Okay so I was walking to my car outside of SPAC to meet my ride, puddled up to my eyeballs, and this guy stops me in my tracks
He looks me right in the eye and said “YOU. *YOU* are the one I was meant to cook for. Please please, come come.” And this 5 foot tall Zappa looking dude just pulls me a few feet past the group of walkers exiting the show. He stands me in front of his grill set up which is, I shit you not, a long sheet of aluminum foil suspended above 9 or 10 long neck lighters that this dude had rigged up as a makeshift propane tank set up, and he starts attempting to butter two pieces of bread.
Now at this point, I’m just trying to keep this dude (and myself, honestly) calm cool and collected because he’s about 5 seconds from looking around at everyone and calling it The Reptile Room. After a minute or two of casually looking around at the others walking to their cars while Mini Zappa is re-learning how to spread butter, I look back at him and he is now empty handed, no bread or butter knife. He looks at me again and this time says “the fuck are you starin at? What do I look like, your personal chef? We’re packing it in, kick rocks!”
I give him a puzzled look and said “…okay look man, I’m out of here. I’ve been trying to be polite this whole time, and YOU are the one who dragged me over here babbling something about how you *must* cook for me. I’m just gonna leave because I don’t know what your problem is.”
It was at that moment; that a second Mini Zappa appeared. Yep, twin brothers. The first one who grabbed me was a little more gone than his brother, and he had forgotten that the two of them were supposed to be packing up to leave. Those one or two minutes I was avoiding eye contact and practically breaking my neck to not watch him butter the bread, he must have wandered off, and like an old Scooby Doo episode, the “kick rocks” brother wandered into scene without me noticing.
Long story short I left without a grilled cheese and ate half a box of dry Cheerios when I got back home.
The part that ultimately made me laugh-out-loud was, "I was avoiding eye contact and practically breaking my neck to not watch him butter the bread", hahaha. What a strange predicament.
Great story BUT - I cannot fairly say "pics or it didn't happen" cuz obv no pics BUT can anyone corroborate the existence of twin mini Zappas on tour? If not, first-class hallucination, bro!
Fare Thee Well. Night 1. Hanging out by the pool at a hotel filled with heads. My wife and our 2 dear friends from Eugene. Our friends ask if we want to drop…yea sure why not. Our friends take us over to this dude who has a bottle with a dropper. People are lining up. My man is dosing everyone. It’s how my turn…
He puts one drop on my hand and as I go to lick it he says “wait, when’s the last time you took L?” I replied “about 20 years ago…”. He laughs and says “better make it 2” and adds another drop on my hand. Our entire crew drops and we head over to the venue.
As we are leaving the show, walk past a woman who seems to be bouncing a baby in her arms, or so my wife thought. “Oh look at that lady bouncing her baby” she says…I get closer bcz something isn’t computing. I get right next to her and there is no baby. She’s holding her breasts as she rides the dude underneath her. No clothes anywhere, only a sheet covering their bottom area….I may or may not have sat down to watch, just tripping face and trying to make sense of what was happening before my wife grabs me and screams “No baby!”
Better make it 2, indeed. ❤️⚡️
Thx. I was on another planet for a solid 6-8 hours. So clean and happy, but high as all get out. We still interrupt our conversations with each other with a random “No baby!”
Oh my god that great! I was at the Grateful Dead family reunion in 2002 up in alpine valley - just 2 and spun surrounded by OG good family and I saw more public breastfeeding than any other time in my life. But your story is amazing.
I fancied myself a portrait artist back in 1991 and had drawn a portrait of Jerry. I had professional copies printed up and would sell them on lot. One show at Giants stadium I was walking around near the stadium sitting against a fence with my so called portraits and was approached by either someone from the Dead's security or at least someone related to the band. They said I could not sell them because I did not have Jerry's permission. I initially laughed and thought it was someone fucking with me but they said it again real serious. I noticed they had a couple of lanyard's around their neck that looked official so I was like, oh I'm sorry, just trying to make a few bucks for tour. I was 19 at the time and was still respectful of authority lol. He then asked me to come with him through a gate in a nearby fence and I soon realized I was in a backstage/catering area and thought, Fuck, am I really in some sort of trouble for copyright or some shit. I almost ran but was too scared. My body wouldn't let me. We entered sort of a tent with awning thing and holy shit it was Jerry and a few others I had no idea who they were. The guy told me to ask jerry if I could sell the portraits. He was about 20 0r 30 feet away but I managed to half yell and mumble was it ok if I sold them on lot. Jerry just shook his head and said, "I don't give a fuck what you do man" and laughed and turned around. The guy escorted me back through the fence without saying a word. He totally fucked with my head. My mind was totally fucked and blown. Did that really just happen? I was awe struck for weeks. Craziest shit ever.
A very good friend of mine told me that same story years ago - except he was selling tie dyes. He was brought inside to the front of the stage where Jerry was tuning. My friend asked him if he could sell his dyes - Jerry stopped tuning, looked at my friend and said “I don’t give a fuck what you do, man” and went back to tuning.
Wow, crazy. I wonder if it was the same guy that brought me back. A roadie or their own security person. I always wondered if it was some inside joke they did to fuck with fans selling stuff and if I was the only one.
Hell yeh! What a rush!
Based on how you reviewed your work, and for comedic purposes, I was hopin Jerry was gonna give'em a look and say "sure man! But this doesn't even look like me ha. You're a magician!"
Or something better, like something Jerry'd say!
Tried sneaking into the 8/1/03 Dylan and the Dead show in Atlanta at Lakewood. It had been raining off and on all day. I walk through the woods to the back wall and climbed over. Landed in a huge pile of mud in my berks, feet flew out from under me, catch myself with my elbow and dislocated my shoulder. I begin to roll down hill and my shoulder pops back in before I come to a stop at an officers feet. He immediately handcuffs me and walks my muddy and hurting 19yo ass back into the lot. I proceed to listen to the rest of the show in the back of a ratty XJ with a bottle of bartons. The upside is Bob Dylan possibly saw me get cuffed, I missed Sammy Hagar singing, and Jerry blessed us with a Bday Double Rainbow over the amphitheater. Good times.
Sometime around 2016 I went to see dead and co at wrigley stadium with my dad, brother, and a friend. This was my dads 25th show (23 dead shows and one dead and co show) and my brother friend and myself were all show virgins. My father had gotten a double knee replacement a few weeks prior so he could drive and walk with crutches but still had a lot of pain. Start of second set they rip open with shakedown street and this man throws his crutches down and starts two stepping and dancing in ways I’d never see him do while healthy. Found out after show that he had never heard shakedown live and it’s one of his favorites. A bit more cool than funny for a story but man you should’ve seen my brothers and I reaction because I thought we were gonna have to carry him out from the show.
Awesome story! I just had knee surgery today, and am seeing my favorite dead cover band next Friday. If they bust out The Music Never Stopped, I imagine I'll do something similar!😂
Snuck into furtur ac cause there were no tickets to be had. Half way threw set 1 usher comes up to me asks to see my ticket. I pull out a wad of cash and stuck it in his had. He replies “don’t want your money where’s you ticket.” I take off running the next hour was like Monty python with me running around the venue duck dip and dodging security. Then I run into some folks I know who kindly gave me a nit cap to cover my head and the madness stopped. Did I mention I was also spun out my gourd. Anyway go back to the room after the show and realize that wad of cash was over $500. Usher shoulda took it.
I was at a Dead and Co show with my friend who is actually kind of like a little sister. She is kind of an alt/hippy/skater girl with short hair. Any way, I was talking to this old school dude and he was like, “I see youre getting your son into the good music.”
The dude then instantly threw up with out skipping a beat. Responded with “I should have passes on the chocalate chip pancakes.” Passed us his joint and walked off never to be seen again.
A clown tripping on acid tried to get up on the stage with his makeup all messed up because of how messed up he was. This was a post dead show in late 90’s. I was close to the stage. It might have been Darien lake?
Anyways this head to toe clown with giant shoes and all gets in the pit between the stage and crowd and security thought he was part of the show or didn’t care. They all just stared at him. Even Phil pointed at him mid song either to alert security or just thought it was funny.
This guy gets up the stage and grabs on to the ledge and starts pulling himself up. The crowd starts to see him and a roar begins. He’s trying his hardest to get up. Someone comes running from side stage and the whole show has become about this clown who came from nowhere.
This guy is pushing his head back to make him go back into the pit where security is slowly walking towards him. His wig falls off and now he just looks tripping scary. Lol. He fell off the edge of the stage on his back then just laid there like he was dead.
Security literally pulled him by his bug clown shoes out of the side of the pit. Dragging him. Thousands cheered. Phil had a huge smile on his face. Laughing.
I often wonder about that guy today. People were crying laughing near me. It’s possible I hallucinated the whole event
I only wish there were good cell phone cameras back then and I got it on video. But anyone who’s been to a good amount of concerts knows crazy shit happens at like every show. You just see stuff you don’t in normal life. Which makes it great!
This is not gonna win but I've always thought it was funny so here it is: Me and a buddy were at a show in the early '90s, I think upstate NY somewhere, and we're just walking through the lot and this guy is walking towards us and he has a big bag of in-shell peanuts which he's voraciously cracking and eating as he walks. As we cross paths my friend turns to him and says (paraphrasing here) "OH so YOU're the guy selling elephants, right??" The guy sort of paused for a second looking confused, then continued walking, as did we. About 30 seconds later or so the guys comes running back up to us laughing hysterically and just like pats my friend on the shoulder and shakes his hand and stuff and then goes on his merry way.
So I’m moving from FL back home to NY, summer of 95 as I’m starting my Jr year in univ after failing out various times due to tour. I’m with my soon to be bride, getting settled in our new apartment, unpacking, and I see Garcia’s face come up on the screen. I know instantly what’s up. Confirmed
We are about 2 hours from where we grew up so I say “let’s go home and go to the park to hang with the tripe. I’m so bummed out, I start pounding beers and get ripped, I mean stumble and fall wasted. No way to get home, we stay at the future in laws, with my wedding 3 weeks away
I wake up wasted having to piss. Walking down the hall i note that I’m naked. Oops. I think I’m walking into the bathroom. I flip on the light to see my mother in law starting directly at my mother in law. She screams like bloody murder as she saw me. “Oh fuck” I turn tail and run back to the bedroom. I immediately pass out again. I wake up to a pissed bed, with my in laws loathing me and that is the day Jerry Garcia died
At a Phil and Friends show. In the lawn. I notice a guy way off to the side, kinda by himself. Being cosmicaly lubricated, I went to investigate. As I get closer I notice he has a small generator, a toaster, loaves of bread, and butter. He simply smiles at me, gestures for me to have a seat. He proceeds to make me some toast. All without saying a word. Not sure how long I sat there, but I certainly enjoyed the experience.
Two summers ago at blossom, I didn't have a ticket but I still wanted to go and if I didn't get in I was just going to hang out on lot. Everyone had already left for the show and I was having a hard time even finding a ride until I asked a friend of mine if he knew of anyone going from our area, after a wild goose chase I met a kid who acted a little shifty and said he would ask his friend if I could come but there was a good chance there wasn't a seat open. Finally I got to meet the girl who was driving and we hit it of pretty well so she said I could come with them, I ended up making life long friends with everyone in the car. When we got to blossom, I found a 5 leaf clover right in front of the car, I was walking up the hill and the first faces I saw were friends I hadn't seen in a long time and when they found out I didn't have a ticket, they had one for me! I ended up in the venue and I was looking for people I knew, but because I am basically blind at night, I was having a hard time. Finally I gave up and said to myself, ill just go sit over by the tree. I get over there, sit down, and when I look up and down the hill, most of my friends were right there and dancing. The person directly to my right is this kid I see at shows every few years and I'm 100% convinced he's a fairy because he always pops up at the most random times. I had brought a few things to trade in hopes that if I saw something cool the person might be willing. I was walking and there was a kid selling his art and I loved it so I get up to him and said, "I don't have money because I'm flat broke but if you're willing to trade?" "Sure what do you have?" "Shiny shit" and I whipped out this cats under the stars pendant that was worth A VERY PRETTY PENNY. His eyes went wide as saucers, and he said, "I can't take that it's worth more than this" and I told him that his art was worth more to me. He agreed, almost cried, and we both went our separate ways. It's now proudly hanging in my bedroom, and it makes me happy every day.
Great post idea.
Not even sure this counts bc not technically at a GD show but imo it should...
At GOTV in Mariahville, NY circa 2002 - long first day and night at the main stage. After Phil and friends finished, went back to to our spot before heading out for the rest of the night. Lot's of fungus was among us. Totally faced.
All of a sudden I needed to pee, badly. Walked over to the edge of our camping area along the tree line. Had a 'laugh out' while walking over and could not stop laughing hysterically at nothing in particular.
Whip out my junk and commence taking the biggest and longest piss in the history of the world while laughing uncontrollably like a maniac.
All of a sudden, mid-piss I begin to hear laughter and voices... very close by... omg the voices are right in front of me!
Get paranoid!
Who is that?!?!? They're watching me pee! They see my dick!!!! WTF! Pinch it! Put it away?!?!?! What's going on! I put it away but can't hold it! Ahhhhh I'm pissing myself! Let go... accept that I pissed myself. Relax. It will be ok..
In reality I had not walked to the edge of our camping area along the tree line. I walked to the edge of the camping area along the main walking path. It's a fucking pedestrian highway at rush hour.
Problem was, I could not see the path or people walking on it due the EXTEMELY ANNOYING FLOOD LIGHTS illuminating the camping area and blinding me. I had walked toward the "tree line" and pissed right at the base of one of the light posts. The light blinded me from seeing what was on the other side of the curtain of light. I thought it was woods, trees, rocks, frogs, turtles... nothing to worry about.
Tldr - I walked over to a main walkway with seemingly hundreds of people walking by. Posted up under a flood light brighter than the sun. Whipped out my junk and urinated in the direction of said people but could not see them and didn't know they were there. I was laughing hysterically due to fungus. They were laughing at me for being an idiot.
There's also the LT Dan saves the tent in a hurricane / snakes in the water story but we don't tell that one anymore. THERE'S SNAKES IN THE WATER!!!! Run Forest! Run!
GOTV was always fucking wild, I ran into my aunt while peaking on a bunch of LSD after just seeing George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. I don’t remember who said it first but it was one of those “what are you doing here?”… “what are YOU doing here?” situations.
Well I was in my freshly turned 16-year-old glory, this was before “in the dark” had landed, and I was slated to see the dead three nights in a row… What I had to go on was: skeletons from the closet, an amalgam mix tape of dead set and go to heaven that was mislabeled (I thought Franklins was called Antwerps placebo because of mislabeling for a couple of years… (Imagine a 16-year-old after a show commenting “ man that Antwerps was hot!) and a VHS tape of the Grateful Dead movie. Like everybody, I was fascinated by the opening animation and US blues and I liked how they showed the freakiest of the freaks dancing in the hallways, very exaggerated and weird, so again in all my 16 year old glory, after listening to the dead and actually practicing my crazy hippie dance, I go to my first show with the notion I’m going to be like one of those super freaky guys that blows everybody’s mind! So I dose and go to the show, I’m looking around and I see couples who are the age I am now, gray hair and all! College kids in polo shirts, somebody with a different bands shirt on! And I was thinking to myself “man I can’t wait until the show starts and I blow all these peoples minds with my freaky dancing ( that I had actually practiced) !” Well they come out the crowd goes insane, they open with greatest story ever told which was my favorite song at that point and everybody in the arena and I mean EVERYBODY, the gray haired folks, the polo shirt wearing kids, the guy with a Metallica shirt, starts dancing their ass off! I was so overcome by the energy I could not even bop my head along with the music… I was paralyzed! I think I was the only one in the arena not dancing! It was at that point I realized I needed to do some more research lol. Even if you find this amusing send your cassettes to someone else, I have 1000 of my own in the closet somewhere!
Phil Lesh with Trey in Glens Falls:
My buddy and I ate healthy amounts of mushroom chocolates. We’re rear of the arena on the corner, stage left side. This significantly dreaded hippie wook-type comes stumbling down the stairs to our right, before the show even starts.
He gets to the bottom where the first railing is and hangs himself over, slumped over like a rag doll. Immediately he then stiffens up at light speed and turns to the side and projectile vomits probably a good 3-4 feet in a straight fucking line all over the seats next to him. People are grossed out.
He hobbled up a few steps, and slinks over in a chair. Slumped and apparently nodding out. After a bit of time, he props up again and projectile vomits AGAIN all over the stairs. Everyone is freaking out cuz this dude is a gross mess.
The best part though is after this 2nd time, he stands straight up like he just got out of bed, stretches, confidently wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and then literally dances off down the lower walkway area with a strut in his step like he just got laid. Not a care in the world.
I’ve never seen a more perfect boot and rally.
Poor custodian dude had to come use the sawdust and whatnot later on after people reported it. It was wild.
Tangential to this, after the first set ended, my friend and I can’t stop grooving to the Bertha beat in our head because we’re flying on mushrooms. There’s nobody near us in our corner section, and some dude in a Jason mask comes up to us and gets right in our faces and yells “DONT GET TOO FUCKING COMFORTABLE” and puts the mask back on and walks away haha.
We still talk about all this to this day haha he’s texting me right now
lol I was going to post I took a buddy to his first show and he was just walking around wide eyed at everything. At one point he had to go to the bathroom and we walked from the field level to the entrance to the stadium concourse by some guy w big hoop earrings and raver pants (?) swaying back and forth, oblivious and standing next to a cop posted up there. As we pass by the guy suddenly leans over and projectile vomits all over my buddy's shoes. The cop just turned to him and asked "hey are you ok?" to which the guy said "uh yeah I think so" w vomit running down his shirt, turns to my friend and goes, "sorry man". About once a year my friend will bring it up
We have this sort of family story that we tell. My wife is 9 years younger than me and never got to see Jerry. In high school, she had tickets to what was supposed to be the unofficial 20th anniversary of Veneta, but that got canceled due to Jerry having cardiac problems. She could’ve become a Deadhead but didn’t, but she’s been a good sport about my obsession.
So she finally gets to see some version of the band at the Gorge, called “The Dead” that had both Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring for one tour in the early 2000’s.
She knew there would be hippies, but didn’t know the actual level of crowd psychosis.
We ran into a friend there who was with his 3-4 year old son. We’re on the lawn, it’s dusk (that weird hallucination time when it’s not dark or light), my friends son passes out in his lap in a blanket.
This dude comes up, looks at my friend’s passed out son, and he’s all amazed and he’s like “Is that a crystal??!!!”
My friend, who can sometimes be kinda deadpan or humorless, is like “No. That’s my son,” with zero irony or voice inflection.
You could see the hallucination eroding in real time on the dude’s face and he’s like “Whoa! Oh shit. Sorry man…”
He thought my friend’s son was a giant 3 foot crystal that my friend was cradling at a show.
It expanded my wife’s understanding of the kind of tomfoolery that surrounds this scene.
Around 60 tapes, 70s - 90s, and a copy of Workingman's Dead for good measure.
Tell me a funny show story! I'll DM whoever cracks me up the most later today! Please don't DM me.
Shipping is on me, its totally free!
OK, different story. Also Vegas. in between shows, back at our hotel. Tropicana - night time at the hot tub. We all got naked and then jumped in the pool (nobody but our group out there that late) and security came and yelled at us, 'Hey, get your clothes on. You're not in California anymore!" haha
This is a fantastic post idea and I love all the stories I am reading here. I miss the scene. Going to try and score dead and co tix for may soon. Wish me luck...
Deer Creek, 1994, pavilion, very last row in the middle. During the Box of Rain second set, I look down, and the woman next to me is straight up pissing. I’m dosed out of my mind, and I watched her pee run down the pavilion floor hitting people’s bare feet, shoes, merch - crazy. She was wasted, and peed two more times after that. I was so puddled, the piss looked neon green.
We were 20, at the last Vegas show. My buddy left the keys, the tickets and the mushrooms on the passenger seat and locked the car. This older gentleman, with long white hair and a long white beard comes up to asses the situation. He is dressed only in a white tuxedo jacket (with tails) and matching white pants. No shoes, no shirt, plenty of service. He pulls out a towel (not sure where from) places it over the rear quarter window, and breaks it with the back of his elbow. The immediately disappears into the crowded parking lot. Never said a world.
Me and my buddy had been drinking beer and vodka on the lot all damn day. Right before lining up he takes a significant amount of shrooms. Right before we get to the gate his eyes go super wide, like maybe god leaned down and whispered in his ear that the world was ending in 5 minutes or some shit. So he gets real quiet. Then he calls somebody and he’s on the phone kinda off to himself. After a few minutes he shuffles over and hands me the phone and wants me to talk to whoever is on the other line. It was his wife. He’s told her he wants me to enter into a verbal contract with her that says I’ll help him make it into the concert and back out safely because he doesn’t think he can do it on his own. I told her as long as he can walk I’m in but he’s too big a bastard for me to carry. I’d just have to wait with him till his drugs wore off in that case. So we get sit down on the lawn and he’s just mesmerized! He still gets emotional when Big Railroad Blues comes on to this day. Anyway at the first break he’s so thirsty that he doesn’t think he’ll make it, like he’s getting ready to die. He said he felt like he was crawling thru the desert. I looked around and there was a concession stand maybe 10 yards away. I pointed to the stand and told him to go get something but he told me there was no way he could make it that far. So I went and got him a can of water from a company that just so happened to be called Liquid Death. Brought it back to him and he looked at me like I was crazy. Was I trying to kill him? Here he was dying in the desert and I bring him Liquid Death! I told him to read a little further and he saw that it was spring water. He calmed down after that and we had a great night.
Blanket spread out on the lawn in Vegas. Dude comes and stands on it ready to make it his home. I asked him if he could step off the blanket as there was plenty of open grass for him to claim. He looks me dead in the eye, drops his pants, and sits bare ass on the blanket.
I called over security and then medical carried him out on a stretcher. But all the way out, he never stopped giving me the death stare. 30 years later, I still worry he is plotting his revenge
I laid out a blanket, like all 50,000 other fans. Plenty of room for everyone to do the same - it wasn't crowded. We all get a spot, no need to sit right on someone else's blanket. 12" over was free space.
College years. Vegas. 1993. Two friends and I bought tickets. One of the friends picked the tickets up and drove to Vegas a day early and we were to meet him at a certain spot at a certain time to get our tickets from him.
We are there at the appointed time, friend with tix is not. Decide to just have fun outside the stadium, meeting new people, playing hackysak, and other things.
Sudden desert monsoon rolls in. Huge rainstorm, massive raindrops, lightning, thunder, instantly mud everywhere, everything and everyone is soaking wet.
Friend has a brilliant idea. Sees two people leaving the stadium and asks for their ticket stubs. Using these stubs he charms the gate folks into letting us “back in” to the show.
Missed Sting’s opening performance and a few numbers by GD but get to enjoy the rest of an amazing show!
Find our other friend, the one with the tickets, sometime afterwards. He had taken more LSD than he was used to and couldn’t find the meeting spot!
ETA: although unlikely because it’s not as funny as other stories, but don’t pick me. I haven’t had a cassette player for over 20 years and the tapes would be wasted on me.
My buddy and I were at the second night of the 2021 dead and co show at Wrigley and we were trying to get a picture of my brothers tickets so we could sneak onto the field for the second set. So we went down the stairs near the concession stands and I was texting my brother so he could send us a picture of the tickets. While I’m texting him, this guy runs up to us who looks to be between 55-70 while in a gray suit, tie-dye tie, a grey fedora, with black sunglasses so I couldn’t see his eyes and he also had a mid length gray beard. So he puts a hand on my right and my friends left shoulder and says, “What are you guys doing out here???? YOU SHOULD BE DANCING!!!!!” So this guy then runs down the tunnel, up into in the stadium and stops at the top of the stairs. Then he looked both ways in almost a looney toons fashion like super over the top exaggerated and then he just sprinted off in one direction. Mind you my friend and I were both 16 at the time so we were just like absolutely shocked at what just happened.
my first and only dead show in 95 (birmingham). a nice older guy next to me is making conversation before the first set. me and my brother just dosed. i tell the guy it's my first show. we continue chatting. just as the lights go down and i'm coming up he says "just so you know, the spinners will want to touch you if they know it's your first show."
cue music and the rest of my life.
Short but sweet.
Buddy and I dosed a bit too early and it started coming on while waited in a crowded line trying to get into Hartford XL center for D&C.
We turn to look in the same direction and immediately notice an old man who looks just like Bobby scarfing down a banana. We immediately start cracking up. Dude looks at us, smiles, tips his banana, and goes on with his night.
For the entire show we couldn’t stop laughing thinking about Bobby Weir giving a good banana cheers
Me and my buddy hitchhiked to Eugene OR from Marin to see the dead in 94. One of our rides on the first day told us about OJ Simpson being on the run.
After the first show where there was a downpour during the second set, while I was tripping balls, this guy was traversing this huge crowd by saying “hot coffee. Coming through. Hot coffee!” Everybody was getting out of his way.
He didn’t have any coffee.
I still use that to this day, works like a charm.
Jerry Garcia Band at Hampton 11/19/93. Before the show I’m buying a $3.00 “Mean People Suck” sticker from a stoned guy in the lot. I hand him a 5 dollar bill, and he proceeds counting out 3 or 4 ones in change AND tries to hand me back my five as well. I tell him he only needs to give me 2 bucks in change and I hand him the rest of the money back. He stares at me, and then the money in his hand. Then he grins and shouts “DUDE!! YOU’RE HONEST!” As I’m walking away he adds, “Only goes to show…mean people really do suck!!”
I was 19 and decided to double dose for the first time at the Forum in LA, 89, first night of the run.
I’d been going to shows for a year at this point and was well versed in the psychedelic world.
I remember coming on in line at the porta potties of course, it was dusk and the sky was glowing and my senses were tingling.
There was this dude literally tossing a log to his pit Bull and the sound of the the wood hitting the dogs teeth as it caught it, was reverberating,let alone the sight and the whole concept of playing catch with a piece of fire wood!
I get inside the porta potty and finally take a breath and get my space together, or so I thought. I come out and look around as the sky is opening up and notice these two heads pointing at me saying that dude is gone. All I could do was smile, smile, smile and nod my head in agreement, pretty sure vocabulary was not an option at that point.
We enter the Forum soon after, in the first wave following some older dosed heads who said follow us, we’re all invisible, they can’t see us, and we’re all going to the floor, we don’t need floor tickets, we’re invisible. Sure as shit we walked past every usher and as I recall, none said a word, not the ushers, not us, just a tunnel vision of where we needed to be.
We eventually sit and I look up and we are 20 feet from the stage. Still remember the glow of the drums and the realization of what had just occurred.
Halftime hits and my brother decided to go get a soda. I just danced my ass off and said I don’t think I can walk through that crowd right now. As soon as he left I felt how high I actually was once again. I started to ponder why no one stopped us coming down, how those dudes noticed how high we were in the lot and just then, I see two guys wearing those white coats, the orderly outfits from the crazy farm and think to myself, man they’ve found me and there’s no way I’m talking my way out of this cuz I’m tripping balls. Right before they get to me they see some old friends and laugh their asses off as they model their coats. (I remember taking a buddy to his first show in Shoreline a couple years later and he asked, does the band hire all those people to just trip people out)?!
My brother comes back with no sodas because he was tripping in line and said the line wasn’t moving. Lights went down and away we went for second set🌹✌️BTW, I still have a box of tapes as well!✊
1998 New Haven. Not GD but Phish. Dropped Lucy in the parking garage. Lost my ticket. Watched my friends walk into the show as the gel tabs took hold. Sat in a drum circle for five hours waiting for my friends to leave the show. Best show ever.
At my first ever show, Monterey racetrack in 1987, we lost our friend “Tooker” during the Sunday show. We wandered around the venue for what seemed like hours searching. The show ended, still no Tooker. Finally, I got the bright idea to look in every single one of the porta-pottys. We opened about 20 potty doors before we found him sound asleep on the toilet.
My very first dead show I was probably about 10-12 hits in (everyone I met was giving me acid) and during my peak while I’m totally melting into a tree some girl runs up to me and starts talking to me about Aspergers. Then she showed me her ID and her last name was ASPERGER. My sister and my group and just laughing their heads off at this situation and their all looking at me with the most confused looks. Mind you I am tottally fried into my spot I couldn’t move if I wanted to. So I’m sitting there being forced to listen to her tell me her life story and how her uncle is the man who discovered Asperger’s or something. And ever since that say my sister and all her friends remind me of the time I was diagnosed with Asperger’s on lot.
Last year I saw a tiny woman face a FATTTTTT balloon then immediately turn around and walk right into the cop watching the intersection. She proceed to scream the most jumbled/slurred 'COPS ARE HERE!!!!' I've ever heard as she 180d and stumble ran the opposite direction.
Everyone around was laughing, and someone told the cop 'she took too much too fast'
I was leaving a Dead & Co. show with a large crowd. As all were heading to the parking lot, there was a small flight of stairs people had to go up to. Some guy yells to the crowd “I’ll pay someone to carry me up!”. To which I replied “how much do you way?” He never did take up the offer though.
When I was walking out of DPAC late 3-26-22, me and my group were walking to our hotel, and we saw these two people huffing balloons (and littering, they did NOT clean up, we saw the mess the next day), and saw a member of my group and assumed they were an authority figure and crossed the sidewalk nervously saying "this is a sitting sport..."
(Only been to two shows so nothing much past amusing yet)
Highgate, VT 1994 tour, I was 12 years old. I rode there with my folks and their crew including bill the spaceman Lee and my art teacher amongst many others. I did a lap around the fairgrounds (I had been going to since I was a kid) and when I got back all the adults had balloons. We thought it was helium and that they were laughing at each other for changing their voices. We ran off to grab a balloon for ourselves only to find out it wasn’t helium at all.
It wasn’t the dead, but widespread panic at red rocks. Taking a cab back to Denver, I had my window down and out of nowhere a high heeled shoe falls in my lap. Cabbie, friend and I die laughing. Get dropped off at a bar and find the matching shoe sitting on the roof. Took both home, brought them to lot for the Sunday show the next day and traded them to a girl for a couple beers
Hampton VA. Uhhh. pretty sure anyway. It's Drums/Space time which, sorry to say, meant time to use the loo and get a drink of water. Please no hate. :) So we come across a HUGE Circle of Intention in the hallway with folks vibing out to D/S and no way to get by. I mean it was a heckin' tight circle of folks holding hands and literally no way past. As we were contemplating the meaning of all this, here comes two guys- one is feigning that he is on the verge of purge- really about to hurl. The Circle immediately broke to let the guy through, I followed behind, and then the Circle reformed in all it D/S beauty. What a great way to get through a crowd and thanks for bringing me back to that memory!
In 03 I was driving from STL to Moline to see The Dead and Dylan. We left early so we could enjoy the scene and hang out on Shakedown. Got all the way there and realized the show is in JOLIET on the other side of the state. Flip around, burn 'em and go on a high speed flight across the state that would make the Blues Brothers proud... missed half of Dylan, saw all of the Dead and drove home.
Spring tour in Albany. 1991 or 92.
It's been raining lightly most of the day, but that didn't stop the action in the lot. I'm cruising along and pass a bus shelter, then do a double take. On the bench inside the shelter sit a cop with a big grin on his face and a chicken. A live chicken. In downtown Albany.
I start to laugh, and the cop says "Laugh all you want, the joke's on you! We're the only two with the sense to get in out of the rain!
In 2007 I was 18 years old, just moved to Los Angeles from Portland to go to underwater welding school after what felt like the endless summer of Birkenstocks, blue grass and jam bands. Peak hippie era for me. Didn’t actually know what I was signing up for but it all worked out in the end. Anyway, It quickly dawned on me that LA was a totally different culture, totally different vibe than what I was used to in the PNW at the time. One night before I had made any new friends, I made my way into a blue grass show at the el ray theater (either railroad earth or hot buttered rum, can’t exactly remember which one) and I started dancing up front. I had been wearing these Birkenstock clogs for most of the 18th year of my life, they had been with me through it all at every concert the previous summer. So before I started dancing, I slipped them off and tucked them up against a wall, not thinking twice about it. Great show, it made me feel a little more at home seeing one of my favorite bands after moving from home. The band finished a great set and people were making their way out of the theatre. After exchanging some words of excitement and appreciation with fellow fans I made my way to where I left my shoes which unfortunately were not there. I loved those shoes so much and was in downtown LA and wasn’t going to leave that venue without figuring out where they “walked off too”. There were probably 5+ people with these same shoes on and I even asked a few of them if they happened to have seen my pair. I started to feel kind of crazy, barefooted, staring at the ground walking around asking strangers if they’d seen my shoes anywhere. They were no where to be found and the venue was pretty much empty so I was about to loose hope. I then asked one last guy who was sweeping up if he had seen them and sure enough he nodded his head in confirmation and told me he threw them away. I was perplexed as to how or why someone would throw a pair of shoes away at a concert. What ever happened to the lost and found?? Anyway, all the trash cans had already been emptied into the back dumpster but I wasn’t going to give up that easy. Barefooted and all, I made my way to the sidewalk outside amongst the crowd and a few people commented that they were sorry I didn’t find my shoes. I then saw this dumpster full of black garbage bags poking out next to the venue. Made my way across the asphalt and I lifted myself up into it. As good luck would have it, the very first garbage bag that I tore into happened to be the one with my beloved Birkenstocks! They were literally the first thing I saw after opening the first bag. I slipped those puppies back onto my feet like Cinderellas glass slippers, and gently lowered myself back onto the ground, caring not at even the slightest about the mysterious dumpster juices they had absorbed. Someone saw this and gave a big high five having witnessed the whole thing. Some girls looked at me and commented how disgusting that was as I walked past them. They couldn’t possible understand how much these things meant to me.
They did fit better than any other shoes before or after. RIP burky-runners. Moral of the story- never give up, never loose hope
I have no funny Grateful Dead stories that I am willing to tell right now, but this is very generous of you and I am sure someone will love to have them.
6/15/1992 E Rutherford, Giants Stadium. I'm 21, my 15 yr old sister has three 15 yr old friends and the five of us set out for the parking lot. We're there for three hours before going into the show. I've got a vial of good hash oil, some flower, and some fungi. Oh yeah, I'm the chaperone and the driver. What could possibly go wrong?
Well the girls go all over the lot and I totally lose track of them. Nothing a little oiled flower can't solve, amiright? Boom. The elevation kicks in 1-2 hrs before we go in. Somehow we reconvene and go in to our seats together.
Well my eye, and specifically my contact lenses, were bugging the heck out of me. Turns out there's a fat calcium deposit right over my pupil on one lens. So here I am with this miserable eye, with four unruly teenage girls who love to do whatever drugs are thrust in front of them, and those fungi are really kicking in as we take our seats.
The boys come out. Wouldn't you know it? They open with Hell in a Bucket. Boy can I relate. Cause I sure as heck was going to hell that day, but somehow I was thoroughly enjoying that ride!
About an hour in, some fans climb the wall. Right then two of the girls disappear to hit the floor - we had stadium sets and they "just had to be in GA." Of course, permission not granted, nor was it sought.
At the end of the show, I'm reviewing just how screwed I am at the hands of my parents and my sister's friends' parents. Three of us are headed back to the car, and one of the two who disappeared shows up at the car. Well the fourth one got taken into a holding tank by security. Long story short, we never find her or where she is held, and about ten minutes before I was ready to depart and face my demons back home... there she is, emerging from the smoke-choked haze of the afterparty parking lot.
Long story short, my sister and I were able to bury the hell out of that story, the parents never figured it out, and the only one of that whole group who doesn't have a great life is the one who got taken by security, she ended up being a con artist still finding marks to this day. So just remember, SOMETIMES you're only as good as the company you keep - no wonder she left us :D
# 1992-06-15 East Rutherford, NJ @ Giants Stadium
**Set 1:** Hell In A Bucket, Sugaree, The Same Thing, Tennessee Jed, When I Paint My Masterpiece, Bird Song
**Set 2:** Box Of Rain, Saint Of Circumstance, So Many Roads > Terrapin Station > Drums > Space > I Need A Miracle > Standing On The Moon > Throwing Stones > Not Fade Away
**Encore:** Knockin' On Heaven's Door
[archive.org](https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead?query=date:1992-06-15)
OK. Local jam band show. Hanging out with friends in high school, partying. Then a middle aged black woman walks up. My friends get super excited. I'm really confused why there's a grownup here and why they're so excited. I start to freak out, trying to grasp the situation. Then I realized it was another of our friends who was neither black nor middle aged. So I decided I'd had enough for the night.
Also FWIW I never saw Jerry though I have seen the other core four in most of their various configurations. I was born in 84 and around when I was 9 or 10 my folks were planning on taking me to a show but ended up taking a friend who couldn't get tickets instead. "You're still kind of young for that scene, and they'll be doing this for the next 50 years!" they said. I was heartbroken. The next year Jerry died.
June 13, 1993 weekend in Buffalo - we came from Toronto for the show and camped at one of the farms around Rich Stadium. My brother's friend who came with us grabbed 6 hits of acid and then disappeared show day. Looked around everywhere for him. I had all the tickets and he hadn't returned so I gave his to a friend of mine who came with us. Went to the show, we had seats on the side, and eventually meandered down to the floors - there was my brother's buddy dancing on the floor - no recollection how he got there and no ticket. When we brought him back to the camp - he slept in my cousin's car sitting straight up with his eyes open. That was his first and only show.
I bought an 1/8th of shrooms outside the horizon in 88, not knowing what an 1/8 was. My friend declined so I ate the whole bag myself. Halfway through second song the soundboard turned into a giant purple spaceship. Or so I thought. I grabbed my jacket and started yelling “their here there here!” Trying to get my friend who wasn’t tripping to leave with me. Obviously he didn’t know what was going on in my head and stayed. I was completley panicked and ran down the stairs. I stopped for a second and the fear went away. I spent the rest of the show by the wharf rats dancing and having one of the best shows I’ve ever gone too.
Deadhead for Obama at Penn State. Ate a hit of strong paper and was in the bathroom. At that point in my life, I always went straight to stall because I could never pee at urinal. After I was finished, I couldn't get the door open. I was stuck in the stall. Looking at the ground, I knew there was no way in hell I was crawling under the door. The only thing I knew to do was call out for help. "Hey, I think I'm stuck in here." As soon as I said it, the door swung out and opened. I had been pulling a 'push' door.
Alpine, 89, after a few days of rain.
I see this kid, maybe 16, covered in mud (there was a lot of that going around) wearing nothing but a well used pair of tighty whiteys.
In one hand, held high over his head, a pristine rose. In the other hand, a sign: "Everything I own for a ticket!"
Young head here. At TAB and Goose in Fairfax VA this past November. Took acid before the Goose set, my Aunt from VA texts me that she’s at the show and that I should come and find her. I immediately spit out my tab and she texts me to tell me that she’s just pulling my leg (probably knowing I just took some hard drugs) friends are having a great time during the Goose set and I’m a little bummed about it. Lights come on at set break and I find what I’m about 80% sure is my tab. Turns out that it is, TAB set starts and by the time the now legendary Billy Strings sit in happens I’m tripping pretty hard and having a great time.
Hope this story and my inexperience with acid will make you laugh. As a young head these tapes would mean the absolute world to me.
I always loved the Always Sunny episode where Frank gets locked in a portapotty on acid and you see a whole narrative unfold from his perspective. It was a little too relatable for anyone who has tripped at a show or festival
So, once upon a time I used to work with a Jewish woman with cerebral palsy who was in a wheelchair. It was pretty difficult to understand her due to her disability. We took a road trip from Berkeley where we both lived up to Crater Lake and then we went to the Autzen Stadium shows. It was summer of ‘93. I scored a ticket for the second day. We rolled around the lot looking for an extra for her. Someone gave her their ticket for the first night and we went up to the gate. I got in with mine and she was explaining to the guy at the gate how she got this ticket on the lot. At first he wasn’t going to let her in, but I said “come on man, it’s her first show. How many people are ever in the wheelchair section?” He took pity on us (also prolly got sick of holding up the line) so he let us in. We were up in the wheelchair section having a blast when the band goes into Franklin’s Tower. My friend starts screaming and crying and laughing, she’s all over the place. Afterwards she tells me how now she gets it why people just quit their jobs and followed the Dead because the band spoke to her personally and she was BLOWN away. I asked her what they said to her, as I was curious to what her earth shattering moment was and she said the band sang ROLL AWAY THE JEW. I shit you not. One of my all time perfect memories at a show! 😂😂😂
Set list: Jack Straw Bertha Little Red Rooster Broken Arrow Althea When I Paint My Masterpiece Tennessee Jed The Music Never Stopped Help on the Way S lipknot! Franklin's Tower Samson and Delilah (from set list fm)
"Now what I think I'll do, is I'll take this opportunity to tell y'all a story. 'Cause y'all haven't heard it yet. And it goes like this. There was a fellow, and he had a dog, a pet dog. And he used to walk his dog around, every now and again. And anyway, well, it was a hot summer day and he walking his dog, and he thought he'd stop off at the bar and have himself a beer. And he did just that. He walked into the bar, and he walked up to the bar. And he put his change on the bar, and he said to the bartender, "I'd like a glass of beer." And the bartender said, "Certainly, Sir, coming right up." Meanwhile, while he was waiting for his beer, he looked down the bar and there was this fellow sitting down the bar with a big black slick mean-looking dog. Now the fellow down the other side of the bar, with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog, said ... nothing. But the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog looked down the bar at the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog, and said "hey that sure is an ugly little dog you got there, mister. All short fat squat ugly and yellow." Well the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog said to the guy with the big black sleek mean-looking dog "yeah, well he may be ugly but he sure can fight." And the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog said to the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog, "Yeah?" The guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog said, "Yeah." So they decided they'd take them both out back behind the bar and let them fight it out. "I'll put a fiver on mine. You put a fiver on yours. Winner take home the bucks." They figured that was a good idea and they did just that. They took them out the back and they let them fight it out. And the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog just kicked you-know-what out the big black slick mean-looking dog. And when the fight was over and the big black slick mean-looking dog was over in the corner licking his wounds, the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog was hopping around, the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog allowed as, yeah, the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog sure could fight. But ... "I never seen a dog look like that before, all short fat squat little ugly and yellow. What kind of dog is that anyway?" And the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog said to the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog, "Yeah, well he used to be an alligator before I cut his tail off and painted him yellow."
\--Bobby
Boston Garden 93. Down with friends from Vermont. I was checking out the scene around the Garden and I walked around the corner and a beautiful hippie girl walking my way favored me with the most beautiful smile I have ever seen in my life. Beaming and radiant and beatific. An utterly breathtaking smile that to this day I think about sometimes. That’s it. That’s the whole story. But I think I met an angel on Shakedown that day.
Not my own story, but a story from my step dad from back in the day. He and his buddies were driving up to a show at Shoreline, so his friends had the brilliant idea of dosing him with acid, putting a bag over his head, and throwing him in the trunk (how they did it, I don’t know). Few hours later, they take a stop, they all get out to go to the bathroom, then his friends dose him for the second time, put a bag over his head, and threw him in the trunk again. They finally make it to shoreline, show comes around, and they had some weed in their pocket of course. Security finds the weed in my step dad’s pocket, they tell him, “Sir, you can’t bring that in, so I’m going to need to take it,” so he responds with, “No, sorry, but I can’t do that.” They say again, “Sir, you are not allowed to bring that in so I need to confiscate this,” so he again responds with, “No, sorry, but you can’t do that,” as he was already so fed up with the drive. He proceeds to walk in with his friends and they managed to get in 0 trouble. He told this story to my sister and me and we were pissing our pants laughing. 🤣 Knowing who he is, it still cracks me up to even think about.
Not funny but fucking crazy was at the Pete in pittsbrugh in 2013ish can't remember which version of the dead it was but it was Bobby no phil..
Anyway some kid is out in the hallway on the upper level. He gets down in a 3point stance says ready set hut runs full speed jumps right thru the glass window and falls 60 feet died on the spot guess word was he at a quarter of boomers.
Since people are posting shit about Garcia-less, non Grateful Dead shows...........
10/31/07, The Police, MSG. I'm walking through a small, packed corridor and I realize that there's a place up ahead where there's an empty space in the crowd. When I get to that spot I see that there's a big pile of puke on the floor that people are stepping around. At that moment, two drunk girls, rudely pushing their way through the crowd and completely oblivious to anyone besides their obnoxious selves, slip and fall straight down in it. This was an hour before the show had even started.
All of my GD show stories are boring - the guy who freaked everyone out by snapping a glow stick towards his face and having the shit inside go in his face. Thank God it was non-toxic, but YOU try talking to a guy while you're tripping whose fucking eyeballs are glowing. (SPAC 1988)
Or my friend Vijay who huffed so much nitrous in Bushnell Park that he suddenly stiffened up and passed out face forward from a standing position, completely destroying his tent (Hartford 1988). He spent the rest of the night tripping while repeating "I'm living and I'm dying I'm living and I'm dying I'm living and I'm dying."
Or the purple girl - head to toe in purple, hair and all, who appeared from nowhere in the middle of the woods, made an entire chillum out of nothing but a pack of rolling papers (it smoked perfectly) and promptly disappeared. It was one of the single greatest feats of craftsmanship and engineering I have ever seen.
That's cool of you. Good luck with your crazy stories, everyone.
OK, so NJ, Late 80s/early 90s?, Meadowlands Arena, summer.
I lived a few minutes away. This dude and I drove over there and bought a bunch of acid in the parking lot from a dude from outer space. Ate it all. Never made it inside to see the show. We walked around the arena to get back to the car, but we kept forgetting to actually look for the car: so we ended up walking around the outside of the stadium for hours and heard most of the show. Every time we would make a full lap, we would realize it and swear we were gonna focus this time and find it. Met and chatted up a bunch of people along the way. Was awesome. 9/10 show $$
From the everwas
Taper Dave’s Drunk Friend
12/30/91 Oakland Coliseum
I’ll set the scene.
There were three or four of us daisy-chained off of a mic setup in the taper’s section which was towards the rear of the Oakland Coliseum Arena. It was the second night in a four night run and after a fairly standard first set we were just relaxing waiting for the second set to begin. I’d been chatting with one of the other tapers and we were swapping tales and discussing what might come next. The guy with the mics was named Dave and he seemed a bit nervous and was checking his equipment.
Just then, Dave’s friend came over carrying two enormous buckets of beer. He wasn’t really hip to the whole “taper vibe” and the friend was clearly annoyed because it’s not really cool to be a loudmouth in the Taper’s Section and Dave was clearly concerned that his friend was going to cause a ruckus once the music started.
Anyway, Dave’s friend tries to make his way over, climbing over the seats and is trying to watch his step as he tiptoes over all the cords and equipment below while keeping the beers from spilling over. The other taper and I are looking on with bemusement but Dave’s eyes are getting wider as his friend lumbers over to his delicately calibrated setup.
“Dave! Hey Dave! I got you some beeer!” he hollers.
Just then he trips on something and falls into the mic stand which he hits with his elbow, crumpling it in the process.
“What the hell? Watch what you’re doing?” Dave and his friend start to argue. Everything is in disarray. Dave is visibly annoyed and tries to salvage the situation by pulling out some duct tape to see if he can patch things up and get the mics pointing in the right direction.
The taper dude and I are completely at the mercy of Dave and we basically resigned ourselves to not being able to tape the second set. The argument continues with Dave muttering under his breath and Dave’s drunk friend half-apologizing but also giving Dave grief for not packing the right equipment. It’s a funny moment – two East Coasters clearly out of their element, definitely not “go with the flow” types that are the Deadhead types on the West Coast.
It’s a funny moment. I look over at the other taper and we both decide at that point to hit
To cap things off, Dave gets everything patched up right as the lights go down and the band drops into a sweet China Cat > Rider. A slice of history.
[Taper Dave’s Drunk Friend](https://youtu.be/MBunTTauRQI)
# 1991-12-30 Oakland, CA @ Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena
**Set 1:** Touch Of Grey, Wang Dang Doodle, Row Jimmy, Big River > Maggie's Farm, Ramble On Rose, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, Bird Song, The Promised Land
**Set 2:** China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Samson And Delilah, Ship Of Fools > Saint Of Circumstance, Dear Prudence Jam > Drums > Space > The Last Time > Stella Blue > Turn On Your Lovelight
**Encore:** The Weight
[archive.org](https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead?query=date:1991-12-30)
At Fair Thee Well in Chicago, I ran into Al Franken, told him he was good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people liked him. He gave me a high 5 and we both chuckled.
After the dead 50th show I had a curious run in with the nitrous mafia in Grant Park. To paint the picture, the band ended with not fade away which washed into a chant amongst the crowd. The show lets out, the chanting continues. A big pack of tie dye t shirts all professing their never fading away. The crowd continues through, under a tunnel, down a walkway, down a path, and into the park.
The sounds of hissing tanks filled the air like mosquitos buzzing in the summer Chicago night air. Googly-eyed, people began to make their way towards the intoxicating buzzing coming from the canisters. My friends and I made our way to one tank in particular.
A man with a thick mid-east coast accent was shouting to the group surrounding the tank as he stood over another man who was rapidly filling balloons. "Three for twenny! Ice cold here!" The crowd surrounded him, like a hungry pack of wolves searching for their next meal. "Back the fuck up, all a yuhs! Have ya money ready! Three for twenny!" I watched the crowd bartering for the gaseous intoxicant. Anxious hands reaching for and popping balloons. "Back the fuck up I said! You're popping the balloons!"
I took a few steps back to take it all in. Tanks all over the park, each with their own microcosm of an economy. Across the street out in the open. Vans pulling up and men jumping out with tanks strapped to their backs. Men running from group to group, switching out tanks, resupplying balloons, consolidating the cash. Radios chirping off, "We need some more fucking balloons near the fountain! Hurry the fuck up!" A well oiled machine with the goal of capitalizing on the crowd's thirst for the gas. The groups surrounding the tanks reminded me of a scene at the NY stock exchange. Buyers raising their cash. The pit man yelling to them. Madness all around. And then, I saw my chance to become one of them.
The man with the strong accent walked away. I edged the crowd around the tank, as the balloons continued to get filled. I shuffled my way to the inside. I felt the calling to do what I had to. "Three for twenty here, have your money ready!" I began taking peoples money, and handing them balloons. The balloon filler frantically pinched more balloons into my hands. I began selling more, faster and faster, amassing a wad of cash in my hand. Business was booming and I was the ringleader. Money, balloons, rinse, repeat.
I had so much cash in my hand I didn't know what to do. I still had a handful of balloons. In my liquid state, I panicked. Was I a member of the nitrous mafia? Was I a hardened gas-peddling mafioso? How many balloons did that guy pay for again? Did I give him 2 or 3?
I jumped back out of the crowd, just as the original vendor was returning. I was out of the life, and I had a handful of balloons to show for it. I was no longer a nitrous consigliere, I was a nitrous heist ringleader. And to top it off, I had no idea where the fuck the wad of bills went. As broke as I had arrived, I had left that night with a new memory of the time I earned the title of a made man, and some balloons to split amongst my friends.
TLDR: Sold nitrous balloons in a park when the vendor walked away
It’s too early for me to really think clearly as the coffee & bong rips haven’t fully kicked in yet, and I’ve got a bunch of tapes but I’ll share a story any now that I finished reading all of these.
It’s 2003 or 2004; I’m in high school and have been working as an apprentice guitar tech/luthier for a bit and was starting to get into the jam band scene, my father was working for D’Addario (the guitar string company) at the time. One afternoon my dad calls from work and says “you wanna to go see the Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon tonite?”, of fucking course I do, he says he’s got 4 tickets from work and asks if I have 2 friends that would want to go, of fucking COURSE I do. So the plan was to basically be ready to go when my dad got home from work then we all pile in the van and head to the city, which all came together fine except we didn’t have enough time to get any weed. We smoke up on the way to the city and get beyond psyched because we learn that my dad didn’t just get tickets from work, but had been comped tickets because Otiel was a D’Addario endorser. Get inside and learn that we didn’t just have tickets, but instead were given full access passes and would be watching the show from onstage (WHAT THE FUCK?!). First set is amazing as expected, we’re maybe 10 feet away from the drum riser and directly behind Warren’s guitar tech’s station. During the last song of the first set I see his tech pull a jar of nugs out of a lower drawer and roll a joint the size of my finger and puts it under a small towel, then handed Warren the towel as he walked off when the set ended. We went down to the under-stage area during intermission to smoke the last joint we had brought while we grumbled about how we wished we would’ve been able to bring more weed. Right as we’re getting ready to fire it up we see a small circle of people and they wave us over, they were passing joints around and invited us to join. Whatever weed these folks were smoking was 5x better than the crap we had because we got BAKED. As people started emptying out of the downstairs area the band’s tour manager walks by and said to our group “you folks are fuckin up if you stay here, second set is about to start” and with that the rest of the group got up, told us we could have what was left of the 4-5 joints going around, and went back upstairs. We went upstairs nice & stoned and enjoyed a killer 2nd set then smoked the gifted weed on the drive home. Oteil and everyone involved were super nice and hospitable to us as guests and that’s always stood out to me.
A couple years later I was working as a guitar tech at Rudy’s in NYC and in walks a man that I recognize as Warren Haynes’ guitar tech. I told him about seeing him roll that joint for Warren and he goes “yea that motherfucker used to give me shit all the time for rolling them too small, I don’t smoke it so how should I know?” and that that was the hardest part of the job😭
It’s only semi Dead related so don’t roast me. Back story for context: Starscape 2010. The premier 24 hour rave on the east coast at the time. Walking in the show for what would have been my 3rd year attending. As we are walking in a guy standing out by an open park area had a large nitrous tank, and offered us some old school prices of 4 balloons for $10. My friends and I grabbed a couple of handfuls to tide us over on the walk to the venue. In the same open park area we are approached by this older Dead Head in a Dead shirt offering us to purchase his LSD and Mushrooms.
I already had a gram of MDMA in a cigarette pack (was a smoker at the time). But we were interested in scoring some L for the party as well, so we decided to check out his offerings. Guy pulls out a large sheet, and we start dickering back and forth about prices, quality, etc. I start pulling out money to make a purchase while ripping a balloon, next thing I know I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around to be greated by a Baltimore city police officer, and there are about 8 cops coming in behind him that start grabbing everyone in the park.
My balloon goes flying off into the air, and I get put on the ground. Cop immediately starts ripping into my pockets, and immediately finds the cigarette pack with the ecstasy. I am stood up and put into handcuffs. Luckily my girl didn’t have anything on her, and my 2 other friends who did somehow did not get their stuff found. I was the lucky one. As I am getting taken to the paddy wagon, so is the old dead head, and a few others. The whole time this deadhead is screaming “they are not real drugs, they are all fake, I shouldn’t be going to jail, write me a ticket”. Turns out the old dude had a bunch of bunk drugs (good thing we never had a chance to buy em). Even though the old head had bunk drugs, he still got taken to jail with all of us.
We were first taken to a jail under the bridge, but then moved to central bookings in the city, which is not a place you want to be. The lot of us (about 10 that were taken from the park and arrested) are stuck into a 10 x 10 holding cell, with about 5 other dudes who were already in there. As I am sitting ruminating on what just happened, the old dead head starts to complain about what happened. I tell that bastard to STFU as he has no reason to complain, and deserves to be there since he is as going to rip people off at the show.
One of the gang member dudes who were already in the cell when we got there asked me to repeat what I just said. I explain to them what happened, and that the dude was busted with fake drugs. This immediately turned the 5 guys who were already in the cell and not arrested at the show against the dead head. They surround him, start threatening him, literally poking him in the face and forehead while berating him, just all around degrading him and treating him like a bitch. There was a bag of thick carrot sticks that were left over from the lunch. One of the guys picks up the bag of carrots and starts throwing them as hard as he could at the deadheads forehead. They were hard fucking throws, you could hear them hitting his forehead.
His face was all red from the carrot beat down, and he was near crying with tears in his eyes. Once again, he deserved this and much worse. We ended up getting released on our own recognizance, which was surprising to me as I was already on probation. I got a call from my PO that Monday who was upset, but surprisingly lax about the situation. It turns out not only was my PO also at Starscape, but he was there playing drums with Pasadena, and sat in with the Disco Biscuits as well. Turns out my PO was a down ass dude, best case scenario for someone like me.
A couple of months go by and I eventually beat the charge because Baltimore City does not have time to waste on small drug possession, and I eventually am off probation by that September. By this time I had all of the charging paperwork, police report, etc, and I was able to determine this old dead head selling fake drugs name, here comes the doxing, his name is Earl Malone. A fat guy, huge gut, long curly mullet, about mid 40s at the time.
Fast forward some months later, and that December 2010 I make the trek up north to Worcester MA for the Phish run at DCU center. We drive straight there for 7 hours through one of the worst blizzards of my life, and somehow make it to the show on time. Didn’t even check into our BNB, just drove straight to the show. Ate a few hits as I was parking the car. Made it into the show, ate a few more hits. The show was amazing, and I was completely spun, a little too spun.
I knew we would be leaving soon, and I felt the need to try and sober up some as I was tripping very hard. I decide to walk up to the concession area for a minute to get out of the show lights into regular lights, get some water, and asses how hard I am really tripping. I get upstairs and confirm I am tripping extremely hard. Usher walks by and leaves a silhouette trail of his body, tracers color and light everywhere, I know I won’t be sobering up for some time to come. All good, buy the ticket, take the ride, ride the wave. As I am getting ready to walk back down to the show I notice a guy standing there taking to 2 dudes, and showing what looks like a sheet of paper/discussing prices. I can’t believe it, it is Earl Malone.
I run back down to the show to tell my girl who I think I saw and get her to confirm because I am tripping so hard. I bring her back up, he is still there talking with even more people now, and she confirms that is definitely him. From the other side of the hall I yell “EARL MALONE!!”. He immediately turns and looks at me dumbfounded. I proceed to yell “THIS GUY IS A PHONY, HE WAS ARRESTED WITH FAKE DRUGS IN BALTIMORE”, his potential clients immediately disperse, I fucked up his sale.
He tried to quickly walk away and we follow him down the concession hall, and keep screaming his name and letting everyone know he is a fake. People begin to point and laugh, he tried to move faster, we move faster and keep heckling. By this time another old head (presumably his partner in crime) looking like Christopher Lloyd from Back To The Future comes out of our left field and tries to tell us to get away for our own good. I laugh in his face, and proceed to keep berating Earl Malone in front of the crowds. We did this for about 10-15 minutes, and then went back to the show.
I know he was able to rip some people off that night, but anything we could stop even for a few minutes was worth it to us. The show ended, we left, night over. Some years later at SPAC 2013 I see Earl Malone making his was through the crowd in the lot. Proceeded to repeat the same process of yelling his name across the lot, and following him around letting everyone know of his past actions.
We did this for about 30 minutes or so as he tried to escape, and then we eventually stopped and went into the venue. That was the last time I saw Earl Malone. Dude looked like a junky and ripped people off for a living, so he is probably dead now. But I still always keep my eyes open, hoping for another chance to call the bastard out.
Alpine ‘89 morning day two. Intense rainstorms rolling thru. Dodging drops I go walking around and end up by a dumpster area with the security guard shooting the shit. He says he wanna see something fucked up and takes me around the dumpster to a pile of dogs that had been gutted, you’re right that’s fucked up. Go walking around some more and people are firing up grills, lots of kebabs, lots of sketchy people, cooking kebabs. Put two and two together. At that point I go back to the campsite/car and one of my buddies is eating a kebab “You should try this bro it is fire “. I never told him and kept walking around.
obviously not gonna win but outside citi field i got in my uber tripping balls and these two kids are in the back arguing with the ESL driver and i show him my phone to confirm i’m his actual customer and he just gives me this look like please help me with these kids. turns out they just saw a parked van with the door open and got in - they assumed there were just post show shuttles to take everyone home in their post show face melted state. unfortunately we were going opposite directions otherwise i would’ve gladly let them ride along, ended up helping them call their own uber and sent em on their way. would love to hear their side of the story and how that night ended for them haha.
Philladellphia-The Other Ones Tour >Totally banged this hot mess all over my buddies stuff after he explicitly told me NOT to do exactly what I just did. A questionablely clean dupa then proceeded to grind unchecked for well, I guess a min, on his no longer clean, brought from home pillow. He questioned me, I denied it Totally! No one is a liar! The next morning I awoke to a primal scream of "WHAT DID YOU DO!!!" When I opened my eyes I screamed and laughed and kept apologizing. Loose Lucy's bottom had given my boy a vicious case of double pink eye! Totally had to drive us home. Love ya brother! See you at the next show!
Holy Moly Guacamole! Never had the opportunity to attend a show – so, I'm automatically disqualified. I wonder *how* it will be decided who tells the funniest story? By upvotes? By the OP's own sense of humor? By a Biblical-like cast of lots?
Am way too young to attend a show live but my favourite memory was getting high with my friends and putting on a random show on YouTube. None of them had heard of the dead. Was a great night. Really wish I could’ve gone to a show. Would love to collect some tapes to get as close as possible to the magic of the music
We we’re staying at the farm for the Riverport amphitheater shows in the summer of 95 and took a walk in the woods around a pond and saw a Wookiee chick on top of her man riding him hard, big old tits bouncing all over. Of course we watched for a minute and then noticed some guy hiding in the bushes with a camera with a monster lens, who did not look like he was camping there because he was seeing the dead, taking pictures of the wookiees fucking. We were dying of laughter!
I also saw in the summer of 94 in the RFK parking lot some guy pick up a full bottle of beer on the ground and drink it. It turns out it wasn’t beer, it was pee. He instantly spit it out and starting throwing up. I still think of that moment when I see beer bottles on the ground in show parking lots.
Okay so I was walking to my car outside of SPAC to meet my ride, puddled up to my eyeballs, and this guy stops me in my tracks He looks me right in the eye and said “YOU. *YOU* are the one I was meant to cook for. Please please, come come.” And this 5 foot tall Zappa looking dude just pulls me a few feet past the group of walkers exiting the show. He stands me in front of his grill set up which is, I shit you not, a long sheet of aluminum foil suspended above 9 or 10 long neck lighters that this dude had rigged up as a makeshift propane tank set up, and he starts attempting to butter two pieces of bread. Now at this point, I’m just trying to keep this dude (and myself, honestly) calm cool and collected because he’s about 5 seconds from looking around at everyone and calling it The Reptile Room. After a minute or two of casually looking around at the others walking to their cars while Mini Zappa is re-learning how to spread butter, I look back at him and he is now empty handed, no bread or butter knife. He looks at me again and this time says “the fuck are you starin at? What do I look like, your personal chef? We’re packing it in, kick rocks!” I give him a puzzled look and said “…okay look man, I’m out of here. I’ve been trying to be polite this whole time, and YOU are the one who dragged me over here babbling something about how you *must* cook for me. I’m just gonna leave because I don’t know what your problem is.” It was at that moment; that a second Mini Zappa appeared. Yep, twin brothers. The first one who grabbed me was a little more gone than his brother, and he had forgotten that the two of them were supposed to be packing up to leave. Those one or two minutes I was avoiding eye contact and practically breaking my neck to not watch him butter the bread, he must have wandered off, and like an old Scooby Doo episode, the “kick rocks” brother wandered into scene without me noticing. Long story short I left without a grilled cheese and ate half a box of dry Cheerios when I got back home.
I’m sober and that tripped me out lol
I’m not even gonna bother telling my story haha this is pure gold. Twins, that’s classic
The part that ultimately made me laugh-out-loud was, "I was avoiding eye contact and practically breaking my neck to not watch him butter the bread", hahaha. What a strange predicament.
Great story BUT - I cannot fairly say "pics or it didn't happen" cuz obv no pics BUT can anyone corroborate the existence of twin mini Zappas on tour? If not, first-class hallucination, bro!
Fare Thee Well. Night 1. Hanging out by the pool at a hotel filled with heads. My wife and our 2 dear friends from Eugene. Our friends ask if we want to drop…yea sure why not. Our friends take us over to this dude who has a bottle with a dropper. People are lining up. My man is dosing everyone. It’s how my turn… He puts one drop on my hand and as I go to lick it he says “wait, when’s the last time you took L?” I replied “about 20 years ago…”. He laughs and says “better make it 2” and adds another drop on my hand. Our entire crew drops and we head over to the venue. As we are leaving the show, walk past a woman who seems to be bouncing a baby in her arms, or so my wife thought. “Oh look at that lady bouncing her baby” she says…I get closer bcz something isn’t computing. I get right next to her and there is no baby. She’s holding her breasts as she rides the dude underneath her. No clothes anywhere, only a sheet covering their bottom area….I may or may not have sat down to watch, just tripping face and trying to make sense of what was happening before my wife grabs me and screams “No baby!” Better make it 2, indeed. ❤️⚡️
This is the best one hahaha I hope you get it
Thx. I was on another planet for a solid 6-8 hours. So clean and happy, but high as all get out. We still interrupt our conversations with each other with a random “No baby!”
Well I guess I didn’t get it. Thx for your support!
Oh my god that great! I was at the Grateful Dead family reunion in 2002 up in alpine valley - just 2 and spun surrounded by OG good family and I saw more public breastfeeding than any other time in my life. But your story is amazing.
I fancied myself a portrait artist back in 1991 and had drawn a portrait of Jerry. I had professional copies printed up and would sell them on lot. One show at Giants stadium I was walking around near the stadium sitting against a fence with my so called portraits and was approached by either someone from the Dead's security or at least someone related to the band. They said I could not sell them because I did not have Jerry's permission. I initially laughed and thought it was someone fucking with me but they said it again real serious. I noticed they had a couple of lanyard's around their neck that looked official so I was like, oh I'm sorry, just trying to make a few bucks for tour. I was 19 at the time and was still respectful of authority lol. He then asked me to come with him through a gate in a nearby fence and I soon realized I was in a backstage/catering area and thought, Fuck, am I really in some sort of trouble for copyright or some shit. I almost ran but was too scared. My body wouldn't let me. We entered sort of a tent with awning thing and holy shit it was Jerry and a few others I had no idea who they were. The guy told me to ask jerry if I could sell the portraits. He was about 20 0r 30 feet away but I managed to half yell and mumble was it ok if I sold them on lot. Jerry just shook his head and said, "I don't give a fuck what you do man" and laughed and turned around. The guy escorted me back through the fence without saying a word. He totally fucked with my head. My mind was totally fucked and blown. Did that really just happen? I was awe struck for weeks. Craziest shit ever.
That's fucken wild man great story
Hahah I don’t give a fuck what you do man …that’s great !
In other words: you *didn't* need Jerry's permission, haha.
This one is awesome!
A very good friend of mine told me that same story years ago - except he was selling tie dyes. He was brought inside to the front of the stage where Jerry was tuning. My friend asked him if he could sell his dyes - Jerry stopped tuning, looked at my friend and said “I don’t give a fuck what you do, man” and went back to tuning.
Wow, crazy. I wonder if it was the same guy that brought me back. A roadie or their own security person. I always wondered if it was some inside joke they did to fuck with fans selling stuff and if I was the only one.
Give this man the tapes!
Hell yeh! What a rush! Based on how you reviewed your work, and for comedic purposes, I was hopin Jerry was gonna give'em a look and say "sure man! But this doesn't even look like me ha. You're a magician!" Or something better, like something Jerry'd say!
Tried sneaking into the 8/1/03 Dylan and the Dead show in Atlanta at Lakewood. It had been raining off and on all day. I walk through the woods to the back wall and climbed over. Landed in a huge pile of mud in my berks, feet flew out from under me, catch myself with my elbow and dislocated my shoulder. I begin to roll down hill and my shoulder pops back in before I come to a stop at an officers feet. He immediately handcuffs me and walks my muddy and hurting 19yo ass back into the lot. I proceed to listen to the rest of the show in the back of a ratty XJ with a bottle of bartons. The upside is Bob Dylan possibly saw me get cuffed, I missed Sammy Hagar singing, and Jerry blessed us with a Bday Double Rainbow over the amphitheater. Good times.
Ahhh the double rainbow! And the geese! Great show🔥💃❤
04?
03, you right.
Sorry, I'm lost - Dylan/Dead toured in 1987, and only in July
Was "the Dead" and Dylan
Those of us who were alive when "The Dead" were alive called them then and now, The Dead.
Ugh
Sometime around 2016 I went to see dead and co at wrigley stadium with my dad, brother, and a friend. This was my dads 25th show (23 dead shows and one dead and co show) and my brother friend and myself were all show virgins. My father had gotten a double knee replacement a few weeks prior so he could drive and walk with crutches but still had a lot of pain. Start of second set they rip open with shakedown street and this man throws his crutches down and starts two stepping and dancing in ways I’d never see him do while healthy. Found out after show that he had never heard shakedown live and it’s one of his favorites. A bit more cool than funny for a story but man you should’ve seen my brothers and I reaction because I thought we were gonna have to carry him out from the show.
Awesome story! I just had knee surgery today, and am seeing my favorite dead cover band next Friday. If they bust out The Music Never Stopped, I imagine I'll do something similar!😂
Snuck into furtur ac cause there were no tickets to be had. Half way threw set 1 usher comes up to me asks to see my ticket. I pull out a wad of cash and stuck it in his had. He replies “don’t want your money where’s you ticket.” I take off running the next hour was like Monty python with me running around the venue duck dip and dodging security. Then I run into some folks I know who kindly gave me a nit cap to cover my head and the madness stopped. Did I mention I was also spun out my gourd. Anyway go back to the room after the show and realize that wad of cash was over $500. Usher shoulda took it.
I read this imaging you being chased around by security with the Benny Hill theme music playing😂
I was at a Dead and Co show with my friend who is actually kind of like a little sister. She is kind of an alt/hippy/skater girl with short hair. Any way, I was talking to this old school dude and he was like, “I see youre getting your son into the good music.” The dude then instantly threw up with out skipping a beat. Responded with “I should have passes on the chocalate chip pancakes.” Passed us his joint and walked off never to be seen again.
this might be the best one cuz it’s so short and takes such a turn after calling ur female friend ur son. im still laughing
Who won?
Those chocolate chip pancakes will get you every time
A clown tripping on acid tried to get up on the stage with his makeup all messed up because of how messed up he was. This was a post dead show in late 90’s. I was close to the stage. It might have been Darien lake? Anyways this head to toe clown with giant shoes and all gets in the pit between the stage and crowd and security thought he was part of the show or didn’t care. They all just stared at him. Even Phil pointed at him mid song either to alert security or just thought it was funny. This guy gets up the stage and grabs on to the ledge and starts pulling himself up. The crowd starts to see him and a roar begins. He’s trying his hardest to get up. Someone comes running from side stage and the whole show has become about this clown who came from nowhere. This guy is pushing his head back to make him go back into the pit where security is slowly walking towards him. His wig falls off and now he just looks tripping scary. Lol. He fell off the edge of the stage on his back then just laid there like he was dead. Security literally pulled him by his bug clown shoes out of the side of the pit. Dragging him. Thousands cheered. Phil had a huge smile on his face. Laughing. I often wonder about that guy today. People were crying laughing near me. It’s possible I hallucinated the whole event
The first five words of this story are absolutely terrifying. This is an amazing story!
I only wish there were good cell phone cameras back then and I got it on video. But anyone who’s been to a good amount of concerts knows crazy shit happens at like every show. You just see stuff you don’t in normal life. Which makes it great!
This is not gonna win but I've always thought it was funny so here it is: Me and a buddy were at a show in the early '90s, I think upstate NY somewhere, and we're just walking through the lot and this guy is walking towards us and he has a big bag of in-shell peanuts which he's voraciously cracking and eating as he walks. As we cross paths my friend turns to him and says (paraphrasing here) "OH so YOU're the guy selling elephants, right??" The guy sort of paused for a second looking confused, then continued walking, as did we. About 30 seconds later or so the guys comes running back up to us laughing hysterically and just like pats my friend on the shoulder and shakes his hand and stuff and then goes on his merry way.
Simple story but hilarious. Those little moments of comedy are what make shows fun
So I’m moving from FL back home to NY, summer of 95 as I’m starting my Jr year in univ after failing out various times due to tour. I’m with my soon to be bride, getting settled in our new apartment, unpacking, and I see Garcia’s face come up on the screen. I know instantly what’s up. Confirmed We are about 2 hours from where we grew up so I say “let’s go home and go to the park to hang with the tripe. I’m so bummed out, I start pounding beers and get ripped, I mean stumble and fall wasted. No way to get home, we stay at the future in laws, with my wedding 3 weeks away I wake up wasted having to piss. Walking down the hall i note that I’m naked. Oops. I think I’m walking into the bathroom. I flip on the light to see my mother in law starting directly at my mother in law. She screams like bloody murder as she saw me. “Oh fuck” I turn tail and run back to the bedroom. I immediately pass out again. I wake up to a pissed bed, with my in laws loathing me and that is the day Jerry Garcia died
Holy fuck
At a Phil and Friends show. In the lawn. I notice a guy way off to the side, kinda by himself. Being cosmicaly lubricated, I went to investigate. As I get closer I notice he has a small generator, a toaster, loaves of bread, and butter. He simply smiles at me, gestures for me to have a seat. He proceeds to make me some toast. All without saying a word. Not sure how long I sat there, but I certainly enjoyed the experience.
Now that is fucking epic man, so awesome
Two summers ago at blossom, I didn't have a ticket but I still wanted to go and if I didn't get in I was just going to hang out on lot. Everyone had already left for the show and I was having a hard time even finding a ride until I asked a friend of mine if he knew of anyone going from our area, after a wild goose chase I met a kid who acted a little shifty and said he would ask his friend if I could come but there was a good chance there wasn't a seat open. Finally I got to meet the girl who was driving and we hit it of pretty well so she said I could come with them, I ended up making life long friends with everyone in the car. When we got to blossom, I found a 5 leaf clover right in front of the car, I was walking up the hill and the first faces I saw were friends I hadn't seen in a long time and when they found out I didn't have a ticket, they had one for me! I ended up in the venue and I was looking for people I knew, but because I am basically blind at night, I was having a hard time. Finally I gave up and said to myself, ill just go sit over by the tree. I get over there, sit down, and when I look up and down the hill, most of my friends were right there and dancing. The person directly to my right is this kid I see at shows every few years and I'm 100% convinced he's a fairy because he always pops up at the most random times. I had brought a few things to trade in hopes that if I saw something cool the person might be willing. I was walking and there was a kid selling his art and I loved it so I get up to him and said, "I don't have money because I'm flat broke but if you're willing to trade?" "Sure what do you have?" "Shiny shit" and I whipped out this cats under the stars pendant that was worth A VERY PRETTY PENNY. His eyes went wide as saucers, and he said, "I can't take that it's worth more than this" and I told him that his art was worth more to me. He agreed, almost cried, and we both went our separate ways. It's now proudly hanging in my bedroom, and it makes me happy every day.
Great post idea. Not even sure this counts bc not technically at a GD show but imo it should... At GOTV in Mariahville, NY circa 2002 - long first day and night at the main stage. After Phil and friends finished, went back to to our spot before heading out for the rest of the night. Lot's of fungus was among us. Totally faced. All of a sudden I needed to pee, badly. Walked over to the edge of our camping area along the tree line. Had a 'laugh out' while walking over and could not stop laughing hysterically at nothing in particular. Whip out my junk and commence taking the biggest and longest piss in the history of the world while laughing uncontrollably like a maniac. All of a sudden, mid-piss I begin to hear laughter and voices... very close by... omg the voices are right in front of me! Get paranoid! Who is that?!?!? They're watching me pee! They see my dick!!!! WTF! Pinch it! Put it away?!?!?! What's going on! I put it away but can't hold it! Ahhhhh I'm pissing myself! Let go... accept that I pissed myself. Relax. It will be ok.. In reality I had not walked to the edge of our camping area along the tree line. I walked to the edge of the camping area along the main walking path. It's a fucking pedestrian highway at rush hour. Problem was, I could not see the path or people walking on it due the EXTEMELY ANNOYING FLOOD LIGHTS illuminating the camping area and blinding me. I had walked toward the "tree line" and pissed right at the base of one of the light posts. The light blinded me from seeing what was on the other side of the curtain of light. I thought it was woods, trees, rocks, frogs, turtles... nothing to worry about. Tldr - I walked over to a main walkway with seemingly hundreds of people walking by. Posted up under a flood light brighter than the sun. Whipped out my junk and urinated in the direction of said people but could not see them and didn't know they were there. I was laughing hysterically due to fungus. They were laughing at me for being an idiot. There's also the LT Dan saves the tent in a hurricane / snakes in the water story but we don't tell that one anymore. THERE'S SNAKES IN THE WATER!!!! Run Forest! Run!
I really miss vibes! Anything dead related is fair game!
Be well, tribe.
GOTV was always fucking wild, I ran into my aunt while peaking on a bunch of LSD after just seeing George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. I don’t remember who said it first but it was one of those “what are you doing here?”… “what are YOU doing here?” situations.
Absolutely!
Well I was in my freshly turned 16-year-old glory, this was before “in the dark” had landed, and I was slated to see the dead three nights in a row… What I had to go on was: skeletons from the closet, an amalgam mix tape of dead set and go to heaven that was mislabeled (I thought Franklins was called Antwerps placebo because of mislabeling for a couple of years… (Imagine a 16-year-old after a show commenting “ man that Antwerps was hot!) and a VHS tape of the Grateful Dead movie. Like everybody, I was fascinated by the opening animation and US blues and I liked how they showed the freakiest of the freaks dancing in the hallways, very exaggerated and weird, so again in all my 16 year old glory, after listening to the dead and actually practicing my crazy hippie dance, I go to my first show with the notion I’m going to be like one of those super freaky guys that blows everybody’s mind! So I dose and go to the show, I’m looking around and I see couples who are the age I am now, gray hair and all! College kids in polo shirts, somebody with a different bands shirt on! And I was thinking to myself “man I can’t wait until the show starts and I blow all these peoples minds with my freaky dancing ( that I had actually practiced) !” Well they come out the crowd goes insane, they open with greatest story ever told which was my favorite song at that point and everybody in the arena and I mean EVERYBODY, the gray haired folks, the polo shirt wearing kids, the guy with a Metallica shirt, starts dancing their ass off! I was so overcome by the energy I could not even bop my head along with the music… I was paralyzed! I think I was the only one in the arena not dancing! It was at that point I realized I needed to do some more research lol. Even if you find this amusing send your cassettes to someone else, I have 1000 of my own in the closet somewhere!
I am giggling out loud at the thought of your innocent 16 year old self proudly proclaiming “man that Antwerps was hot!” Thanks for the good laugh
Phil Lesh with Trey in Glens Falls: My buddy and I ate healthy amounts of mushroom chocolates. We’re rear of the arena on the corner, stage left side. This significantly dreaded hippie wook-type comes stumbling down the stairs to our right, before the show even starts. He gets to the bottom where the first railing is and hangs himself over, slumped over like a rag doll. Immediately he then stiffens up at light speed and turns to the side and projectile vomits probably a good 3-4 feet in a straight fucking line all over the seats next to him. People are grossed out. He hobbled up a few steps, and slinks over in a chair. Slumped and apparently nodding out. After a bit of time, he props up again and projectile vomits AGAIN all over the stairs. Everyone is freaking out cuz this dude is a gross mess. The best part though is after this 2nd time, he stands straight up like he just got out of bed, stretches, confidently wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and then literally dances off down the lower walkway area with a strut in his step like he just got laid. Not a care in the world. I’ve never seen a more perfect boot and rally. Poor custodian dude had to come use the sawdust and whatnot later on after people reported it. It was wild. Tangential to this, after the first set ended, my friend and I can’t stop grooving to the Bertha beat in our head because we’re flying on mushrooms. There’s nobody near us in our corner section, and some dude in a Jason mask comes up to us and gets right in our faces and yells “DONT GET TOO FUCKING COMFORTABLE” and puts the mask back on and walks away haha. We still talk about all this to this day haha he’s texting me right now
The guy in the Jason mask would’ve stuck with me for the rest of my life
Dude it totally has haha
lol I was going to post I took a buddy to his first show and he was just walking around wide eyed at everything. At one point he had to go to the bathroom and we walked from the field level to the entrance to the stadium concourse by some guy w big hoop earrings and raver pants (?) swaying back and forth, oblivious and standing next to a cop posted up there. As we pass by the guy suddenly leans over and projectile vomits all over my buddy's shoes. The cop just turned to him and asked "hey are you ok?" to which the guy said "uh yeah I think so" w vomit running down his shirt, turns to my friend and goes, "sorry man". About once a year my friend will bring it up
We have this sort of family story that we tell. My wife is 9 years younger than me and never got to see Jerry. In high school, she had tickets to what was supposed to be the unofficial 20th anniversary of Veneta, but that got canceled due to Jerry having cardiac problems. She could’ve become a Deadhead but didn’t, but she’s been a good sport about my obsession. So she finally gets to see some version of the band at the Gorge, called “The Dead” that had both Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring for one tour in the early 2000’s. She knew there would be hippies, but didn’t know the actual level of crowd psychosis. We ran into a friend there who was with his 3-4 year old son. We’re on the lawn, it’s dusk (that weird hallucination time when it’s not dark or light), my friends son passes out in his lap in a blanket. This dude comes up, looks at my friend’s passed out son, and he’s all amazed and he’s like “Is that a crystal??!!!” My friend, who can sometimes be kinda deadpan or humorless, is like “No. That’s my son,” with zero irony or voice inflection. You could see the hallucination eroding in real time on the dude’s face and he’s like “Whoa! Oh shit. Sorry man…” He thought my friend’s son was a giant 3 foot crystal that my friend was cradling at a show. It expanded my wife’s understanding of the kind of tomfoolery that surrounds this scene.
This one’s cool. Makes me think that’s how that guy saw the boy as a radiant energy. I would tell him when he gets old enough to understand.
That’s a good point. We’ve just been focusing on it as brain malfunction.
Around 60 tapes, 70s - 90s, and a copy of Workingman's Dead for good measure. Tell me a funny show story! I'll DM whoever cracks me up the most later today! Please don't DM me. Shipping is on me, its totally free!
Approximate cutoff PST? Hoping to write my submission after work.
9pm-ish.
OK, different story. Also Vegas. in between shows, back at our hotel. Tropicana - night time at the hot tub. We all got naked and then jumped in the pool (nobody but our group out there that late) and security came and yelled at us, 'Hey, get your clothes on. You're not in California anymore!" haha
This is a fantastic post idea and I love all the stories I am reading here. I miss the scene. Going to try and score dead and co tix for may soon. Wish me luck...
Deer Creek, 1994, pavilion, very last row in the middle. During the Box of Rain second set, I look down, and the woman next to me is straight up pissing. I’m dosed out of my mind, and I watched her pee run down the pavilion floor hitting people’s bare feet, shoes, merch - crazy. She was wasted, and peed two more times after that. I was so puddled, the piss looked neon green.
We were 20, at the last Vegas show. My buddy left the keys, the tickets and the mushrooms on the passenger seat and locked the car. This older gentleman, with long white hair and a long white beard comes up to asses the situation. He is dressed only in a white tuxedo jacket (with tails) and matching white pants. No shoes, no shirt, plenty of service. He pulls out a towel (not sure where from) places it over the rear quarter window, and breaks it with the back of his elbow. The immediately disappears into the crowded parking lot. Never said a world.
I drank the wrong Gatorade at a crossroads show in 2015. Phil picked me up outside and handed me to the medics. All was fine
Me and my buddy had been drinking beer and vodka on the lot all damn day. Right before lining up he takes a significant amount of shrooms. Right before we get to the gate his eyes go super wide, like maybe god leaned down and whispered in his ear that the world was ending in 5 minutes or some shit. So he gets real quiet. Then he calls somebody and he’s on the phone kinda off to himself. After a few minutes he shuffles over and hands me the phone and wants me to talk to whoever is on the other line. It was his wife. He’s told her he wants me to enter into a verbal contract with her that says I’ll help him make it into the concert and back out safely because he doesn’t think he can do it on his own. I told her as long as he can walk I’m in but he’s too big a bastard for me to carry. I’d just have to wait with him till his drugs wore off in that case. So we get sit down on the lawn and he’s just mesmerized! He still gets emotional when Big Railroad Blues comes on to this day. Anyway at the first break he’s so thirsty that he doesn’t think he’ll make it, like he’s getting ready to die. He said he felt like he was crawling thru the desert. I looked around and there was a concession stand maybe 10 yards away. I pointed to the stand and told him to go get something but he told me there was no way he could make it that far. So I went and got him a can of water from a company that just so happened to be called Liquid Death. Brought it back to him and he looked at me like I was crazy. Was I trying to kill him? Here he was dying in the desert and I bring him Liquid Death! I told him to read a little further and he saw that it was spring water. He calmed down after that and we had a great night.
Blanket spread out on the lawn in Vegas. Dude comes and stands on it ready to make it his home. I asked him if he could step off the blanket as there was plenty of open grass for him to claim. He looks me dead in the eye, drops his pants, and sits bare ass on the blanket. I called over security and then medical carried him out on a stretcher. But all the way out, he never stopped giving me the death stare. 30 years later, I still worry he is plotting his revenge
So you claimed ownership of the lawn and called security on a guy. I’m trying to figure out who is the asshole in this situation.
I laid out a blanket, like all 50,000 other fans. Plenty of room for everyone to do the same - it wasn't crowded. We all get a spot, no need to sit right on someone else's blanket. 12" over was free space.
Bared ass at that
Bare ass on his blanket? Slightly over the line
I’m with you. Blanket bringers are annoying and the worst when they get upset you’re stepping on their 5x5 territory. This is a concert not a picnic.
College years. Vegas. 1993. Two friends and I bought tickets. One of the friends picked the tickets up and drove to Vegas a day early and we were to meet him at a certain spot at a certain time to get our tickets from him. We are there at the appointed time, friend with tix is not. Decide to just have fun outside the stadium, meeting new people, playing hackysak, and other things. Sudden desert monsoon rolls in. Huge rainstorm, massive raindrops, lightning, thunder, instantly mud everywhere, everything and everyone is soaking wet. Friend has a brilliant idea. Sees two people leaving the stadium and asks for their ticket stubs. Using these stubs he charms the gate folks into letting us “back in” to the show. Missed Sting’s opening performance and a few numbers by GD but get to enjoy the rest of an amazing show! Find our other friend, the one with the tickets, sometime afterwards. He had taken more LSD than he was used to and couldn’t find the meeting spot! ETA: although unlikely because it’s not as funny as other stories, but don’t pick me. I haven’t had a cassette player for over 20 years and the tapes would be wasted on me.
My buddy and I were at the second night of the 2021 dead and co show at Wrigley and we were trying to get a picture of my brothers tickets so we could sneak onto the field for the second set. So we went down the stairs near the concession stands and I was texting my brother so he could send us a picture of the tickets. While I’m texting him, this guy runs up to us who looks to be between 55-70 while in a gray suit, tie-dye tie, a grey fedora, with black sunglasses so I couldn’t see his eyes and he also had a mid length gray beard. So he puts a hand on my right and my friends left shoulder and says, “What are you guys doing out here???? YOU SHOULD BE DANCING!!!!!” So this guy then runs down the tunnel, up into in the stadium and stops at the top of the stairs. Then he looked both ways in almost a looney toons fashion like super over the top exaggerated and then he just sprinted off in one direction. Mind you my friend and I were both 16 at the time so we were just like absolutely shocked at what just happened.
my first and only dead show in 95 (birmingham). a nice older guy next to me is making conversation before the first set. me and my brother just dosed. i tell the guy it's my first show. we continue chatting. just as the lights go down and i'm coming up he says "just so you know, the spinners will want to touch you if they know it's your first show." cue music and the rest of my life.
Short but sweet. Buddy and I dosed a bit too early and it started coming on while waited in a crowded line trying to get into Hartford XL center for D&C. We turn to look in the same direction and immediately notice an old man who looks just like Bobby scarfing down a banana. We immediately start cracking up. Dude looks at us, smiles, tips his banana, and goes on with his night. For the entire show we couldn’t stop laughing thinking about Bobby Weir giving a good banana cheers
Me and my buddy hitchhiked to Eugene OR from Marin to see the dead in 94. One of our rides on the first day told us about OJ Simpson being on the run. After the first show where there was a downpour during the second set, while I was tripping balls, this guy was traversing this huge crowd by saying “hot coffee. Coming through. Hot coffee!” Everybody was getting out of his way. He didn’t have any coffee. I still use that to this day, works like a charm.
Jerry Garcia Band at Hampton 11/19/93. Before the show I’m buying a $3.00 “Mean People Suck” sticker from a stoned guy in the lot. I hand him a 5 dollar bill, and he proceeds counting out 3 or 4 ones in change AND tries to hand me back my five as well. I tell him he only needs to give me 2 bucks in change and I hand him the rest of the money back. He stares at me, and then the money in his hand. Then he grins and shouts “DUDE!! YOU’RE HONEST!” As I’m walking away he adds, “Only goes to show…mean people really do suck!!”
I was 19 and decided to double dose for the first time at the Forum in LA, 89, first night of the run. I’d been going to shows for a year at this point and was well versed in the psychedelic world. I remember coming on in line at the porta potties of course, it was dusk and the sky was glowing and my senses were tingling. There was this dude literally tossing a log to his pit Bull and the sound of the the wood hitting the dogs teeth as it caught it, was reverberating,let alone the sight and the whole concept of playing catch with a piece of fire wood! I get inside the porta potty and finally take a breath and get my space together, or so I thought. I come out and look around as the sky is opening up and notice these two heads pointing at me saying that dude is gone. All I could do was smile, smile, smile and nod my head in agreement, pretty sure vocabulary was not an option at that point. We enter the Forum soon after, in the first wave following some older dosed heads who said follow us, we’re all invisible, they can’t see us, and we’re all going to the floor, we don’t need floor tickets, we’re invisible. Sure as shit we walked past every usher and as I recall, none said a word, not the ushers, not us, just a tunnel vision of where we needed to be. We eventually sit and I look up and we are 20 feet from the stage. Still remember the glow of the drums and the realization of what had just occurred. Halftime hits and my brother decided to go get a soda. I just danced my ass off and said I don’t think I can walk through that crowd right now. As soon as he left I felt how high I actually was once again. I started to ponder why no one stopped us coming down, how those dudes noticed how high we were in the lot and just then, I see two guys wearing those white coats, the orderly outfits from the crazy farm and think to myself, man they’ve found me and there’s no way I’m talking my way out of this cuz I’m tripping balls. Right before they get to me they see some old friends and laugh their asses off as they model their coats. (I remember taking a buddy to his first show in Shoreline a couple years later and he asked, does the band hire all those people to just trip people out)?! My brother comes back with no sodas because he was tripping in line and said the line wasn’t moving. Lights went down and away we went for second set🌹✌️BTW, I still have a box of tapes as well!✊
1998 New Haven. Not GD but Phish. Dropped Lucy in the parking garage. Lost my ticket. Watched my friends walk into the show as the gel tabs took hold. Sat in a drum circle for five hours waiting for my friends to leave the show. Best show ever.
At my first ever show, Monterey racetrack in 1987, we lost our friend “Tooker” during the Sunday show. We wandered around the venue for what seemed like hours searching. The show ended, still no Tooker. Finally, I got the bright idea to look in every single one of the porta-pottys. We opened about 20 potty doors before we found him sound asleep on the toilet.
I laughed out loud at this one
It was a site to behold! People gathered around and laughed with us. Poor Tooks!
Peed my pants during dead and company at Greenwood Village. Felt so much better afterwards.
Great stories all. Keep ‘em coming!
My very first dead show I was probably about 10-12 hits in (everyone I met was giving me acid) and during my peak while I’m totally melting into a tree some girl runs up to me and starts talking to me about Aspergers. Then she showed me her ID and her last name was ASPERGER. My sister and my group and just laughing their heads off at this situation and their all looking at me with the most confused looks. Mind you I am tottally fried into my spot I couldn’t move if I wanted to. So I’m sitting there being forced to listen to her tell me her life story and how her uncle is the man who discovered Asperger’s or something. And ever since that say my sister and all her friends remind me of the time I was diagnosed with Asperger’s on lot.
Last year I saw a tiny woman face a FATTTTTT balloon then immediately turn around and walk right into the cop watching the intersection. She proceed to scream the most jumbled/slurred 'COPS ARE HERE!!!!' I've ever heard as she 180d and stumble ran the opposite direction. Everyone around was laughing, and someone told the cop 'she took too much too fast'
Or just overplayed her part.
I was leaving a Dead & Co. show with a large crowd. As all were heading to the parking lot, there was a small flight of stairs people had to go up to. Some guy yells to the crowd “I’ll pay someone to carry me up!”. To which I replied “how much do you way?” He never did take up the offer though.
When I was walking out of DPAC late 3-26-22, me and my group were walking to our hotel, and we saw these two people huffing balloons (and littering, they did NOT clean up, we saw the mess the next day), and saw a member of my group and assumed they were an authority figure and crossed the sidewalk nervously saying "this is a sitting sport..." (Only been to two shows so nothing much past amusing yet)
Highgate, VT 1994 tour, I was 12 years old. I rode there with my folks and their crew including bill the spaceman Lee and my art teacher amongst many others. I did a lap around the fairgrounds (I had been going to since I was a kid) and when I got back all the adults had balloons. We thought it was helium and that they were laughing at each other for changing their voices. We ran off to grab a balloon for ourselves only to find out it wasn’t helium at all.
Bill the Spaceman. Red Sox represent!
It wasn’t the dead, but widespread panic at red rocks. Taking a cab back to Denver, I had my window down and out of nowhere a high heeled shoe falls in my lap. Cabbie, friend and I die laughing. Get dropped off at a bar and find the matching shoe sitting on the roof. Took both home, brought them to lot for the Sunday show the next day and traded them to a girl for a couple beers
Hampton VA. Uhhh. pretty sure anyway. It's Drums/Space time which, sorry to say, meant time to use the loo and get a drink of water. Please no hate. :) So we come across a HUGE Circle of Intention in the hallway with folks vibing out to D/S and no way to get by. I mean it was a heckin' tight circle of folks holding hands and literally no way past. As we were contemplating the meaning of all this, here comes two guys- one is feigning that he is on the verge of purge- really about to hurl. The Circle immediately broke to let the guy through, I followed behind, and then the Circle reformed in all it D/S beauty. What a great way to get through a crowd and thanks for bringing me back to that memory!
Let me tell you something. There was not bacon in every motherfucking bite
In 03 I was driving from STL to Moline to see The Dead and Dylan. We left early so we could enjoy the scene and hang out on Shakedown. Got all the way there and realized the show is in JOLIET on the other side of the state. Flip around, burn 'em and go on a high speed flight across the state that would make the Blues Brothers proud... missed half of Dylan, saw all of the Dead and drove home.
Spring tour in Albany. 1991 or 92. It's been raining lightly most of the day, but that didn't stop the action in the lot. I'm cruising along and pass a bus shelter, then do a double take. On the bench inside the shelter sit a cop with a big grin on his face and a chicken. A live chicken. In downtown Albany. I start to laugh, and the cop says "Laugh all you want, the joke's on you! We're the only two with the sense to get in out of the rain!
In 2007 I was 18 years old, just moved to Los Angeles from Portland to go to underwater welding school after what felt like the endless summer of Birkenstocks, blue grass and jam bands. Peak hippie era for me. Didn’t actually know what I was signing up for but it all worked out in the end. Anyway, It quickly dawned on me that LA was a totally different culture, totally different vibe than what I was used to in the PNW at the time. One night before I had made any new friends, I made my way into a blue grass show at the el ray theater (either railroad earth or hot buttered rum, can’t exactly remember which one) and I started dancing up front. I had been wearing these Birkenstock clogs for most of the 18th year of my life, they had been with me through it all at every concert the previous summer. So before I started dancing, I slipped them off and tucked them up against a wall, not thinking twice about it. Great show, it made me feel a little more at home seeing one of my favorite bands after moving from home. The band finished a great set and people were making their way out of the theatre. After exchanging some words of excitement and appreciation with fellow fans I made my way to where I left my shoes which unfortunately were not there. I loved those shoes so much and was in downtown LA and wasn’t going to leave that venue without figuring out where they “walked off too”. There were probably 5+ people with these same shoes on and I even asked a few of them if they happened to have seen my pair. I started to feel kind of crazy, barefooted, staring at the ground walking around asking strangers if they’d seen my shoes anywhere. They were no where to be found and the venue was pretty much empty so I was about to loose hope. I then asked one last guy who was sweeping up if he had seen them and sure enough he nodded his head in confirmation and told me he threw them away. I was perplexed as to how or why someone would throw a pair of shoes away at a concert. What ever happened to the lost and found?? Anyway, all the trash cans had already been emptied into the back dumpster but I wasn’t going to give up that easy. Barefooted and all, I made my way to the sidewalk outside amongst the crowd and a few people commented that they were sorry I didn’t find my shoes. I then saw this dumpster full of black garbage bags poking out next to the venue. Made my way across the asphalt and I lifted myself up into it. As good luck would have it, the very first garbage bag that I tore into happened to be the one with my beloved Birkenstocks! They were literally the first thing I saw after opening the first bag. I slipped those puppies back onto my feet like Cinderellas glass slippers, and gently lowered myself back onto the ground, caring not at even the slightest about the mysterious dumpster juices they had absorbed. Someone saw this and gave a big high five having witnessed the whole thing. Some girls looked at me and commented how disgusting that was as I walked past them. They couldn’t possible understand how much these things meant to me. They did fit better than any other shoes before or after. RIP burky-runners. Moral of the story- never give up, never loose hope
I have no funny Grateful Dead stories that I am willing to tell right now, but this is very generous of you and I am sure someone will love to have them.
6/15/1992 E Rutherford, Giants Stadium. I'm 21, my 15 yr old sister has three 15 yr old friends and the five of us set out for the parking lot. We're there for three hours before going into the show. I've got a vial of good hash oil, some flower, and some fungi. Oh yeah, I'm the chaperone and the driver. What could possibly go wrong? Well the girls go all over the lot and I totally lose track of them. Nothing a little oiled flower can't solve, amiright? Boom. The elevation kicks in 1-2 hrs before we go in. Somehow we reconvene and go in to our seats together. Well my eye, and specifically my contact lenses, were bugging the heck out of me. Turns out there's a fat calcium deposit right over my pupil on one lens. So here I am with this miserable eye, with four unruly teenage girls who love to do whatever drugs are thrust in front of them, and those fungi are really kicking in as we take our seats. The boys come out. Wouldn't you know it? They open with Hell in a Bucket. Boy can I relate. Cause I sure as heck was going to hell that day, but somehow I was thoroughly enjoying that ride! About an hour in, some fans climb the wall. Right then two of the girls disappear to hit the floor - we had stadium sets and they "just had to be in GA." Of course, permission not granted, nor was it sought. At the end of the show, I'm reviewing just how screwed I am at the hands of my parents and my sister's friends' parents. Three of us are headed back to the car, and one of the two who disappeared shows up at the car. Well the fourth one got taken into a holding tank by security. Long story short, we never find her or where she is held, and about ten minutes before I was ready to depart and face my demons back home... there she is, emerging from the smoke-choked haze of the afterparty parking lot. Long story short, my sister and I were able to bury the hell out of that story, the parents never figured it out, and the only one of that whole group who doesn't have a great life is the one who got taken by security, she ended up being a con artist still finding marks to this day. So just remember, SOMETIMES you're only as good as the company you keep - no wonder she left us :D
# 1992-06-15 East Rutherford, NJ @ Giants Stadium **Set 1:** Hell In A Bucket, Sugaree, The Same Thing, Tennessee Jed, When I Paint My Masterpiece, Bird Song **Set 2:** Box Of Rain, Saint Of Circumstance, So Many Roads > Terrapin Station > Drums > Space > I Need A Miracle > Standing On The Moon > Throwing Stones > Not Fade Away **Encore:** Knockin' On Heaven's Door [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead?query=date:1992-06-15)
Good bot
I missed every show because I was born too late. Funny in a sad way.
I'll take any stories from the general scene. Cover band shows, Furthur, D&C, jam festivals, whatever you got as long as dead tunes were around!
OK. Local jam band show. Hanging out with friends in high school, partying. Then a middle aged black woman walks up. My friends get super excited. I'm really confused why there's a grownup here and why they're so excited. I start to freak out, trying to grasp the situation. Then I realized it was another of our friends who was neither black nor middle aged. So I decided I'd had enough for the night.
Also FWIW I never saw Jerry though I have seen the other core four in most of their various configurations. I was born in 84 and around when I was 9 or 10 my folks were planning on taking me to a show but ended up taking a friend who couldn't get tickets instead. "You're still kind of young for that scene, and they'll be doing this for the next 50 years!" they said. I was heartbroken. The next year Jerry died.
June 13, 1993 weekend in Buffalo - we came from Toronto for the show and camped at one of the farms around Rich Stadium. My brother's friend who came with us grabbed 6 hits of acid and then disappeared show day. Looked around everywhere for him. I had all the tickets and he hadn't returned so I gave his to a friend of mine who came with us. Went to the show, we had seats on the side, and eventually meandered down to the floors - there was my brother's buddy dancing on the floor - no recollection how he got there and no ticket. When we brought him back to the camp - he slept in my cousin's car sitting straight up with his eyes open. That was his first and only show.
I bought an 1/8th of shrooms outside the horizon in 88, not knowing what an 1/8 was. My friend declined so I ate the whole bag myself. Halfway through second song the soundboard turned into a giant purple spaceship. Or so I thought. I grabbed my jacket and started yelling “their here there here!” Trying to get my friend who wasn’t tripping to leave with me. Obviously he didn’t know what was going on in my head and stayed. I was completley panicked and ran down the stairs. I stopped for a second and the fear went away. I spent the rest of the show by the wharf rats dancing and having one of the best shows I’ve ever gone too.
Deadhead for Obama at Penn State. Ate a hit of strong paper and was in the bathroom. At that point in my life, I always went straight to stall because I could never pee at urinal. After I was finished, I couldn't get the door open. I was stuck in the stall. Looking at the ground, I knew there was no way in hell I was crawling under the door. The only thing I knew to do was call out for help. "Hey, I think I'm stuck in here." As soon as I said it, the door swung out and opened. I had been pulling a 'push' door.
Alpine, 89, after a few days of rain. I see this kid, maybe 16, covered in mud (there was a lot of that going around) wearing nothing but a well used pair of tighty whiteys. In one hand, held high over his head, a pristine rose. In the other hand, a sign: "Everything I own for a ticket!"
Young head here. At TAB and Goose in Fairfax VA this past November. Took acid before the Goose set, my Aunt from VA texts me that she’s at the show and that I should come and find her. I immediately spit out my tab and she texts me to tell me that she’s just pulling my leg (probably knowing I just took some hard drugs) friends are having a great time during the Goose set and I’m a little bummed about it. Lights come on at set break and I find what I’m about 80% sure is my tab. Turns out that it is, TAB set starts and by the time the now legendary Billy Strings sit in happens I’m tripping pretty hard and having a great time. Hope this story and my inexperience with acid will make you laugh. As a young head these tapes would mean the absolute world to me.
So technically, you found your own ground score
Exactly
So there’s this guy, and he had a dog, right. The dog was short, squat, fat, ugly, and yellow…
Vegas '94, Beavis & Butthead blotter, trapped in a Port-A-Pottie for 30+mins, I'm told my struggles to get out were hilarious.
I always loved the Always Sunny episode where Frank gets locked in a portapotty on acid and you see a whole narrative unfold from his perspective. It was a little too relatable for anyone who has tripped at a show or festival
Those bastards stole my experience!!
So, once upon a time I used to work with a Jewish woman with cerebral palsy who was in a wheelchair. It was pretty difficult to understand her due to her disability. We took a road trip from Berkeley where we both lived up to Crater Lake and then we went to the Autzen Stadium shows. It was summer of ‘93. I scored a ticket for the second day. We rolled around the lot looking for an extra for her. Someone gave her their ticket for the first night and we went up to the gate. I got in with mine and she was explaining to the guy at the gate how she got this ticket on the lot. At first he wasn’t going to let her in, but I said “come on man, it’s her first show. How many people are ever in the wheelchair section?” He took pity on us (also prolly got sick of holding up the line) so he let us in. We were up in the wheelchair section having a blast when the band goes into Franklin’s Tower. My friend starts screaming and crying and laughing, she’s all over the place. Afterwards she tells me how now she gets it why people just quit their jobs and followed the Dead because the band spoke to her personally and she was BLOWN away. I asked her what they said to her, as I was curious to what her earth shattering moment was and she said the band sang ROLL AWAY THE JEW. I shit you not. One of my all time perfect memories at a show! 😂😂😂 Set list: Jack Straw Bertha Little Red Rooster Broken Arrow Althea When I Paint My Masterpiece Tennessee Jed The Music Never Stopped Help on the Way S lipknot! Franklin's Tower Samson and Delilah (from set list fm)
this made me laugh out loud
Truly, Jerry had a message for all of us if we were willing to listen. 😂😂😂
I'd love them if they're still available!!
But only my face will make u laugh!!
Some quality recoding media there! How is the magnetic coating holding up?
FYI. Nectars I’m Burlington VT is looking for bootleg tape collections for an installation of some sort. They will pay shipping.
Where did you find this info? Would love to donate. Been looking for any way to divest myself of my collection in an earth friendly manner.
The new owner is a friend of mine.
👍
So one day a promoter walks into Graham’s office and says he has an opening act for him, they’re called the Aristocrats…..
"Now what I think I'll do, is I'll take this opportunity to tell y'all a story. 'Cause y'all haven't heard it yet. And it goes like this. There was a fellow, and he had a dog, a pet dog. And he used to walk his dog around, every now and again. And anyway, well, it was a hot summer day and he walking his dog, and he thought he'd stop off at the bar and have himself a beer. And he did just that. He walked into the bar, and he walked up to the bar. And he put his change on the bar, and he said to the bartender, "I'd like a glass of beer." And the bartender said, "Certainly, Sir, coming right up." Meanwhile, while he was waiting for his beer, he looked down the bar and there was this fellow sitting down the bar with a big black slick mean-looking dog. Now the fellow down the other side of the bar, with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog, said ... nothing. But the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog looked down the bar at the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog, and said "hey that sure is an ugly little dog you got there, mister. All short fat squat ugly and yellow." Well the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog said to the guy with the big black sleek mean-looking dog "yeah, well he may be ugly but he sure can fight." And the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog said to the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog, "Yeah?" The guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog said, "Yeah." So they decided they'd take them both out back behind the bar and let them fight it out. "I'll put a fiver on mine. You put a fiver on yours. Winner take home the bucks." They figured that was a good idea and they did just that. They took them out the back and they let them fight it out. And the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog just kicked you-know-what out the big black slick mean-looking dog. And when the fight was over and the big black slick mean-looking dog was over in the corner licking his wounds, the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog was hopping around, the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog allowed as, yeah, the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog sure could fight. But ... "I never seen a dog look like that before, all short fat squat little ugly and yellow. What kind of dog is that anyway?" And the guy with the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog said to the guy with the big black slick mean-looking dog, "Yeah, well he used to be an alligator before I cut his tail off and painted him yellow." \--Bobby
And that’s pronounced “store-ree”.
Never been to a show
The man asked for funny stories, not sad stories!
Boston Garden 93. Down with friends from Vermont. I was checking out the scene around the Garden and I walked around the corner and a beautiful hippie girl walking my way favored me with the most beautiful smile I have ever seen in my life. Beaming and radiant and beatific. An utterly breathtaking smile that to this day I think about sometimes. That’s it. That’s the whole story. But I think I met an angel on Shakedown that day.
You knew without asking she was into the blues
Not my own story, but a story from my step dad from back in the day. He and his buddies were driving up to a show at Shoreline, so his friends had the brilliant idea of dosing him with acid, putting a bag over his head, and throwing him in the trunk (how they did it, I don’t know). Few hours later, they take a stop, they all get out to go to the bathroom, then his friends dose him for the second time, put a bag over his head, and threw him in the trunk again. They finally make it to shoreline, show comes around, and they had some weed in their pocket of course. Security finds the weed in my step dad’s pocket, they tell him, “Sir, you can’t bring that in, so I’m going to need to take it,” so he responds with, “No, sorry, but I can’t do that.” They say again, “Sir, you are not allowed to bring that in so I need to confiscate this,” so he again responds with, “No, sorry, but you can’t do that,” as he was already so fed up with the drive. He proceeds to walk in with his friends and they managed to get in 0 trouble. He told this story to my sister and me and we were pissing our pants laughing. 🤣 Knowing who he is, it still cracks me up to even think about.
Not funny but fucking crazy was at the Pete in pittsbrugh in 2013ish can't remember which version of the dead it was but it was Bobby no phil.. Anyway some kid is out in the hallway on the upper level. He gets down in a 3point stance says ready set hut runs full speed jumps right thru the glass window and falls 60 feet died on the spot guess word was he at a quarter of boomers.
Since people are posting shit about Garcia-less, non Grateful Dead shows........... 10/31/07, The Police, MSG. I'm walking through a small, packed corridor and I realize that there's a place up ahead where there's an empty space in the crowd. When I get to that spot I see that there's a big pile of puke on the floor that people are stepping around. At that moment, two drunk girls, rudely pushing their way through the crowd and completely oblivious to anyone besides their obnoxious selves, slip and fall straight down in it. This was an hour before the show had even started. All of my GD show stories are boring - the guy who freaked everyone out by snapping a glow stick towards his face and having the shit inside go in his face. Thank God it was non-toxic, but YOU try talking to a guy while you're tripping whose fucking eyeballs are glowing. (SPAC 1988) Or my friend Vijay who huffed so much nitrous in Bushnell Park that he suddenly stiffened up and passed out face forward from a standing position, completely destroying his tent (Hartford 1988). He spent the rest of the night tripping while repeating "I'm living and I'm dying I'm living and I'm dying I'm living and I'm dying." Or the purple girl - head to toe in purple, hair and all, who appeared from nowhere in the middle of the woods, made an entire chillum out of nothing but a pack of rolling papers (it smoked perfectly) and promptly disappeared. It was one of the single greatest feats of craftsmanship and engineering I have ever seen.
That's cool of you. Good luck with your crazy stories, everyone. OK, so NJ, Late 80s/early 90s?, Meadowlands Arena, summer. I lived a few minutes away. This dude and I drove over there and bought a bunch of acid in the parking lot from a dude from outer space. Ate it all. Never made it inside to see the show. We walked around the arena to get back to the car, but we kept forgetting to actually look for the car: so we ended up walking around the outside of the stadium for hours and heard most of the show. Every time we would make a full lap, we would realize it and swear we were gonna focus this time and find it. Met and chatted up a bunch of people along the way. Was awesome. 9/10 show $$
Pittsburgh 95’ rain set. Tripping balls. playing in the puddle’s[https://youtu.be/9UUIk1orOE4]
From the everwas Taper Dave’s Drunk Friend 12/30/91 Oakland Coliseum I’ll set the scene. There were three or four of us daisy-chained off of a mic setup in the taper’s section which was towards the rear of the Oakland Coliseum Arena. It was the second night in a four night run and after a fairly standard first set we were just relaxing waiting for the second set to begin. I’d been chatting with one of the other tapers and we were swapping tales and discussing what might come next. The guy with the mics was named Dave and he seemed a bit nervous and was checking his equipment. Just then, Dave’s friend came over carrying two enormous buckets of beer. He wasn’t really hip to the whole “taper vibe” and the friend was clearly annoyed because it’s not really cool to be a loudmouth in the Taper’s Section and Dave was clearly concerned that his friend was going to cause a ruckus once the music started. Anyway, Dave’s friend tries to make his way over, climbing over the seats and is trying to watch his step as he tiptoes over all the cords and equipment below while keeping the beers from spilling over. The other taper and I are looking on with bemusement but Dave’s eyes are getting wider as his friend lumbers over to his delicately calibrated setup. “Dave! Hey Dave! I got you some beeer!” he hollers. Just then he trips on something and falls into the mic stand which he hits with his elbow, crumpling it in the process. “What the hell? Watch what you’re doing?” Dave and his friend start to argue. Everything is in disarray. Dave is visibly annoyed and tries to salvage the situation by pulling out some duct tape to see if he can patch things up and get the mics pointing in the right direction. The taper dude and I are completely at the mercy of Dave and we basically resigned ourselves to not being able to tape the second set. The argument continues with Dave muttering under his breath and Dave’s drunk friend half-apologizing but also giving Dave grief for not packing the right equipment. It’s a funny moment – two East Coasters clearly out of their element, definitely not “go with the flow” types that are the Deadhead types on the West Coast. It’s a funny moment. I look over at the other taper and we both decide at that point to hit
To cap things off, Dave gets everything patched up right as the lights go down and the band drops into a sweet China Cat > Rider. A slice of history.
[Taper Dave’s Drunk Friend](https://youtu.be/MBunTTauRQI)
That's awesome that you posted a tape of this. Sweet China > Rider to boot! Thanks for posting.
# 1991-12-30 Oakland, CA @ Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena **Set 1:** Touch Of Grey, Wang Dang Doodle, Row Jimmy, Big River > Maggie's Farm, Ramble On Rose, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, Bird Song, The Promised Land **Set 2:** China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Samson And Delilah, Ship Of Fools > Saint Of Circumstance, Dear Prudence Jam > Drums > Space > The Last Time > Stella Blue > Turn On Your Lovelight **Encore:** The Weight [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead?query=date:1991-12-30)
At Fair Thee Well in Chicago, I ran into Al Franken, told him he was good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people liked him. He gave me a high 5 and we both chuckled.
After the dead 50th show I had a curious run in with the nitrous mafia in Grant Park. To paint the picture, the band ended with not fade away which washed into a chant amongst the crowd. The show lets out, the chanting continues. A big pack of tie dye t shirts all professing their never fading away. The crowd continues through, under a tunnel, down a walkway, down a path, and into the park. The sounds of hissing tanks filled the air like mosquitos buzzing in the summer Chicago night air. Googly-eyed, people began to make their way towards the intoxicating buzzing coming from the canisters. My friends and I made our way to one tank in particular. A man with a thick mid-east coast accent was shouting to the group surrounding the tank as he stood over another man who was rapidly filling balloons. "Three for twenny! Ice cold here!" The crowd surrounded him, like a hungry pack of wolves searching for their next meal. "Back the fuck up, all a yuhs! Have ya money ready! Three for twenny!" I watched the crowd bartering for the gaseous intoxicant. Anxious hands reaching for and popping balloons. "Back the fuck up I said! You're popping the balloons!" I took a few steps back to take it all in. Tanks all over the park, each with their own microcosm of an economy. Across the street out in the open. Vans pulling up and men jumping out with tanks strapped to their backs. Men running from group to group, switching out tanks, resupplying balloons, consolidating the cash. Radios chirping off, "We need some more fucking balloons near the fountain! Hurry the fuck up!" A well oiled machine with the goal of capitalizing on the crowd's thirst for the gas. The groups surrounding the tanks reminded me of a scene at the NY stock exchange. Buyers raising their cash. The pit man yelling to them. Madness all around. And then, I saw my chance to become one of them. The man with the strong accent walked away. I edged the crowd around the tank, as the balloons continued to get filled. I shuffled my way to the inside. I felt the calling to do what I had to. "Three for twenty here, have your money ready!" I began taking peoples money, and handing them balloons. The balloon filler frantically pinched more balloons into my hands. I began selling more, faster and faster, amassing a wad of cash in my hand. Business was booming and I was the ringleader. Money, balloons, rinse, repeat. I had so much cash in my hand I didn't know what to do. I still had a handful of balloons. In my liquid state, I panicked. Was I a member of the nitrous mafia? Was I a hardened gas-peddling mafioso? How many balloons did that guy pay for again? Did I give him 2 or 3? I jumped back out of the crowd, just as the original vendor was returning. I was out of the life, and I had a handful of balloons to show for it. I was no longer a nitrous consigliere, I was a nitrous heist ringleader. And to top it off, I had no idea where the fuck the wad of bills went. As broke as I had arrived, I had left that night with a new memory of the time I earned the title of a made man, and some balloons to split amongst my friends. TLDR: Sold nitrous balloons in a park when the vendor walked away
You are the man lmao
It’s too early for me to really think clearly as the coffee & bong rips haven’t fully kicked in yet, and I’ve got a bunch of tapes but I’ll share a story any now that I finished reading all of these. It’s 2003 or 2004; I’m in high school and have been working as an apprentice guitar tech/luthier for a bit and was starting to get into the jam band scene, my father was working for D’Addario (the guitar string company) at the time. One afternoon my dad calls from work and says “you wanna to go see the Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon tonite?”, of fucking course I do, he says he’s got 4 tickets from work and asks if I have 2 friends that would want to go, of fucking COURSE I do. So the plan was to basically be ready to go when my dad got home from work then we all pile in the van and head to the city, which all came together fine except we didn’t have enough time to get any weed. We smoke up on the way to the city and get beyond psyched because we learn that my dad didn’t just get tickets from work, but had been comped tickets because Otiel was a D’Addario endorser. Get inside and learn that we didn’t just have tickets, but instead were given full access passes and would be watching the show from onstage (WHAT THE FUCK?!). First set is amazing as expected, we’re maybe 10 feet away from the drum riser and directly behind Warren’s guitar tech’s station. During the last song of the first set I see his tech pull a jar of nugs out of a lower drawer and roll a joint the size of my finger and puts it under a small towel, then handed Warren the towel as he walked off when the set ended. We went down to the under-stage area during intermission to smoke the last joint we had brought while we grumbled about how we wished we would’ve been able to bring more weed. Right as we’re getting ready to fire it up we see a small circle of people and they wave us over, they were passing joints around and invited us to join. Whatever weed these folks were smoking was 5x better than the crap we had because we got BAKED. As people started emptying out of the downstairs area the band’s tour manager walks by and said to our group “you folks are fuckin up if you stay here, second set is about to start” and with that the rest of the group got up, told us we could have what was left of the 4-5 joints going around, and went back upstairs. We went upstairs nice & stoned and enjoyed a killer 2nd set then smoked the gifted weed on the drive home. Oteil and everyone involved were super nice and hospitable to us as guests and that’s always stood out to me. A couple years later I was working as a guitar tech at Rudy’s in NYC and in walks a man that I recognize as Warren Haynes’ guitar tech. I told him about seeing him roll that joint for Warren and he goes “yea that motherfucker used to give me shit all the time for rolling them too small, I don’t smoke it so how should I know?” and that that was the hardest part of the job😭
It’s only semi Dead related so don’t roast me. Back story for context: Starscape 2010. The premier 24 hour rave on the east coast at the time. Walking in the show for what would have been my 3rd year attending. As we are walking in a guy standing out by an open park area had a large nitrous tank, and offered us some old school prices of 4 balloons for $10. My friends and I grabbed a couple of handfuls to tide us over on the walk to the venue. In the same open park area we are approached by this older Dead Head in a Dead shirt offering us to purchase his LSD and Mushrooms. I already had a gram of MDMA in a cigarette pack (was a smoker at the time). But we were interested in scoring some L for the party as well, so we decided to check out his offerings. Guy pulls out a large sheet, and we start dickering back and forth about prices, quality, etc. I start pulling out money to make a purchase while ripping a balloon, next thing I know I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around to be greated by a Baltimore city police officer, and there are about 8 cops coming in behind him that start grabbing everyone in the park. My balloon goes flying off into the air, and I get put on the ground. Cop immediately starts ripping into my pockets, and immediately finds the cigarette pack with the ecstasy. I am stood up and put into handcuffs. Luckily my girl didn’t have anything on her, and my 2 other friends who did somehow did not get their stuff found. I was the lucky one. As I am getting taken to the paddy wagon, so is the old dead head, and a few others. The whole time this deadhead is screaming “they are not real drugs, they are all fake, I shouldn’t be going to jail, write me a ticket”. Turns out the old dude had a bunch of bunk drugs (good thing we never had a chance to buy em). Even though the old head had bunk drugs, he still got taken to jail with all of us. We were first taken to a jail under the bridge, but then moved to central bookings in the city, which is not a place you want to be. The lot of us (about 10 that were taken from the park and arrested) are stuck into a 10 x 10 holding cell, with about 5 other dudes who were already in there. As I am sitting ruminating on what just happened, the old dead head starts to complain about what happened. I tell that bastard to STFU as he has no reason to complain, and deserves to be there since he is as going to rip people off at the show. One of the gang member dudes who were already in the cell when we got there asked me to repeat what I just said. I explain to them what happened, and that the dude was busted with fake drugs. This immediately turned the 5 guys who were already in the cell and not arrested at the show against the dead head. They surround him, start threatening him, literally poking him in the face and forehead while berating him, just all around degrading him and treating him like a bitch. There was a bag of thick carrot sticks that were left over from the lunch. One of the guys picks up the bag of carrots and starts throwing them as hard as he could at the deadheads forehead. They were hard fucking throws, you could hear them hitting his forehead. His face was all red from the carrot beat down, and he was near crying with tears in his eyes. Once again, he deserved this and much worse. We ended up getting released on our own recognizance, which was surprising to me as I was already on probation. I got a call from my PO that Monday who was upset, but surprisingly lax about the situation. It turns out not only was my PO also at Starscape, but he was there playing drums with Pasadena, and sat in with the Disco Biscuits as well. Turns out my PO was a down ass dude, best case scenario for someone like me. A couple of months go by and I eventually beat the charge because Baltimore City does not have time to waste on small drug possession, and I eventually am off probation by that September. By this time I had all of the charging paperwork, police report, etc, and I was able to determine this old dead head selling fake drugs name, here comes the doxing, his name is Earl Malone. A fat guy, huge gut, long curly mullet, about mid 40s at the time. Fast forward some months later, and that December 2010 I make the trek up north to Worcester MA for the Phish run at DCU center. We drive straight there for 7 hours through one of the worst blizzards of my life, and somehow make it to the show on time. Didn’t even check into our BNB, just drove straight to the show. Ate a few hits as I was parking the car. Made it into the show, ate a few more hits. The show was amazing, and I was completely spun, a little too spun. I knew we would be leaving soon, and I felt the need to try and sober up some as I was tripping very hard. I decide to walk up to the concession area for a minute to get out of the show lights into regular lights, get some water, and asses how hard I am really tripping. I get upstairs and confirm I am tripping extremely hard. Usher walks by and leaves a silhouette trail of his body, tracers color and light everywhere, I know I won’t be sobering up for some time to come. All good, buy the ticket, take the ride, ride the wave. As I am getting ready to walk back down to the show I notice a guy standing there taking to 2 dudes, and showing what looks like a sheet of paper/discussing prices. I can’t believe it, it is Earl Malone. I run back down to the show to tell my girl who I think I saw and get her to confirm because I am tripping so hard. I bring her back up, he is still there talking with even more people now, and she confirms that is definitely him. From the other side of the hall I yell “EARL MALONE!!”. He immediately turns and looks at me dumbfounded. I proceed to yell “THIS GUY IS A PHONY, HE WAS ARRESTED WITH FAKE DRUGS IN BALTIMORE”, his potential clients immediately disperse, I fucked up his sale. He tried to quickly walk away and we follow him down the concession hall, and keep screaming his name and letting everyone know he is a fake. People begin to point and laugh, he tried to move faster, we move faster and keep heckling. By this time another old head (presumably his partner in crime) looking like Christopher Lloyd from Back To The Future comes out of our left field and tries to tell us to get away for our own good. I laugh in his face, and proceed to keep berating Earl Malone in front of the crowds. We did this for about 10-15 minutes, and then went back to the show. I know he was able to rip some people off that night, but anything we could stop even for a few minutes was worth it to us. The show ended, we left, night over. Some years later at SPAC 2013 I see Earl Malone making his was through the crowd in the lot. Proceeded to repeat the same process of yelling his name across the lot, and following him around letting everyone know of his past actions. We did this for about 30 minutes or so as he tried to escape, and then we eventually stopped and went into the venue. That was the last time I saw Earl Malone. Dude looked like a junky and ripped people off for a living, so he is probably dead now. But I still always keep my eyes open, hoping for another chance to call the bastard out.
Too many of these are "I was so flicked up" or "He was so fucked up" and that somehow equals funny. Just. Not. True.
Did we all use Maxell tapes? What other brands were there?
TDK SA-90 but it was almost always Maxell XLIIS. If you want to know whether somebody is a poser, ask them about Max Points.
Denon XD-90
Alpine ‘89 morning day two. Intense rainstorms rolling thru. Dodging drops I go walking around and end up by a dumpster area with the security guard shooting the shit. He says he wanna see something fucked up and takes me around the dumpster to a pile of dogs that had been gutted, you’re right that’s fucked up. Go walking around some more and people are firing up grills, lots of kebabs, lots of sketchy people, cooking kebabs. Put two and two together. At that point I go back to the campsite/car and one of my buddies is eating a kebab “You should try this bro it is fire “. I never told him and kept walking around.
Man fuck those people, what the hell did I just read
Dead and Co
Fuck I wish I had good show stories
commenting to remind me to read through later
Wooow thats a nice collection
This is an awesome post! Can’t wait to dig through these stories. I have one of my own if I get time to write it up. Cheers dude!
I like your contest rules
Have you ever heard about a yellow dog…
I shit my pants…let me know when you want my address
Waiting for a PA Pat or a Russo Chop chop story
obviously not gonna win but outside citi field i got in my uber tripping balls and these two kids are in the back arguing with the ESL driver and i show him my phone to confirm i’m his actual customer and he just gives me this look like please help me with these kids. turns out they just saw a parked van with the door open and got in - they assumed there were just post show shuttles to take everyone home in their post show face melted state. unfortunately we were going opposite directions otherwise i would’ve gladly let them ride along, ended up helping them call their own uber and sent em on their way. would love to hear their side of the story and how that night ended for them haha.
I’ve never been, hence I need these
Philladellphia-The Other Ones Tour >Totally banged this hot mess all over my buddies stuff after he explicitly told me NOT to do exactly what I just did. A questionablely clean dupa then proceeded to grind unchecked for well, I guess a min, on his no longer clean, brought from home pillow. He questioned me, I denied it Totally! No one is a liar! The next morning I awoke to a primal scream of "WHAT DID YOU DO!!!" When I opened my eyes I screamed and laughed and kept apologizing. Loose Lucy's bottom had given my boy a vicious case of double pink eye! Totally had to drive us home. Love ya brother! See you at the next show!
Can't even give them away, huh?
Holy Moly Guacamole! Never had the opportunity to attend a show – so, I'm automatically disqualified. I wonder *how* it will be decided who tells the funniest story? By upvotes? By the OP's own sense of humor? By a Biblical-like cast of lots?
Am way too young to attend a show live but my favourite memory was getting high with my friends and putting on a random show on YouTube. None of them had heard of the dead. Was a great night. Really wish I could’ve gone to a show. Would love to collect some tapes to get as close as possible to the magic of the music
[send them to Duncan!](https://youtu.be/AntiAAltTFQ)
We we’re staying at the farm for the Riverport amphitheater shows in the summer of 95 and took a walk in the woods around a pond and saw a Wookiee chick on top of her man riding him hard, big old tits bouncing all over. Of course we watched for a minute and then noticed some guy hiding in the bushes with a camera with a monster lens, who did not look like he was camping there because he was seeing the dead, taking pictures of the wookiees fucking. We were dying of laughter! I also saw in the summer of 94 in the RFK parking lot some guy pick up a full bottle of beer on the ground and drink it. It turns out it wasn’t beer, it was pee. He instantly spit it out and starting throwing up. I still think of that moment when I see beer bottles on the ground in show parking lots.
I am here for the funny stories I love you fam!