The Dead's
5/9/70 show in Worcester has long been a lost show, hidden in the
shadows of their more famous May 1970 concerts. Not much has been
written about the show, and no tape ever made it into circulation. A
partial acoustic tape used to be dated May 9, but when it turned out
to actually be from May 3 at Wesleyan, the Worcester show retreated
back into the shadows, never to be heard.... Until now.
The Dead
were a week into their tour of Northeast college campuses with the
New Riders. They'd been cramming as many shows into the tour as they
could, with just a couple of weekdays off. (In addition, the New
Riders were apparently playing extra unscheduled free shows in some
cities like NYC and Boston as well.) After a blowout of a show in
Delhi on May 8, "they played until 2-3 [a.m.] and apologized
that they had to travel the next day."
May 1 -
Alfred State College, Alfred NY
May 2 -
Harpur College, Binghamton NY
May 3 -
Wesleyan U, Middletown CT (free)
May 6 -
MIT, Cambridge MA (free)
May 7 -
MIT, Cambridge MA
May 8 -
SUNY, Delhi NY
May 9 -
WPI, Worcester MA
(Lost Live
Dead, May 1970 tour: New England & New York)
It's
possible that NRPS may have played a free show in Boston earlier in
the afternoon on May 9. Although Boston is just a short drive from
Worcester, I'm skeptical of the date. Not only had the Dead already
played in the Boston area a couple days earlier, but on May 9 they
had to travel over 200 miles from Delhi to Worcester, which would
have taken a few hours. An extra drive out of the way back to Boston
would not make much sense on this date.
The Dead
had played in Worcester twice before, at Clark University - a
"colossal disaster" in December '67 when power problems cut
the show short, and a more successful return in April '69. Circling
back round on their May 1970 tour, they instead went to the nearby
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a tech & engineering school. WPI
may have made a better offer fitting the Dead's schedule, or perhaps
the Dead needed a bigger venue than Clark's 650-seat Atwood Hall.
Clark students would doubtless have come to the show anyway. (The
Clark student newspaper for 1970 isn't yet digitized online, but may
have carried a notice of the show. I'm not sure which university was
larger at the time, but about 1700 students were enrolled at WPI.)
The Harrington Auditorium was new on campus, built in 1968 to supersede
the older basketball court in the Alumni Gym. Typically used for
basketball games, the auditorium had 2800 seats (and more standing room) and was easily
adaptable for dances, concerts, and other events. Some performers who
played shows there in the 1969-70 school year included Richie Havens
(Oct. 18), Joni Mitchell (Dec. 12), BB King (Feb. 28), and Judy
Collins (April 25). A cult acid-rock group like the Dead were quite
outside the norm in the year's concert lineup.
The student
paper (the Tech News) didn't report on the booking of the Dead, so
nothing's currently known about how the show was arranged. WPI's
Social Committee was in charge of using the student budget to host
concerts on campus, and over the year they booked a number of other
groups as well. The 1970 yearbook (the Peddler) somehow didn't
mention the Dead's appearance, but the 1971 edition wrote about some
groups that played at Harrington in the following school year:
"College
social life is normally measured by the quantity and quality of the
music groups that appear on campus. Four years ago this boiled down
to old soul groups still making the campus rounds like the Shirelles,
or old rock groups that for one reason or another were passed by by
the changing music scene, like the Barbarians.
Luckily,
the musical ability of rock musicians has increased tenfold over the
past few years, and the WPI social budget has been enlarged to deal
with the harsh reality of the prices such rock groups command. Thus,
Ike and Tina Turner opened the year with a tight performance, John
Sebastian followed with an incredible one-man show of a mixture of
folk music, light rock, and easy ballads, the Band then closed out
the concert season for the first semester with a country-rock
performance that made it apparent that the rock music scene has a
number of fine musicians. Many parents probably feel the same way
that Spiro Agnew does about rock music: it causes drug induced
psychosis and permanent deafness. Rock music has become softer and
lyrically improved. James Taylor proved that with a concert at WPI in
February - the first after a moratorium forced by gate-crashers from
the city." (1971 Peddler, p.91)
It's likely
that the Dead were booked by Don Baron, who had been elected Social
Chairman in March 1970 and brought many popular bands to WPI. "Don
has worked on the Social Committee in past years, and has
distinguished himself this year by being instrumental in booking The
Band for Junior Prom and John Mayall for Freshman Weekend... Don has
a fine knowledge of music and experience in booking groups."
(3/3/70 Tech News, p.2) [Both bands canceled.]
The
following fall, Baron would book a surprising number of groups for
WPI - he'd asked for increased "social fees" from students
to cover the higher band prices. "Don Baron has given campus
life some real class. Not since [Homecoming 1968] has WPI seen talent
the likes of which Don Baron is giving the student body regularly. In
the past six weeks, Tech has hosted concerts featuring Ike and Tina
Turner, John Sebastian, John Fahey, and The Band." (11/10/70
Tech News, p.2)
In an
article on how Baron worked to produce the Band's show in November
'70, one local promoter said, "Donny thinks like a professional
promoter... Baron is putting on an incredible program for a school
the size of WPI. He is setting up, on the average, one major
production a month... You're lucky you elected a good social
chairman." (11/10/70 Tech News, p.7)
However,
this soon produced a backlash as Baron's concert picks were called
"disastrously successful" - the administration was
skeptical of the big crowds they drew and wanted to limit shows to
students only, one dean saying "the concerts were just not worth
all the problems they posed to the student body, the administration,
and the social committee." "Pop entertainers of the caliber
we've seen have come to demand and get five-figure contracts for
one-night stands, and a school our size has only been able to afford
this by opening ticket sales to all of Worcester. The result is that
we've been running Harrington as a civic auditorium. In performing
this kind of community-wide service, we've attracted overflow crowds
and many gate-crashing townies." (3/2/71 Tech News, p.3)
"Baron
explained that Tech kids want to see big name groups, but that Tech
can't support these groups unless it opens ticket sales to all of
Worcester. Although there is a large and lucrative market available
and most concerts are sold out, Tech concerts are not run to make
money. Besides paying customers, big name performers also draw gate
crashers and vandals. Therein lies the problem. Don observes that
there is nothing else for kids to do in Worcester except see a movie
or attend a college social function... The Administration does not
want Tech property damaged. They have tried increased security
measures and found them inadequate. They feel that the popular
performers are an attractive nuisance and that if they are to be
presented it should be on a small scale with no publicity and no
outside sales. This would naturally increase the cost for Tech
students..." (3/2/71 Tech News, p.1)
The fall of
1970 would see various gate-crashing incidents and damage at
Harrington, particularly at the Band's show. Concerts were
temporarily canceled as WPI suspended its concert schedule. They
resumed with James Taylor in February '71, but apparently "violence"
at that show was still too much, and a dean "announced that Tech
would sponsor no more big-name concerts as a result of the events at
the James Taylor performances. Small scale afternoon events would be
held instead." The somewhat lesser-known bands that came to
Worcester in spring '71 (such as Brewer & Shipley, Sea Train, Boz
Scaggs, and It's A Beautiful Day) would play the much smaller Alden
Hall instead, likely reserved for "Tech students and their
dates."
But that
was far in the future when the Dead came to WPI. As of May 1970,they
weren't yet facing the constant gate-crashing that would plague them
later in the year - if anything, their shows on this tour sometimes
had the opposite problem of emptying out the longer the Dead played.
It's not known how many tickets were sold, but no crowd problems were
reported.
The Dead
appeared as part of the so-called "Freek Weekend."
(Typically WPI would bring bands to mark various campus celebrations
such as Greek Weekend, Spring Weekend, etc.) It doesn't look very
freaky, with events such as class skits, a lake race, and coffeehouse
folksingers, but the Dead would make up for that.
As a tech
school, WPI had long been an all-male university but had just
recently gone co-ed. ("Worcester Tech is now the proud owner of
co-ed dormitories," the yearbook proclaimed.) Women started
being admitted (in small numbers) in 1968, but in 1970 WPI was still
a mostly male university. With only a handful of women on campus,
most of the ladies at the Dead show would have been from elsewhere in the area.
Much of the crowd came from other colleges (and high schools) in town
- they paid $2.50 for tickets, while WPI students paid $2.00.
The Dead
arrived to find the campus in turmoil, along with all the other
colleges they'd played. Their tour coincided with a nationwide
college strike following Nixon's April 30 invasion of Cambodia, and
the student mood wasn't improved after the Kent State shootings on
May 4. "For
the first time in the school's history, W.P.I. students went on
strike this week to protest the Southeast Asian War and its recent
escalation by President Nixon. In doing so, the students joined
nearly 450 other colleges and universities participating in strike
activities." (As Tech News editor Paul Cleary said, "When college
students can be shot down and murdered on campus, when the President
can send troops into a foreign country without an act of Congress,
then it is time for students to act.")
Per one
article, "In the past few days so much has happened... For over
three days and nights a small number of students went without sleep,
food, and classes in order that they may coordinate the activities
for the week. With the arrival of Friday night, nerves became frayed
and voices strained. Saturday was proclaimed a day of rest. Some
slept, some went home, and some just sat around reflecting upon the
events that occurred." (5/12 Newspeak, p.7)
And on
Saturday, the Dead arrived.
This photo
isn't from the Dead show, but it gives an idea what the scene in
Harrington would have looked like:
The Tech
News ran a review of the show by Al Gradet in the May 12 issue, p.19:
The
Greatful Dead performed at WPI on Saturday, May 9 and Sunday, May 10.
Their concert lasted from 9 p.m. Saturday until 2:20 a.m. Sunday
morning. Led by guitarist Jerry Garcia, the Dead performed everything
from acoustic country music to distortic rock music.
Beginning
a little late at 9 p.m., the group did a bit of acoustic country
music. The crowd didn't quite get into this part of the show, except
those who really liked the Dead. As the night went on, and the group
moved into more electric music, the crowd began to wake up. By 12 the
crowd on the floor had thinned out and some of those left were
dancing and tripping. By 2:20 a.m. when the concert ended, those left
had either fallen asleep on the floor, or were still standing up
front jumping and dancing.
The
Grateful Dead were one of the first groups to come out with what is
now sometimes known as the "San Francisco" sound. A mixture
of country and rock with a little blues thrown in, the "sound"
has been carried on by such groups as the Moby Grape, Sea Train,
Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane; the latter of
which had more of a hard rock tint. The Grateful Dead are actually a
group of about ten musicians, including two drummers, three
guitarists, one bass player, and one organist-harp player.
All in
all, the concert was very good, all five and one half hours of it.
The
audience was not too thrilled with the acoustic set: "The crowd
didn't quite get into this part of the show, except those who really
liked the Dead." (One person recalls a "great version of
Friend of the Devil.") Many disappointed listeners left early -
a dead.net attendee confirms that "3/4 of the audience left
before the second set." Another Archive reviewer recalls, "At
the long break most of the audience left. It was my first Dead
concert, and a friend insisted they would come back, which they did
with an electric vengeance. Maybe 100-200 people stayed for the long
second set, if I recall." (Much the same had happened at the May
1 show, and probably at others as well, as audiences came expecting
psychedelic rock and got a long dose of country instead.)
Those who
stayed got more excited as the Dead went electric: "The crowd
began to wake up. By 12 the crowd on the floor had thinned out and
some of those left were dancing and tripping." While the
setbreaks were long (one person thought "a break seemed like an
hour to us"), the final electric set must have been pretty long
too for the full show to last over five hours. "By 2:20 a.m.
when the concert ended, those left had either fallen asleep on the
floor, or were still standing up front jumping and dancing."
(I'm not sure whether to believe that people had fallen asleep on the
floor by the end!)
Art Barton
wrote: "I recall a good show with a lot of shorter uptempo
songs, including Cold Rain and Snow and Good Loving. I enjoyed this,
as my first Dead show a year earlier at nearby Clark University had
been only long slower jam songs, and not one of their better nights
in that style. But this version of the Dead rocked."
The show
seems to have been an epic marathon, typical of the tour. One
dead.net attendee recalls, "The WPI show was an absolute monster
- Jerry was re-stringing a broken string while playing - the end of
the show was a massive feedback explosion of the sun - people were
chain dancing on the floor of the auditorium." "The band
was crazed that night." Another guy at his first Dead show
writes, "If anyone remembers the pyrotechnics at the end, one of
the Roadies gave us firecrackers and we lit them as the finale
finished."
One person
recalled: "Phil was cranking through a case of Budweiser tall
boys that were set on top of his amp head during the show. I was
surprised he was still standing at the end!"
"Underthevolcano"
wrote at more length about his experience:
"I was
at that amazing show. It was the first time I had seen them in
concert. I stayed until the end when a cacophony of feedback closed
out [a] show for the ages. A group of us were chain dancing in
circles on the floor of the audition with stupid silly grins, sweat
and the joy of enlightenment flashing out of our eyes. I was a
student at Assumption College who bought a ticket at the door on the
night of the show armed with my mission to see the Dead. I had missed
them when they came [to] Clark University. The furious jamming was
like a freight train barreling through the hall and nothing could
stop them including Jerry’s busted string. I was hypnotized by the
dual drum thunder of Mickey and Billy. I had seen nothing like this
ever before and got on the bus for life."
Kenneth
Boutot has written about the show in a few places, with the
distressing statement: "My friend Jim actually recorded the Dead
show - on a $25 cassette recorder - and the built in mics were
overloaded for the entire show - rendering it close to impossible to
enjoy."
His
memories on the Archive:
"I
attended this show and have a few photos taken with a 126 camera and
the 4-sided flashcubes. Was there with a bunch of friends really down
close enough to spit onstage - a friend recorded onto a portable
cassette recorder - but would not want to brag about the sound
quality. Concert was essentially in a gymnasium - Harrington
Auditorium it was called - we sat on the floor on canvas tarps and
Jerry and Bob opened up doing acoustic songs - Monkey and Engineer,
and I do remember Pigpen being there. Electric New Riders came out
after that - Jerry on steel - did Cold Jordan and others - have a
lousy recording of some of these songs too - after a break that
seemed like an hour to us - Electric Dead came out and were loud -
cassette audio was overloaded and really awful... At 2 am we hit the
streets to walk home - way too late to call the parents for a ride,
no security, lotsa reefer and laid-back show - my ticket stub says
2.50 price of admission - a good night."
He also
commented on Lost Live Dead:
"A
night that went on forever - Acoustic Weir/Garcia - and Phil came out
as well as I recall - Black Peter, Monkey and Engineer, El Paso...
After that set - New Riders came out - with Jerry - and Mickey Hart
was there too - David Nelson - and after a break that seemed like an
hour - our eardrums were split with an electric set - that pretty
much set my friend's ALC on his cassette into permanent overload - we
should have thought to turn it away from the stage and the monitors -
it may have eased the overload a bit - I do have some of it on reel
to reel - made from the original cassette - but the oxide was flaking
pretty badly last time it was out of the box...
And have
quite a few shots on the old 126 format - 3.5 square prints - some
pics have the gymnasium wall logo in the back - Garcia and Weir both
in tie-died shirts - both were purplish in color - Phil in a yellow
dress shirt almost? and Dave Nelson - Marmaduke clearly visible as
well in a few shots.
I think the
concert went over 5 hours total - got home at 3am - pretty close to
it - and I lived 3 miles away."
So for the
acoustic set, people remember Friend of the Devil, Black Peter,
Monkey and the Engineer, and Cold Jordan. I'm more skeptical of El
Paso, since no other performance is known until July '70, but it's
possible. The New Riders seem to have left little impression.
No
witnesses tell us what jam numbers closed out the show. There could
have been a Lovelight (which ended several shows in the tour, as
usual for 1970), but the feedback & pyrotechnics indicate a
different ending: throughout the year, Feedback almost always
followed Caution or Alligator (except for a couple of Viola Lees).
Bob
Matthews, on the Dead's sound crew, had recorded the first couple of
shows on the tour (May 1 and 2), but then for whatever reason, kept
no other tapes until May 14. Other than a fortuitous radio recording
from the MIT free show, this left several shows represented only by
audience tapes (mostly of low quality). No tape of the Worcester show
ever appeared, leaving it a mysterious blank.
A partial
tape of the show has now surfaced. (The taper is unknown, but I
presume was a separate taper from Kenneth above.) Only the first part
of the electric set survives - it's unknown whether the acoustic or
NRPS sets were taped by this source. The batteries in the tape
recorder ran out during High Time, leaving us with about 50 minutes
of the set.
(The
quality is not pristine. This was an mp3 copy of the tape made some
years ago and converted to WAV.)
First
electric set - partial set list:
Cold Rain
and Snow
Sittin' on
Top of the World
New
Minglewood Blues
Morning Dew
Good Lovin'
>
Drums >
New Orleans
>
Good Lovin'
High Time//
There's a
steady tape hum, but otherwise the sound quality is about average for
a 1970 audience tape. The taper seems to have found a good spot on a
balcony: the band is somewhat distant but clear (considering the echo
in the gym), and the audience is relatively quiet. (In one mishap
that may indicate what happened to the earlier part of the show, part
of Sittin' on Top of the World was taped over by a news report,
starting at 1:10.)
This part
of the show doesn't have Harpur or MIT levels of energy. There is no
stage banter and the crowd's restrained. But it's a typical set for
1970 - after a couple of songs, the playing's pretty hot.
Coincidentally
or not, the Dead start the set with four songs in a row from their
debut album: no new song is played until High Time, so this part of
the show has something of an oldies feel. After the 4-minute drum
break in Good Lovin', the band pops into a quick, fun New Orleans.
This was a rarity, played just a few times that year (they'd do the
same medley again on 6/6/70). They return to a brisk jam and wrap up
Good Lovin', then cool things down with a mellow High Time, where the
tape recorder dies. The rest of the show could have been anywhere
from 60-90 minutes.
The next
day, the Dead would fly down to Atlanta for a May 10 show there.
(Their equipment was "left behind in Boston by the airline,"
but fortunately the Allman Brothers came to the rescue.) Meanwhile,
the students at WPI went back to classes on May 11, their short
school strike over, the Dead show a memory for the few who'd stayed
til the end. The Dead wouldn't play on campus again - when they came
back to Massachusetts over the next few years, it was always to
Boston or Springfield (each just an hour away from Worcester).
But Jerry
Garcia would return to WPI a few years later. As soon as the Dead
went on hiatus, Garcia & Saunders took a two-week tour of the
Northeast in November 1974, playing a couple of shows in Worcester
between stops in Boston and Upper Darby. Per the student paper
announcement, "On Friday November 15 in Alden Hall, the WPI
Social Committee will present a Grateful Dead party, with Jerry
Garcia, Merle Saunders and Friends of the Grateful Dead. There will
be two shows, one at 7:00 p.m. and the other at 10:00 p.m."
(11/5/74 Newspeak, p.5)
This
reflects the hope that a Garcia show would be more of a "Grateful
Dead party" than it was! (No "friends of the Dead"
appeared.) Garcia was asked to play in the Harrington gym, but
refused. Per Corry Arnold, "At Worcester Poly, Garcia insisted
on playing double shows at the smaller (and presumably acoustically
superior) Alden Auditorium instead of the school gym." (He also
refused an interview with the paper, saying "he isn't in it for the fame.")
Bruce
Minsky's review in the paper also approved of the smaller venue:
"Alden Auditorium provided a most aesthetic atmosphere and
perhaps a better chance to relate with the band because of the
smaller size, especially compared to Harrington." (11/19/74 Newspeak, p.4)
However,
this caused the WPI Social Committee some problems. Newspeak tallied
up the income & expenses, showing that they'd lost over $2300 on
Garcia's appearances. (Ticket sales: $9200. Expenses: $11,560.)
S.B. Fine
wrote an article, "The High Cost of Concerts," examining
the expenses of putting on a Tech concert: "A more recent
concert problem was the Jerry Garcia concert. If Garcia had played in
Harrington, the social committee might have broken even or
conceivably made money. Unfortunately instead he played two concerts
in Alden. For both concerts 1600 tickets (approximately) were sold.
If the concert were in Harrington many more would have been sold.
Jerry Garcia though refused to play in Harrington, saying that he was
doing a tour of only small concerts." (12/3/74 Newspeak, p.3)
Social
Committee members followed this up with another article explaining
their budget: "One last point about Steve Fine's article in last
week's issue of Newspeak. This is a fairly accurate description of
some of the actual []ists of a concert - including the need (?) of
having to rent the hall. Policies are not set by us but by Building
and Grounds. In his last paragraph, he states that Jerry Garcia
refused to play in Harrington, where we could conceivably have made
money; this is entirely correct, and if we could have gotten him to
play in Harrington, we would have. Thus the reasons for a concert
"losing" money includes not only student apathy but also
the artist's whims and impressions of himself." (12/10/74
Newspeak, p.3)
Still,
Minsky was happy about Garcia's show in his review, calling it "the
unquestionably best concert this year at WPI. I think the majority of
the dead heads were satisfied." A later issue also called the
show "excellent." (However, "Garcia appeared in his
usual lackadaisical manner...he just kind of stood there and played
away. During the second show, he showed a little more life and
actually moved his feet a few times.")
Although
the Jerry Garcia Band and Grateful Dead would return to Worcester in
the '80s, they would play larger venues in town such as the Centrum -
to the consternation of city authorities who preferred that the Dead
never came to town at all. (After 1988, "An irate City Council
did everything in its power to make Worcester an undesirable tour
stop for the band, from attempting to place restrictions on future
entertainment licenses to requiring the group to pay some of the
bills incurred by the city for additional police patrols and public
works cleanup details.")
Not so
different from the WPI administration upset about "gate-crashing
townies" crowding too-popular shows at Harrington back in
1970... But a long way from a couple hundred people on a gym floor
chain-dancing and setting off fireworks to blasts of feedback!
Pleased to share a new unheard tape from 1970!
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