End of the line in 95 with the scene collapsing.

[Rude]

I was looking for the photos I saw in the Indy paper after deer creek and came across this GD thread from 7/3/95.  

 

This is crazy thread. There is political commentary that sounds like it’s happening today. There’s mostly GD commentary how the scene was dying b/c gate crashers and actual criminal behavior. I honestly didn’t even know large threads like this existed in 95. 

 

Check it out 

 

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/rec.music.gdead/B2ZxUe8TltY

[Greg from Chestertown]

I always thought that the gate crashes were why the Grateful Dead started playing the Stones tune ‘last time’. 

[PoetryGirl]

2 hours ago, Greg from Chestertown said:

I always thought that the gate crashes were why the Grateful Dead started playing the Stones tune ‘last time’. 

They played that 90/ 91 or so, too. No gate crashing happened then, right?

[Greg from Chestertown]

Oh, I could be totally wrong. Within the reality of my Grateful Dead universe, I never heard it live until around ‘94. So, that’s why I said what I said. It worked that way for me. Like someone posted recently, Jeff singing ‘dust off those rusty strings just one more time’ holds different meaning while he is playing the Wolf guitar. The magic of Grateful Dead lyrics makes all of us feel as though they were written for us, personally, being sung to us, directly. 

[Mojo Hand]

Interesting link.  Thanks Rude.  Brought back many old feelings, sensations, and memories from those days. 

 

I guess by nature of the fact that my first show was in 1988, I would be considered a "touch head".  There has always been lots of negativity associated with the increased popularity the Dead found in the late 80's and I am sure much of it is well-deserved.  I can't speak to what the scene was like before I showed-up, but I am sure the influx of young people in the late 80's changed things considerably.  The HS and college kids of the late 60's and 70's had a completely different sensibility than the attitude and culture that came with the young kids of the 80's.  However, I don't think the culture change that came with the "touch heads" represented a death sentence for the Grateful Dead scene.  Many may disagree.

 

I saw something markedly different infiltrate the scene by 1993.  The Dead lot was being taken over by homeless young people.  Many of them were beggars, ticketless, and strung-out.  This phenomena was not unique to the Dead scene.  At the time, I was going to Drexel University in Center City Philadelphia.  Quite a few abandoned houses were taken over by young, voluntary homeless who spent their days begging around campus.  I also traveled the West Coast quite a bit and the same thing was going on in other cities.  Most notably, Portland had a huge young, homeless population.  The highest concentration of this phenomena could be found at Grateful Dead shows. 

 

Touring with the Grateful Dead  held much of the same allure to these folks that it had to millions of young people before them.  However, the previous generations of tour heads brought happy positive people who loved music, traveling, and selling their wares within a like-minded community.  The new generation of homeless, young tour heads were strung-out beggars, who emoted negativity and misery.  I have no idea if those people had any sense of what our music and community was all about. 

 

Also of note, there was a huge uptick in heroin use at the time.  Available in a cheap powder form, heroin was fast became a drug of choice to young people who had not really seen it before.......and there's not much positive that comes along with that. 

 

To me, this is the undercurrent of the conversations in the link Rude sent.  These people did not respect the scene or bring any of the same culture and sensibilities that had always been associated with Deadheads.  Whether or not Jerry died, I think at least a temporary break was in order.  The scene needed some purging. 

[chuckvegas]

Well said, Mojo Hand. As a college kid of the '70s who saw shows during that decade, I could not feel much affinity for what it had become by the Touch years. The renaissance these last 20 years or so (in no small part due to DSO) helps demonstrate how strong the underlying current of Americana remains. Thank you all.

[Greg from Chestertown]

So many thoughts. Touch of Grey brought crowds. Not necessarily bad, just competition for tickets. Scalpers dream. A lot of that crowd went away, not interested in the Grateful Dead. A lot stayed, became deadheads. Cool, no problem. The scene before touch was the vibe started by the youth in the sixties. It still lived within the Dead scene. I was young in the sixties but I remember it. Teenagers were not going to grow up to be their parents. Same old story, right? I had the good fortune of being escorted into the Grateful Dead scene by an experienced deadhead. I was tutored, educated on how to behave, fit in at a show. The same with acid. When you went to a show, A Lot of people were tripping. People went to shows for the music, how it made you feel. You didn’t sit in your seat. Your section was close enough. You didn’t scalp tickets. You sold your extra for what it cost you.  I have always believed, since while it was happening, that the deadheads that came before, didn’t ‘parent’ (there’s got to be a better word, it’s not coming to me) the touch heads, not even properly, almost not at all. That sixties vibe seemed to get extinguished. That void seemed to get filled with all of the problems of the modern world. I’m talking about the lot scene now. Inside the venue, that vibe lived. The band just kept drilling it into our heads, hearts, and souls. That’s why we left feeling so good, looking forward to the next time. They gave us hope. Our behavior in the lot wasn’t giving them hope. You know the rest. That’s all, thanks for letting me share.

[Weather Command]

Crashes started in mid to late 80's with stadium shows added in addition to the release of IN THE DARK. Keller wrote a song about the Deer Creek debacle. Top 40 has the potential to ruin anything outside of packing the band's pockets with dough. Vince didn't help anything either...when Brent died, the scene collapsed, in my opinion...I saw only 3 local shows in 1995..

[Greg from Chestertown]

So true about Brent. I think he is underrated. My memories after he passed are slivers of light, glimpses of hope. Hornsby was promising but didn’t pan out. Jerry band ‘91 and’93 satisfied. Midnight hour/ Cumberland, Visions of Johanna, that was cool. Yea, you wonder if they had packed it in, made some kind of drastic change after Brent passed, maybe the last chapter wouldn’t have been the last chapter. 

[Rude]

I unfortunately only saw the end so I knew nothing about anything. I was in Memphis in 95 where the newspaper wrote that more people came from out of state to a music event than any time in Tennessee history (30k out of state estimate). There were 17k seats in the pyramid and an estimated 50k people there. It was all fingers in the air. No one got a ticket that didn’t have one. It was my 2nd show and Beale street after was a fun madhouse. I still felt like a complete outsider. It wasn’t until summer tour that I started to understand and poof it was gone. I did have both night deer creek tix and the 3rd night of our run was cancelled. The Indianapolis Star article was scathing. I have it laminated and it’s somewhere at my moms house. The picture of a scoundrel trying to juke a police dog to get to the fence still is as clear as day in my mind.  It was a perfect pic with the dogs mouth open barking and the gate crasher frozen in time leaning to the side trying to make a move to the fence anyway. The fence was little more than anyone’s back yard fence. Now all venues are barbed wire. That one had a 4 foot Orange plastic warning fence and a 10’ wooden back one up the hill a little bit. It seems weird to think a 20k seat outdoor venue isn’t fortified now. You have to think that none of this stress helped Jerry’s addiction and more than likely caused him to use more and more to escape the reality that this was becoming exponentially bigger and bigger with no end in sight. 

[Tea]

The last thing Jerry wanted was to be the captain of THAT ship.  It became too big for anyone to handle....

[Greg from Chestertown]

Rude, you didn’t miss out if you saw one show. Somewhere in there, even if it was one song, Jerry was as good as he’s ever been. The vibe lives on at DSO shows. I worry about them but I believe the band has a maturity about them that will keep them from succumbing to a similar demise. Cool heads prevail and they got that going on. 

[Tom Banjo]

Interested subject. I especially like the comment from Greg about how the tour heads didn’t parent the touch heads. “Parenting” or whatever you want to call it seems essential to thrive and emmerse yourself in this scene and community. The unparented or those who refuse to be parented usually end up on the fringe or go away. Some of the older heads I’ve met through dark star taught me as much about life as any single human beings outside of my parents. We all come in a little rough around the edges and sometimes the scene can seem like a free for all. I’m sure it did in 95. 

 

Maybe the darkness is from your eyes..

Maybe you had too much too fast. 

[PoetryGirl]

You might say I am a touch head ! I fell into the scene  a junior in HS amidst  dating an avid deadhead originally from Delaware, befriending  a bevy of local college alums who were deadheads, and  hanging out with small sect of homegrown deadheads too. 

 

One of my favorite memories was the couple you might consider the elders of the crowd feeding us all black bean soup and bread after spending the night post show at their place. They fed probably thirty of us. It felt like family and care and cemented what shows were about in my book. The sister and brotherhood - togetherness. 

[helpfrankslip]

On 11/11/2018 at 6:01 AM, PoetryGirl said:

They played that 90/ 91 or so, too. No gate crashing happened then, right?

2/25/91 my birthday show and we were leaving the colosseum and singing that might have been the first one we don't know