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| The Boston Garden, home to the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins, was also the premier popular music venue in the city. In the early 1970s, the Grateful Dead were still a long way from the Garden. |
In the 1990s, when the Grateful Dead could choose their venues at will, they would play the Boston Garden for several nights in a row. The Dead were just as much of an event in Boston as they were in New York, New Jersey or Philadelphia. Indeed, the only thing that kept them from playing Boston more often was the NBA season, since the Boston Celtics had dibs on the Garden once they tipped off (and the NHL Boston Bruins did also). Even so, the Dead also played some very high profile outdoor shows in Foxboro (in 1990) and in Vermont (at Highgate in 1994 and '95), drawing fans from all over the region. Greater New England was prime Deadhead territory by '94.
But it wasn't always that way, not at all. In the Northeast, the first Grateful Dead stronghold was Manhattan, ably supported by Brooklynites. Deadhead territory rapidly expanded to include Central and Upstate New York as well as New Jersey. Careful cultivation of Pennsylvania colleges made the Dead a guaranteed attraction in Philadelphia, too. Yet during the early 70s, the Grateful Dead just barely played New England, only a few random shows here and there. The Grateful Dead didn't make real gains in New England until the mid-1970s, a late start compared to New York State, Jersey or Philly.
It's easy to say that it was inevitable that the Grateful Dead would be huge in New England in the 1990s, because they were huge anywhere they played. It's important to remember, however, that by the 90s, the Grateful Dead traveling circus went where it had been before. The cities and promoters that liked Deadheads got them back, and where it hadn't worked out, the Dead no longer appeared. The Grateful Dead had made determined efforts to make a splash in Texas and the Southwest, for example, starting around 1970. Yet by 1988 there were greener pastures elsewhere, and the Dead never played there again. Now, Texas is a huge state, with a boom economy, and Texans love music, so it should have been a perfect fit--but it wasn't. So New England's comfort with the Grateful Dead was not guaranteed.
This post will look back at the Grateful Dead's initial forays into New England, focusing on the period from 1970 to 1972. It may surprise you to find out how little they played, and how few opportunities there were for aspiring Deadheads to actually see the band live anywhere near them without traveling.
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| The Grateful Dead played The Boston Tea Party, formerly The Ark, at 15 Landsdowne St, on October 2-3-4, 1969 (Doc Watson replaced the Bonzo Dog Band on the bill) |
Backdrop: The Grateful Dead in Boston, 1967-69
Boston, MA was a crucial city for popular music in the 1960s, going all the way back to the Great Folk Scare at the beginning of the decade. Cambridge, part of the Boston Metro area (where Harvard and MIT were located) was an essential part of the folk scene, along with Greenwich Village. Of course, all the colleges ensured that there was a huge market for music. When the British Invasion came, it hit New England hard (just like the time before), and rock was huge in Boston and the surrounding areas.
As far as the psychedelic sixties went, Boston was a magnet. The Boston Tea Party was one of the legendary 60s ballrooms, particularly for touring English bands (I have attempted to capture the Boston psychedelic story elsewhere). There were many unique things about the latter sixties in Boston, and one of them was how little the Grateful Dead had to do with it. In many cities, the Dead had been one of the first touring bands to show up, playing free in the park, carrying on, and bringing the spirit of San Francisco to unconquered territory. Boston, however, had already gotten a taste of LSD (Tim Leary had been at Harvard in '62), had a booming folk/blues/rock market and plenty of action. There was never any animosity in Boston towards the Dead, but they were just another band from out of town without a hit record.
The Grateful Dead had played an obscure Boston venue called the Psychedelic Supermarket in December of 1967, while also finding time for an unfortunate gig at Clark University in Worcester, MA, an hour West. The band would not return until April 1969, playing yet another obscure venue, The Ark (April 21-23, 1969), while also returning to Clark (April 20). The Tea Party would then move to the larger Ark in July, and the Dead would play two more weekends there. One was New Year's Eve weekend, 1969 (with SNL's Jane Curtin opening the show!), but for all the good live music they had played, the Dead had little impact on the Boston scene. Save for Worcester, the Grateful Dead never even played elsewhere in New England in the 60s.
In retrospect, the significance of the two 1969 weekends at the Tea Party (October 2-4 and December 29-31) was the venue's manager, Don Law Jr. The post-Touch Of Grey Dead could tour anywhere and sell out, since their fans would travel. So the places they played largely depended on local promoters that they were comfortable with, which were almost always the ones they had worked with since back in the day. Don Law Jr was the dominant promoter in Boston and New England in the 80s and 90s, so it's no surprise that the Dead played for him, since they went back to 1969 together. The strange part was that the Grateful Dead did not work for Don Law again until 1974--and Jerry Garcia played some shows for him in 1975--and the New England connection drifted. So the Grateful Dead's relationship with New England could have gone the way of Texas, unlikely as it may seem.
This post will begin a review of the long, circuitous path that the Grateful Dead took through Boston and New England in the 1970s, with a close look at 1970 through 1972.
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| The Grateful Dead at Foss Hill, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT May 3 '70 |
May 3, 1970 Foss Hill, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Wednesday)
For their May, 1970 tour, the Grateful Dead had introduced a new concept, "An Evening With The Grateful Dead." At the time, most rock concerts had multiple acts. Sam Cutler's concept was that the Dead provided the entire evening's entertainment, thus capturing the fees for the opening acts as well as being the headliner. For this initial tour, many of the shows were booked at East Coast colleges, a few of which were in New England. In those days, colleges had entertainment budgets, particularly those colleges far from big cities, so ticket sales did not have to cover the entire cost. Also, unlike promoters, colleges did not suddenly go out of business, so they were reliable bookings. The Dead opened their May tour in New York at SUNY Alfred (May 1) and SUNY Binghamton (May 2), and then played Wesleyan University on May 3.
Wesleyan University had been founded in Middletown, CT, in 1831. Middletown is--appropriately--midway between New York City and Boston. Founded in 1784, it was initially a thriving river port. In 1970, the population of Middletown was 36,924. Wesleyan probably had a student body of about 3,000. There are numerous distinguished alumni, including John Perry Barlow. Ironically, however, Barlow had already graduated (just barely, apparently) in 1969.
Intriguingly, the show did not take place at the Gym, as you might expect, but was a free outdoor concert on campus at a place called Foss Hill. Sam Cutler understood that while the Grateful Dead were underground legends, few students had actually heard them. There's every reason to think, incidentally, that the Grateful Dead were actually paid for this free concert, because otherwise they wouldn't have played Wesleyan. Since campus concerts weren't designed to make money, per se, Cutler could talk the school into paying for a free concert. Free concerts were a strategy for the Dead in New England, as we will see.
May 6, 1970 Kresge Plaza, MIT, Cambridge, MA: Grateful Dead (Wednesday)
The Grateful Dead's definitive appearance in New England was their free concert at Kresge Plaza at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The Dead played at an afternoon rally protesting the National Guard killing of 4 students at an antiwar protest at Kent State University in Ohio just two days earlier. There's a couple of ways to look at the Dead's appearance, both of them largely true, if contradictory.
The Dead considered themselves "not political," but the Kent State killings were seen as trans-political, an issue of what we would now call "Social Justice." Of course, the Dead were always willing to play for free, and saw it as good business, but I have no doubt that the individual band members were as appalled as other Americans that the Ohio Guard had fired on protesting college students. Playing a free concert at a protest rally at an elite University in Boston assured that the Dead were always seen as being "on the right side of history." In the ensuing years, the Dead's ongoing credibility stemmed from events like the MIT rally.
Of course, the Grateful Dead also pioneered the strategy of rolling into a town and playing a high profile free concert. Their infamy ensured a lot of attention, and numerous future Deadheads would get "On The Bus" right on the spot. Usually, they held free concerts where they were playing a paying gig that same weekend. They did this over and over, in Vancouver, Greenwich Village, Denver, Miami and numerous other cities. It was a strategy, not an accident.
As it happened, the band had a paying show at MIT's DuPont Gym the next night (May 7), so you can just as well see it as the Dead drumming up business. Whether you see the concert as calculating or sincere, however, keep in mind that plenty of other bands were on tour that week, and there were protests at Universities all over the country. How many bands with record contracts played those protest rallies? Few, if any. The Grateful Dead did play a Kent State protest, for free, and their underground status continued to set them apart from their peers.
May 7, 1970 Dupont Gym, MIT, Cambridge, MA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Thursday)
The Boston concert market was unique in the late '60s in that the best paying shows were at local colleges. Since the biggest schools (Harvard, MIT and Boston University) were right in downtown Boston or Cambridge (just across the St. Charles River), those concerts could draw students and civilians. Yet the universities would directly or indirectly support the concerts, so any bookings were both well-paid and guaranteed. Dupont Gym, at 120 Massachusetts Avenue, had originally been built as the State Armory, but was acquired by MIT in 1959 and adapted for use as a gym.
Remember that in May of 1970, the Dead were just sort of underground legends. Live/Dead was probably getting a little late night airplay on WBCN-fm, Boston's top rock station, but Workingman's Dead had not been released yet, so "regular" rock fans had mostly never heard the Dead. Yet in the post Kent State turmoil, after the Dead had played the plaza for free, seeing them in concert would have gone from "fun" to "righteous," probably guaranteeing a good turnout. "Cryptical Envelopment> Drums> The Other One> Cryptical Envelopment> Cosmic Charlie" probably took care of the rest of it.
May 9, 1970 [outdoor venue], Boston, MA: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Saturday)
Very recent sleuthing by fellow scholar Jesse Jarnow uncovered a little-remembered free concert by the New Riders of The Purple Sage somewhere in downtown Boston on Saturday afternoon. At this time, the New Riders were completely unknown, with no recordings, nothing to play on FM radio, and not even a promotional photo. The New Riders played three free outdoor concerts by themselves at this tour (in Central Park, Boston and St. Louis). Since the event was so obscure, it can't have had a big effect on the Dead's popularity, but it does show the outline of Cutler's plan to play free shows in new territory.
May 9, 1970 Harrington Auditorium, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Saturday)
Worcester, MA is about an hour West of Boston, and the Grateful Dead had played at Clark University there in 1967 and '69. The band returned to Worcester in 1970, but this time at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The band played Harrington Auditorium (at 100 Institute Road), built in 1968 and home to the school's basketball teams. The venue held about 3,000. The connection between the Dead and Worcester probably mainly had to do with a booking agency relationship, rather than some specific thing about the town itself. It is a strange fact, however, how up through Spring '70, Worcester was the only town other than Boston that the Dead had played in Massachusetts.
The Grateful Dead were booked to headline a concert at Fairfield University in Connecticut, just across Long Island Sound, near Bridgeport. The show was in the football stadium, Alumni Field, but it only has a capacity of 4000 (Fairfield was not a football school). Also booked were the Butterfield Blues Band, Chicago Transit Authority and some local bands. A few days before the concert, however, the show was canceled. The likely reason was poor ticket sales. This would have been one of those shows that would have been remembered fondly by both Fairfield students and local townies, but it didn't happen.
July 13, 1970 Harvard Stadium, Harvard University, Allston, MA: Grateful Dead/John Hammond (Monday) part of Schaefer Beer Festival-canceled
Schaefer Beer sponsored Summer-long series of rock concerts in Central Park in Manhattan in the late 60s, and they are fondly remembered. They all required paid admission, but tickets were usually discounted. Every touring band played them, and Central Park was easy to get to for anyone in the region. In 1970, Schaefer Beer sponsored a similar series of concerts at Harvard Stadium. The Grateful Dead were booked, but did not play the show. I don't know if it was only the Dead who canceled, or other shows were canceled as well. I know that the final concert in the series was held, as it was Janis Joplin's final live performance (on August 12).
Harvard Stadium, at 95 N. Harvard St in the Allston neighborhood, had a capacity of around 30,000 at the time. So it was a big stadium, but not gigantic. Workingman's Dead had just been released in June of 1970, and playing Harvard Stadium could have drawn a huge crowd to hear the Grateful Dead in their prime. In any case, similar to Fairfield, it would have been fondly remembered, but it didn't happen. The Grateful Dead had tried to hit New England in the Summer of 1970, but they didn't actually succeed.
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| Boston University ca 1970 and ca 2017 |
November 21, 1970 Sargent Gym, Boston University, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/chimpanzee act (Saturday)
The Grateful Dead would never actually appear in New England when Workingman's Dead was their current album. By the time they played another concert in Boston, American Beauty had already come out. The Dead were playing colleges and junior colleges in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, yet New England was left bare. FM rock radio stations were popping up everywhere, playing "Casey Jones" and "Uncle John's Band," so the Dead were happening in every college dorm. Yet in the biggest college town in the country, and the whole surrounding region, the Dead weren't being booked.
The Dead were finally booked in November at Boston University, right across the Charles River from Harvard and MIT, and not too far from the Boston Tea Party. The band would have been booked around September, but by the time the show came around, American Beauty had been out for three weeks, so the Dead would have been bigger than ever amongst college students.
Boston University was a private research institution, founded in 1839. In 1920, the school had purchased 15 acres along the Charles River. After World War 2, BU expanded dramatically. In 1951, Harold C. Case became the school's fifth president and under his direction the character of the campus changed significantly, as he sought to change the school into a national research university. The campus tripled in size to 45 acres, and added 68 new buildings before Case retired in 1967.
Boston University campus buildings ran along the Charles from Commonwealth Avenue and Kenmore Square all the way to the Allston district. While BU surely had fewer than the 34,000 students that it does today, it was still a large school. It was also right across the river from Harvard and MIT, so its section of Boston was a nexus for live music, theater and the arts that were appealing to college students. BU was not a basketball school, and did not have a huge sports tradition--save for Ice Hockey, a unique Boston thing--so Sargent had a capacity typical of such facilities, just around 1800 in concert configuration. (BU's current gym was built in 1972, so I assume Sargent has been torn down).
The indispensable Deadsources blog gives us some insight into the unique circumstances of a large school booking a concert in downtown Boston, so different than other cities. From the Boston Record-American the week before the show (November 13, 1970):
Boston University's student union isn't having any problem presenting rock artists. On Nov. 22, the union's Social Council will have the The Grateful Dead performing in Sargent gym for a sell-out audience of 2000. And since the Dead won't agree to appear for less than five hours - and sometimes go for as long as 10 - the council has made the performance an affair for BU students only, so that the city's closing-hour ordinance won't apply.
The Grateful Dead were popular now. This led to some unexpected consequences, most significantly a substantial number of counterfeit tickets. You can't help but think that such an organized crime had some connection, to, well, organized crime. There were thousands of college students on Commonwealth Avenue on any Saturday night, so pickings were ripe. The Record-American, November 22:
Campus police said trouble erupted when thousands of rock lovers couldn't get into the auditorium because someone had sold counterfeit tickets.
With so many tickets - real and bogus - sold, the gymnasium was filled to capacity with the overflow crowd backing up into Commonwealth Ave.
Yet the ruckus probably added to the Grateful Dead mystique, even if the net result was that the band hardly played the region at all. Writer Charles Guiliano, from the Boston Herald (November 29):
The Grateful Dead are not just a rock band. They represent a gestalt of everything that is at once insane yet creative about the youth cultural explosion that broke out like a rash in San Francisco's Height Ashbury in the rockin' mid-sixties.
Grateful Dead fans will not be denied. Even the knowledge that the concert at BU last week was sold out within three hours failed to discourage the hopes of non-ticket holders.
Every ploy was used to gain entry. Pushing and shoving, gate crashing, counterfeit tickets, tall tales, and phony press credentials were all part of the game for harried BU marshals and their security allies.
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| Ned Lagin playing electric piano with the Grateful Dead at Boston U on November 21, 1970 (photo: Jeff Albertson via Nedbase) |
As to the Grateful Dead show itself, Sargent Gym was the first time that band friend Ned Lagin sat in for an entire concert. Lagin had played on some songs during the band's Port Chester run earlier in the month, but at Boston, he played the entire show. Lagin had gone to MIT, and had met the band when they played the school back in May. During the Summer, Lagin had flown out West to jam and hang out with the band. For this concert, Lagin played a borrowed Wurlitzer electric piano (for further details, check out the exceptional Nedbase blog).
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| Vaudeville-type chimpanzee act opening for the Grateful Dead, Sargent's Gym, Boston U, November 21, 1970 (photo: Jeff Albertson) You'd think this would be the last time chimps opened for the Dead (but you'd be wrong) |
One of the opening acts for the show was, as you would expect, the New Riders of The Purple Sage. Disconcertingly, however, the first performers were a chimpanzee act. Much as I dislike trained animal acts in any case, the unfortunate primates were treated to rowdy Dead fans hurling firecrackers at the stage. It did not go well.
While the Grateful Dead were playing at Sargent Gym, the Allman Brothers were finishing up a weekend at the Boston Tea Party. The bands had met in Atlanta in 1969, and Duane Allman had already jammed with the Dead at Fillmore East, back in February of 1970. After the shows were over, Duane, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Pigpen dropped by the dj booth at WBCN, Boston's leading rock radio station. The dj invited them to play some songs, which sounded like a great idea. There was only one problem: there were only two guitars. So Garcia and Weir played five songs as a duo, and then Duane Allman took over Jerry's guitar for two more with Weir. Pigpen neither spoke nor played. There was some banter with the dj, too, but all-in-all it was some tired musicians idly picking late at night. Historic, yes, but not actually memorable.March 5-6, 1971 New Haven Arena, New Haven, CT: Grateful Dead (Friday-Saturday) canceled
Members of the Yale Class of 1971 attempted to book the Grateful Dead for their Prom. The first night would have been a public concert, and in theory the profits would allow the second night (Saturday March 6) to have tickets for Prom-goers only for $2. It's not clear whether it was the band that backed out or if the University got cold feet, but the Class of '71 tried as hard as they could to make it happen. In the end, the Grateful Dead would not tour the East until the next month (April). In any case, the failed effort shows that there was plenty of interest in seeing the Grateful Dead in New England, even if the Dead almost never played there.
Incidentally, campus events like the Yale Prom were common bookings from rock bands in the '60s and early '70s. The Grateful Dead had played the Temple University Homecoming concert in 1968 (held at an auditorium at U Penn). The most legendary of such events, of course, was the May 17, 1969 Ohio University Junior Prom, featuring Jose Feliciano, with Led Zeppelin as the opening act. So the Grateful Dead at the 1971 Yale Prom is not as far-fetched as it might sound today.
April 7-8, 1971 Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Wednesday-Thursday)
In the Spring of 1971, the Grateful Dead made their mark in the Northeast. Sam Cutler had rationalized the band's touring schedule. The Dead made short hops between cities, so the equipment truck had easy
transit (the band members mostly flew). Thus the band was rested and
the rig was well set up, so the Dead played great every night. The shows were booked through agent Ron Rainey of the International Famous Agency (IFA), but Cutler worked closely with Rainey to ensure that the Dead's schedule could be profitable. The Dead played colleges and small auditoriums throughout the Northeast, and made Deadheads for life, in Pennsylvania, in Princeton, in Manhattan and in New York State. This time out, the band even made some forays to New England.
The Boston Music Hall, at 268 Tremont Street, had been built in 1925 as the Metropolitan Theater. It had been renamed the Boston Music Hall in 1962. Boston Music Hall had a capacity (at the time) of 4225, large for the era (now, as The Wang Theater, the capacity is around 3500). Performers included the Ballet and Symphony as well as music acts. In the 60s, rock bands had played a place called The Back Bay Theater, but it had been torn down in 1968. After that, big rock acts played Boston Music Hall. The theater was not the province of a single promoter, however, and was just a hall for rent. The Grateful Dead would go on to play the Music Hall numerous times in the 1970s.
This April, 1971 foray into the hall was promoted by New York impresario Howard Stein. The Dead had played for Stein at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, and on this tour they had played for Stein a few days earlier at Manhattan Center (April 4-6). This week was oddly booked--the Dead played Boston on Wednesday and Thursday, had no gig on Friday, a Pennsylvania College on Saturday (April 11 at Franklin and Marshall) and then Pittsburgh Civic Center on Monday (April 12). It's important to remember, however, that Good Friday was April 11. Thus many of the college students in Boston would have been out of town or in transit, with many colleges closed.
April 21, 1971 Rhode Island Auditorium, Providence, RI: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Wednesday)
Ron Rainey booked two more Grateful Dead shows in New England, somewhat unnoticed at the time, but they were the initial forays into the territory. The Dead had numerous shows in April all around the Northeast, in Pennsylvania, New York and Princeton, plus a stadium show in Durham, North Carolina. Sam Cutler understood touring economics, and filled in some weeknights with gigs, since empty nights on the road still cost money for lodging.
Music Productions of Boston, whoever they were, promoted the Wednesday show in Providence and the next night in Maine. The Rhode Island Auditorium was at 1111 North Main St. The 5,300-capacity arena had opened in 1926 (it was torn down in 1989). It was the home of the Rhode Island Reds minor league hockey team from 1926 until 1972, until the team moved to the newly-opened Providence Civic Center. The Grateful Dead would also move on to the much larger Providence Civic Center (now the Dunkin' Donuts Center) as well.
April 22, 1971 Bangor Auditorium, Bangor, ME: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Thursday)
Music Productions of Boston also produced the Thursday night show in Bangor, ME. It was produced "In Association With Phonic Productions." This suggests that a Boston outfit financed the show, and the more local Phonic Productions probably handled the local publicity and in-house services. Bangor is the last significant city on Interstate 95, which traverses the East coast all the way up from Florida. Bangor is two hours north of Portland, ME, which in turn is two hours north of Boston. Beyond Bangor there is very little, save the small town of Orono a few miles north, the home of the University of Maine. Historically, Bangor was a center of logging, and the logs were turned to lumber that helped build Boston, New York and the whole East Coast. Bangor is at the confluence of some rivers, so the lumber went by boat, and Bangor was thus populated by loggers and sailors for a few hundred years. Bangor has had a population of about 30,000 since the 1960s.
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| It's two hours North from Bangor to the Canadian border on I-95, but if you take the parallel Route 9 instead, you can cross at St. Stephen, New Brunswick |
The University of Maine was founded in 1862, in the town of Orono (pop. 8500), at a time when Bangor was the leading commercial city. The University of Maine is a well-regarded school, but it will come as no surprise that the biggest sport at the University is ice hockey, as the Maine Black Bears are a perpetual NCAA hockey power. In many ways Bangor appears to function as the "city" for the University, although the 10,000+ student body is bigger than Orono, and when the two are combined, they are not far smaller than Bangor itself.
The Bangor Municipal Auditorium was a 5948-capacity auditorium built in 1955 (and torn down in 2013). On Thursday, April 22, 1971, the Grateful Dead and the New Riders of The Purple Sage played a four hour show on a Thursday, in between bookings in Providence and Durham, NC. I wrote about this show at some length in another post. The Dead's performance in Bangor was very much an outlier, both literally and figuratively. Boston was a major American city, and places like Providence were part of the heavily populated part of New England.
Bangor, however, was far from anywhere, and the Dead would never play that far North (in the States) again. The Grateful Dead did not play upper New England again until 1978, and they did not play Maine again until 1979. When they returned to Maine, they played in Portland. In the late 19th century, the city of Portland, two hours warmer, with a correspondingly less icy port, became the nexus of several New England railroads and grew in importance. Portland, with a population of 60,000 or so, surpassed Bangor 100 years ago, and remains the commercial center of Maine.
The Grateful Dead were booked at the huge, 70,000-capacity Yale Bowl. I don't know if the booking had anything to do with the scuttled Yale Prom back in March, but it does mean that Sam Cutler and Ron Rainey would have had some contact with the University. Based on the poster, the show was sponsored by a local bank. According to what I can piece together, there were supposed to be a number of shows at Yale Bowl this Summer. The Dead show was the second of four scheduled shows (Grand Funk Railroad would play Yale Bowl July 24).
According to various commenters on the Archive, numerous fans showed up, including many from Long Island, a sign that Dead fans were starting to travel. The stadium wasn't full, but there was a good crowd. I suspect that many fans knew about the legends of the Dead playing for free, and expected not to pay. On the archive, Commenter rollandfin laments
Historical note, this show featured a mad clash between police and would-be concert goers who stormed the fence and broke them down. You don't see any more shows at Yale Bowl after July 31, 1971, the Dead or anyone else.
Comments like this are echoed by others. Whatever exactly happened, things got out of hand. In the early 70s, a lot of city parks or college facilities--such as an amphitheater or quad--got overwhelmed by rock fans. Not only were rock bands more popular than ever, but many young fans felt "concerts should be free." This phenomenon was not at all exclusive to the Grateful Dead, but the nature of the Dead's pirate-ship reputation made them susceptible to these assumptions.
Universities were particularly unsympathetic to large, out-of-control rock concert events. Schools recognized that they had liability, with deep pockets that made them ripe for lawsuits, yet no real use for the revenue created by rock concerts. It was a lot easier to refuse to schedule shows on campus than take any risks that had no tangible rewards. University facilities and city parks became more and more unavailable to the Grateful Dead in the early 70s. In that respect, the Yale Bowl show was part of a trend, not particularly related to New England itself.
A recent book, The Economic History Of The Grateful Dead, by scholar David Davis, sheds significant light on the Yale show. Davis added immeasurably to Grateful Dead history by reviewing every surviving concert contract for the band, and his analysis greatly expands our understanding of the group's successes and challenges. In the case of the Yale show, the Grateful Dead sold 13,000 tickets and received a fee of $37,800. This was the band's biggest payday so far in their concert history. Tickets averaged $6, so the gate was apparently over $75,000. Yet the evidence noted above suggests that far more than 13,000 showed up, even if not all of them got into the show.
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| The August 3, 1971 Hartford Courant explained why the Who and Chicago concerts at the Yale Bowl were canceled after the "melee" at the July 31, 1971 Grateful Dead concert |
The August 3, 1971 Hartford Courant explained:
Last Concerts Canceled After Yale Bowl Melee (NEW HAVEN [AP])
The two remaining "Pops Concerts" at The Yale Bowl were canceled Monday, the result of a fracas during the Saturday night concert of "The Grateful Dead" rock group.
Police said 89 persons were arrested as a group estimated at 1,000 people tried to storm the gate.
Another article the day before (August 2) suggested that there were at least 2000 "gatecrashers" at the Dead show. It also alluded to problems at the Yale Bowl concert the week before (Grand Funk Railroad had played July 24). Apparently there were a smaller number of gatecrashers, but they had managed to enter the show, due to a lack of security guards. Yale was more prepared this time, but not for the volume of enthusiastic Deadheads.
The Yale shows were successful, and a nice profit could have been made. But Yale was wealthy, and didn't really need the money. Riots were unattractive, and Yale, with its deep pockets, was an inviting target for a lawsuit, so they simply canceled upcoming rock shows. The Grateful Dead were plenty popular in New England, but as it happened, they were too popular. The band would not return to Yale.
December 1-2, 1971 Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead (Wednesday-Thursday)
The Grateful Dead played another mid-week pair at the Boston Music Hall, as a warmup to shows at the Felt Forum (December 4-7) and then St. Louis (December 9-10). At this writing, it remains unclear who promoted this show. Numerous promoters rented the Boston Music Hall, and the Dead had not settled on any exclusive New England promoter. Clearly the band had a following in Boston--hardly surprising--but they were not in a position yet to fully exploit it. The Harvard Crimson published a detailed review by writer Jim Krauss, so the event had some impact, but the Dead still treated Boston and New England as an afterthought.
January 26, 1972 Symphony Hall, Boston, MA: Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia Performing "Hooteroll?"/Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin (Wednesday)
Oddly enough, Jerry Garcia's first tour outside of the confines of the Grateful Dead/New Riders axis was with Howard Wales. Douglas Records had released Wales' and Garcia's album Hooteroll? in late 1971, and Columbia (the parent of Douglas) promoted a brief tour in support. Also on the tour was another Columbia act with connections to Douglas Records, namely John McLaughlin and The Mahavishnu Orchestra. They had recently released their debut album Inner Mounting Flame on Columbia (McLaughlin had recorded a solo album earlier on Douglas, Devotion, released back in 1970).
The Wales/Garcia tour was six January, 1972 dates in the Northeast. Garcia sat in with Wales' regular band, which featured Jim Vincent on guitar, Roger "Jellroll" Troy on bass and some vocals, and Jerry Love on drums. There was the occasional blues, sung by Troy, and some way out jamming. There wasn't much that was rehearsed, but Wales and Garcia weren't about rehearsal anyway. After shows in Manhattan, Syracuse and suburban Philadelphia, the pair played Boston. Symphony
Hall was at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, and had opened in 1900. It was
the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and seated 2625 people. Remarkably, the Wales/Garcia gig was broadcast on WBCN, which means that Columbia paid up for the air time. It's an irony that Garcia's presence attracted attention to Mahavishnu Orchestra, a remarkable band (who actually rehearsed) whose moment in the sun was just arriving. Per the ad, the show was presented by one Robert "Skip" Chernov.
There is an interesting subplot to the Boston Symphony Hall show. According to a David Gans interview with legendary Grateful Dead engineer Bob Matthews (on July 29, 1992), Garcia had a surprise backstage guest at this show: no less than ex- (but forever) Beatle George Harrison. Matthews had gone on tour with Stoneground in 1970, instead of the Grateful Dead, because Alembic Sound had been committed to Tom Donahue's Medicine Ball Caravan movie. At the end of the tour, Matthews had ended up recording Stoneground in a London studio. George Harrison had been working upstairs, and they had met, and Matthews had sent him all the Dead albums, including Live/Dead. According to Matthews, he had encouraged George to include the "Apple Jam" lp on All Things Must Pass.
Per the interview, George came backstage at Symphony Hall in Boston, and told Garcia that he was visiting because he knew Bob Matthews, which Matthews said was the best thing he had ever heard in his life. It's pretty remarkable to think about Jerry Garcia coming on right after John McLaughlin, and even more startling to think that George Harrison was just offstage, taking it all in.
The next date on the brief Hooteroll? tour was at Loew's Theater in Providence. Loew's Theater had been built in 1928 with a capacity of about 3,100. It was at 220 Wyebosset Street in downtown Providence. Shortly after this, Loew's changed its name to The Palace Theater, where it became better known as a rock venue throughout the 1970s. Today, it is known as the Providence Performing Arts Center.
Once again, Mahavishnu Orchestra opened the show. Two tracks of the Garcia set were included in a cd re-release of Hooteroll? One of them, surprisingly, was the George Jones 1962 country weeper "She Once Lived Here," sung by Garcia. While this was out of character for Wales, he in fact had played every kind of music and he sounded great, staying inside the chords (for once).
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| Boston Globe Movie Listings, April 26, 1972 |
In April of 1972, the New Riders of The Purple Sage were on tour supporting their second album, Powerglide. It was the band's first tour without Jerry Garcia on board. Sam Cutler had not yet formed Out Of Town tours, but Ron Rainey booked the New Riders, so Cutler was surely heavily involved.. On one hand, Cutler was following the playbook that had worked so well for the Grateful Dead in 1970 and '71, playing colleges and building a fan base, one show at a time. On the other hand, Cutler was also developing relationships with promoters and learning about different venues.
At this time, the Boston Music Hall was mainly a movie theater. During this week, per the Boston Globe (above), the feature was a "Blacksploitation" crime flick called Cool Breeze. It does not sound very good. In this case, the 8:00 showing was replaced by the New Riders. Tranquility (an English band on Columbia) listed this show in their Billboard ad, so presumably they opened the show. Keep in mind, even if the New Riders did not sell out the hall--I'm sure they didn't, on a weeknight--they still got more money than they would have if they had just been doing nothing.
April 28, 1972 Meehan Auditorium, Brown U, Providence, RI: Mahavishnu Orchestra/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Friday)Sam Cutler was the Grateful Dead's road manager, and would become their booking agent in August, making the phone calls out of the band's headquarters at Fifth and Lincoln in San Rafael. Cutler would also take over booking the New Riders, in conjunction with his right-hand man, Chesley Millikin. Although Ron Rainey, by this time at Agency For The Performing Arts, was booking both the Dead and The New Riders (as well as Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds), Cutler was working to take it over. Booking shows was about relationships, made over the phone, so that meant that Cutler was regularly calling promoters on behalf of the Riders as well as the Dead. In this case, Cutler and Rainey were booking a show for the New Riders at a venue that probably wouldn't have booked the Dead. Nonetheless, it means he would have made numerous phone calls to numerous parties, so it increased the Dead's connections to promoters in the Northeast.
Brown University was founded in 1764, and it is located in downtown Providence. Indeed, I think it precedes downtown itself. Meehan Auditorium is the 3000-capacity hockey facility, and the largest indoor facility at the school. It opened in 1961 at Hope Street and Lloyd Avenue. As a lesson in 1970s rock economics, the Mahavishnu Orchestra had opened for Jerry Garcia a few months earlier, and now as their album became hotter, the New Riders were opening for them. Howard Wales, Mahavishnu and the New Riders were all on Columbia, so record company support was easier to come by when the label could share promotional costs.
The seemingly strange pairing of the New Riders and Mahavishnu makes more sense if you consider that the University was probably striving to get a cross-section of undergraduates. Note the descriptions from that day's Brown Daily Record (from David Kramer-Smyth's stellar research):
John Mclaughlin & the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Fri. 8 p.m. Meehan. Intense synthesis of jazz, rock, classical, blues and Eastern music, lead with spiritual conviction by dynamic guitarist McLaughlin, who sees his music as "an offering to the supreme being."
NEW RIDERS of the Purple Sage. Fri.. 8 p.m.. Meehan. A light, peppy. Poco-like brand of country-rock-western, guaranteed to have you bouncing in your seat.
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| A contemporary photo of the restored Palace Theater at 100 E. Main St in Waterbury, CT |
May 1, 1972 Palace Theatre Waterbury CT New Riders of The Purple Sage (Monday)
A company called Web LT had booked the New Riders at a "Folk Festival" in Virginia on April 8, and now they booked the band at a Monday night at a now-legendary venue called the Palace Theater in Waterbury, CT. Waterbury is between Hartford (33 miles to the Northeast) and New York City (77 miles to the Southwest). It had (and has) a population of around 110,000. In the first half of the 20th century, it was a thriving industrial city. From the 1960s onward, however, Waterbury underwent a severe economic decline. As a rock peculiarity, however, Waterbury had a large movie theater from its glory days, and easy freeway access from larger areas. The Palace Theater, at 100 E. Main Street in downtown, had been built in 1922. By the early 1970s, it wasn't apparently in great shape, but it had a capacity of a few thousand and fantastic acoustics. It went from being an oversized movie house to a destination rock concert venue.
In the early 1970s, bands figured out that in order to make touring profitable, they had to play as many nights as possible with reasonably short trips in between. If a band on a road had, for example, a lucrative weekend booking in Manhattan, and another the next weekend in Boston, they had to do something in between that paid. A night or two at a place like Waterbury was perfect. It was just far enough from major cities that it didn't tread on the major bookings, and attracted fans who wouldn't (or couldn't) go to a big-city show. FM radio was everywhere, anyway, and there were plenty of kids in the suburbs who wanted to see the bands that played Manhattan or Boston. Whoever owned the aging Palace Theater would have been happy to rent it out profitably, unconcerned if some hippies might do a little damage. All the good touring bands of the 1970s played the Palace in Waterbury, some of them many times.
I doubt the New Riders sold that many tickets on a Monday night, but on the road it may not have mattered. If they covered their expenses, then it was better than just spending the night in a hotel. Ron Rainey was probably the one who knew about the Palace Theater, and booked the show. But Sam Cutler, would have learned about the Palace, and the Dead would play there in September.
On the Sunday afternoon of July 16, 1972, the Grateful Dead played Dillon Stadium, an old, local football stadium in Hartford, CT. Dillon Stadium, at 250 Huyshope Avenue, had been built in 1935, and was home to a minor league football team, with a football capacity of 9,600. About 14,000 were in attendance for the concert. The show is famous amongst Deadheads for the surprise guest appearance of Dickie Betts, Berry Oakley and Jaimoe from the Allman Brothers, who joined in for a medley at the end of the show ("Not Fade Away">"Goin' Down The Road">"Hey Bo Diddley"). Duane (and even Gregg) Allman had jammed with the Dead at Fillmore East, but both groups were much more famous by 1972.
A more important connection was established in Hartford that day, although the Dead themselves probably didn't realize it until later. The show was presented by Cable Music, a then-new firm run by partners Shelly Finkel and Jimmy Koplik. Koplik would go on to become the major concert promoter in New England, outside of Boston, all the way through the 1990s. The Grateful Dead were not only a popular touring band throughout that time, but they were also the most profitable band to promote durng those decades. Koplik's relationship with the Dead was critical to his success, and in turn Koplik's promotions were critical to the band's rise to prominence in the ensuing years.
There had been an early wave of hippie concert promoters in the 1960s, and like all pioneers, some thrived and some did not. Rock music and live rock concerts really became big business in the 1970s, and there was room for new, younger promoters because there were no "old-time" rock promoters. The business was fairly territorial--bands would only book shows with a certain promoter in certain areas. You can decide for yourself if that was a violation of anti-trust laws. Concert promotion was a dirty business that depended on trust, and bands like the Grateful Dead tended to trust promoters they had worked with for a long time.
From the 1970s through the 1990s, the key promoters in the Northeast were John Scher (Metropolitan Entertaiment), who was down in New Jersey, along with Larry Magid (Electric Factory) over in Philadelphia, Don Law Jr in Boston and Jim Koplik in Connecticut and the other parts of New England, including Upstate New York. Key promoters in the West, for the Grateful Dead at least, included Bill Graham in San Francisco, Sepp Donahower (Pacific Presentations) in Southern California and Barry Fey (Feyline) in Denver. Some promoters, like Howard Stein (New York), Pacific Presentations and others also worked with promoters in smaller regions througout the country. The business ties that the Grateful Dead formed in the early 1970s remained intact until 1995. Most of those promoters sold out to SFX (later Clear Channel, now LiveNation), and Jerry Garcia's death likely played a big part in those promoters' decisions to sell.
Jim Koplik had gotten his start as a promoter in college, putting on a Steppenwolf concert in 1968 at Ohio State when he was a student. Around 1972 he teamed up with Shelly Finkel to form Cable Music. Finkel was a bit older, while Koplik was the "house hippie," a common enough arrangement in concert promotion at the time. Entrepreneurs in their 30s who knew the business side were not necessarily able to navigate who was cool and who was not, so they needed a younger partner.
Shelly Finkel (b.1944) wasn't some neophyte in the concert business. In 1967, Finkel (then running a dating service) managed to parlay a job passing out flyers into managing the Action House in Long Island. The Action House was the premier rock club in the region, breaking local bands like Vanilla Fudge and the Vagrants, and also putting on shows by touring bands like the Doors, Cream and the Grateful Dead (on November 9-10, 1970).
The owner of the Action House was an infamous Long Island club owner named Phil Basile. Over the years, he was involved in numerous other Long Island clubs and discos, including Speaks (the re-named Action House), My Father's Place, Channel 80 and Industry. In the late 60s, however, thanks to the Action House, Basile had recognized how much money there was in live rock music. Basile formed the promotion company Concerts East, who put on most of the Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin shows in the East in the 68-70 period (the Grateful Dead opened for Hendrix at a Concerts East production at the Temple Stadium in Philadelphia on May 16, 1970). So while Finkel was just Basile's house manager at the Action House, he would have had plenty of intersection with the larger business of rock promotion.
Phil Basile is an interesting character, alluded to often but still hard to get a handle on. For such a high profile promoter of legendary acts, there is very little real information about him. You can Google Phil Basile yourself, and you'll see that names like Henry Hill (the real-life inspiration for Goodfellas) and Paul Vario (Hill's boss) keep turning up, as does the term "crime family." Draw your own conclusions.
The Grateful Dead concert at Dillon Stadium was one of the first promotions by Cable Music, but they would go on to promote many shows by the Dead and others over the next several years. The most famous concert was at Watkins Glen Grand Prix Racecourse on July 28, 1973, when 600,000 or so fans showed up to see the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead and the Band. In the mid-70s, Shelly Finkel stepped out of the rock business and became a very successful boxing promoter, leaving the rock business to Koplik. Koplik, through his firm Cross Country Concerts, would promote the Dead many times. Finkel would return to the rock business later in the 70s, and ended up working for John Scher at Monarch Entertainment later in the 1980s.
September 15-16, 1972 Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead (Friday-Saturday)
In August 1972, Sam Cutler created Out Of Town Tours, the Grateful Dead's in-house booking agency. Booking agents are like real estate agents, in that they share fees and work together in different regions, and I'm pretty certain that Cutler was still working closely with Ron Rainey. Nonetheless Cutler was now formally making bookings for the Dead and the New Riders on his own behalf.
The Dead ended up opening their Fall 1972 concert at the Boston Music Hall, promoted by Cable Music. The logic suggests that the Dead had already booked two shows on the tour with Cable (Waterbury and Springfield, below). The Dead had booked concerts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center that had gotten canceled (September 15-16), so they looked to add some shows on that weekend. Koplik and Finkel only promoted shows intermittently in Boston, but for whatever reason it seemed to be "open territory." The principal promoter in Boston was Don Law, and the Dead had played for him back in '69 at the Boston Tea Party. As noted above, they would go on to play for Law in Boston almost exclusively from 1974 onwards. However, although Law was active in Boston and at The Music Hall during this period, the Dead did not play for him. In the territorial world of 70s concert promotion, this is curious indeed.
September 23-24, 1972 Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT: Grateful Dead (Saturday-Sunday)
The Grateful Dead played again for Cable Music for two nights at the Palace Theater in Waterbury. Since the New Riders had played there in May (see above), the venue would have passed muster. Two nights of the Dead at the Palace was a good booking, since fans could come from many directions.
For this tour, the Grateful Dead had a screwy schedule. After the initial weekend in Boston, they had played Sunday night (September 17) in Baltimore, then Tuesday (September 19) in Jersey City (at Roosevelt Stadium) and Thursday (September 21) at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Friday night, Jerry Garcia was playing a benefit in Berkeley, so he had to fly home, jam out with Merl Saunders and fly back. Meanwhile, the equipment truck would have made a leisurely 200-mile trip from Philly to Waterbury in time for a Saturday-and-Sunday booking.
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| Springfield Civic Center, at 1277 Main St, sometime in the 1970s |
October 2, 1972 Civic Center, Springfield, MA: Grateful Dead (Monday)
The Grateful Dead ended the Northeastern leg of their Fall '72 tour on a Monday night with their first concert at Springfield Civic Center. Once again they were playing for Cable Music. The Springfield Civic Center, at 1277 Main Street, had a capacity of around 8,000 (possibly up to 10,000) for concerts. From 1972-1994, it was the home of the Springfield Indians of the American Hockey League. The building is still active, now known as the MassMutual Center, and the current home of the Springfield Thunderbirds (the St. Louis Blues AHL franchise).
Springfield had a population of about 155,000. Like Waterbury, had been a thriving industrial area in the first part of the 20th century, but it had started to decline economically at the end of the 1960s. This decline would continue throughout the '90s. The Springfield Civic Center had just opened, on September 5, 1972, and the Cable Concert Grateful Dead show would have been one of the first rock concerts at the venue. According to eyewitness Dennis McNally (this show was his first Dead concert), the 1972 show was not anywhere close to full. This isn't surprising--it was a Monday night, in an area where the Grateful Dead hadn't played. Still, the band would return in March of the next year, so ticket sales must have met expectations.
The Monday night booking is a little peculiar. The band had three nights in Jersey City (September 26-28), and then a Saturday show (September 30) at American University at Washington, DC. The DC show was actually a free concert, but since it rained the show is hardly remembered. I am fairly certain, however, that although the concert was free, the Grateful Dead got paid by the University. Nonetheless, most weeknight shows were between weekend gigs, and the Dead booked a Monday night show in Springfield as their last show on the tour. The payday must have been worth it, and in any case, the band returned numerous times.
As another footnote, the night before the Dead concert (October 1), Roberta Flack was the headline act. Flack, a conservatory-trained pianist, had scored a huge hit with "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." For the Flack show, the sound was provided by an old Grateful Dead pal, former Fleetwood Mac soundman Stuart "Dinky" Dawson. In his memoir Life On The Road (with Carter Alan, Billboard Books 1998), Dawson describes in detail how he was visited at the board by Jerry Garcia and Owsley Stanley. The pair were checking out Dawson's sound system in preparation for building the Wall Of Sound (I wrote about the encounter at some length).
Springfield is just 30 miles north of Hartford, and they shared the same radio market. The dominant FM station at the time was WHCN out of Hartford, a "sister station" to WBCN in Boston. Broadly speaking, the two shows in Springfield were the first indoor shows for the Grateful Dead in the Hartford/Springfield market, since they had played outdoors at Dillon Stadium. The Dead would play the Springfield Civic Center 10 times (through 1985), but its more accurate to include Hartford and Springfield as the same market. The Dead or Jerry Garcia played the much larger Hartford Civic Center (capacity 16,000) 21 times, so for anyone in the region the 1972 Springfield show was the first of 31 indoor dates.
December 3, 1972 [venue], University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Sunday)The Grateful Dead would not play New England again until spring 1973. However, there's still another footnote to the saga. In December, 1972, the New Riders of The Purple Sage had released their third album on Columbia, Gypsy Cowboy. They were touring the East Coast in support, and Sam Cutler had organized Out Of Town tours and was now booking the band. Cutler had figured out in 1970 and '71 that East Coast colleges had entertainment budgets and students anxious to attend, so he booked the New Riders at numerous colleges. The strategy ultimately worked pretty well. Just as importantly, the Riders effectively flew the Grateful Dead flag at some smaller places, and Cutler kept up all his connections with Eastern concert promoters.
Cable Music booked the New Riders to headline the Boston Music Hall on Tuesday, December 5, so the relationship forged between Koplik and the Dead in the Fall were continued. The New Riders got an enthusiastic review in the Boston Globe (December 6).
Opening act Eric Andersen, also on Columbia, would have been touring behind his album Blue River. Andersen was also a Marin resident, and in fact was Bob Weir's next-door neighbor, which is how he came to help Weir by writing the lyrics to "Weather Report, Part I."
December 7, 1972 [venue] Quinniapiac College, Hamden, CT: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Thursday)
December 8, 1972 Green Hall, Smith College, Northhampton, MA: New Riders of The Purple Sage (Friday)
State Of Play: The Grateful Dead In New England, 1972
The Grateful Dead were unquestionably popular in Boston and New England in 1972, but they hardly played shows in the region. They had played for Don Law back in 1969, and Law was one of the key rock promoters in Boston. Yet they hadn't played for him since. At the very end of 1972, they had booked three shows (plus a New Riders gig) with Jim Koplik, and that would turn out to be a critical relationship for their future career. At the time, however, the Dead were focusing on New Jersey, New York State and greater Philadelphia. New England was just an afterthought. In the subsequent post, reviewing shows from 1973 to '76, we will see how the Dead cemented the relationships with Law and Koplik that would define their future performing history in the region.
Appendix: The Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Live in New England, 1990-95
In the 1990s, the Grateful Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band played many substantial shows in New England.
March 18-19, 1990 Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT: Grateful Dead (Sunday-Monday) CCC/Metropolitan Presents
July 14, 1990 Foxboro Stadium, Foxborough, MA: Grateful Dead/Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians (Saturday) Frank J Russo Presents
September 20-22, 24-26, 1991 Boston Garden, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead (Friday-Sunday, Tuesday-Thursday) Don Law Presents
November 13, 1991 The Centrum, Worcester, MA: Jerry Garcia Band (Wednesday)
November 17, 1991 Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT: Jerry Garcia Band (Sunday) Frank J Russo Presents
November 19, 1991 Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI: Jerry Garcia Band (Tuesday)
September 25-27, September 28-October 1, 1992 Boston Garden, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead (Friday-Sunday, Tuesday-Thursday) CANCELED
September 24-26, 28-30 1993 Boston Garden, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead (Friday-Sunday, Tuesday-Thursday) Don Law Presents
November 8, 1993 Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT: Jerry Garcia Band (Monday) Metropolitan Presents
November 9, 1993 Cumberland County Civic Center, Portland, ME: Jerry Garcia Band (Wednesday)
November 11, 1993 Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI: Jerry Garcia Band (Friday)
November 15, 1993 The Centrum, Worcester, MA: Jerry Garcia Band (Monday)
July 13, 1994 Franklin County Field, Highgate, VT: Grateful Dead/Yousso N' Dour (Wednesday) Metropolitan/Jim Koplik Presents
September 27-29, October 1-3, 1994 Boston Garden, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead (Tuesday-Thursday, Saturday-Monday) Don Law Presents
June 15, 1995 Franklin County Field, Highgate, VT: Grateful Dead/Bob Dylan (Thursday) Metropolitan Presents
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