The long, strange trip has included more than a few stops in our area. As the remaining members of the band come back to town, local Grateful Dead fans share some of their fondest memories.
Bring out your Dead
The first time you experience the Grateful Dead, if you’re feeling at all open, the music comes at you from all sides simultaneously. It works some sort of strange molecule-adjusting black magic on you, refuses to ever settle into some imagined groove of repose and leaves you forever changed. It is like watching a delicate ballet being performed on a high-wire. Or maybe it’s more like watching an 18-wheeler negotiate a hairpin turn with grace and dignity intact.
There’s nothing else like the Grateful Dead, even though an entire subgenre of rock music— known, for better or worse, as “jam band”—sprung from the soil it first rooted about in. Love it or hate it, which almost seems beside the point, it had to happen; from the first time you really “got it” to today, it felt like something with the force of the inevitable about it. Like Kerouac, Dylan or Kurt Cobain.
From the first time the collective of lysergic cowboys hit the caravan trail and headed due east from the San Francisco that midwifed its birth and hovered over its formative years, the Dead began forging a rather unusual relationship with New York State—and its western-most reaches in particular.
College campuses, cow fields, hockey arenas, even our city’s hallowed home of the Buffalo Philharmonic— they all hosted the Dead and, in the process, did their part in shaping the band’s history and the history of the fellow travelers who took pride in calling themselves Deadheads.
With the surviving members of the Grateful Dead— Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart — reconvening for their first extended outing in years, it comes as no real surprise that one of the 15 shows booked for the short reunion tour is a Buffalo date— Tuesday, inside HSBC Arena.
Allman Brothers Band/Gov’t Mule guitarist Warren Haynes is standing where Jerry Garcia once stood, and Jeff Chimenti, keyboardist with Weir’s Ratdog, is flanking him, suggesting that the Dead—no “Grateful” without the late Jerry Garcia, has long been the rule—still have plenty of improvisational muscle to flex.
More significantly, the group members feel that there is still much to explore in the open-ended, “formless-form,” controlled-chaos approach to music making they pioneered in the late ’60s.
That makes this band and its music as much of an anomaly now as it was 40 years ago, if not moreso.
As the “long, strange trip” prepares to pause for a bit in our town, readers came out of the woodwork, eager to share their tales (via e-mail) of primal, indelible and formative concert experiences involving the Dead here in Buffalo. Here are some of their stories.
Aud fellows
If the walls at the old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium could sing, it’s likely that a Dead tune or two would make the playlist. The band started playing there in the ’70s, and it was within the hallowed structure of the Aud that most area Deadheads had their first taste.
From Andrei Neimanis, Amherst:
Buffalo, the Dead and I happily converged in the Aud in the late ’70s. Subsequently, I went to Niagara University, so if they were in town, I was there. Spring, summer and fall we’d see the boys in the Century Theater, Shea’s, Rich Stadium and, of course, the beloved Aud. As I drive by that building now, I can only imagine a T-shirt with an image of the Aud in its current state, and the caption: “Hey Garcia! I told you the guitar was too loud!” Or maybe, “Were they ever here at all?
Of all the Dead shows we attended in this town, I really can’t pick out an absolute favorite. One thing I can say is that I can’t think of a bad one. The Dead always rocked Buffalo. Wherever you see the band, you can always count on the local Buffalo contingent making themselves heard loud and clear every time “Truckin’ “ is played. The Dead are “truckin’ up to Buffalo.” It may be the coolest shoutout in the world!
For me and my adventurous friends during those wonderful days of college, Buffalo was usually the starting point when we would “do the Thruway.” After the show in Buffalo, we’d follow the caravan southeast toward New York City. So it was off to ... places like Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Utica, Albany and Cortland, and eventually, Manhattan, Long Island and even a few trips across the border to New Jersey. It was our way of “getting on the bus” even though there were times when being on the bus meant hitching a ride back to Niagara in the rain after a show in the Broome County Arena. Plus, we went to all these shows and rarely had tickets in hand. We normally bought tickets outside the venue and, as I recall, fairly easily. There were very few times that we paid more than the price printed on the ticket. Deadheads were a heartier breed back then. You know you’re getting old when you long for the days when honey and sprout sandwiches were a nickel!
Famous at Rich
Following the great crossover success of the Dead’s “In the Dark” album, and its runaway single “Tough of Grey,” the band found itself no longer able to stick to the large theaters and midsize arenas it had long favored. Suddenly, the Dead was a stadium band, and a whole new generation of teenagers and college students wanted in on the party, much to the chagrin of seasoned Deadheads.
Sure, there were logistical problems aplenty, and it could be argued that the whole utopian community aspect of the Dead was forever compromised by the influx of the more casual fans, who came to shows mostly for the party. But in Buffalo, the jump to stadiums meant a few now-legendary appearances at Rich Stadium— one of which has been forever immortalized on the “Truckin’ Up To Buffalo” CD and DVD. For many local fans, the Rich shows remain favorites.
From Paul Urbanski, Buffalo:
My last great Dead show was Buffalo 7/16/90, (Rich Stadium). I saw seven or eight shows afterward, but none came close to this show, off the final Brent Mydland tour. [Mydland died a short time after this show.] The band was really on a roll—fall ’89 and spring ’90 were universally praised as the best tours in years, and the band was breaking out all the old material after years of stale set lists.
Rich Stadium was packed on a gorgeous sunny Tuesday afternoon, and the Grateful Dead played as tight and carefree as I’d ever seen them. You just got the sense watching them that they could do no wrong—that here was a band in their 25th year as in sync with each other as ever. The set list offered plenty of gems - “Mississippi Halfstep Uptown Toodle-oo,” “Loose Lucy,” “High Time,” “Let it Grow,” “Sugar Magnolia”/” Scarlet Begonias” (alas, no “Fire on the Mountain”). But my single favorite moment is the post-drums Wharf Rat. The vocal harmonies of this version of the Dead were one of their strongest suits, and hearing the line many heads can identify with—“I know that the life I’m livin’s no good”— through the band’s pristine sound system among a very quiet appreciative crowd—in a stadium no less—will always stay with me.
Being right in front of the sound board sure didn’t hurt. My last grasp of the gold ring. All things must pass
A spirit lingers
Jerry Garcia loved to play. Not exactly breaking news there, but the late guitarist and reluctant spiritual leader of the Dead was rarely without a guitar in his hands and a series of road dates in his future. This meant that, when the Dead machine had been hosed down and put back into the garage for a rest, Garcia would hit the road with his own band. Buffalo was a routine stop during these Jerry Garcia Band tours.
From Lenny Stubbe Jr., Buffalo:
Jerry Garcia’s finest later Buffalo moment prior to his passing in August of ’95, was not at Rich Stadium, but at the Aud. Nov. 5, 1993, the Jerry Garcia Band put on a magical performance in what many Heads have referred to over the years as the hottest show of that tour. I was second row from the floor in the lower golds stage left, and witnessed my most incredible Jerry performance in the most hallowed of Buffalo halls. It was not only at the Aud, but it was a place that Jerry himself along with the GD put on some incredible performances in the late ’70s and early ’80s, before my concertgoing days.
Despite this being a time when Jerry was winding down in many ways musically, he got up for this performance, sang gracefully and played magically to the local Deadheads and the many Heads who were on tour that filled the hallways of the Aud that evening. I can envision him under the spotlight, and still hear his voice echoing through the Aud corridors to this day. This is helped by the wonderful recordings of this show that circulate in the free trading circles.
What made this evening even more special for Buffalo was the fact that the same night, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were playing Alumni Arena at Buff State. Everyone I knew who was into music was at one of the two shows that night. Who could have known both iconic figures would be gone from our music scene less than two years later?
I’d like to think with [Tuesday’s show] being the first large arena show for members of the Dead since Jerry’s passing, and the Aud being dismantled just a short distance away, that the spirit of Jerry will be there with us on that night.
Bonds of brotherhood
The Grateful Dead has, from its very beginnings, split potential audiences down the middle. Folks who loved the band really loved it, and made the Dead’s music, its tours and its general social and philosophical outlook, a major part of their day-to-day lives.
People who didn’t care for the Dead weren’t exactly content to keep this to themselves. They hated the band, mocked it and brandished a tired old saw (Q: What did one Deadhead say to the other when they ran out of drugs? A: “This band sucks!”) as a weapon in their bid to rid the world of 20- minute versions of “Playing in the Band”.
This battle still rages today. For fans, however, seeing the
Dead, hearing the music interpreted in new ways from night to night, and losing themselves in the sway and flow of it all, remains a portal to feelings of interconnectedness, brotherhood, and the like.
From Stacy Matjoulis, Kenmore:
I have been to over 25 shows,
all between the ages of 18 and 23. I look back on that period in my life with great fondness. Nothing before or since has compared to the amazing feeling of family, beauty and brotherhood that you experience at a Grateful Dead show!
One of my fondest memories is of the Buffalo show at Rich Stadium on the Fourth of July, in 1989. It was only fitting that they played “U. S. Blues,” and I don’t think the crowd could have been any more appreciative than it was.
It’s great to see them on the road again, with a whole new generation of brotherhood.
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