has been canceled. Reason for the cancellation, according to promoters, were "insurmuoutable problems connected with the staging of the event."
 
The technical problems were twofold. The size of the stage needed to accommodate the full Grateful Dead show posed a problem. So did the fact that the stadium is located directly behind the UC physical plant, which according to the Dead's road manager, Sam Cutler, makes entirely too much noise. He feared it would be a distraction.

It is believed the show will be rescheduled later in the summer when there some more time to prepare fully for it.

In general, when road managers in the 1970s explain why concerts had to be canceled, particularly road managers named Sam Cutler, they did not usually tell the truth, or much of it. In this case, however, I think Cutler's explanation was likely mostly true.

• The principal reason that concerts were canceled was because of poor ticket sales, and given the Grateful Dead's popularity in 1973, I don't think that was the case.
• The second most likely reason for bands to cancel concerts is that they don't think they will be paid. The University of Cincinnati was not some cigar-chewing mobster, however--any check from the school was going to clear the bank.
• The other reason that bands canceled concerts was that some members weren't able to play. Usually, however, the band would state it as such, and in any case we know so much about the Grateful Dead. All the band members were fine, so that wasn't the problem either. 

The Deadcast made clear how much effort went into the groundbreaking Grateful Dead sound system, fine tuned for every venue. If the stage was really in front of the "physical plant," which I take to mean the University power station, I can see how it might undermine the Dead's state-of-the-art sound. I did think that a member of the Dead's sound team (such as Bob Matthews) visited all the venues beforehand, but somehow this got missed. 

In any case, since the report was in the Thursday paper, the show was effectively canceled on Wednesday, June 13. Given the putative schedule I described above, the crew would have been begun building the stage on Wednesday, and soon identified the issues. The band was still in San Francisco, presumably scheduled to fly on Thursday (June 14), so they never left home. 

Aftermath
The Nippert Stadium show didn't happen. The Here Comes Sunshine box set was just 17 discs, not 20. he Grateful Dead returned to action the next week in Vancouver, on June 22, 1973. The Dead played Cincinnati, indoors, on December 4, 1973 at Cincinnati Gardens. On October 2, 1976, they would return to the city again to play the 16,000 seat Riverfront Coliseum, but they never played outdoors there did not play a stadium in Cincinnati, although they played the Rubber Bowl with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty on July 2, 1986.

Appendix 1: Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati, OH 1973
There were two concerts in Nippert Stadium in the summer of 1973, however. Presumably the bands weren't as finicky as the Grateful Dead about the technical issues or the size of the stage.

 

July 22, 1973 Nippert Stadium, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH: Edgar Winter Group/James Gang/Peter Frampton's Camel  (Sunday)
Attendance was apparently between 5000 and 7000. The Edgar Winter Group had scored a big hit in '72 with the instrumental "Frankenstein," and would soon score an even bigger one with bassist Dan Hartman's "Free Ride." Guitarist Ronnie Montrose had been replaced by Jerry Weems.

The James Gang featured singer Roy Kenner and guitarist Dominic Troiano, as Joe Walsh had left the band. Peter Frampton had left Humble Pie at the end of 1971, and was making his first American tour with his band, Frampton's Camel.

July 29, 1973 Nippert Stadium, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH: Grand Funk Railroad/Ball'n Jack (Sunday)
Grand Funk Railroad, about to have a mid-career boom with their newly-released "We're An American Band," drew about 8000.

August 3, 1975 Nippert Stadium, Cincinnati, OH: Aerosmith/Black Oak Arkansas/Blue Oyster Cult/Styx/REO Speedwagon/Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Foghat/Mahogany Rush/Outlaws (Sunday) Ross Todd Productions and U.S. Concert Board present the Ohio River Music Festival
Two years later, there was a big outdoor show at Nippert Stadium, headlined by Aerosmith. 

Appendix 2: Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron OH Summer 1972
Belkin Productions, out of Cleveland, booked nine concerts at the Akron Rubber Bowl in the Summer of 1972. For a complete look at the history of the shows, with pictures and all, see the Akron Beacon-Journal article here.  The shows were financially successful and fondly remembered by fans, but the University of Akron chose not to renew the contract.

June 16, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Three Dog Night/James Gang (Friday) estimated crowd- 12,000

July 3, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Faces/Badfinger/Cactus (Monday) est: 17000

July 11, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Rolling Stones/Stevie Wonder (Tuesday) est: 50000

July 17, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Black Sabbath/Humble Pie/Edgar Winter/Ramatam (Monday) est: 18000

July 21, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Osmonds/Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods (Friday) est: 20000

August 5, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Alice Cooper/J Geils Band/Dr. John (Saturday) est: 20000

August 11, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Yes/Mahavishnu Orchestra/The Eagles (Friday) est: 20000

August 20, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Chicago (Sunday) est: 19000

August 21, 1972 Akron Rubber Bowl, Akron, OH: Jefferson Airplane/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Monday) est: 21000

September 2, 1967 Cabrillo College Football Field, Aptos, CA: Grateful Dead/Canned Heat/others (Canceled?)

The poster for a rock festival at the football field at Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA on September 2-3, 1967

Both the Grateful Dead and the University of California at Santa Cruz were founded in 1965, after many years of planning, so UCSC made a suitable home for the band's archives. I have written at length elsewhere about the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia's various appearances in Santa Cruz County between 1967 and 1987. The nearest that the Grateful Dead themselves got to the campus, however, as a performing entity at least, appears to have been their very first performance in the County. According to a well-circulated poster the Dead headlined a rock festival at Cabrillo College, just a few miles from the UCSC campus, on September 2, 1967. Since the Grateful Dead played Rio Nido the next two days (September 3 and 4), and those dates are fairly well confirmed, everyone, and most especially me, has presumed that the Dead headlined the first day of the Cabrillo College "Magic Music" Festival, on Saturday September 2.

I have always romanticized this event, entranced by the idea of the Grateful Dead headlining an outdoor show at the tiny Cabrillo stadium. Sadly, however, I am now leaning towards the conclusion that the show never took place. I would be delighted to be wrong, but difficult as it is to prove a negative, I can find no evidence that the show actually occurred, and I find it difficult to fathom that such a seemingly remarkable event in the history of Santa Cruz County rock music in the 1960s would pass by thoroughly unremarked.

[Update 2: thanks to the invention of the Internet, another researcher has found a newspaper listing from the August 29, 1967 Santa Cruz sentinel that the event was canceled].
Commenter Steve Hathaway tells us

It was indeed cancelled. The Tuesday August 29, 1967 edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel has a short article headlined "No 'Rock' Festival At Cabrillo." Full article:
Contrary to information being circulated on handbills, the Magic Music Festival will NOT be held at Cabrillo College September 2 and 3. The performances of the rock and roll bands has not been authorized by the college, according to Cabrillo officials.
Hope that puts it to rest. BTW, I have one of the handbills and have posted images of it and the article at:http://www.45worlds.com/memorabilia/item/nc490994us 

What Is Known About The Event?
The "Magic Music Festival" is only known from a poster that appeared in Paul Grushkin's book The Art Of Rock. Since The Art Of Rock preceded the internet, posters published in that book were a principal source of original research for show lists, not least because the excellent reproductions allowed much of the fine print to be read. However, AOR (as it is known), was appropriately enough about the Art of rock posters, rather than as a sourcebook for archival research. As a result, many fine posters of canceled or re-scheduled shows were published there without comment, since the purpose of the book was not to document events. As a result, publication of a poster in that book indicates nothing about whether the event occurred.

The poster itself says

2 Days And Nights Of Magic and Music
Dancing On The Green
Lights By STP
Arts Crafts Lights Color Sound Displays
Sat Sun Sep 2-3 
3-12 PM
Cabrillo College Stadium
Tickets $2.50 At The Door

The bands listed are

Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, Leaves, Andrew Staples, Sons of Champlain (sic), New Delhi River Band, Second Coming, New Breed, Bfd. Blues Band, Gross Exaggeration, Yajahla tingle Guild, People, Jaguars, Art Collection, Morning Glory, Ben Frank's Electric Band, New Frontier, Chocolate Watch Band, Other Side, E types, Mourning Reign, Imperial Mange Remedy, Omens, Ragged Staff, talon Wedge, & Others.

The entire event sounds deeply logical. September 2 and 3, 1967 was the Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day Weekend. The Monterey Pop Festival had just happened an hour South of Santa Cruz a few months earlier, and the Cabrillo College Football Field was larger than any facility at the newly opened University of California at Santa Cruz (and may still be, as the UCSC Banana Slugs do not play football to my knowledge). There were three bands of the status to headline the Fillmore or Avalon, namely the Dead, Canned Heat and the Chocolate Watch Band, as well as a number of popular local hippie and hip rock groups.

It's worth noting, however, that all that is known about this event is that there was a poster published in the Art Of Rock. To my knowledge, every other reference to this show stems ultimately from this poster. Almost all the groups on the poster are the sort of hip band favored by collectors, archivists and 60s scholars like myself, and various websites, blog posts and articles in magazines like Cream Puff War or Ugly Things have covered these groups in some detail, as even the most casual google search will reveal. Yet I have been unable to find a single reference to this show actually happening--no band remembers opening for the Dead or Canned Heat at Cabrillo, nobody recalls a drug bust or LSD freakout or meeting their girlfriend at what would otherwise be a memorable event in Santa Cruz County. I realize it's impossible to prove a negative proposition, but am I supposed to believe that the first and still biggest rock event in Santa Cruz County happened at the end of the Summer Of Love and left nary a trace?

To give just one example, I looked again at the history of Talon Wedge, the last band mentioned on the poster. At the time, Talon Wedge was a Cream-styled heavy blues band in Santa Cruz. By 1969 they had evolved into a terrific band called Snail, who ruled Santa Cruz County bars and clubs for many years. Snail even released two underrated albums (Snail and Flow) in the late 1970s, and future Elvin Bishop and Jerry Garcia Band drummer Donnie Baldwin was a member of the band for a large part of that time. A great site called Garage Hangover has a great overview of Talon Wedge and early Snail, and includes a copy of the poster, but nothing is ever mentioned about the show. An absolutely amazing Comment thread recaps the entire history of Snail, with many of the members of the band and their friends weighing in with great, detailed memories. Yet among all 53 Comments, not a single one recalls an outdoor show opening for the Dead. If the show had been held, would none of the Santa Cruz teenagers remember it?

The Poster
A closer look at the poster suggests that it was a preliminary poster for a planned event, but the event itself was not close to occurring. Whether the poster was printed long in advance of the show, or whether the poster was just wishful thinking by an ambitious promoter remains unknown at this time. However, a number of things stick out about the poster. First of all, while the poster says "Cabrillo College Stadium," there is no map, no indicator of what city Cabrillo College was in and no directions of how to get there. It's one thing for a poster of a school dance to have no "directions" (the students know where the gym is), but this is a regional rock festival. Cabrillo is easy to get to, but shouldn't it say "Park Avenue exit off Highway 1, six miles South of Santa Cruz?" or something to that effect.

Also, the bands are listed in some kind of random order. Once a two-day event gets close to happening, prospective patrons want to know who will be playing what day. A poster that just listed the bands would have to have been a promotional item pushing an event some time off in the future. The band listing is why I think that the poster was published in mid-Summer, anticipating a Monterey Pop-like event that never actually happened. I have done considerable research on the 60s rock history of Santa Cruz County, with respect to The Barn in Scotts Valley, the New Delhi River Band and a variety of other tributaries. As a result, I have been in contact with a lot of people from that time, and not a one has mentioned this event, even when I specifically asked them about it, so I just can't buy that the event actually occurred.

Some Speculation
The Monterey Pop Festival took place on the weekend of June 16-18, 1967. Although the event did not really make economic sense, as all the bands played for free, a flurry of similar events were promoted up and down the West Coast over the next 18 months. I have to think some enterprising promoter thought that the Santa Cruz area would make a good candidate, given a resort area on Labor Day weekend. Cabrillo College would not have been in session until after Labor Day, so some College functionary may have given a provisional OK to use the football field.

Cabrillo College was a junior college that had opened in Aptos in 1959. It was the first institution of Higher Education in Santa Cruz County. It was a lively, interesting place, and had a well regarded Music Festival, featuring 20th Century composers, that started in the early 1960s. The campus itself is in a beautiful setting that most resorts would envy. It was a forward looking place and would not have been inherently hostile to a rock show presented on its campus.

However, Santa Cruz County was considerably smaller and less populated than it was today, and the "hippie" population was still tiny and not well liked (as opposed to now, where the opposite is the case). No rock concert (of the paying variety) had ever been held on the Cabrillo campus, to my knowledge. I can't imagine that the college would have tolerated a giant, Monterey Pop event on the sleepy little campus. The local roads and parking lots would have been completely overwhelmed. If the two-day festival was ever a serious proposition, I think it got shot down long before it came anywhere near fruition. All that remained was a poster of what might have been.

The Carl Connelly Stadium at Cabrillo College, June 2011

Having come to the mournful conclusion that the Cabrillo show never took place, I decided to look at the facility as it stands today. The venue is now called The Carl Connelly Stadium. While I'm sure that the stadium did not have artificial turf as it does today, the location of the stadium on the site (see photo above) indicates that it could not have been bigger or significantly different that it is today. As is typical of Junior College athletic fields, there are almost no bleachers. There were almost certainly fewer buildings in those days, so there may have been considerably more room to allow people to dance and watch the show, but it is not a large site. I have to think that after the size of Monterey Pop became known, any willingness on the school's part to host such an event evaporated. More's the pity.

Please Prove Me Wrong!
I normally write blog posts with the intention of being right, but I'd much rather be wrong in this case. I would love it if after I posted this, some close personal friend of the Yajahla Tingle or someone would chime in with memories of the event, whether or not the Grateful Dead played. It would still be the first outdoor rock concert of any size in Santa Cruz County, and almost all the bands have their share of fans. So here's to hoping against all the evidence that maybe there was an outdoor concert overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, September 2, 1967, even if all the evidence points in the other direction.

Updates: I May Actually Be Wrong--Hooray!

Ross weighs in with a listing from the Berkeley Barb from that week. He is confident that the event occurred, and the listing hints that the event may have been a one day affair. It says "Dead, Staples, 2nd Coming, Morning Glory, Canned Heat, 8 more: Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz, 3pm-midnite, $2.50 benef LMN, SPAR, others, info Pat Sullivan, 1838 W. Bayshore Rd, Palo Alto."

I do not know what organizations "LMN" and "SPAR" represent, but all campus events would have had to benefit some outside organization (students could not use a college facility on a for-profit basis). Whomever Pat Sullivan may have been--hey, maybe he's a reader!--that is the first indication of a promotional entity behind the event. West Bayshore was a sleepy residential part of Palo Alto, so the address was probably just the promoter's house.

It's great to be wrong--now to look for some eyewitnesses...

Update 2: I spoke to soon. As quoted above, commenter Steve Hathaway found a notice in the Santa Cruz Sentinel  of August 29, 1967 that the show was canceled, because the college had not approved the two-day rock and roll performance. A Santa Cruz-area musician (Larry Hosford of the E-Types) told me that he had played dances on that field, but I suspect this event was far larger than the school was willing to countenance.

November 23, 1969, Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead/Country Joe and The Fish/Pacific Gas & Electric (canceled?)

(A handbill advertising two shows at The Boston Music Hall on Sunday, November 23, 1969, featuring The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish and Pacific Gas & Electric. The show was probably canceled)

Periodically the Universe brings forth strange artifacts for our contemplation. A recent auction for a handbill for this hitherto unknown handbill for two Grateful Dead concerts at the Boston Music Hall on November 23, 1969 raises a host of questions. The most important question is whether the shows took place at all. My assessment is that they did not, which is why the handbill is so rare--it's an advertisement for a show which was ultimately canceled. However, while I would love to be proved wrong and discover that the shows did actually occur, the fact that the shows were ever planned at all sheds some interesting light on the Dead's late November 1969 plans.

The Handbill
The handbill advertises two shows at The Boston Music Hall on Sunday, November 23, 1969, featuring The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish and Pacific Gas & Electric. The ad says "The groups that rocked The Coast will now rock Boston." Both the Dead and Country Joe and The Fish had played Boston numerous times and would have been very popular. Both also had current albums, and the just-released Live/Dead was probably getting heavy play on WBCN-fm, Boston's leading rock station. Pacific Gas & Electric was a Los Angeles band, with a new album on Columbia.

The handbill advertises two shows, at 6:15 pm and 9:30 pm. With three bands, even a short set by the opening act would insure that both the Dead and CJF would play about 45 minute sets. Outside of hippie enclaves like the Fillmores, shorter performances were common, even for San Francisco bands.

The Boston Music Hall
The Boston Music Hall was at 270 Tremont Street. It was built in 1925 as the Metropolitan Theater, but in 1962 it became the home of the Boston Ballet and its name was changed to the Boston Music Hall. It seated more than 3,600 people, so it was a substantial auditorium. The Music Hall primarily featured opera and symphony as well as ballet, but shows by popular artists, including rock bands, were not unknown. It is not surprising, however, that the show was booked for a Sunday night. Weekend dates were probably typically reserved for regular performances by the Boston Ballet or other regular performers.

The venue is now known as the Citi Performing Arts Center.

The Planned Concert
The Boston Music Hall was a reserved seat show, and a close look at the handbill shows that seat prices ranged from four to six dollars. Six dollars was a lot for a rock show in the 60s, even with the guarantee of good seats. Two shows of 3600 plus at high prices was a substantial booking indeed. While rock shows at the Boston Music Hall in the 60s were not typical, they were not unheard of. Just a few weeks after this scheduled show, Janis Joplin and The Butterfield Blues Band played the Boston Music Hall. Janis and Butter played on Thursday, December 11, another sign that weekends were typically reserved. I would note that Janis was a huge rock star in 1969, and Butterfield wasn't small, so it gives some idea of the scale of the intended rock concert. Two shows on a Sunday night in Boston was intended as a major booking, well worth flying out for.

In late 1969, Country Joe and The Fish were as big or bigger than the Grateful Dead. Their first two Vanguard albums (Electric Music For The Mind And Body and I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die) had been huge hits on the underground and in the early days of FM radio. Country Joe and The Fish were front and center at every anti-war protest and political rally, and that endeared them to many people who found it attractive that a band they really liked shared their political views. The group's fourth and current album, Here We Are Again, had not had the impact of the first two, but it was still a good record. The band had undergone numerous changes (see here for a better picture of the dizzyingly complex story of Country Joe And The Fish), but Joe McDonald and Barry Melton still lead the group and were as engaging performers as ever.

The Grateful Dead had been famous, or infamous, since well before they released an album. However, that had not translated much into record sales. Their first three albums had found their adherents, but only those lucky enough to see the band had really been drawn to them. This was starting to change with the release of Live/Dead, giving every FM radio listener in the country a taste of what they had been missing. The album had just been released in November 1969 (60s release dates are murky), so in an odd way the Dead's popularity as a band was just starting to catch up with their fame. Since both the Dead and CJF were longstanding San Francisco legends, it made sense to pair them up. 7200 plus tickets was a lot of tickets, particularly at high prices, so two headliners would be needed to make it happen. Note that neither band's name is higher than the other on the handbill. The bands probably didn't care, but I'm sure their booking agents did.

I don't know why there was a third band on the bill, but I think Pacific Gas & Electric may have touring with Country Joe and The Fish, so they needed to be booked as well.

Grateful Dead Touring Schedule, November 1969
I have already done a detailed touring itinerary for the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia for November 1969, and there was no trace of this show. However, the band's presumed activities on the weekend would make sense if a substantial East Coast show was canceled. The presumed Dead activities for the weekend were:

November 21, 1969 Cal Expo Building "A", Sacramento Grateful Dead/Country Weather/AB Skhy/Commander Cody/Wildwood KZAP Birthday Party
KZAP-fm was the progressive FM station in the Sacramento area. The Cal Expo was part of the California State Fairgrounds.

November 22-23, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Anonymous Artists Of America/Devil's Kitchen
Crack research staff found this date, advertised in the Berkeley Tribe. 

We can be confident that the Friday, November 21 event occurred. It was mentioned in the SF Chronicle, and a tape endures. The Family Dog appearance by the New Riders Of The Purple Sage was recently discovered, but I had wondered why the Dead did not play anywhere on a Saturday night (November 22), after they had saddled up the horse the night before.

Country Joe And The Fish Touring Schedule
Country Joe And The Fish's touring schedule for November 1969 was murky, but there were definitely booked shows throughout the country. They had played Cal Expo themselves on November 15, and they had booked a show in Kansas City on November 29, followed by an appearance at a rock festival in Palm Beach, Florida. So national touring was at least contemplated for that week, whether or not it actually happened.

Summary
Pending further evidence, here are some propositions for what may have happened. I have no more evidence than I have presented here, and that ain't much, so any other suggestions or long-ago memories from Bostonites are very welcome. 

Hypothesis #1
The show was booked, and both the Dead and Country Joe and The Fish planned to fly East and play other shows during the weekend, not necessarily together. However, the Boston show fell through due to poor advance ticket sales, and any shows surrounding the Sunday night show were canceled.

Two big shows in Boston would have been well worth flying out for. However, if the Dead were going to fly out for a Sunday night show, they would surely play a weekend show somewhere on the East Coast, albeit not too near Boston. Country Joe and The Fish would have done the same, albeit most likely in a different city, and the bands would have convened in Boston. However, once the Boston Music Hall dates fell through, the financial justification for flying East fell through as well, and wherever the Dead had planned to play that weekend fell through as well.

The cancellation left a hole in the Dead's touring schedule for the weekend of November 21-23. They seemed to have managed to hook onto the KZAP Birthday party in Sacramento, but weekend activities for Saturday, November 22 would already have been planned and the Dead could not find a paying show. The last-second booking of the New Riders at the Family Dog was a low risk, low reward event to keep the compulsive Garcia busy as much as anything.

Hypothesis #2
Here's an alternative proposition. The Grateful Dead were scheduled to play three nights at the relatively small Boston Tea Party on December 29, 30 and 31. This would have been a big event in Boston. The booking at the Boston Music Hall may have violated the contract with the Boston Tea Party, so the show at the Music Hall was canceled. Although Country Joe And The Fish were popular, they could not have carried two shows at Boston Music Hall by themselves, so they dropped out as well.

The net result for the Dead's touring schedule would have been the same, as it would have created an opportunity for the band to play Sacramento on Friday, November 21, but too late to find a Saturday night show.

Hypothesis #3
It is remotely possible that the Dead played Sacramento on Friday, November 21 and then flew to Boston the next day. If we assume that the New Riders did not play the Family Dog on November 22-23, which is plausible enough, I guess we could imagine that the Dead played two shows in Boston on Sunday, November 23.

If the Grateful Dead did play two shows at the Boston Music Hall on Sunday, November 23, it has escaped our notice until now. I find it extremely unlikely that there was no tape, review or ad of the show, and that the band just flew home the next day. But hey--it's my blog and I can hope.

Conclusion
I personally find Hypothesis #2 the most likely. The show was booked, and handbills were printed, though possibly never circulated, but the show was blocked by a conflict with the Boston Tea Party New Year's Eve event. Any interesting speculation or long-buried memories are more than welcome in the Comments.

Update
Better to be lucky than good. Hypothesis #3 seems to be the most likely answer, thanks to some excellent research from the Lone Star Dead Research Institute. Someone remembers it, and even has a ticket stub. So I guess NRPS didn't play Family Dog that night, and probably not the night before either (Nov 22).

A ticket stub from the Boston Music Hall, November 23, 1969, featuring the Grateful Dead and Country Joe And The Fish

Boston Globe November 21 1969--The Youngbloods replace the Dead

Update 2
The show took place, but the Youngbloods replaced the Grateful Dead, per the Boston Globe. This confirms the report of an Anonymous commenter.

March 1970 New Riders Shows--Did They Happen?

In a prior post, I was very pleased to find the earliest known 1970 show by the New Riders of The Purple Sage, on March 12, at the tiny Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati. Since that was the day before  a pair of weekend shows at Berkeley's New Orleans House (March 13 and 14, 1970), I drew an elaborate conclusion that the New Riders were testing Dave Torbert as a bassist. I posited that he presumably passed, and that would have set the stage for the New Riders surfacing in late April.

That was yesterday. I am now rethinking the whole concept. Maybe the shows never took place at all, so my logical deductions about the New Riders bass player had a foundation in empty air. First, the new evidence, via Ross:

The weekly Berkeley Barb display ad for the New Orleans House (for the week of March 6-12, 1970) shows the New Riders as appearing on Friday and Saturday, as has been advertised for some time.

However, Ross also sent a clip from the Barb entertainment listings of the same week, and it shows Big Brother as appearing at the New Orleans House. Now, the display ads were often prepared some time in advance, not surprisingly, but the Scenedrome entertainment listings were much more current, often updated by phone. Its hard not to draw the conclusion that Big Brother seems to have replaced the New Riders at the Boarding House.

Whatever the story--and I'll speculate on that in a minute--Big Brother and The Grateful Dead had been good friends for many years, and David Nelson and Peter Albin were even better friends, so the substitution seems likely. During this period, Big Brother was getting back into performing without Janis Joplin, so headlining a small venue (or a large club, depending on your point of view) like The New Orleans House made business sense. Ross reminded me of another New Riders booking:

The next week's Barb (March 13-19, 1970) advertised a benefit at San Francisco's Family Dog On The Great Highway, featuring the New Riders of The Purple Sage and Hot Tuna. I had long dismissed this as a valid New Riders date, since the Grateful Dead were in Buffalo the night before (March 17), and it seemed unlikely that Garcia and Hart would fly back for a benefit. I have always presumed that Hot Tuna played the show, but that the New Riders did not.

However, the new evidence from Ross and the Comment thread on the March 12, 1970 post has led me to re-think my entire view of the evolution of the New Riders in Spring 1970. In contravention of everything I wrote yesterday, I am going to suggest that

• The New Riders never played March 12 in Cotati, March 13-14 in Berkeley or March 18 in San Francisco
• Dave Torbert was not a member of the New Riders until April of 1970, begging the question of who the March 1970 was supposed to be

I tend to be narrowly focused on live performance dates, but one of the themes of the Comment thread was the amount of stressful activity going on in the Grateful Dead universe in February and March 1970. To note some important highlights, for which my primary source is Dennis McNally (p. 360-363)

• Tom Constanten was fired after the January 23 show in Hawaii, not to be replaced.
• The Dead were busted down on Bourbon Street on January 31, 1970. While it was the usual setup, pot busts were never a casual matter back then.
• At the same time the Dead were getting busted on tour, Dead manager Lenny Hart was trying to move the Dead offices from Novato to the Family Dog in San Francisco, where he would become the manager of the concert venue as well as the Dead.
• In early February, however, Lenny Hart refused to show Family Dog impresario Chet Helms his account books, and Chet refused to go through with the merger. Helms kept back-of-the-envelope type accounts himself, so he might not have been bothered by a bit of sloppiness, but he had to have pretty serious suspicions to cancel on what could have been a venue-saving merger. Lenny Hart scuttled back to Novato before the Dead returned from tour after February 23.
• Jerry Garcia and Mountain Girl were on the verge of losing their house and were desperate for cash to buy the house they lived in (it was for sale). Garcia was owed a check from MGM for working on the Zabriskie Point soundtrack, and Lenny appeared to have absconded with it. Garcia and MG had to move, and this precipitated a crisis. Ramrod ultimately told the band "it's him or me," and Garcia told Lenny "we know we can't do without him."
• When Lenny was pushed aside, investigation showed that he had stolen at least $155,000 from the band, effectively bankrupting them.
• The Dead installed a new management troika, with John McIntire handling the record company, Sam Cutler handling the road and Rock Scully handling promotion.
• Between January 30 (New Orleans) and March 8 (Phoenix), the Grateful Dead played 22 nights in concert, in an insane schedule (New Orleans>St. Louis>SF>NYC>Texas>SF>Santa Monica>Phoenix). 
• With non-stop madness swirling around the Grateful Dead throughout February and March, somehow the band found the light to rehearse and record Workingman's Dead at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco. Deeply in debt, the band focused on rehearsing and recording a simple album of songs that could be made cheaply. They succeeded and found a huge new audience as well.

I believe the New Riders of The Purple Sage shows scheduled for March were booked in February, but they were never actually played. The Inn Of The Beginning did not have "headline" acts on weeknights, so the New Riders did not have to be "replaced." The New Orleans House would have needed a headliner, but Big Brother must have done the Dead a favor, and in any case they were re-establishing themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if Big Brother replaced the Riders at the Family Dog on March 18 as well.

My old reason for rejecting the New Riders date on March 18 was thinking that since the Dead were in Buffalo the night before, it seemed unlikely that Garcia and Hart would fly back for a benefit. Ironically, I actually think Garcia may have flown back anyway, in order to mix Workingman's Dead. However, McNally dates the Dead's discovery of Lenny Hart's perfidy to early March, and I think a big barrier to any New Riders shows was asking Mickey Hart to play. Mickey couldn't not play Dead dates, as the band needed the money too desperately, but the New Riders shows were a different proposition. A few New Riders dates had been booked, but the turmoil surrounding the Dead meant that the shows were never played.

The Dave Torbert Question
Despite my clever line of reasoning in my prior post about the March shows, I had wondered how the Riders had found time to rehearse Dave Torbert enough to get through three nights as a headliner. Looking at Garcia and the Dead's activity level and problems for February and March, I don't think it would have been possible. I think Phil Lesh was still on board as the New Riders bass player, as the band would have had no time to rehearse. The only alternative was that Robert Hunter was going to make his live debut as the Riders bassist, and since these shows were never played, it never occurred.

Whatever Garcia, Nelson and Marmaduke's plans for the New Riders in March 1970--an interesting if only hypothetical question--they were thrown over by chaos in the Dead organization. Thus Dave Torbert's hiring probably did not take place until April of 1970. That would suggest that the first Torbert show as April 17, 1970 at The Family Dog on The Great Highway, presumably after some intensive rehearsal.

March 19, 1971 The Syndrome, Chicago, IL The Grateful Dead (canceled)

The February 6, 1971 Billboard mentions in its "News From The Music Capitals Of The World" for Chicago that the Grateful Dead are scheduled to play The Syndrome on March 19. There is indeed a blank spot on the Dead's Spring tour for Friday, March 19, between the Fox Theater in St. Louis (Thursday March 18) and the University of Iowa Fieldhouse (Saturday, March 20), but no sign of a Chicago show. The reason for this is simple: the April 10, 1971 edition of Billboard remarks on the abrupt closure of The Syndrome. It seems clear that the Dead had a gig booked there, and when the venue closed the band was simply stuck with an open date.

Not surprisingly, Chicago had a huge rock market, but various efforts to establish a Fillmore type venue were not successful. One such effort was The Syndrome. The site of The Syndrome was actually the Chicago Coliseum on Wabash Avenue (between 14th and 16th Streets). The Coliseum, actually the second building with that name, was built in 1899 and mostly housed sports teams, including the Chicago Blackhawks (NHL 1926-29), Roller Derby and the Chicago Packers (NBA 1962-63, they moved to Baltimore and became the Bullets). Starting in the late 1960s, it was used periodically for rock concerts. The capacity of the room for basketball was about 7,000. I do not know the rock concert capacity, but I have been told that Chicago promoters had a tendency to pack in as many people as humanly possible, since any fire or other building codes that were being violated could be overlooked for a modest consideration.

The venue had been used for rock concerts under the name Chicago Coliseum in the 1960s, generally for acts too large to play the Kinetic Playground or Auditorium Theater, Chicago's main rock venues. Cream played there on October 13, 1968, and Jimi Hendrix Experience played there on December 1, 1968. The venue became known as The Syndrome sometime in 1970. The promoters seem to have been The 22nd Century, and put on shows at both the Syndrome and the smaller, seated Auditorium Theater. The Dead played there on Friday, November 27, 1970. Since The Syndrome probably held at least 7,000, it was considerably larger than the usual venues that the Dead played in during the early 1970s.

Things must have gone well enough to be re-booked, but The Syndrome closed in early March. The building remained largely unused afterwards, and was torn down in 1982. Coliseum Park, at 1400 Wabash, stands on the site today.

October 17, 1973 Tarrant County Convention Center, Fort Worth, TX Grateful Dead (canceled show?)

A correspondent sends a listing (above) from the Texas Monthy of October, 1973, available through Google Books. There is a tantalizing listing for a Grateful Dead show on Wednesday, October 17 at the Tarrant County Convention Center in Forth Worth, TX, just three days after John Denver and two days before Guy Lombardo (note: when I initially posted this, I thought the venue was the Dallas Convention Center, but alert commenters have proved otherwise, and I changed the post accordingly. The general points still hold, however).

The Fall 1973 Grateful Dead tour is generally known to have begun at the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds Arena on Friday October 19. This show, featuring an epic "Dark Star," was released as Dicks Picks 19. Nothing would make me happier to know that there was a show before that, since every note the Dead played in 1973 was gold as far as I am concerned, and I hope there is another one out there. It certainly fits the touring schedule, where there were two day gaps between cities (Omaha was October 21, Bloomington October 23, Madison October 25 and so on).

However, much as I want there to be another show on the Fall 1973 tour, I have to fall on the side of believing it didn't happen. If a Fort Worth show on October 17 didn't happen, then the tour simply started two days later, a very different scenario than leaving an empty date in the middle of the tour. While the Dead were always admirable in their willingness to invade new territory, I am not surprised to find that they did not play the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The Tarrant County Convention Center, now the Fort Worth Convention Center, features an 11,000+ capacity arena. Strange as it may seem to modern Deadheads, despite their legendary status the Grateful Dead were not at all a big draw outside of the two Coasts and some Midwestern strongholds for many decades. I find it an unlikely proposition that the Dead could fill an 11,000 seater in Dallas/Fort Worth in the 1970s. While even in the 1970s Deadheads were famous for traveling a long way for shows, Dallas was a long way from New Jersey or San Francisco, and Texas itself was a forbidding place for longhairs in the 1970s (Austin perhaps excluded).

Nonetheless, an alert commenter pointed out that there is an extant handbill for the show:

The discovery of this flyer (h/t Psyclops) suggests that the plans for this show were a lot farther along than merely a listing in some monthly magazine. While most shows after 1971 are taped, it was not unheard of for shows to lack a circulating tape, and Texas was far from the circle of regular tapers, so while the lack of a tape or review points away from this show having occurred, its not completely out of the question.

Although I retain hope that another 1973 tape lies in wait, I have to assume that this show was booked to open the Dead's Fall Tour and quietly canceled when ticket sales did not live up to expectations. Dallas is a big city, but a glance at the other acts in October gives a hint to entertainment in Dallas. Three Dog Night (October 13), John Denver (October 14) and James Brown (October 26) were all huge acts with hit singles on the charts and substantial track records behind them. Jerry Reed (October 27) was a big country star, and while he is in fact a fine guitarist and an excellent performer, it is telling that a Nashville star (with an occasional crossover hit like "Polk Salad Annie") was playing the same venue as multi-platinum stars Three Dog Night.

August 21, 1971 Midway Stadium, St. Paul, MI The Who/Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead (canceled)

This intriguing notice in Andy Mellen's weekly Youthscene column in the Winnipeg Free Press of Wednesday, August 18, 1971 refers to a scheduled Grateful Dead concert on Saturday, August 21, 1971. I find it unlikely that the show actually occurred, but its interesting to know it was scheduled, and the planning for the event does explain some anomalies in the Dead's 1971 touring schedule. The paragraph says

The rock festival scheduled for St. Paul-Minneapolis this Saturday is definitely go. The festival will be held at Midway Stadium, and headlines The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Grateful Dead, folksinger Leo Kottke and several others. If you haven't got any wheels and don't feel like hiking, Terry Michalsky of the Music Market has chartered a bus to the Twin Cities. Total cost, including festival tickets, is $20; the bus leaves Friday night. To reserve a seat, telephone Terry.

The hopeful phrase "definitely go" suggests the event was in doubt. Midway Stadium in St. Paul was a minor league baseball stadium, home of the AAA St. Paul Saints from 1957-60. After the Minnesota Twins came to town and used Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis, the Saints moved and Midway Stadium was used for lesser events and as a Minnesota Vikings (NFL) practice field. The stadium was at 1000 North Snelling Drive. It was torn down in 1981. A new facility called Midway Stadium was built in 1982 (at 1771 Energy Park Drive) and remains in use today.

Although I do not believe the "festival" took place. It does fit the touring schedule of all three major bands. The Who were touring America behind Who's Next. According to The Who Concert File book, their tour ended in Chicago on August 19. According to the book, there were efforts to end the tour with open air concerts in Red Rocks (August 22 and 24) and a free concert in New York on August 29. All three events were blocked by civic authorities. The St. Paul event isn't mentioned, but it makes sense that The Who were trying to plug a hole in their itinerary, even if they eventually gave up and returned to England.

The Jefferson Airplane were also touring the Midwest. On August 20 and 21 the Airplane played Cobo Hall in Detroit, MI, one of them apparently a makeup date for a canceled show in May. Whatever last second plans may have had to be changed, its at least plausible for the Airplane to have considered an outdoor show in St. Paul, as the Airplane tour also ended at Detroit on August 21.

As for the Grateful Dead, they were free on the weekend of August 21 as well. The band had played a weekend gig at Berkeley Community Theater on August 14-15, and their next gigs were in Chicago 8 days later (August 23-24), on a Monday and a Tuesday. Then they played a Thursday gig (October 26) in New York City (at Gaelic Park in The Bronx), and then returned home. These gigs have never made any sense to me. Why would the Dead have flown to Chicago for weeknight gigs, played another weeknight gig in The Bronx, then returned home? Since the New Riders were booked at the Longbranch in Berkeley on August 27, it seems fairly certain that they returned home in a hurry.

I believe that the planned Grateful Dead itinerary for the week was as follows

• Saturday August 21-Midway Stadium, St. Paul, MN with The Who/Jefferson Airplane
• Monday August 23-Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL
• Tuesday August 24-Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL
• Thursday August 26-Gaelic Park, The Bronx, NY
• Sunday August 29-free concert, New York City with The Who

It hardly would have been a coincidence that The Dead planned to be on the East Coast when The Who were planning a free concert in New York City, so I'm sure the Dead planned to play.

Based on the uncertainty of this newspaper listing, and the fact that the Who and the Airplane seem to have been elsewhere, it seems unlikely that the Dead played Midway Stadium on August 21 or that St. Paul event even occurred. Nonetheless it looks like the Chicago and Bronx gigs were booked as filler between two big outdoor dates, the second a big one in New York with The Who (and I'll bet the Airplane wouldn't have missed that party). According to The Who Concert File, Roger Daltrey told Melody Maker "the Mayor wouldn't have us" (p.175), so obviously well-laid plans had to be scuttled.

The Mayor of New York City (John Lindsay) probably had a point: while The Who, The Grateful Dead and The Jefferson Airplane playing for free in Central Park (or anywhere in the Five Boroughs) in 1971 would have been one for the ages, the idea of Watkins Glen with subway access would have made Woodstock look like a picnic. Still...

(Note: I am aware that there is a recording from Mickey's Barn with various Dead members dated August 21, 1971, but even if the date is accurate,  I don't think it proves much beyond the fact that the band probably hadn't left yet for Chicago).

July 19-20, Los Angeles Coliseum Stadium: Eric Clapton/Grateful Dead (didn't happen)

The very end of the weekly rock column "Rock Talk From KG" in the Hayward Daily Review always included a few notes about upcoming shows, some of that not yet final or advertised. This is the final paragraph of the May 17, 1974 column, with the tantalizing note that Eric Clapton and The Grateful Dead would play together at the giant Los Angeles Coliseum, with a capacity of about 80,000. Needless to say, it didn't happen.

The idea wasn't as far fetched as it might seem. Eric Clapton had just returned to touring after a four year layoff, and his tour was a huge event. Stadium concerts were "in", at the time, a chance to see major acts in a venue with refreshments and bathrooms, as opposed to a muddy field. The Grateful Dead had a new, expensive sound system, and they needed high paying gigs. While the Dead were never as popular in Los Angeles as they could have been, even in 1974 it was well known that Deadheads would travel in large numbers, given the incentive. OK, the LA Coliseum was an old dump, and the area around it wasn't exactly hippie central, but a 4-hour Dead show followed by a couple of hours of Clapton would make it all worthwhile, right? And then we could do it all again the next day? Oh, well.

Eric Clapton did indeed play Los Angeles on July 19 and 20, but he played at the much smaller Long Beach Arena. The Grateful Dead played Selland Arena in Fresno on July 19.

As to the CSNY/Allman Brothers/Beach Boys/Marshal Tucker gig at the LA Coliseum, it didn't happen either, but it almost did. CSNY were just starting their titanic National tour, mostly in Stadiums, but the Bill Graham produced show was scrapped, and they did not open until July 9 in Seattle.  The Beach Boys were on the CSNY tour, and they too opened in Seattle with them. The Allman Brothers tour seems to have been between Tulsa (July 5) and St. Paul (July 8) during these dates.

I'm listening to "Dark Star">"Have You Ever Loved A Woman">"Not Fade Away" in my mind's ear.