On
Saturday, May 2, the Grateful Dead arrived at Harpur College in
station wagons after driving 130 miles from Alfred State College. The
night before at Alfred, one fan recalled "hanging out with Phil
and Mickey as they loaded the station wagons to split after the
show." Ned Lagin spotted them at MIT a couple days later: “Jerry
was driving a rented station wagon with the guitar amplifiers and
everything in the back.” There was sure to be an equipment truck
driven by the crew as well, but in 1970 a Dead tour was still a
largely DIY operation.
It was
Spring Weekend at Harpur (as it had been at Alfred), and many events
were afoot over the campus. (Note: back in 1965 the campus officially
became the State University of New York at Binghamton, but the
undergrad liberal arts college was still known as Harpur College,
which is the name I'll use here, deferring to tradition.) Students
could attend a raft race, a road rally, a buffet dinner, a Sunday
afternoon picnic, and more.
The
Dead had been booked to play the festivities along with Pentangle and
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band - and later in the week, the
Incredible String Band and James Taylor. The Dead were the most
expensive band: their fee was $4,000, but according to the student
paper, tickets would be $1.50.
One
student said, “Harpur's concert board did its best to bring in
groups that were on the cutting edge of what was happening.” The
concerts were sponsored by the Convocations Committee (the student
events group) and the Student Center Board. Convocations grandly
announced that they were able to offer such low ticket prices because
“the committee has met its budget requirements for the year. It is
able to forego profit necessities.”
On May
1, Pentangle played a two-set show in the men's gym at 8:00, with
reserved seats; Paul Butterfield then played a dance in the women's
gym at 10:30. (Those shows were $1.00 each.) On May 2 the Dead were
scheduled in the men’s gym at 8:30, with no seats. (The student
paper alerted ticket-buyers that "the length of the Dead's set
has not yet been determined." On the same night, the obscure Jam
Factory were playing a dance in the women’s gym, which only cost
fifty cents but was probably not well-attended.
Some
background on the week's lineup:
(This
ticket says $3.00. The newspaper didn’t announce any increase in
price for the concerts, so I’m not sure why the ticket price is
double.)
The
Dead were on a two-week tour, playing mostly colleges in the
Northeast. They'd started the day before, May 1, at Alfred State
College, which had not been very well-attended. One attendee says, "I
think there were maybe 50 people at the show." Another recalls
that Harpur was the “second
show in this format, the first at [Alfred] a flop. They did not have
the supplies or the "spirit" of the crowd on the Dead side
of Harpur.”
On
this tour, the Dead were expanding their usual format. Since February
they had been playing short acoustic portions, usually about six
songs, within their electric shows. But in April they decided to take
another step and open their shows with a whole separate acoustic set,
about an hour long. They practiced these in a few gigs at the Family
Dog:
Not
only that, but they decided to have the New Riders of the Purple Sage
open their shows on the tour, rather than other opening bands as
usual. Although Garcia and Hart had been playing in this group with
John Dawson and David Nelson for the past year, it was still
unrecorded on album and unknown to the public outside the Bay Area,
and the country-rock style with pedal steel was totally different
than what Dead fans might expect.
The
JGMF blog points out that on May 1, the New Riders opened the show,
followed by the acoustic Dead. This turned out to be unwise, as the
already-small audience left in droves.
Philip
Oby recounts how the Alfred audience diminished: "The show
started around 8 PM. Most of the people there at the beginning of the
show were unfamiliar with the Dead and had no idea what they were
getting into. The show opened with...the New Riders of the Purple
Sage...and during the break at the end of a very solid set, the
audience dropped from about 250 people to around 150 hearty souls. I
guess they thought it was country music. The next set was acoustic
Dead... [When it] ended, the band took a break and again the audience
was cut in half, so there were 50 - 75 knowledgeable souls left. By
now it was almost 11 PM... The Grateful Dead came onstage and Jerry
walked up to the mike and said: “I guess all we have left now are
the connoisseurs.”"
Seeing
the audience flee was not something the Dead were used to. So on May
2, they switched to the acoustic Dead – New Riders – electric
Dead set order they would stick to for the next few months. Partly
this may have been to greet the audience with something more
"Dead-like" at the start of the show; and partly it may
have made more sense equipment-wise to set up the louder electric
bands after the acoustic set. But Garcia seems to have seen the new
set order as an artistic concept, building the show from quiet to
heavy music: "We start off with acoustic music and then the New
Riders...and then we come on with the electric Dead...and it's six
hours of this whole development thing. By the end of the night it's
very high." (As reviewer Tom Zito would put it, "Concerts
started with acoustic instruments and gradually built into an
overwhelming electrical wave.")
Soundman
Bob Matthews recorded these shows. (Bear, who usually handled
recording, was legally stuck in California at this point after the
New Orleans bust, so Matthews went out on this tour with the Dead.)
Matthews had been producing the Dead's work in the studio over the
past year, so they trusted his engineering skills, but on the road he
seems to have been content to make a quick rough-and-ready tapemix of
their shows. Oddly, Matthews' tapes survive from the start of the May
tour (May 1-2) and the end (May 14-15), but not from any of the shows
in between, a sad loss.
There
was also a light show, a group called
"ICC Sound Union" from NYC. Not much is known about them
(I'm not sure if they regularly did light shows at Harpur, or just
came for the Dead concert). The newspaper review mentions images and
cartoons shown in the electric set. Steve Rosen, working in the light
show, recalled that “Mickey Hart left his drum set in the gym and
we returned it to him at their motel after the show!”
There
were plenty of Dead freaks around Binghamton. If people didn't hear
Dead albums from their friends or neighboring dorm rooms, they could
perhaps hear them broadcast on WHRW, the student radio station on
campus. Word of the Dead was also percolating around the area from
their NYC shows. One showgoer recalls: "My first Grateful Dead
show... A few months later, I entered Harpur College as an incoming
freshman... I heard about The Dead two years prior listening to
Allison Steel, ‘The Nightbird’ on WNEW radio NYC. Used to stay up
late simply to catch ‘The San Francisco Sound’, the bands she
played on her show. My favorite was The Dead!... The Harpur show was
everything to me."
 |
| https://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/12/west-gym-harpur-college-suny-1092-bunn.html |
The
men's gym at Harpur had just recently been built, opening in 1969.
The gym capacity was 3500, although there's no record of how many
people attended this show. (One attendee says there were "just a
few hundred," which seems unlikely; another says "maybe a
thousand," another says it was "packed.") Sal Caruana,
a concert staffer, recalls that due to the students' dislike of
campus security, "in their place groups of student volunteers
were often asked by event organizers to be ticket takers, ushers and
crowd-controllers if needed, and on the night of the Dead concert
many of the members of the TAU Alpha Upsilon fraternity were serving
in these functions." (At least a couple of the guys who served
as "security" for the show were also volunteers at the High
Hopes Drug Counseling Center at Harpur.)
One memory of working the show from Richard Block: "I was a student at Harpur College in Binghamton back then and had the best work-study job in the world -- I got to do the lighting for this show (and all the other concerts for three years.) They did this show differently; as always it was in our gymnasium, but instead of setting up the stage against the long wall and filling the gym floor with folding chairs, they set the stage up away from the wall to allow room for the Joshua Light Show equipment [sic] doing a rear projection light show behind the stage. Then they just left the gym floor empty for standing. Jerry Garcia asked me not to use our follow spots much on the band -- he said there was enough flood lighting on the stage and since he wanted to see the audience we should light them with the spots. The air was pretty thick up there on the spot light platforms and a number of police officers were roaming the audience, looking for smokers, so we would find one of the officers, zoom the spotlight in on him, the beam narrowed down to the size of his head, and follow him around the crowd until he got annoyed and headed for our scaffold, but somehow there was no one on the scaffold by the time he got there. Without a doubt the best concert we ever had there (and we had some amazing ones.)"
Richard
Wolinsky wrote a review for the school paper (the Colonial News)
describing the show. He set the scene: “Waiting
at the door. Tons of freaks waiting also. Painted. Tripping. Stoned.
The doors open. A mad rush for the floor. Balloons fly through the
air. "Clear for an aisle." "Anybody got any matches?"
"No Smoking." "Anybody want Electric Wine?" Whoo.
Whoo. Screams. A Bird Call.”
Other
memories from setlists.net: “A
cold wet Southern Tier night in a brand new gymnasium. Deadheads
converged from all corners, children played, hippies danced, frisbees
flew and the Hog Farm(?) came off the day-glo buses to do their light
shows (on overhead projectors with colored water).” “I
remember lots of people taking hits from what turned out to be spiked
jugs of wine as we entered.” “It was my first Dead show, but
there were many, many Deadhead veterans there.”
ACOUSTIC
 |
| Acoustic Dead 5/2/70 |
The
tape opens with tuning, chatter, and an excited crowd. Pigpen asks
the audience, “How come things are so strange around here?”
(According to
some listeners, in the background before this Lesh asks, "How
many drops did you put in my cup?" Someone replies, "I put
six." "I'm gonna be so far out!" Lesh says. However, I
can't make this out.)
Garcia
is more concerned with the sound levels: he asks the crowd, "You
people hear these guitars?" then asks Kreutzmann, "Hey
Bill, can you hear the guitars?" then tells Matthews, “Guitars
louder in the monitors please, Bob.” Lesh is on a turned-down bass,
and it’s Kreutzmann’s turn on drums. (He and Hart would alternate
as the sole drummer in the acoustic sets from show to show.)
After
more strumming, Garcia isn't quite satisfied: "We could still
have more guitars in the monitors, Bob." "Back monitors!"
Pigpen calls. (Some hear this as "Fat monitors!") Someone
in the crowd is trying to get Garcia's attention, with no luck: "You
want me? Sorry, man." But soon the band's ready: "Okay,
that's it," Garcia says. Pigpen tells them: "Have at it!"
They
start with an energetic ‘Don’t Ease Me In,’ Pigpen blowing on
harmonica. This had been their first single back in 1966, but they’d
only just started playing it again as an acoustic song in March.
Garcia encourages Pigpen before the harmonica solo: “Do it!” (You
can hear Weir scatting "da-da-da" quietly as the solo winds
up.) Pigpen hadn’t wanted to come out in the acoustic set the day
before, but he’s more active tonight. After the song ends Garcia
asks Pigpen, “Hey, you want to play a little bit of organ on ‘I
Know You Rider’? Nice and quiet, man!”
A slow
acoustic ‘I Know You Rider’ follows, with trio singing and very
quiet organ. In early 1970, the audience likely would not have known
this as an old Dead standard (unless they’d been to other shows in
New York lately), so this may have been the first time many of them
heard the Dead play it. (The same would be true of most of the songs
in this set.) In retrospect, it’s one of the first times Garcia
slowed down the original Dead arrangement of a song (something also
heard later in the show with 'Cold Rain'). He also adds the standard
folk verse, “I’d rather drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow log”
in these acoustic Riders. (Here he sings it with more emphasis than
the headlight verse, throwing off his timing coming back to the
chorus.)
After
Garcia tunes up, they continue with the brand-new ‘Friend of the
Devil,’ which had just debuted back in March. The bass & drums
are barely present in the background, making the guitar interplay
stand out.
Afterward
there's a bit of banter with the audience - "the demon rum,"
Pigpen comments. Garcia & Weir decide on the next song:
Garcia:
“Whatcha got on your mind?”
Weir:
“Uhhh…how ‘bout we do…”
Garcia:
“Dire Wolf?”
Weir:
“Dire Wolf? Sure.”
The
crowd is getting increasingly rowdy, and the band seems amused by all
the commotion. "Try playing your guitar," Lesh says. Garcia
tells the shouting audience, “Everybody just relax, man, we have
you all night long!” This only encourages everybody to holler more,
and Garcia calls, “All right, all right…” Lesh is more
impatient: “How do you expect us to play music when you’re
screaming?” Weir joins in: “Cool it, you guys, cool it. You gotta
start acting like a mature responsible audience.” Garcia finds this
funny: “Don’t listen to him!” Someone in the band starts
mocking the audience requests in a silly voice (“Jerry, play St.
Stephen!”) which makes Garcia crack up as one girl gets excited.
But
they launch into ‘Dire Wolf,’ one of several songs in the set
that would appear on Workingman’s Dead a month later. (Until then,
everyone who heard the song called it ‘Don’t Murder Me.’) It's
a strong performance - Weir remarks during Garcia’s solo, “I
smell gunpowder,” and scats along.
Afterward,
Garcia asks Weir, “You wanna do one, what do you wanna do?” Weir
suggests "How about 'Beat It On Down the Line’?" This
wasn’t the most obvious choice for an acoustic number – in fact I
think this was the only time the Dead played it acoustically. The
Dead check the monitor levels again (Phil: "I don't know, it
sounds a little better. The balance is a little better. Try and turn
'em up.") Weir asks the crowd, “Hey can you hear the guitars
out front?” Garcia grumbles, “We can’t. Turn the guitars up on
the stage again, and also the voices. All of a sudden this stuff is
all very quiet again – until now it was really good.” Weir
concurs: “It’s all disappearing before us.” Then it’s time to
pick the BIODTL beats: Weir asks, “Hey Bill, how many? Pick a
number! Eight?”
‘Beat
It On Down the Line’ was a song familiar to the audience from the
Dead’s first album, and they greet it with a cheer. It would also
be the only song in the acoustic set where Weir was the lead singer.
It works all right as an acoustic song, despite some vocal excess.
Pigpen plays some quiet organ, and Weir tells Garcia “Rock on out”
before the solo. (The newspaper review calls it “really
fantastic.”)
Garcia
cools the temperature down by going straight into ‘Black Peter,’
although it takes the band a minute to calm down, sync up, and settle
into it. Pigpen is a faint presence on organ.
Then
Garcia takes them into ‘Candyman’ without a pause. This was the
newest song in the set, which had debuted only a month earlier.
Unfortunately, the tape runs out after the first chorus, so most of
the song is cut. (On Dick’s Picks 8 this problem was solved by an
editing segue into ‘Cumberland Blues,’ which I think was also
done on old tape copies and perhaps on the FM broadcast.)
The
tape picks up again during a long pause, as Garcia puts down his
acoustic and picks up an electric (probably a Stratocaster). “Hey
Matthews!” he calls. “I need a microphone for the little
amplifier.” “Okay.” Lesh teases ‘Cumberland’ while this is
set up; David Nelson also comes out to tune his acoustic with Weir.
Garcia tells the crowd, “This is David Nelson who’s helping us
out with acoustic guitar.”
The
crowd claps along at the start of ‘Cumberland Blues.’ The Dead
had been playing this as a strictly electric number for months, but
they'd just started to try out the acoustic/electric blend onstage
and they liked the effect. The crowd likes it too, cheering after the
last break as Garcia generates some heat, and it gets big applause.
The
band ponders what to play next and settles on ‘Deep Elem Blues.’
This was another cover song briefly played in ‘66/67 that had
resurfaced in the acoustic sets in March ’70. I don’t think
Nelson had played the song with the Dead onstage before, but he was
familiar with it. It's the third prewar blues cover in the set; along
with the other blues-based songs, the Dead are showing their
influences.
After
some discussion and moving around, Garcia switches back to acoustic,
Nelson gets his mandolin, and John Dawson comes out. The end of the
set is near.
Garcia:
“Well it’s gospel time, everybody.”
Weir:
“Everybody take off your hats…or the men take off your hats,
ladies leave them on.”
Garcia:
“We’re gonna use a couple of New Riders for this here gospel
number. You got a microphone, Marmaduke?”
After
some tuning, “Here we go!” ‘Cold Jordan’ was then the only
gospel-quartet number in the set – ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’
wouldn’t be introduced for another month (and ‘A Voice From On
High’ was, for some reason, very rarely played). It’s
well-received by the crowd.
Garcia
says “Thank you boys,” and Nelson & Dawson split. He tells
the others, "Let's do 'Uncle John's Band' instead," and
they go right into an acoustic ‘Uncle John’s Band’ to close the
set. (Either Pigpen or Hart plays some extra percussion.) This song
had alternated comfortably between acoustic and electric renditions
in the past few months, and there's a sense of pride when they sing
it.
Garcia
says, “Thanks a lot. We’re gonna knock off for a little while and
bring the New Riders up here, and they’re gonna play for a while
and then the electric Grateful Dead’ll be back.”
Wolinsky
thought the acoustic set was “really fine” but the mood was
“Where’s
the electric?”
This isn't so evident on tape, where the crowd sounds quite excited,
punctuating the songs with screams. Compared to the Alfred show, the
Harpur audience is a lot rowdier, putting more energy into the set.
At times they're downright obstreperous. Part of the noise, as often
in those days, came from a battle going on in the audience between
the floor-sitters and the standers blocking their view. “Sit
down, people scream.”
But
one attendee captures the vibe: "I was a freshman at Harpur
College in the Spring of 1970, and I went to this show. It was my
first Dead concert. The first set was all acoustic, and...many in the
crowd seemed unprepared for the acoustic set. They kept yelling
things like "Get it on, man!" and Jerry and the boys had to
ask them to calm down and be patient---the electric stuff would come
later."
The
acoustic repertoire is still limited at this point, dominated by
Garcia's songs, with most songs repeated from one show to the next.
There's a rustic front-porch feel, heavy on folkie harmonies and
blues covers; this is the Dead in their simplest country guise. But
Nelson's involvement adds a new element: the Dead's acoustic set
becomes a more communal affair, with new guests showing up, Garcia
switching guitars, extra textures with Strat or mandolin, and nods to
Bakersfield, bluegrass, and gospel styles that would be expanded in
later months. (And musically, it also helps that Kreutzmann is
drumming tonight. Hart's clomping percussion had been distracting in
the acoustic songs at Alfred, but the drumwork in this set is always
fitting.) But one reason this acoustic set is so beloved is not just
the crowd energy, but all the intimate chatter with the audience –
once the electric set comes, there's noticeably a lot less
back-and-forth banter.
NRPS
 |
| NRPS photo from 5/7/70 - not from Harpur |
 |
| NRPS photo from 5/7/70 - not from Harpur |
The
New Riders of the Purple Sage were returning to the road after
apparently taking a few months off. (There are only a scattering of
shows in the winter, and this tour has the first circulating NRPS
tapes since October '69.) Dave Torbert had joined them on bass and
they'd worked up a regular repertoire of John Dawson's songs and some
well-known covers. But at this point they're still a "new"
band without that many gigs under their belt, and it shows.
The
crowd is very enthusiastic for the New Riders, and the set goes down
well. By Henry and Lodi, the audience is going nuts. (The combination
of a popular Creedence tune and Dawson dedicating a song to "anybody
in the audience that happens to smuggle dope for a living"
probably helps.) Then Dawson announces, “I tell you, we’re gonna
get Bobby Ace, formerly of Bobby Ace and the Cards off the Bottom,
heh, and he’s coming up here right now – he’s got his
guitar...”
Weir
comes out to sing on Sawmill, The Race Is On, Me & My Uncle, and
Mama Tried. He'd been an occasional guest in New Riders sets since
summer '69, and a few of his country covers were shared between the
New Riders and the Dead. (Three of these songs had been done in the
Dead's acoustic set the day before.) Weir gets the chance to indulge
his "Bobby Ace" country-singer persona, Dawson harmonizing
on all the songs, and the audience digs it.
The
set ends with The Weight (without Weir, although Garcia sings some
backing vocals). Dawson tells the crowd, “Grateful Dead coming on
in about 10-15 minutes.”
The
New Riders were well-received, their country style accepted by an
audience that had come to the show expecting the likes of Anthem of
the Sun or Live/Dead. There aren't many shouts for the Dead, anyway
(although there may be someone yelling, "Get to the electric
stuff!"). Even Wolinsky, impatient for the Dead, called the New
Riders "fine country music" and singled out some
"fantastic" highlights (Lodi, The Race Is On, The Weight).
Concertgoers remember their set fondly: "The New Riders were
terrific." "They were spectacular." "The Riders
at their peak."
I
don't think the set holds up so well on tape. It's rickety,
untogether country-rock with a lead singer prone to yelping. (Dawson
seems, well, pretty high.) The drumming's uneven, as Hart's not very
steady. Torbert is a solid base, but Nelson is understated to the
point of invisibility. It's all held together by Garcia's pedal
steel, taking most of the solos and adding a sweet frosting to the
music. But this is not the New Riders' finest hour.
Some
listening comments from the JGMF blog:
ELECTRIC
 |
| 4/24/70 Denver - not from Harpur |
Unlike
the acoustic set and NRPS, the tape of the electric set is basically
in mono - much like the recordings on May 1 and May 14. In fact,
almost all of Bob Matthews' recordings on the road in early 1970 are
in mono, so it seems to have been his preference. This makes me think
the switch to mono at Harpur was Matthews' choice, not an accident as
people usually suspect. The mix is okay, although Weir’s guitar is
low, bringing Garcia to the fore. Pigpen plays organ through much of
the set, but it's very quiet, more felt than heard.
The
newspaper review: “Garcia
plays the first two notes of St. Stephen and the crowd goes berserk.
The light show flashed St. Stephen with horns and snake hair.”
The
tape comes in during the middle of ‘St. Stephen.’ (Apparently the
first two minutes of 'Stephen' on the Vault tape are just white
noise.) ‘St. Stephen’ almost never opened a set – in fact, the
last time had been at Woodstock in August ’69 (which had fallen
apart). The crowd hollers after the “another man spills”
cannon-blast. (“The
crowd fills in the album screams.”)
The jam is short and ramshackle, and after the last verse Garcia
segues right to the ‘Cryptical Envelopment’ intro, to the crowd’s
joy. (This was also rare: the last time they were paired had been
back on 4/23/69, and it would only happen once more on 5/15/70.)
After
a rather low-key 3-1/2-minute drum break (the crowd shouting them
on), the band storms back in with 'The Other One.' The rhythm's
strong, the band aggressive, Garcia flying on his Gibson SG, the
effect fierce and hypnotic. Weir churns out fuzzy chords while Lesh
prods everyone forward. There's a big crowd cheer when they quiet
down for the verse. The jam after the verse becomes more subdued and
delicate but gradually ramps back up to heaviness. Things get wilder
when Garcia sustains a long feedback note, drills into a droning
fuzz-concerto, and bursts back into the crazed theme lick. After the
second verse, more cheers when the band smoothly returns to
'Cryptical.' They stay quiet & slinky for a long time, ambling
along for a few minutes until Garcia plays a tense harmonics
transition back to “you know he had to die.” Good vocals and
feedback lead to a sudden explosion – the jamming turns intense,
Garcia's playing twisted and fractal as it turns in repeating circles
– “endless
and phenomenal. Garcia’s guitar is cosmic.”
Finally the jam winds down in quiet harmonics.
This
Other One suite is a close companion to the version at Alfred the day
before (the only piece the electric sets have in common). The May 1
Other One is also a great angry version, very similar to Harpur but
just a hair below in charged intensity. Tonight the band slides into
‘Cosmic Charlie,’ the usual destination out of 'Cryptical.' After
an amped-up start it's a standard version for the year with the added
twin-guitar riffs, played very carefully. “People
jumping up and down.”
Garcia
has to tune, so Weir says, “Hey, we’re gonna take a couple
minutes and tune up here.” I think the tape is stopped, so it’s
not that long before they start ‘Casey Jones.’ The audience is
silent when it starts, this being a new song to most of them.
Wolinsky calls it “a
song I don’t know. Someone told me it was the Train song.”
It’s a short and average version, but the crowd’s enthusiastic
when it ends. (For one witness, "my
most vivid memory was the crowd going absolutely bonkers when they
played Casey Jones.")
“People
flopping on top of themselves.”
Then
‘Good Lovin’’ opens with a short drum intro and some
bludgeoning guitars, Pigpen entering in a howl of feedback and the
others shouting their vocals. Pigpen calls “Groove a while!”
after the verses, and the drummers go into another drum duet (this
one more energetic than in the Other One). After 3 minutes the
guitarists come back over a frantic Latin-style two-chord rhythm.
(They were getting into this kind of thing heavily at the time –
compare the jam before the Other One on 4/15/70, or the jam after the
Eleven on 4/25/70.) Garcia blazes over a high-speed frenetic jam;
after a couple minutes Weir & Lesh drop easily back into the Good
Lovin’ chords behind him. [In the Miller copy there's a dropout at
9:34, covering a reel flip - it was quick, sounds like nothing's
missing, but Dick's Picks 8 edits out a small portion here.] Garcia’s
in the mood for a ‘Soulful Strut’ jam (you can hear him start to
tease it around 9:20) and pushes for it with some strident chords
around 10:20, blended with Good Lovin’, but doesn't quite get
there. (“Garcia
gives a break which almost goes into Lovelight but never quite makes
it.”)
After 11:20 Lesh tries to switch gears to ‘Feelin’ Groovy’ but
it doesn’t take. Instead the jam breaks down to a Garcia/drum duet,
then Garcia & Weir repeat the Good Lovin’ riff over & over
without Lesh until finally Garcia slows it down and they plow back
into the verse, to crowd cheers. “Pipes
and joints flow to the music.”
There's
long applause after the song – Lesh teases ‘High Time’ but that
song won’t appear. Instead, after some tuning they start ‘Cold
Rain and Snow’ (of course, it was raining outside during the show).
It’s immediately apparent that Garcia is out of tune. The others
hesitate, but he decides to tune on the fly while playing the song.
He can’t get in tune for the first 3 minutes, which certainly adds
a weird effect, but then he treats the audience to a very loopy solo
and some emphatic singing. Despite its problems, it's quite the
surreal version of this tune with a slam-bang finish. (Wolinsky, a
fan of the first album, called ‘Cold Rain’ “one of the best
things in the set.”) Wisely, more tuning follows the song. (It was
left off Dick’s Picks 8, but restored on the vinyl reissue.)
After
some chatter, they remind themselves of how ‘It’s A Man’s
World’ goes. “Have at it!” Pigpen commands, and they start the
song on the count of 6. This James Brown cover was the newest
addition to their electric set (they’d been playing it for less
than a month, and the song would stay in the repertoire only through
1970, so it's a rare piece). I think this is the first version where
they sing the "da-da-da" backing right at the start. Pigpen
sometimes loses his place in the verses, but makes it work. There's a
nice transition in the middle from Pigpen's groaning chant to a
Sputnik-like Garcia passage, which lights up this performance.
Previous versions (like 4/25) had a big Garcia solo, but here he only
gets a brief understated break. Pigpen dominates without leaving much
space for a jam, but Garcia still has some good bluesy playing under
the vocal, conjuring up a dark smoke-filled atmosphere, and the new
minor-key ending is great. The whole band shines in this one. "The
music comes on and keeps coming."
The
Dead are in a Motown mood, and they cheerfully carry on with ‘Dancing
in the Street.’ "Come on and dance around now!" After
some sloppy backing vocals, Garcia takes a slow-burn approach to the
jam. The intensity rises 4 minutes in, and Hart starts wildly banging
the cowbell. After 4:30 a Latin feel starts to creep in, which Weir
turns into a full-blown ‘Soulful Strut’ by 5:00 (formerly known
as the 'Tighten Up' jam). This one’s longer and more developed than
in Good Lovin’, stretching over 5 minutes, with Garcia taking the
theme through several phases, from speedy notes to choppy chords to a
fuzzy reprise of the melody. [There's a tape warble going 'zip' like
a stopped reel, at 8:40 on DP8 or 8:50 in the Miller copy, but it
doesn't sound like anything's cut.] The drums tumble, Garcia switches
his tone, and Weir & Lesh keep pushing the jam forward, not
wanting to let go. Around 10:30 Garcia swerves back to Dancing territory with some Cosmic Charlie-type chords that leap dramatically
to a Sputnik at 11:30 (sounding as much at home here as in a Dark
Star). (“Garcia
throws in a Dark Star riff I think.”)
This lasts a minute then blasts into ferocious Dancing chords, a
final stirring crescendo...and the jam almost fades out in a feedback
haze before Weir brings back the verses just in time. After his final
yell, the song finally ends with a triumphant burst of feedback,
which cuts at the end as the reel runs out. (Dick's Picks 8 patches
on the last few seconds from the 4/12/70 version here.)
This
amazing version of 'Dancing in the Street' follows two other
incredible performances in April. 4/12 (best-known from Fallout from
the Phil Zone) is more light-footed, fast & torrential, bursting
with ideas and quickly shifting from one phase to the next so it
doesn't hang onto one theme for long. 4/15 is very similar to Harpur,
with most of the central jam a lengthy Soulful Strut theme followed
by a Cosmic Charlie-type finale. It's telling how much of the Harpur
jam could come straight out of a Dark Star – the Soulful Strut
theme was shared between Dancing and Dark Star this year, as if the
two songs were interchangeable at the core. (Looking ahead a bit,
they'd be paired at the Delhi show on May 8, another night of magic,
as a single continuous suite.)
The
band decides it’s time for a break. Lesh announces: “Okay now,
you folks should all follow the fine example of the fellow over here
who got it on over here with his girlfriend, and we’re gonna take a
short break, and I want you to all feel each other for about ten
minutes while we… But we’ll come back and play some more, honest
we will.”
The
crowd collects themselves for more. “Everybody
gets water and runs through the rain; people look dazed. Some sitting
giving tripraps...”
It was in the 40s outside, so a little break from the heat and smoke
of the gym must have been refreshing. Student concert staffer Sal
Caruana recalled, “Between
the two sets there was an intermission, and in the intermission, a
lot of people went outside, and it was pouring and these people were
impervious to the rain, and that told you that they were really into
the music or really out of their skulls.”
When
the Dead come back to the wet audience, they waste no time heading to
the dark side. Hart’s gong ushers in the doomy intro of ‘Morning
Dew.’ It’s an excellent, heavy version – as Wolinsky says,
“totally controlled and superb.”
After
a little chatter, the Dead continue with another old tune off the
first album, ‘Viola Lee Blues.’ Although they’d played it a few
times since March, it was infrequent in their sets and starts
lumberingly. (The last version on 4/12 is like a lighter, more agile
twin to this one.) A lyrical stumble in one verse hardly matters; the
crowd cheers after Garcia's climbing spirals between verses. The main
jam starts very slowly and gradually picks up speed, very controlled
– as the pace picks up like a speeding train, by 10:00 the tempo is
racing, the band becoming liquid. By 12:25 chaos has descended and
they fall into the climactic meltdown, then snap neatly back to the
loping song riff at 13:15 to astonished cheers. (“Viola
Lee Blues with three buildups, the last ending with people screaming
and shouting and Garcia pulling the most phenomenal notes out of one
guitar.”)
Garcia delivers some final stinging licks before the last verse, and
the song closes with 90 seconds of howling feedback – the Dead in
fierce primal mode, harking back to the old days.
The
crowd starts a slow clap, and the band sings a soothing ‘And We Bid You
Goodnight’ with some quiet guitar notes and the audience clapping
along. The old funeral hymn offering comfort and salvation to the
dead is well-placed here, and it's easily the best version of the
year. It ends after 3 minutes, the crowd roaring. Garcia bids
farewell: “Thanks a lot, you people are too much.”
The
crowd stomps to bring them back (“no
one will let them go”)
but Sam Cutler comes out to tell them: “The Grateful Dead are very
tired. We have to go to Connecticut tomorrow and we’d like to
sleep, but we’ll be playing at the Fillmore East on the 15th of May and I think there are tickets still there, so come and see us
at the Fillmore East – we’re worn out, thanks anyway”
This
could be considered a short third set or a half-hour encore, the
weary band's last gasp. Either way, it heightens the intensity of an
already fired-up concert, and the apocalyptic feel of this closing
stretch has few rivals among Dead shows. Most of their shows at the
time ended with a rousing long Lovelight, always guaranteed to leave
an audience happy. The dark Feedback closers of yore were being
phased out, with just a few exceptions – the Caution>Feedback on
2/14, the Viola Lee>Feedback on 4/12, and likely some lost shows
such as 4/10 and 5/9.
But
now it's time for the band to depart, and the audience to return to
the everyday world. The last voice on the tape is someone on a
microphone saying, “What a pretty girl you are.” According to one
attendee, this was Phil: "He
was trying to pick up one of our friends there with us. She was
having none of it!"
AFTER
One
dead.net commenter recalls We Bid You Goodnight ending the show at
3am, and another witness recalls "the Dead went way past 2am. We
all did." The show had been scheduled for 8:30, and Wolinsky
reports that it was 5-1/2 hours long. If the show had started by 9pm,
it would have ended between 2 and 3. (The sets on tape add up to
about 260 minutes, so the setbreaks were likely considerably longer
than "10-15 minutes" each.)
Wolinsky
noticed some people sleeping, but this may not have been due to them
being worn out by the Dead. According to Sal Caruana,“The concert
staffers were all asked to remain until everyone had left the
building. When
the West Gym finally emptied around 1:30 a.m., there were eight
bodies left lying on the floor in various drug-induced states, and no
one on the scene qualified to assess or treat these individuals.
Students rushed to make frantic calls from the gym office to campus
security for help...and to local hospitals for ambulances.”
The
calls were met with indifference (which he ascribed to "hippie
payback"), so "we made a quick and frenzied decision to
load the students into our cars and race to the three area
hospitals... Once at the hospitals our victims were promptly accepted
and treated, and we were advised to go home. As we left, we realized
we did not know any of their names, and none had been recognized by
us as Binghamton students. News of the eight overdosers or their
outcomes never appeared in the campus paper or Sun-Bulletin... Though
fatalities were never confirmed, those of us who kept asking
questions heard one story or rumor repeatedly: three of the victims
had died and none of them had any Binghamton connections (they were
either Deadheads and/or students from other upstate colleges)."
(Personally
I think if there had been any fatalities from overdoses at a Dead
concert on campus, this would have been certain to make the news.)
Wolinsky's
review of the show was printed in the May 5 edition of the Colonial
News (along with a worshipful review of the Pentangle show, to which
he replied, "they didn't approach the Dead").
 |
| https://www.nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=tcn19700505-01.1.4&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN---------- |
Some
more recent comments from Wolinsky were used in a 2020 Pipe Dream
article by Gabriela Iacovano on the show:
Wolinsky
raved about the show, “the finest concert I’ve ever seen.” Many
others there felt the same: “I've been to many shows; this was the
best.” “Best ever, of all of them I've been to.” “I can
testify that this was the best concert I have experienced in my 60
years.” “It
was certainly a life changing experience.”
Some
comments on the show from attendees in an NYT poll:
“As
I recall, the show started in the Harpur gym at about 9 pm with Jerry
playing with the New Riders for a set or two...they were spectacular!
The Dead then came out and played until 4 am or so. I especially
remember an amazing version of Saint Stephen. The Hog Farm denizens
including Ken Kesey were in attendance. I recall standing near the
stage in front of a huge tower of speakers with Jerry's solos
piercing my skull (I don't think that my hearing has been the same
since that night). It was a wonderful and surreal night on so many
levels.”
“What
a concert and experience that night at Harpur. The place was buzzing
and partying for hours before...a jug of wine with something (!) in
it was circulated...electricity in the air...I stood impaled by the
sound of Phil's bass in front of the tower of speakers at stage
right...the music just kept getting higher and higher....people in
front of the stage doing interesting things on top of a
parachute...what a night!!”
“If
you followed the Dead in those early years, you know how it was. The
Dead were just rocking like mad that night in the intimacy of the
gym. The music coming out at us like living waves of big time energy
seemed to last forever, loud as it was and near as the band was –
and the many-footed fans, wild and nonplussed, stoned and tripping
and seduced by it all, swaying and jumping and dancing to the push
and tug of the music like the band was the moon and we were a willing
body of water.”
“I
was a freshman at Cornell. Had tix for Pentangle but my friends
talked me into giving them away so I could experience the Dead. So
when the bus went by, I got on & then it all began. This was a
concert that changed my life. The music, the vibes, the politics, the
people were all new to me. They all validated for me how there are
alternate ways to see & live life - a value I still cherish.”
“I
was 16. I didn't partake of any of the festivities going on round me
cuz i didn't want to do something stupid... Pretty much wandered
about in open jawed amazement the whole time knocked out by it all.
We walked in on the Riders and at first I was 'what the hell is this'
but soon got it… After the acoustic sets I was beaming...they still
were as trippy as Anthem too. Been to a few concerts already
including Janis and Jimi but not like this. Remember really digging
Pigpen, and the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my life. After,
we went back [to the dorm]...I know I didn’t sleep.”
(From
Reddit:) “After an amazing show the night before at Alfred, we
loaded into Wally’s bug and drove down to Harpur College, on Phil’s
insistence we come to this show. My memory is really fuzzy here, as
this was the first time I had tripped 2 nites in a row. I was really
overwhelmed by last nite's electric set, so during the acoustic and
NRPS sets, I just kinda wandered around meeting new people and
talking to myself - haha! You don’t really realize at the time you
are viewing history happening, as the band began their set. They
played dragon music that nite. It spiraled around and around and
trembled and exploded (!). We danced and jumped and screamed! We
laughed and cried. It
was amazing. But not...until a few years later when I heard my first
bootleg of the electric show that I realized just how good it was.”
A
longer testimony from Hank Keiser on dead.net:
"Winter
was slowly exiting the Southern Tier; snow had turned to ice had
turned to mud. Binghamton was a dreary area; clouds came down the
Susquehanna Valley from the Great Lakes just about every day... But
we welcomed every Spring with a weekend of concerts. This spring
brought The Butterfield Blues Band, Pentangle, and The Grateful Dead.
"The
Dead show was going to be held in the new gym; I watched the sound
check that afternoon, they were having trouble with the power supply,
which was playing havoc with the monitors... [But] the New Riders
seemed to keep everything mellow. Monitors were fucking up, they
didn't care, unplug the whole thing and just play. No master
electrician in sight, no power schematics to be found. Patch and
pray. The recording engineer was more bugged than the band.
"8
p.m. rolled around, a high level of energy, frantic energy engulfed
the gym. Pigpen took the microphone and asked "How come
everyone's so weird around here." He'd never experienced a Binghamton winter - snow, ice, wind and acid, tons of acid. The crowd
remained on edge, Jerry sensed it, leaned into the mic and said
"Relax, we've got you all night long." And the gym erupted
in cheers as though a karmic dam had burst. The monitors were still
not right, and now the mics were shorting too. "More monitors,
Bob" Garcia asked. "Fat monitors" Pigpen chimed in.
"The
acoustic set lasted about 75 minutes, then NRPS came out with Weir
and Garcia...about that time the screen behind the band began to
flash "It's in the water" every 60 seconds or so. I looked
around and found someone with a goat skin. It was in the water. NRPS
was at their best, loose, easy, full of life. It was a mix of stuff,
including a few things that made their way on to Workingman's Dead in
a more polished style.
"There
was about a 15 minute break before the electric set began, long
enough for the edge to return to the crowd. I remember thinking
"When's it gonna happen?" It was stage, open floor, and
bleachers pulled out on the side. Really primitive lighting, maybe 20
lights in all. I could see the engineers, they weren't happy, they
had just lost a power supply... But they had the speakers right, and
the gym was filled note after perfect note.
"By
now the band was into The Other One, the edge was building, and then
it happened - Lesh hit the bass notes I'll never forget. And the
music exploded... I had my Dead Moment at Harpur. There were maybe a
thousand of us, open floor, no security, 4 foot high stage. And goat
skins."
Rumors
about the Dead's visit floated around the campus for years
afterwards. Deadbase reviewer Gregg Bucci, who went to school there
later on, wrote, "One of the stories I've heard is that the Dead
hung out in the new dorm room complex on campus during the afternoon
of the show and that people were dispensing liquid sunshine from
water pistols... It has also been said that following the show, which
was held in the gym, someone set up a volleyball net and the Dead
clowned around with the concertgoers." (This last story seems
unlikely. However, one showgoer says, "I
talked to Jerry that night and played soccer with Bob and Sam Cutler
and some roadies.")
The
Dead traveled on to Connecticut to play a free show at Wesleyan
University, then onwards to MIT, only to find that their spring tour
of Northeast campuses was coinciding with a nationwide wave of
college strikes over the invasion of Cambodia on April 30:
Harpur
was going through its own turbulence. Students remember the political
heaviness of the time: “This show at Harpur took place 2 days after
Nixon came on TV to announce that we had troops in Cambodia. Campuses
everywhere erupted…” “On campus we were either on "strike"
or soon to be due to the Cambodia incursion.”
The
university voted to go on strike on May 5 and classes were canceled
for the rest of the semester. (See this editorial.) But after a
couple of weeks, protests dwindled and many students simply went home
early.
(The
Colonial News was disappointed by the small turnout for a march in
Albany. "An Alfred University student standing on line at a
water fountain summed up his dismay at the demonstration. 'Harpur.
Everybody's from fuckin' Harpur,' he said.")
The
student paper went through changes as well: "Colonial" was
struck from the name Colonial News, and the next year the paper was
renamed Pipe Dream.
After
the Dead returned home, they made the unusual decision to share their
tape of the show. They had done a couple of live radio broadcasts
before (most notably 2/14/68 and 4/6/69), but in general they seem to
have kept their growing stash of live tapes to themselves. One
wonders: when they listened back to the Harpur show, what did they
hear? Perhaps, to them, it was a particularly high night, or the
first show where the new "evening with the Grateful Dead"
show format proved itself.
At any
rate, someone passed along the whole tape (acoustic, NRPS and all) to
KPFA in Berkeley, who broadcast it as part of their weekly series of
live shows. Radio taper Cryptdev recalls: “The KPFA broadcast
series was called "Stays Fresh Longer" and consisted of one
live broadcast every Sunday night… I remember the regular emcee of
the show saying that the Dead had provided the tape of the Harpur
show for broadcast.”
The
show was apparently also broadcast by WBAI in New York. One radio
listener has a different memory of the announcement: “Warren
Van Orden, the radio host for "Stays Fresh Longer," before
broadcasting the Harpur college concert...said up front that the
concert was recorded by KPFA'S sister station WBAI. So KPFA really
had no involvement with the initial recording.”
It may
have been first broadcast in June '70, although one person remembers
the show being broadcast later that September, so it could have been
repeated. It seems the whole show was broadcast in one night, despite
its length; Cryptdev says, “I
don't believe the DJ even broke in between sets - just let the whole
show play through.”
Another
listener recalls: “First heard the whole show on KPFA in
1970 and taped it off the air on a Sony open reel, copied it to
cassette.. After the show played at KPFA there were voices in the
studio yelling "play it again, play it again."”
Tapes
of the show made their way to many listeners. One, for instance: "I
played this reel recording of a '71 broadcast over and over in the
summer of '72, I realized this was a very exciting band that I wanted
to see... That tape did it, this was a really wild band, and it
really made me think about rock music differently..."
Back
at Harpur, the buzz around the show also remained strong through
word-of-mouth as showgoers passed its reputation down to newer Dead
fans:
“For
years we who had been there claimed it had been the best of the best
Dead concerts, and when one bootleg surfaced...even people who were
only able to hear what it had been became believers.”
"A
friend of mine, who had seen the Dead a bunch of times by then and
had tried to get me into them, was at the show. He told me it was his
favorite."
"I
remember people who were much more into the Dead than I was in 1971
talking of this show as monumental."
"This
was the concert that those of us who arrived in Binghamton the
following September were still hearing about in the fall."
“I
arrived as a freshman at Harpur a few months after this show, in
September 1970 and…everyone was talking about the Dead show. I got
a bootleg record of the concert, that has the title "Cowboy's
Dead" on the homemade album cover...”
Overall,
the 1970 Harpur concert schedule was considered a great success, with
numerous popular acts playing on campus. A Pipe Dream article on the
Convocations Committee from 9/15/70 summed it up: “Last year the
Grateful Dead, backed by C.C., played five straight hours through
smoke and din. Mountain, Arlo, and Phil Ochs loved the packed house.
The wild crowd paid no more than $2.00 a head for The Band and Tim
Buckley; and the Convocations Committee made profit on all of them.”
Naturally,
many people hoped the Dead would return and play at Harpur again - a
1971 article in Pipe Dream noted that "many people were
enthusiastic over inviting the Grateful Dead back this year."
The Student Center Board did their best to book the Dead again in
fall 1970; but the Dead would not return.
Pipe
Dream reported on 11/3/70, “No Grateful Dead”:
“The
Student Center Board regrets to announce that the Grateful Dead
concert, which was tentatively scheduled for November 19, will not
take place due to the fact that one member of the Dead group was
recently busted and will spend the month of November in jail. SCB
will attempt to book the Dead for a date sometime in December or
shortly thereafter.”
It
seems someone was telling a fib! (The Dead spent the month of
November touring New York; they had the day free on November 19 and
played in Rochester on the 20th.) Other colleges had better luck
booking the Dead, and spring ’71 issues of Pipe Dream had ads for
the nearby SUNY Cortland concert on April 18 (less than an hour's
drive from Harpur). That is, until April 16: “The Grateful Dead
Concert at SUNY at Cortland is SOLD OUT. Please don’t make the trip
unless you already have a ticket.”
(The
Dead wouldn't play in Binghamton again until 1977.)
In the
meantime, bootlegs of the 5/2/70 radio broadcast were starting to
appear by 1971 - incomplete and poorly labeled, but snapped up by the
eager Dead fans who found them. ("We bought any and all Dead
bootlegs, regardless of the quality. We never knew until we got home
to play them. This bootleg was played over and over many times in the
same night for hours at a time...")
Oddly, vinyl bootlegs such
as "Acoustic Dead," "Cowboy's Dead," "Silent
Dead," and "Double Dead" focused mostly on the
acoustic set; as far as I know, only tape collectors (or lucky radio
listeners) would get to hear much of the electric set for many years.
The
show's reputation stayed high - in the '90s it hovered near the top
of Deadbase polls, and on surveys it was a popular request for
release once the Dick's Picks series got started. (One example: "I
had half the show on a cassette since the mid-'70s... They sent out
surveys to ask what our top ten shows were that we'd like to see
released. I filled all ten slots with Harpur College 1970!")
Dick
Latvala himself considered it "the ultimate Dead show" and
"as good as it will ever get." Back in 1977 he'd referred
to it as "this famous date": "There are so many
outrageous things that stand out on this date, that I hesitate to
list them all."
Despite
all the requests, it took a while to show up in the Dick's Picks
series. Latvala had been trying to get Harpur released since the
start. But, as he sighed, "one of the reasons I’ve been
pushing for this one as long as I have...and being rejected for a
long, long time is because of the fact that the electric sets are in
mono. There is a big problem with that."
“Ever
since I got into the position of influence at all, which was when Dan
Healy started the Vault release program in 1990, I’ve been trying
the whole time to get...Harpur College 1970 [out].”
"Harpur
College was rejected every time I brought it up for years. From the
first time I got involved, I was trying to bring Harpur College to
people’s attention and it got beat down every time. It was like a
nightmare to me."
“Anyone
with any common sense knows Harpur College is a show that should have
come out centuries ago. It was ten years of trying to get that one up
the flagpole. Healy would say, ‘That Latvala, he can’t tell the
difference between stereo and mono!’ And that’s why he would
reject Harpur College, cause the electric sets are in mono. So
fucking what? Does anyone say that ain’t a great example of a show?
I’ll tell you, it wasn’t like I snapped my fingers to have it
occur, it was like embarrassing myself forever to get it out.”
Rob
Bertrando recalls, “Phil
absolutely refused to let Harpur College be released with the Cold
Rain & Snow, even after the difficulty getting Cutler to approve
the mono-only electric set.”
Finally
in 1997, the Dead show was released on Dick's Picks 8 (with a few
judicious edits). A caveat emptor on the back cover warned listeners
of the mono electric sets: "While the reason for this remains a
mystery, spurious electrical activity is suspected."
Spurious
or not, electricity was in the air at Harpur that night, and the
tapes captured lightning. Over the years the show became legendary
among Dead collectors, just the word "Harpur" became
shorthand for an intense cosmic journey, and the music would lie in
wait like a timebomb for listeners like me...
“Oh,
what a night in the men's gym!”
