An Interlude: My Photos of the Grateful Dead (part 1)

As promised, every so often I'll post some photos I've taken through the years. On August 15, 1971 my friend Josh and I went to see the Grateful Dead at the Berkeley Community Theater in Berkeley, CA. We didn't have the greatest seats so before the show began I asked one of the nice 7 foot 400 lb "bouncers" if I might enter the Holy Land known as "Friends of the Dead" (like the first 10 rows or so) to grab a photo or two. Amazingly, Mr. Bouncer let me pass. As I tried to position myself to take a pic of the opening act (The New Riders of the Purple Sage, of course) someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me into a seat in the front row, center. I later discovered this beautiful angel of mercy was in fact the girlfriend of Rock Scully, the Dead's manager at the time. She said the seat was empty anyhow, no reason why it should go to waste. I even later discovered that the seat I had been occupying was in fact being held for Marmaduke, the lead singer of the New Riders. When he came out after his performance he feigned outrage then laughingly told me to stay where I was, he could always sit backstage. So there I was, front and center, literally, for the Grateful Dead. The pic you see here was taken by me at that show. This is just a taste - I'll post more periodically - and actually the ones I'll post later are better than this one, in my opinion anyhow. If I could figure out how to post more than one at a time without Blogger acting up on me, I would. The funny thing is, if you check out volume 1 of the Deadheads' Taping Compendium you'll see other pics (not mine) from the same show. What's funny is they appear to be taken from about the 3rd or 4th row - hey, maybe that's the back of my head in that photo! Anyhow, hope you enjoy this one. Thankfully, Josh did, and he wasn't too upset about being left behind. After the show he and I needed to catch our breath (it was a great, great show), so we plopped ourselves down on the grass across the street from the theater - while sitting there, we saw Phil Lesh exit the venue, his bass case in hand. He walked over to a BMW sitting by the curb, popped the trunk, placed the bass inside, and drove away. Hey, I said to Josh, why not - as far as the band was concerned, this was a home game!
Later this week I'll get back to music posting, with some cover songs recorded by Feist and Everything But The Girl during performances for the Black Sessions, in Paris.